The Spoils of War - Part 5
Here is the next part of this tale. Warnings for disturbing verbal imagery and the suggestion of extreme violence and torture. If I knew how, I'd put this part behind an adults only warning. Sorry about that, those of you who aren't yet 18.
Continue at your own risk.
Chapter 5 - The Monster Within
The late afternoon wind came, as it always did, but Inzilanî didn't feel it. She didn't feel anything. Her eyes stared at the line of trees in the direction of the battle, but didn't really see them. And in her hand, the dagger stabbed down over and over again, a small, wet squishing, sucking noise that only she could hear telling her that the stab had hit its mark. She didn't need to look; she knew what she was hitting, and why.
But it didn't matter anymore.
"Inzilanî?"
Slowly she blinked, and finally saw that the daylight was on the verge of failing. The din of battle was gone, and the silence in the copse was deafening. In front of her, Borongil squatted on the ground with his hand outstretched to her. The moment he saw that she was actually seeing him, he pointed to her hand.
Inzilanî frowned in confusion. If he took back the dagger, then she couldn't…
She looked down and felt her empty stomach twist painfully as she truly saw what she'd been stabbing at repeatedly. Next to the rock she was sitting on lay the crushed and bloodied head of an uruk. Whether it was that of her owner or one of the other two that had found them during the battle, she had no way of knowing; all of them, without exception, had met exactly the same fate. The second and the third had been easier to fell, however, for one of the taller boys had laid claim to her owner's sword, even though it was too big and almost too heavy for him to use with any skill at all. Four of them - the three tallest and strongest of the twenty and herself - now were armed and ready to take on the next monster to stumble over them.
The features that would have been the face of the uruk had long since been obliterated. All was black, stinking blood and lazy, blue-hued flies which buzzed and simply hopped out of the way of her dagger as it fell yet again. As if nothing were real, she tipped her head and wondered if anybody could tell that the mouth she kept stabbing into was filled with that with which he had tortured them - they all had tortured them - and that it had been the first part to be ripped from each living uruk. A mouth open in a scream of agony had been so easily filled by the same thing that had torn into her so many times after she was thrown to the ground.
At last, she roused herself enough to look around her. The copse was filled with nimîr, all of them staring in dismay at the mess that had once been a peaceful, beautiful place, some already carefully moving to take charge of a stunned captive boy. Black blood was everywhere: on the nimîr, on the captives, on the grass, on the tree trunks, on the rocks, on the mutilated body parts and internal organs that were scattered about like melting hailstones, only identifiable by size and shape, and even then only sometimes. Inzilanî felt the crawl of the flies on her face and hands, no doubt enjoying the meal of gore that covered her from head to toe.
How had this happened? She could only vaguely remember her owner bursting through the underbrush, and her rage ripping through her. When had…
"Inzilanî." Borongil's voice called her back to the present moment, and she blinked as if just awakening all over again. Her nimir keeper's armor was splattered with black blood, and his silver hair hung limp and heavy with mess. But those grey eyes were still filled with starlight, and now infinite sadness. Slowly he inched forward until, finally, he put his hand on hers, stilling the mindlessly mechanical stabs and then prying the hilt from her frozen fingers.
As if the dagger had been all that had held her together, Inzilanî sagged the moment it was taken from her, sickened and yet numb. Her mind twisted, trying to avoid remembering and not being able to escape the visible reminders of what she and the others had done. She stared with horrified fascination at the faceless head covered in blood, dust and dead leaves, unable to understand where the person who had shoved bloody genitalia into an open mouth until the uruk choked as well as screamed had come from. It hadn't been her.
It couldn't have been.
Large hands slipped under her arms, and she was lifted to her feet. Were it not for the arm that slid around her and pulled her close, Inzilanî wouldn't have been able to stand - or walk. Her feet dragged on the stony ground, and her hands dangled uselessly from her arms. Her gaze caught on one of the larger lumps of flesh as she passed the edge of the trees, and suddenly her stomach twisted again painfully, sickeningly. She bent double and began to heave, only there was nothing in her stomach to lose.
