From Beneath A Burning Sun - Lord of the Rings (1/5)
Title: From Beneath A Burning Sun (1/5)
Fandom: Lord of the Rings (sort of)
Characters/pairings: OCs. Lots of OCs. In fact, it's only really a fanfic at all because I'm using that universe. Faramir makes a cameo appearance, though. ^.-
Warnings: Blood, guts, and mild language.
Disclaimers: Lord of the Rings belongs to the estate of JRR Tolkien. However, pretty much all the clans, characters, and cultures in this fic come from my fevered imagination.
Summary: A Haradrim perspective on the events of the War of the Ring. This chapter is set just after Sam and Frodo meet Faramir.
A/N: To be honest, this is more of a story which happens to be set in Middle-Earth than it is a Lord of the Rings fanfic at all. I've always had a bit of a fascination with the Haradrim, and Imial suddenly started planting plot-bunnies in my head. It sort of grew from there...
It might sound like a Suefest, from the surfeit of OCs, but that's mostly because, as I said, it isn't about the books, it's about the world.
And, credit where credit's due, the name 'Imial', as well as several of the other names, were actually suggested by yarukage
I know I always say this, but please comment and criticise! I never seem to get much concrit, and it makes me nervous that it's crap and you're just not saying so. =/
Enjoy!
-------
“Get your feet moving, and your eyes forwards!” an officer’s voice rings out from behind him, and he hears the whip crack, hears one of the soldiers scream as the lash comes down on some poor fool’s back.
Not his, though. And for that, he is thankful.
It has been a long time to travel - a long time, and a long way, with light-shod feet blistering and callousing against the earth that is hard and intransient. He longs for the sands and the burning skies of the desert he has always called home. But they are long ago and far away, a memory and nothing else.
But it is worthwhile. He knows that, with the stubborn, proud certainty that all his people share. Worthwhile, however much the pain and suffering may grow. Worthwhile, to avenge the indignities that Gondor have heaped upon his people - upon all the people of Harad - since time immemorial. That is the thought that keeps him marching, keeps his pace good and his spirits high, and he knows it is a thought that all of them share.
He is tall, like all of his race - nigh on six foot, and growing still - and, like the rest of them, he shares the deepset gold eyes and dark brown skin of the people of Al-Sina. His long black hair is tied in a warrior’s style; thin, neat plaits, woven through with gold threads, fall dark against his scarlet tunic, his brass corslet. In his belt, there is a scimitar, on his shoulder, a bow. He is dressed as a warrior, armed as a warrior, thinks he is a warrior.
He is no warrior. The older soldiers, who march alongside him with their notched blades and their scarred faces, know that much. He is not a warrior; he is a seventeen-year-old boy, still old enough to be proud of the few dark hairs clustered on his chin. And he will die that way, unless he grows up very, very quickly.
But Imial Zahiir thinks he is a warrior. He walks with his head high, the weight of the armour unfamiliar on his shoulders, occasionally grabbing at the bow that is poorly-balanced on one shoulder. And he is not afraid.
At least, he is not afraid until Mahoomed, his cousin, Mahoomed who had been so proud to be riding with the mûmakil warriors, Mahoomed who had parted ways with him only the day before, with a solemn injunction not to meet again until they had spilt Northern blood - he is not afraid until that Mahoomed suddenly clutches at his throat with a strangled cry that cuts through the air. Until Mahoomed falls from his seat hangs for a moment seemingly in midair, and then tumbles in a great rush, away from the mûmak, with an arrow lodged in the shallow hollow of his throat, and lands with a crash on the path beside them.
And then fear blooms in him, like blood on a clean shirt, and in the tense silence that follows, he finds himself choking back tears of panic and of loss. His bow is in his hands before he’s even drawn breath, loaded and tensed to fire, but he cannot see the foe anywhere, anywhere at all. And then there is shouting - Ware! Ware! Northerners! Northerners! - and then more shouting, in a tongue he does not recognise - To me, men of Gondor, to me! - and then arrows are flying, and he sees a white face, surrounded by dark hair, and he shoots.
