8 #2
“If we come out there, are they going to kill us?” asked one of the boys, who must have been around seven or eight years old.
“No,” she said. “I promise you, no.”
“Well, all right, then,” he said, and led the others out. There were around ten of them. The youngest must have only been three years old, trailing along, holding her sister’s hand, looking around with the same sort of solemnity as the others.
Aerhril led them back to the room where the women had been and she was not entirely surprised to find that very few of them had left. Those that had were the mothers of the children she was bringing with her, which also did not surprise her.
She left the children with the other women and went off in search of their mothers. Luckily all of the women were together, and she found them in the hallway near the chapel, surveying the bodies.
“I found the children,” she called and they raced to her.
Aerhril got to witness the tearful reunion, and that made her wish to cry again.
She gave them all the news that they would eat at six, and then she retreated.
She looked in on Celedin. He was still asleep.
She did not know where to find Hafindel.
She climbed all the way to the top of the keep, to stand on the turrets connecting the north and south tower. She was planning to look at how far the tents stretched out.
But he was up there.
“Dathor,” she said.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“Is that an order, commander?”
“A request,” he said.
“You are in no position to make requests of me,” she said. But she didn’t go. She came to stand next to him and looked out at the army encamped all around them, and she felt helpless and frightened and overwhelmed.
“I may have done all of this wrong,” he muttered.
Regret, again. Well, it didn’t matter. He could regret all he wished. Some things could not be mended. “What do you mean?” she said.
“Just… all of this. I’m not saying it was entirely my idea to invade like this, because it wasn’t.
It was a number of people’s ideas. You know how that goes.
When a number of people are presented with the same situation, our brains all work similarly and a number of people come up with the same idea. ”
“Is that the way of it?” she said.
“Anyway,” he said, not answering the question, “I suppose what I chiefly wanted was to be back here. Back home.” He looked up at the sky. “I missed the air here. You cannot breathe in Arzakh.”
“You cannot wish me to feel sorry for you. I do not. It was your decision to cross the pass after that woman—”
“It was not her decision to be herded across the pass and out of the country and treated like cattle,” he growled.
“Oh, not like cattle,” she said. “We have use for cattle.”
He sneered at her.
“What? Did you think I would not insult you after everything you have done?”
“Oh, has it been rare that you have insulted me, fair elf?”
“Yes,” she spat out.
He snorted.
“It has. I loved you, Dathor, and you know I did.”
“Yes, and when a person loves someone, of course, they never say anything cruel to that person, never do anything cruel.”
She was quiet.
“It should all be enough, I suppose,” he said. “I have had my revenge on him, and I did want that. I did picture it, this way that way and every such way, and now it’s done.”
“What? Not as good as you imagined?”
He laughed a bitter laugh. “Perhaps nothing is as good as we imagine. Perhaps it is rare that life serves us something so pleasant that it truly surprises us. Much more often, however, life surprises me with how positively awful it is.”
“There we are agreed,” she said. But he used to be the thing that surprised her with his goodness. He used to excite her and please her and make her feel as if she were alight in nothing but sweetness and pleasure.
Now…
“I am saying that I do not know if I want the orcs to win,” he said.
She turned to look at him, stunned. “What? You brought this army into our home, gave them leave to invade every corner of it and to take away all our food and to kill ever so many people, and you don’t want them to have done it?”
“I’m not saying that,” he said. “Findas is the problem, though, him. If you elves weren’t so soft, you would have ousted him yourselves, I think. We… if the orcs take over, I do not know if it will be good for the country.”
“You have no faith in your own race?”
“I am half elf,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps I never felt that way, for the elves never thought of me as one of them. You have always thought I was nothing but a monster.”
“I have never thought of you as a monster, and the fact that you can’t see that—”
“You have. You have used me your whole life, Aerhril. You have enjoyed looking upon me, feasting your gaze on me. You especially like to eagerly let your gaze crawl over my form when I am sweating and working hard, and you linger ever so long on all my scars. I think you like the scars the most. You fancy that you and I are both very oppressed, that we have something in common in that way. But your suffering is nothing compared to mine, and you cannot handle that fact.”
“Nothing compared to yours?” She shook her head. “Nothing?”
“Yes,” he said fiercely.
“Well, I suppose that’s why it was justified to rape me in front of everyone in the chapel, then. Because I never suffer.” She spat the words at him.
He turned to her, his handsome features full of fury. “I didn’t say you didn’t suffer at all, Aerhril, I said that I suffer worse than you.”
She scoffed. “Oh, yes, you suffer, how you suffer. Look at you, commander, with all these orcs at your beck and call. How long were you even in that country and you somehow have worked your way up in the ranks? Oh, you suffer, all right.”
He squared his shoulders, nodding. “I shall give you that. It’s a fair point.”
“Meanwhile, I, here, have watched my father be put in prison, my mother disappear, and all I have been able to do is put off that wedding with Celedin, put it off and put it off, until I couldn’t put it off anymore, because he was frothing at the mouth for me.”
“Oh, poor Aerhril,” he said sarcastically, “wanted by a rich elf.”
“You know what he’s like!”
“Was he striking you?”
“Sometimes!” she snapped.
He hadn’t been expecting that. “Truly?”
“Oh, by the golden fingers of the dawn, how can you doubt it? He used to hurt me when we were children, and all that was holding him back was your uncle. He likes hurting things, and you know this as well as I!”
He hung his head. “Well, I’m sorry.”
She drew in a breath. “Oh, perhaps you are right that it has always been worse for you. I have never been whipped.”
“And you never will be,” he said. “If I could kill him again—”
She let out a laugh, a helpless laugh, because she supposed he could, at that. Should she tell him that Celedin was alive, wheezing his breath out in that old room of his? Should she let him have his revenge again?
And anyway, did it matter? Didn’t everyone like hurting things, everyone she had ever met? Had she not seen the sheer joy all over Dathor as he slit Celedin’s throat? Could she not remember the sick sweetness of sentencing poor pregnant Nathre to what fate Aerhril had condemned her to?
She had enjoyed it.
Momentarily, she had.
Then, later, she had hated herself.
None of that mattered, of course, because no matter how much one hated oneself or regretted one’s actions, they were already done and could not be taken back.
There was a meanness in everyone, absolutely everyone, herself included.
He looked away, out over the orc encampment, a lock of his black hair falling into his eyes. “I suppose you don’t welcome those sorts of sentiments from me, seeing as how I raped you, or whatever you claim.”
She set her teeth, too angry to respond to that.
He tossed his head, shaking his hair of his eyes, making his long waves glisten.
“It’s only that you would have allowed me to have you, and we both know that.
Had I arrived on horseback and thrust open the outer doors to the chapel, come inside and beckoned for you, you would have run to me, and we would have galloped off on my horse, and I would have built a fire later and lay you down on the ground and kissed you senseless and you’d have opened those legs of yours to me, and so I don’t really think it counts. ”
“Don’t you?” she said through clenched teeth. It was awful that she’d had that split-second thought that he was rescuing her, and now he was saying this.
“No,” he said. “I’m not saying you liked it. I didn’t like it. I’m only saying, you’re acting as though it’s some crime, and… and…”
“It’s not?”
He huffed.