A deep voice sounded from close by, and she noticed that Pharazôn had come close; and it was almost a relief to slip to her knees and press her face into the dust that she hadn't quite been able to vomit on. She couldn't even look into his face - she no longer had the right to look upon such an elevated person - and she definitely didn't want him looking into hers. What else could he see when he looked at her but a monster: someone capable of…
Borongil's voice sounded saddened and frustrated, and Pharazôn spoke softly to him and then walked away. She felt her keeper's large hands slip beneath her arms again and lift, but this time he didn't even attempt to make her stand on her own. Soon enough, he was lifting her up to the back of the gore-splattered grey and then springing up behind her this time. His arms surrounded her, pulling her close, as the horse set off on a smooth walk. Inzilanî tucked her hands in and huddled against the filthy metal plates that covered his cuirass, keening softly, but she could find no peace, no refuge. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was the blood and the gore and the mess and remember how the curtain of red had fallen over her eyes, setting loose the monster that lived within her.
Inzilanî dozed fitfully, awakening before any real sleep could take her, the entire night that Borongil kept her on the horse and moving through the forest. She was cold, and the gore that had spattered her face and hands was sticky and stank. She shivered, and felt the horse beneath her halt smoothly for a moment, until something warm was wrapped around her. Then they were moving again.
Borongil was still being kind to her, and it made no sense. She had proven herself no better than the urik themselves. Her memories were distant, as if she had watched something happening to someone else, but they were clearer now. She had taken the dagger - something he had gifted her with in order to protect herself - and used it to deliberately and with great pleasure inflict the most intense amount of pain and suffering that she could on a being that was not threatening her. Indeed, by the time she'd gotten to them, each urkan had been disarmed and rendered harmless by the actions of others. What was more, nothing she had done to any of the uruk while alive had been done quickly or cleanly. No, she had reveled in the volume and desperation of the screams. She had put herself where the spurts of black blood could hit her in the face and rejoiced. In the end, she had helped throw the bits and pieces into the air at random and then stomp on them in a horrific dance of victory and revenge.
It had been her, after all.
The lesson was clear: somewhere, while in the possession of the uruk, she had become an uruk. She had betrayed the kindnesses she had been shown by the nimîr, and she deserved nothing more or less than the same death that had been dealt to the urik with grey skin and red eyes. If she had any honor at all - which, of course, she clearly didn't - she would take care of the matter herself. But she couldn't reach or handle Borongil's sword, and she had no idea where he had hidden the dagger.
And so she huddled against Borongil, the one she wanted desperately to claim her as his slave so that she would never have to fear again, powerless to do the right thing and end her own life. Her keeper was taking her somewhere, exactly where no longer mattered. Wherever it was, it would be better than where she deserved to be: on the ground, dead, her lifeblood soaking into the dust and her parts scattered.
Slowly the sky lightened with a new day, and the sounds of running water could be heard in the distance. The horse's pace picked up, and they moved faster through the warming forest to finally slow and halt again on the banks of a swift-running stream. Borongil threw his leg over the side of the horse and slipped to the ground without dropping Inzilanî, and carried her to a patch of green grass in the sun and set her down. He waggled his finger at her, telling her to stay put, and returned to his mount. From a pair of bags that Inzilanî hadn't noticed draped across the horse's back, he withdrew something: clean clothing.
He put his burden on the ground nearby and then squatted down so he could face her. He lifted a blood-encrusted wad of hair on both of them and wrinkled his nose, then wiped a finger down her cheek and over his filthy armor and then rubbed that finger onto the grass with a look of distaste. Inzilanî slowly nodded. They were both filthy and disgusting. He nodded and then pointed to the stream and began mimicking the act of washing his face, then tipped his head. She gazed at the water thoughtfully. Would water ever completely wash away the filth with which she was stained?
Still, Borongil deserved an answer, and so she nodded tiredly. "Na." Even if she deserved death, she had declared herself the property of Borongil. He wanted her to wash herself, so wash she would.
"Mae," he said with a quick nod and rose, extending his hand down to her. "Tolo."