The shot goes wild, but at the other side of the battlefield, Faramir son of Denethor feels its wind by his face as he ducks, and thanks the Valar that it was not an inch lower. Imial neither notices this nor pays it mind, because the battle is thick around him now, the air dark with arrows. The gold collar around his neck turns aside one such, sending it skittering up into his chin, and he winces; there is blood on his skin now, hot and cloying, and fear chokes him.
“Mahoomed!” he shouts, because he can see his cousin struggling back to his feet, blood bubbling from between his lips, and then there is a Northerner there, tall and ugly and strong, and Imial lunges forwards, throwing his bow aside and pulling the scimitar loose from his belt. This is his weapon, this feels a greater comfort to him, and for a moment, he almost believes that he can do it, that he can somehow, impossibly, save the boy he grew up with, save his cousin, his friend.
And then, suddenly, real time and real fear rushes back, and he dives between Mahoomed and the Northerner, tears flying from his eyes and sweat beading on his brow, and brings his blade up to catch the pale man’s broadsword as it sweeps down. He sees the cold grey eyes of his enemy, like hard iron, and he knows he will get no mercy here. This is an earnest battle, such as he has never fought before, and he will get no mercy, so he must show none. And in the Northerner’s cruel, arrogant features, he sees all the tales he has been told about the persecution of his people, the evils of their people, and hate rises up in him like a storm. It is no longer fear for Mahoomed that drives him; it is pure rage and utter loathing. There is crimson on his blade, and there is crimson wetting his scarlet tunic, and there is crimson hanging in beads in his black hair. He no longer knows what is his blood and what is the Northerner’s, but it is the Northerner’s guard that drops, not his, and it is the Northerner’s head that flies through the air, severed in a swing that he didn’t know he had in him.
And then he remembers Mahoomed, and then he turns, only to find that his cousin, swaying on his feet with the arrow still lodged in his throat, has been confronted by another of the hated Northerners, and before he can move a muscle, right before his eyes, another Northern arrow, fletched with those terrible green feathers, strikes Mahoomed in the back of his neck, and the Northerner, not content with such a murder, has driven his blade into Mahoomed’s shoulder, and there is blood in Mahoomed’s hair, drowning out the gold…
And then Mahoomed, Corba’s son, Imial’s cousin, Raheli’s husband, lurches forwards with a noise that Imial thinks, banally, stupidly, is rather like a goat being slaughtered. His foot catches on the Northerner’s, and he trips, falling in a trail of blood from the edge of the bank they stand on.
Imial sees him fall, sees him crash face-down onto the ferns at the bottom with a horrible, meaty thud, thinks he sees movement nearby. And he turns swiftly, shouting “Ware! Ware!” but the words are barely out of his mouth before they come back to him, like an echo but not an echo, at the edge of the group he has strayed from; “Ware! Ware!” and he sees ‘Uman, with the dark skin and red war-paint of the Razei, beside him, sees fear in the older man’s eyes. And then, the mûmak has broken free from the trap, the cowardly trap, set for them by the Northerners, and it is charging straight at him, down the steep bank, and in front of him, there is ‘Uman again, eyes bulging and face grey, shouting again and again “Ware! Ware!” But ‘Uman cannot take his own advice, because suddenly there is a spray of blood, and the old Razei clansman who fought once beside Imial’s own father, in the long-off distant past when their two races were in alliance, the man who taught Mahoomed to ride the mûmak in the first place, the man who beat Imial soundly for sneaking rations and then gave him spare in atonement, is suddenly skewered on the barbed tusk of the great mûmak, his broken body tossed aside as the great beast flees blindly. On the creature’s neck, the tribesman from jungles Imial has never seen lurches to and fro, clinging on with hands and knees and teeth beside the smashed canopy of the saddle. Only the day before, he had been telling them stories of the thick green canopies of his own land, and now he is going to die, Imial knows he is going to die, and Imial himself barely escapes being crushed under the mûmak’s great feet, diving to the side and rolling through the fresh ferns, so bright and green compared to the deserts of his homeland, but somehow less fair, and he hears screaming, and realises it is his own.