Inzilanî allowed the cloak in which he had wrapped her fall away and then let him pull her to her feet. She walked with him to the very edge of the water and then crouched, dabbling her hand in the clear, icy water and watching the blood slowly rinse away from her fingers. When she looked up, Borongil had already stripped off the metal-adorned leather and stood clad in nothing but some finely-woven protective undergarments, the tunic of which he stripped away as well and tossed onto a clean patch of grass. He crouched then by the water and splashed water up into his face and over his head, rinsing away the blood just the way it had eventually rinsed from her hand.
She looked down at herself. The tunic and leggings he had given her were ruined; there would be no chance of getting the mess out of them to make them wearable again. She sighed, resigning herself to once more wearing nothing but a blanket or, if Borongil was generous and charitable, his cloak. Her fingers shook as she unhooked the chain belt and let it drop with a clink, and then toed off the ruined boots so that she could pull at the gore-soaked leggings. When she had pulled the tunic over her head as well, she walked naked into the stream, disregarding entirely the icy knives of freezing water that sliced painfully at her, and sat down to begin rubbing at the black mess on her skin.
The more she rubbed, though, the tighter the stain seemed to cling to her skin, and she gave a desperate sob and scrubbed hard at her hands, her arms, her face. Borongil would no doubt leave her if she couldn’t get clean, and she wouldn't blame him in the least if he did; but she didn't want to get left behind, even if that was what she deserved. She sobbed and tore at her hair, pulling at where the clots of blood had congealed her hair into ugly clumps that made her look like the uruk she was. No matter how hard she worked, there was always some more left behind.
Inzilanî hadn't been paying attention, because strong arms suddenly surrounded her, stopping her frantic actions, and a gentle voice in her ear said, "Baw, Inzilanî. Sidh." The words continued to tumble out, but Inzilanî's sobs wouldn't let her hear them.
"I'm nothing but an uruk!" she cried in her own tongue, knowing full well that Borongil wouldn't understand a word of what she said. "I killed him. I killed all three of them. I wanted to hurt them as much as I had been hurt, and I did. I did to them what they had done to me, and I am no better than them! I will never be clean, never be free. You should let me die!"
But the arms around her wouldn't loosen. Inzilanî screamed and sobbed out her hatred and her remorse and her grief and her pain and her desolation, and the arms never moved. And eventually, at long last, all she had energy to do was sag against his hold on her, weeping as if her heart were shattered and clinging to him, amazed that he was allowing this at all. At last Borongil moved, slipping an arm beneath her knees and lifting her from the icy water to carry her to the sunny grass on the banks of the stream.
Numb inside and out, she was motionless beneath his ministrations as he used the clean side of the cloak that he'd had her wrapped in to dry her, and then carefully and gently pulled the fresh tunic over her head and steered arms into sleeves. He had trousers for her this time on which he could tighten a drawstring so they wouldn't fall off, although he rinsed and then cinched the chain about her waist again after rolling the bottoms of the legs so they wouldn't drag on the ground. And then he wrapped her back up in the cloak, clean side against her skin and clothing, waggled his finger at her, telling her to stay put, and moved to dress himself once more, this time in tunic and leggings. Finally he took the dirty tunic that had been worn beneath the leather, wet it in the stream, and began the job of scrubbing the blood from his armor.
Inzilanî gave a heavy sigh and shed the cloak. She was a slave, and if her new owner would not have her for bed comfort, then performing tasks for him so that he didn't have to do them himself was her only purpose in life. She rose and tapped his shoulder and held out her hand, wordlessly demanding the wet cloth. With wide eyes, Borongil handed it over to her and moved aside, and she crouched and began her work. Perhaps if she had a task that she could focus on, she wouldn't have to remember anything. She dipped the cloth in the cold water again and scrubbed hard. The blood of an uruk didn't belong on the armor of a nimir. She would see this armor sparkling in the sun again, as if that worn by Pharazôn himself.
Until she could do what was needed, she would do what was required. She was a slave; it was time she started acting like one again.
Vocabulary (A) Adúnaic (S) Sindarin
baw - (S) don't, no
mae - (S) good, well
na - (S) yes
nimir - (A) elf
nimîr - (A) elves
Pharazôn - (A) Golden One
sidh - (S) peace
tolo - (S) come (imperative)
urik - (A) orcs (obj. case)
urkan - (A) orc (nom. case)
uruk - (A) orc (obj. case)
Continue at your own risk.
Chapter 5 - The Monster Within
The late afternoon wind came, as it always did, but Inzilanî didn't feel it. She didn't feel anything. Her eyes stared at the line of trees in the direction of the battle, but didn't really see them. And in her hand, the dagger stabbed down over and over again, a small, wet squishing, sucking noise that only she could hear telling her that the stab had hit its mark. She didn't need to look; she knew what she was hitting, and why.
But it didn't matter anymore.
"Inzilanî?"
Slowly she blinked, and finally saw that the daylight was on the verge of failing. The din of battle was gone, and the silence in the copse was deafening. In front of her, Borongil squatted on the ground with his hand outstretched to her. The moment he saw that she was actually seeing him, he pointed to her hand.
Inzilanî frowned in confusion. If he took back the dagger, then she couldn't…
She looked down and felt her empty stomach twist painfully as she truly saw what she'd been stabbing at repeatedly. Next to the rock she was sitting on lay the crushed and bloodied head of an uruk. Whether it was that of her owner or one of the other two that had found them during the battle, she had no way of knowing; all of them, without exception, had met exactly the same fate. The second and the third had been easier to fell, however, for one of the taller boys had laid claim to her owner's sword, even though it was too big and almost too heavy for him to use with any skill at all. Four of them - the three tallest and strongest of the twenty and herself - now were armed and ready to take on the next monster to stumble over them.
The features that would have been the face of the uruk had long since been obliterated. All was black, stinking blood and lazy, blue-hued flies which buzzed and simply hopped out of the way of her dagger as it fell yet again. As if nothing were real, she tipped her head and wondered if anybody could tell that the mouth she kept stabbing into was filled with that with which he had tortured them - they all had tortured them - and that it had been the first part to be ripped from each living uruk. A mouth open in a scream of agony had been so easily filled by the same thing that had torn into her so many times after she was thrown to the ground.
At last, she roused herself enough to look around her. The copse was filled with nimîr, all of them staring in dismay at the mess that had once been a peaceful, beautiful place, some already carefully moving to take charge of a stunned captive boy. Black blood was everywhere: on the nimîr, on the captives, on the grass, on the tree trunks, on the rocks, on the mutilated body parts and internal organs that were scattered about like melting hailstones, only identifiable by size and shape, and even then only sometimes. Inzilanî felt the crawl of the flies on her face and hands, no doubt enjoying the meal of gore that covered her from head to toe.
How had this happened? She could only vaguely remember her owner bursting through the underbrush, and her rage ripping through her. When had…
"Inzilanî." Borongil's voice called her back to the present moment, and she blinked as if just awakening all over again. Her nimir keeper's armor was splattered with black blood, and his silver hair hung limp and heavy with mess. But those grey eyes were still filled with starlight, and now infinite sadness. Slowly he inched forward until, finally, he put his hand on hers, stilling the mindlessly mechanical stabs and then prying the hilt from her frozen fingers.
As if the dagger had been all that had held her together, Inzilanî sagged the moment it was taken from her, sickened and yet numb. Her mind twisted, trying to avoid remembering and not being able to escape the visible reminders of what she and the others had done. She stared with horrified fascination at the faceless head covered in blood, dust and dead leaves, unable to understand where the person who had shoved bloody genitalia into an open mouth until the uruk choked as well as screamed had come from. It hadn't been her.
It couldn't have been.
Large hands slipped under her arms, and she was lifted to her feet. Were it not for the arm that slid around her and pulled her close, Inzilanî wouldn't have been able to stand - or walk. Her feet dragged on the stony ground, and her hands dangled uselessly from her arms. Her gaze caught on one of the larger lumps of flesh as she passed the edge of the trees, and suddenly her stomach twisted again painfully, sickeningly. She bent double and began to heave, only there was nothing in her stomach to lose.