“Ware! Ware!” he shouts, again and again, his throat sore now with every rasping breath. “Ware! Mûmak! Ware!”
If they do not hear me, he thinks frantically, they must be deaf, and he shrieks it again, stumbling upright in the deep ferns and fumbling for the handle of his scimitar. “Ware! WARE!” And there is nausea rising in his throat, and there is blood cloying on his face, his and Mahoomed’s and ‘Uman’s, Sinaen and Razei and Northern, and then his hand closes around the hilt of his sword, and he is sprinting up the slope again, screaming now in rage, not fear, and beneath the blood that smears his face, he no longer even looks human. Spit flecking his lips and clinging to the beginnings of a beard on his chin, he throws himself forwards at the Gondorians, but it is too late, it is always too late, and he is tackled to the ground by a swarthy Easterner, who is missing an arm now and has an arrow trapped between two of the plates of his corslet, but who is still very much alive and very much active.
“Let them be, boy!” he grinds out, his bearded face very close to Imial’s. The young Sinaen can smell rotten meat on the soldier’s breath, hot on his face, and although he speaks the tongue of the desert tribes, it is with the accent of a coastsman. “There’s no way out of that now, once you’re into it! They’re dead meat, and if you go after them, you will be, too! Better to leave the Northern bastards standing, and be there to fight them off later!”
Imial nods, wide-eyed, thinking wildly that he might be as frightened by this stranger - who might very well be Haradrim, but is not from any Haradrim race that the young Sinaen has ever come across - as he is by the prospect of death, as he is by the prospect of the Northerners.
Seeing the terror on the young man’s face, the warrior’s expression softens a little. It may have been long, long indeed, since his first battle, but he can still remember the horror of it all. As soon as he is sure that the brass-armoured young man will not storm back into battle at the drop of a hat, the older man stands up.
As soon as the weight is lifted off him, Imial rolls over, onto his hands and knees, and vomits. He should be ashamed, he knows, to be such a coward that battle makes him sick, and it will be something that he knows will haunt him for years, but he does it anyway, his throat rising in protest against the smell, the sight, the very idea of this battle.
And when he is done, he stands up again, sheltered from view by the ferns and by the hill, and wipes his mouth. The coastsman is watching him still, with grim amusement showing on his weathered countenance, and Imial flushes.
“Don’t worry about it,” the older man advises him gruffly, picking up an abandoned bow - not Imial’s, which is no doubt still lying at the crest of the hill where he threw it, but close enough - and passing it to him. “You aren’t the first to be caught ill by your first fight.”
“It’s not my first fight,” Imial protests, but weakly and unconvincingly, and the coastsman is not fooled for a minute.
“There’s no shame in it,” he says, casting about for abandoned arrows. “Be glad that the marauding Northerners have no interest in your deserts, and that your clan have passed a lifespan in peace.”
That isn’t exactly true, Imial thinks, and remembers with a shudder the wars between the Sinaens and the Mihilae; remembers huddling in a sand-covered tent while the men outside fought to and fro like thunder. But that was a long time ago, when he was still a child and he says nothing but a rather embarassed, “Thank you.”
“Don’t even think it,” the coastsman says with a shake of his head, and bows in the fashion of the coast, arms crossed over his chest - and his severed arm makes an effort to cross, although past the elbow there is only a bloody mess, and it does little more than twitch towards the other.
Imial watches, fascinated, and only just remembers to return the bow, hands clasped behind his back in the Sinaen manner.
“Gamba Qayyum,” the coastsman says, and it takes Imial a moment to realise that it is an introduction. “From the tribe Yara of the western shores.”
“Imial Zahiir.” He pauses for a moment, considering the utter banality of the situation, of polite introductions here, now, with drying vomit crusted around his mouth and rivulets of darkening crimson spilling over his face, of manners and etiquette in these strange lands, with the Northerners still prowling around all of a hundred yards away. “From the tribe Al-Sina of the central deserts.”
“Well met, friend, and pleasant days,” Gamba says, as is the custom, and, as is the custom, Imial replies with, “May they be long to you and short to your foes,” although he can’t help feeling that, after today, wishing anyone long days is a stretch.
“Indeed,” Gamba says with a nod, formalities over, and Imial notices that, although his right arm if destroyed beyond all use, his sword arm is not; from the practiced way he grasps his scimitar, the Yaran has been very lucky to be born left-handed. “Now, if we’d not change those two wishes around, we’d best hurry.” He indicates with a nod of his head that Imial should follow him, and then he’s away, sword held low and ready, crouching through the poor cover of the ferns and running.
Slinging the bow over his shoulder and checking the quiver at his belt, Imial mimics the Yaran’s low, defensive posture, scuttling through the deep green after him. His bright uniform, brass and scarlet and gold, which he was so proud of only an hour or so before, now seems a hideous, garish thing, a beacon for Northern arrows, and he wishes with all his might for duller garb. Every one of his footfalls seems to make as much noise as a herd of mûmakil, and with every passing second, he expects one of those accursed green-flighted arrows to strike him between the shoulders. Gamba seems perfectly serene as he runs onwards, and Imial envies him that ease.
The Sinaen has no idea how long they have been running, halfway between road and forest, when the Yaran in front of him stops dead, raising a hand. Stop.
Imial does, breathing heavily, grateful for the respite. He has always been a good runner, but now he finds that running freely over shifting sands is not at all like the quick, sneaky rush of the last few minutes. His breath is coming heavy, and his heart is pounding. To his horror, he can taste fresh vomit in his mouth, and he spits hurriedly onto the earth.
“You’ll have to get better at that,” Gamba tells him, not unkindly. “With the damned pale soldiers attacking us so often now, it’s a skill you can ill do without - and I can hear your breathing from a mile away.”
Imial accepts the criticism, as he has been taught, bows his thanks for it, as he has been taught, and is surprised when Gamba cuffs him around the jaw.
“Don’t bother with that here, boy. There’s few enough who appreciate it, and too much politeness can get a man killed.”
“But… back on the slopes…” Imial stammers, his voice stumbling over the twin blocks of breathlessness and confusion.
“I needed you to wait,” Gamba said. “And if you make a little noise while a lot is going on already, men don’t notice it continue afterwards. Trust me.”
And Imial does. He trusts the Yaran implicitly, although they have only just met. Perhaps, he thinks, that is how war is.
How war is…
And then his mind goes back to Mahoomed, choking on his own blood as he fell, and he finds himself crying, in big, childish gulps that thoroughly embarrass him. Again, Gamba simply watches, as he did when the Sinaen was vomiting, and when Imial is done, he claps him lightly on the shoulder.
“That lad who fell first…” he says thoughtfully, and Imial looks up, surprised. “…Friend of yours?”
Imial shakes his head. “Cousin.”
Nodding, Gamba sits down next to him, well aware that the Sinaen must be thoroughly humiliated by this show of emotion, and says, “It’s always hard when you see someone you know go down. And that was a nasty way for it to happen.”
Imial is giving every impression of not listening, but it’s obvious that he feels a little better for the reminder that he’s not alone. “What do we do now?”
“What do we do?” Gamba sighs, chewing thoughtfully on his thumbnail. “We do as we are told. We bind our wounds and bring our survivors together, and then we do what we were brought here to do.”