A deep voice sounded from close by, and she noticed that Pharazôn had come close; and it was almost a relief to slip to her knees and press her face into the dust that she hadn't quite been able to vomit on. She couldn't even look into his face - she no longer had the right to look upon such an elevated person - and she definitely didn't want him looking into hers. What else could he see when he looked at her but a monster: someone capable of…
Borongil's voice sounded saddened and frustrated, and Pharazôn spoke softly to him and then walked away. She felt her keeper's large hands slip beneath her arms again and lift, but this time he didn't even attempt to make her stand on her own. Soon enough, he was lifting her up to the back of the gore-splattered grey and then springing up behind her this time. His arms surrounded her, pulling her close, as the horse set off on a smooth walk. Inzilanî tucked her hands in and huddled against the filthy metal plates that covered his cuirass, keening softly, but she could find no peace, no refuge. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was the blood and the gore and the mess and remember how the curtain of red had fallen over her eyes, setting loose the monster that lived within her.
Inzilanî dozed fitfully, awakening before any real sleep could take her, the entire night that Borongil kept her on the horse and moving through the forest. She was cold, and the gore that had spattered her face and hands was sticky and stank. She shivered, and felt the horse beneath her halt smoothly for a moment, until something warm was wrapped around her. Then they were moving again.
Borongil was still being kind to her, and it made no sense. She had proven herself no better than the urik themselves. Her memories were distant, as if she had watched something happening to someone else, but they were clearer now. She had taken the dagger - something he had gifted her with in order to protect herself - and used it to deliberately and with great pleasure inflict the most intense amount of pain and suffering that she could on a being that was not threatening her. Indeed, by the time she'd gotten to them, each urkan had been disarmed and rendered harmless by the actions of others. What was more, nothing she had done to any of the uruk while alive had been done quickly or cleanly. No, she had reveled in the volume and desperation of the screams. She had put herself where the spurts of black blood could hit her in the face and rejoiced. In the end, she had helped throw the bits and pieces into the air at random and then stomp on them in a horrific dance of victory and revenge.
It had been her, after all.
The lesson was clear: somewhere, while in the possession of the uruk, she had become an uruk. She had betrayed the kindnesses she had been shown by the nimîr, and she deserved nothing more or less than the same death that had been dealt to the urik with grey skin and red eyes. If she had any honor at all - which, of course, she clearly didn't - she would take care of the matter herself. But she couldn't reach or handle Borongil's sword, and she had no idea where he had hidden the dagger.
And so she huddled against Borongil, the one she wanted desperately to claim her as his slave so that she would never have to fear again, powerless to do the right thing and end her own life. Her keeper was taking her somewhere, exactly where no longer mattered. Wherever it was, it would be better than where she deserved to be: on the ground, dead, her lifeblood soaking into the dust and her parts scattered.
Slowly the sky lightened with a new day, and the sounds of running water could be heard in the distance. The horse's pace picked up, and they moved faster through the warming forest to finally slow and halt again on the banks of a swift-running stream. Borongil threw his leg over the side of the horse and slipped to the ground without dropping Inzilanî, and carried her to a patch of green grass in the sun and set her down. He waggled his finger at her, telling her to stay put, and returned to his mount. From a pair of bags that Inzilanî hadn't noticed draped across the horse's back, he withdrew something: clean clothing.
He put his burden on the ground nearby and then squatted down so he could face her. He lifted a blood-encrusted wad of hair on both of them and wrinkled his nose, then wiped a finger down her cheek and over his filthy armor and then rubbed that finger onto the grass with a look of distaste. Inzilanî slowly nodded. They were both filthy and disgusting. He nodded and then pointed to the stream and began mimicking the act of washing his face, then tipped his head. She gazed at the water thoughtfully. Would water ever completely wash away the filth with which she was stained?
Still, Borongil deserved an answer, and so she nodded tiredly. "Na." Even if she deserved death, she had declared herself the property of Borongil. He wanted her to wash herself, so wash she would.
"Mae," he said with a quick nod and rose, extending his hand down to her. "Tolo."
Inzilanî allowed the cloak in which he had wrapped her fall away and then let him pull her to her feet. She walked with him to the very edge of the water and then crouched, dabbling her hand in the clear, icy water and watching the blood slowly rinse away from her fingers. When she looked up, Borongil had already stripped off the metal-adorned leather and stood clad in nothing but some finely-woven protective undergarments, the tunic of which he stripped away as well and tossed onto a clean patch of grass. He crouched then by the water and splashed water up into his face and over his head, rinsing away the blood just the way it had eventually rinsed from her hand.