Imial wipes his eyes, picking at the dried blood on his face. “Mordor?”
“Mordor.”
Fandom: Lord of the Rings (sort of)
Characters/pairings: OCs. Lots of OCs. In fact, it's only really a fanfic at all because I'm using that universe. Faramir makes a cameo appearance, though. ^.-
Warnings: Blood, guts, and mild language.
Disclaimers: Lord of the Rings belongs to the estate of JRR Tolkien. However, pretty much all the clans, characters, and cultures in this fic come from my fevered imagination.
Summary: A Haradrim perspective on the events of the War of the Ring. This chapter is set just after Sam and Frodo meet Faramir.
A/N: To be honest, this is more of a story which happens to be set in Middle-Earth than it is a Lord of the Rings fanfic at all. I've always had a bit of a fascination with the Haradrim, and Imial suddenly started planting plot-bunnies in my head. It sort of grew from there...
It might sound like a Suefest, from the surfeit of OCs, but that's mostly because, as I said, it isn't about the books, it's about the world.
And, credit where credit's due, the name 'Imial', as well as several of the other names, were actually suggested by yarukage
I know I always say this, but please comment and criticise! I never seem to get much concrit, and it makes me nervous that it's crap and you're just not saying so. =/
Enjoy!
-------
“Get your feet moving, and your eyes forwards!” an officer’s voice rings out from behind him, and he hears the whip crack, hears one of the soldiers scream as the lash comes down on some poor fool’s back.
Not his, though. And for that, he is thankful.
It has been a long time to travel - a long time, and a long way, with light-shod feet blistering and callousing against the earth that is hard and intransient. He longs for the sands and the burning skies of the desert he has always called home. But they are long ago and far away, a memory and nothing else.
But it is worthwhile. He knows that, with the stubborn, proud certainty that all his people share. Worthwhile, however much the pain and suffering may grow. Worthwhile, to avenge the indignities that Gondor have heaped upon his people - upon all the people of Harad - since time immemorial. That is the thought that keeps him marching, keeps his pace good and his spirits high, and he knows it is a thought that all of them share.
He is tall, like all of his race - nigh on six foot, and growing still - and, like the rest of them, he shares the deepset gold eyes and dark brown skin of the people of Al-Sina. His long black hair is tied in a warrior’s style; thin, neat plaits, woven through with gold threads, fall dark against his scarlet tunic, his brass corslet. In his belt, there is a scimitar, on his shoulder, a bow. He is dressed as a warrior, armed as a warrior, thinks he is a warrior.
He is no warrior. The older soldiers, who march alongside him with their notched blades and their scarred faces, know that much. He is not a warrior; he is a seventeen-year-old boy, still old enough to be proud of the few dark hairs clustered on his chin. And he will die that way, unless he grows up very, very quickly.
But Imial Zahiir thinks he is a warrior. He walks with his head high, the weight of the armour unfamiliar on his shoulders, occasionally grabbing at the bow that is poorly-balanced on one shoulder. And he is not afraid.
At least, he is not afraid until Mahoomed, his cousin, Mahoomed who had been so proud to be riding with the mûmakil warriors, Mahoomed who had parted ways with him only the day before, with a solemn injunction not to meet again until they had spilt Northern blood - he is not afraid until that Mahoomed suddenly clutches at his throat with a strangled cry that cuts through the air. Until Mahoomed falls from his seat hangs for a moment seemingly in midair, and then tumbles in a great rush, away from the mûmak, with an arrow lodged in the shallow hollow of his throat, and lands with a crash on the path beside them.
And then fear blooms in him, like blood on a clean shirt, and in the tense silence that follows, he finds himself choking back tears of panic and of loss. His bow is in his hands before he’s even drawn breath, loaded and tensed to fire, but he cannot see the foe anywhere, anywhere at all. And then there is shouting - Ware! Ware! Northerners! Northerners! - and then more shouting, in a tongue he does not recognise - To me, men of Gondor, to me! - and then arrows are flying, and he sees a white face, surrounded by dark hair, and he shoots.