She looked down at herself. The tunic and leggings he had given her were ruined; there would be no chance of getting the mess out of them to make them wearable again. She sighed, resigning herself to once more wearing nothing but a blanket or, if Borongil was generous and charitable, his cloak. Her fingers shook as she unhooked the chain belt and let it drop with a clink, and then toed off the ruined boots so that she could pull at the gore-soaked leggings. When she had pulled the tunic over her head as well, she walked naked into the stream, disregarding entirely the icy knives of freezing water that sliced painfully at her, and sat down to begin rubbing at the black mess on her skin.
The more she rubbed, though, the tighter the stain seemed to cling to her skin, and she gave a desperate sob and scrubbed hard at her hands, her arms, her face. Borongil would no doubt leave her if she couldn’t get clean, and she wouldn't blame him in the least if he did; but she didn't want to get left behind, even if that was what she deserved. She sobbed and tore at her hair, pulling at where the clots of blood had congealed her hair into ugly clumps that made her look like the uruk she was. No matter how hard she worked, there was always some more left behind.
Inzilanî hadn't been paying attention, because strong arms suddenly surrounded her, stopping her frantic actions, and a gentle voice in her ear said, "Baw, Inzilanî. Sidh." The words continued to tumble out, but Inzilanî's sobs wouldn't let her hear them.
"I'm nothing but an uruk!" she cried in her own tongue, knowing full well that Borongil wouldn't understand a word of what she said. "I killed him. I killed all three of them. I wanted to hurt them as much as I had been hurt, and I did. I did to them what they had done to me, and I am no better than them! I will never be clean, never be free. You should let me die!"
But the arms around her wouldn't loosen. Inzilanî screamed and sobbed out her hatred and her remorse and her grief and her pain and her desolation, and the arms never moved. And eventually, at long last, all she had energy to do was sag against his hold on her, weeping as if her heart were shattered and clinging to him, amazed that he was allowing this at all. At last Borongil moved, slipping an arm beneath her knees and lifting her from the icy water to carry her to the sunny grass on the banks of the stream.
Numb inside and out, she was motionless beneath his ministrations as he used the clean side of the cloak that he'd had her wrapped in to dry her, and then carefully and gently pulled the fresh tunic over her head and steered arms into sleeves. He had trousers for her this time on which he could tighten a drawstring so they wouldn't fall off, although he rinsed and then cinched the chain about her waist again after rolling the bottoms of the legs so they wouldn't drag on the ground. And then he wrapped her back up in the cloak, clean side against her skin and clothing, waggled his finger at her, telling her to stay put, and moved to dress himself once more, this time in tunic and leggings. Finally he took the dirty tunic that had been worn beneath the leather, wet it in the stream, and began the job of scrubbing the blood from his armor.
Inzilanî gave a heavy sigh and shed the cloak. She was a slave, and if her new owner would not have her for bed comfort, then performing tasks for him so that he didn't have to do them himself was her only purpose in life. She rose and tapped his shoulder and held out her hand, wordlessly demanding the wet cloth. With wide eyes, Borongil handed it over to her and moved aside, and she crouched and began her work. Perhaps if she had a task that she could focus on, she wouldn't have to remember anything. She dipped the cloth in the cold water again and scrubbed hard. The blood of an uruk didn't belong on the armor of a nimir. She would see this armor sparkling in the sun again, as if that worn by Pharazôn himself.
Until she could do what was needed, she would do what was required. She was a slave; it was time she started acting like one again.
Vocabulary (A) Adúnaic (S) Sindarin
baw - (S) don't, no
mae - (S) good, well
na - (S) yes
nimir - (A) elf
nimîr - (A) elves
Pharazôn - (A) Golden One
sidh - (S) peace
tolo - (S) come (imperative)
urik - (A) orcs (obj. case)
urkan - (A) orc (nom. case)
uruk - (A) orc (obj. case)