The shot goes wild, but at the other side of the battlefield, Faramir son of Denethor feels its wind by his face as he ducks, and thanks the Valar that it was not an inch lower. Imial neither notices this nor pays it mind, because the battle is thick around him now, the air dark with arrows. The gold collar around his neck turns aside one such, sending it skittering up into his chin, and he winces; there is blood on his skin now, hot and cloying, and fear chokes him.
“Mahoomed!” he shouts, because he can see his cousin struggling back to his feet, blood bubbling from between his lips, and then there is a Northerner there, tall and ugly and strong, and Imial lunges forwards, throwing his bow aside and pulling the scimitar loose from his belt. This is his weapon, this feels a greater comfort to him, and for a moment, he almost believes that he can do it, that he can somehow, impossibly, save the boy he grew up with, save his cousin, his friend.
And then, suddenly, real time and real fear rushes back, and he dives between Mahoomed and the Northerner, tears flying from his eyes and sweat beading on his brow, and brings his blade up to catch the pale man’s broadsword as it sweeps down. He sees the cold grey eyes of his enemy, like hard iron, and he knows he will get no mercy here. This is an earnest battle, such as he has never fought before, and he will get no mercy, so he must show none. And in the Northerner’s cruel, arrogant features, he sees all the tales he has been told about the persecution of his people, the evils of their people, and hate rises up in him like a storm. It is no longer fear for Mahoomed that drives him; it is pure rage and utter loathing. There is crimson on his blade, and there is crimson wetting his scarlet tunic, and there is crimson hanging in beads in his black hair. He no longer knows what is his blood and what is the Northerner’s, but it is the Northerner’s guard that drops, not his, and it is the Northerner’s head that flies through the air, severed in a swing that he didn’t know he had in him.
And then he remembers Mahoomed, and then he turns, only to find that his cousin, swaying on his feet with the arrow still lodged in his throat, has been confronted by another of the hated Northerners, and before he can move a muscle, right before his eyes, another Northern arrow, fletched with those terrible green feathers, strikes Mahoomed in the back of his neck, and the Northerner, not content with such a murder, has driven his blade into Mahoomed’s shoulder, and there is blood in Mahoomed’s hair, drowning out the gold…
And then Mahoomed, Corba’s son, Imial’s cousin, Raheli’s husband, lurches forwards with a noise that Imial thinks, banally, stupidly, is rather like a goat being slaughtered. His foot catches on the Northerner’s, and he trips, falling in a trail of blood from the edge of the bank they stand on.
Imial sees him fall, sees him crash face-down onto the ferns at the bottom with a horrible, meaty thud, thinks he sees movement nearby. And he turns swiftly, shouting “Ware! Ware!” but the words are barely out of his mouth before they come back to him, like an echo but not an echo, at the edge of the group he has strayed from; “Ware! Ware!” and he sees ‘Uman, with the dark skin and red war-paint of the Razei, beside him, sees fear in the older man’s eyes. And then, the mûmak has broken free from the trap, the cowardly trap, set for them by the Northerners, and it is charging straight at him, down the steep bank, and in front of him, there is ‘Uman again, eyes bulging and face grey, shouting again and again “Ware! Ware!” But ‘Uman cannot take his own advice, because suddenly there is a spray of blood, and the old Razei clansman who fought once beside Imial’s own father, in the long-off distant past when their two races were in alliance, the man who taught Mahoomed to ride the mûmak in the first place, the man who beat Imial soundly for sneaking rations and then gave him spare in atonement, is suddenly skewered on the barbed tusk of the great mûmak, his broken body tossed aside as the great beast flees blindly. On the creature’s neck, the tribesman from jungles Imial has never seen lurches to and fro, clinging on with hands and knees and teeth beside the smashed canopy of the saddle. Only the day before, he had been telling them stories of the thick green canopies of his own land, and now he is going to die, Imial knows he is going to die, and Imial himself barely escapes being crushed under the mûmak’s great feet, diving to the side and rolling through the fresh ferns, so bright and green compared to the deserts of his homeland, but somehow less fair, and he hears screaming, and realises it is his own.
“Ware! Ware!” he shouts, again and again, his throat sore now with every rasping breath. “Ware! Mûmak! Ware!”
If they do not hear me, he thinks frantically, they must be deaf, and he shrieks it again, stumbling upright in the deep ferns and fumbling for the handle of his scimitar. “Ware! WARE!” And there is nausea rising in his throat, and there is blood cloying on his face, his and Mahoomed’s and ‘Uman’s, Sinaen and Razei and Northern, and then his hand closes around the hilt of his sword, and he is sprinting up the slope again, screaming now in rage, not fear, and beneath the blood that smears his face, he no longer even looks human. Spit flecking his lips and clinging to the beginnings of a beard on his chin, he throws himself forwards at the Gondorians, but it is too late, it is always too late, and he is tackled to the ground by a swarthy Easterner, who is missing an arm now and has an arrow trapped between two of the plates of his corslet, but who is still very much alive and very much active.
“Let them be, boy!” he grinds out, his bearded face very close to Imial’s. The young Sinaen can smell rotten meat on the soldier’s breath, hot on his face, and although he speaks the tongue of the desert tribes, it is with the accent of a coastsman. “There’s no way out of that now, once you’re into it! They’re dead meat, and if you go after them, you will be, too! Better to leave the Northern bastards standing, and be there to fight them off later!”
Imial nods, wide-eyed, thinking wildly that he might be as frightened by this stranger - who might very well be Haradrim, but is not from any Haradrim race that the young Sinaen has ever come across - as he is by the prospect of death, as he is by the prospect of the Northerners.
Seeing the terror on the young man’s face, the warrior’s expression softens a little. It may have been long, long indeed, since his first battle, but he can still remember the horror of it all. As soon as he is sure that the brass-armoured young man will not storm back into battle at the drop of a hat, the older man stands up.
As soon as the weight is lifted off him, Imial rolls over, onto his hands and knees, and vomits. He should be ashamed, he knows, to be such a coward that battle makes him sick, and it will be something that he knows will haunt him for years, but he does it anyway, his throat rising in protest against the smell, the sight, the very idea of this battle.
And when he is done, he stands up again, sheltered from view by the ferns and by the hill, and wipes his mouth. The coastsman is watching him still, with grim amusement showing on his weathered countenance, and Imial flushes.
“Don’t worry about it,” the older man advises him gruffly, picking up an abandoned bow - not Imial’s, which is no doubt still lying at the crest of the hill where he threw it, but close enough - and passing it to him. “You aren’t the first to be caught ill by your first fight.”
“It’s not my first fight,” Imial protests, but weakly and unconvincingly, and the coastsman is not fooled for a minute.
“There’s no shame in it,” he says, casting about for abandoned arrows. “Be glad that the marauding Northerners have no interest in your deserts, and that your clan have passed a lifespan in peace.”
That isn’t exactly true, Imial thinks, and remembers with a shudder the wars between the Sinaens and the Mihilae; remembers huddling in a sand-covered tent while the men outside fought to and fro like thunder. But that was a long time ago, when he was still a child and he says nothing but a rather embarassed, “Thank you.”
“Don’t even think it,” the coastsman says with a shake of his head, and bows in the fashion of the coast, arms crossed over his chest - and his severed arm makes an effort to cross, although past the elbow there is only a bloody mess, and it does little more than twitch towards the other.
Imial watches, fascinated, and only just remembers to return the bow, hands clasped behind his back in the Sinaen manner.
“Gamba Qayyum,” the coastsman says, and it takes Imial a moment to realise that it is an introduction. “From the tribe Yara of the western shores.”
“Imial Zahiir.” He pauses for a moment, considering the utter banality of the situation, of polite introductions here, now, with drying vomit crusted around his mouth and rivulets of darkening crimson spilling over his face, of manners and etiquette in these strange lands, with the Northerners still prowling around all of a hundred yards away. “From the tribe Al-Sina of the central deserts.”
“Well met, friend, and pleasant days,” Gamba says, as is the custom, and, as is the custom, Imial replies with, “May they be long to you and short to your foes,” although he can’t help feeling that, after today, wishing anyone long days is a stretch.
“Indeed,” Gamba says with a nod, formalities over, and Imial notices that, although his right arm if destroyed beyond all use, his sword arm is not; from the practiced way he grasps his scimitar, the Yaran has been very lucky to be born left-handed. “Now, if we’d not change those two wishes around, we’d best hurry.” He indicates with a nod of his head that Imial should follow him, and then he’s away, sword held low and ready, crouching through the poor cover of the ferns and running.
Slinging the bow over his shoulder and checking the quiver at his belt, Imial mimics the Yaran’s low, defensive posture, scuttling through the deep green after him. His bright uniform, brass and scarlet and gold, which he was so proud of only an hour or so before, now seems a hideous, garish thing, a beacon for Northern arrows, and he wishes with all his might for duller garb. Every one of his footfalls seems to make as much noise as a herd of mûmakil, and with every passing second, he expects one of those accursed green-flighted arrows to strike him between the shoulders. Gamba seems perfectly serene as he runs onwards, and Imial envies him that ease.
The Sinaen has no idea how long they have been running, halfway between road and forest, when the Yaran in front of him stops dead, raising a hand. Stop.
Imial does, breathing heavily, grateful for the respite. He has always been a good runner, but now he finds that running freely over shifting sands is not at all like the quick, sneaky rush of the last few minutes. His breath is coming heavy, and his heart is pounding. To his horror, he can taste fresh vomit in his mouth, and he spits hurriedly onto the earth.
“You’ll have to get better at that,” Gamba tells him, not unkindly. “With the damned pale soldiers attacking us so often now, it’s a skill you can ill do without - and I can hear your breathing from a mile away.”
Imial accepts the criticism, as he has been taught, bows his thanks for it, as he has been taught, and is surprised when Gamba cuffs him around the jaw.
“Don’t bother with that here, boy. There’s few enough who appreciate it, and too much politeness can get a man killed.”
“But… back on the slopes…” Imial stammers, his voice stumbling over the twin blocks of breathlessness and confusion.
“I needed you to wait,” Gamba said. “And if you make a little noise while a lot is going on already, men don’t notice it continue afterwards. Trust me.”
And Imial does. He trusts the Yaran implicitly, although they have only just met. Perhaps, he thinks, that is how war is.
How war is…
And then his mind goes back to Mahoomed, choking on his own blood as he fell, and he finds himself crying, in big, childish gulps that thoroughly embarrass him. Again, Gamba simply watches, as he did when the Sinaen was vomiting, and when Imial is done, he claps him lightly on the shoulder.
“That lad who fell first…” he says thoughtfully, and Imial looks up, surprised. “…Friend of yours?”
Imial shakes his head. “Cousin.”
Nodding, Gamba sits down next to him, well aware that the Sinaen must be thoroughly humiliated by this show of emotion, and says, “It’s always hard when you see someone you know go down. And that was a nasty way for it to happen.”
Imial is giving every impression of not listening, but it’s obvious that he feels a little better for the reminder that he’s not alone. “What do we do now?”
“What do we do?” Gamba sighs, chewing thoughtfully on his thumbnail. “We do as we are told. We bind our wounds and bring our survivors together, and then we do what we were brought here to do.”
Imial wipes his eyes, picking at the dried blood on his face. “Mordor?”
“Mordor.”