12 #2
But then, after the invasion was underway, Gathren had been shuffled here and there, to and fro, and she had tried to send word to her mother to tell her where she was, but it didn’t mean that word got to her mother, and it certainly didn’t mean that she was still in that place when her mother sent anything to it, which may or may not have happened.
Even so, when she came upon her family’s farm, and the small farmhouse was a charred, half-standing ruin, and most of the fields had been burned to nothing, it was a blow.
She hadn’t considered that something could have happened to the farm, to her mother, to her uncle.
She tore into the burned remains of her family’s farmhouse, and she found a body in a bed, but it was in her uncle’s room, not in her mother’s.
Her mother’s room was empty. The burned body in her uncle’s bed, though, it could have been anyone.
The features weren’t recognizable. It was more a skeleton than anything else.
And the smell of everything inside the charred remains of the house, it was putrid.
She staggered outside, falling to her knees, and she put a hand to her chest and she tried to make sense of what she was feeling.
What was she feeling?
Panic?
Sorrow?
Confusion.
“Gathren?”
She looked up. It was dark. The sun had set over twenty minutes ago, and she had pushed her horse on and on, knowing that she was almost home, and she had thought there would be food and drink and her mother smiling at her and embracing her, saying that she knew that Gathren would come home eventually, and some meade or some blackberry wine to drink, and she could barely make out the figure who was approaching her in the darkness.
Then she did make him out, and she thought she must have lost her mind, and she wondered if the burnt house was some sort of hallucination as well, if she were simply seeing things.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
Iahir was gaping at her house. “What happened?”
“Well, I don’t know that, do I?” Her voice was choked. “I think it’s been some time since it happened, though. The burnt fields, there are signs of weeds growing in around the charred stalks of corn.”
“Is this your home?” he breathed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I followed you, all right? At some point, I began to realize it was pointless, because you were almost home, and I told myself to go back, but then you were almost home, so I thought I would see you safely delivered to your family, and then I would go find an inn for the night and go back to my family in the morning, and then…” He gestured.
“Why would you follow me? Do you really think I needed someone to look after me?”
“Maybe you do.” He was gazing at the house. “Who would burn down your house?”
She pushed past him and went to find her horse. She was going to need to name this horse, she thought. It seemed as if it were her horse, and it should likely have a name. She pulled into the saddle and began to trot off.
“Gathren!” Iahir called after her.
She ignored him. She was dimly aware that he got on his horse and came after her.
She went half a mile down the road to their closest neighbors, but as she did, she could see that the main house here was also burnt to a crisp. What could have happened?
She spotted the newer house, built by her neighbors for their son and his wife, however, and it was intact, and there was a light in the window. She rode straight for it, dismounted, went to the door, and banged on it.
Iahir was arriving. He was dismounting from his horse. Gathren still ignored him.
The door to the house opened.
The neighbor’s son. What had his name been? “M-malreg?” she said.
“Gathren,” he said. “Oh, it’s Maldred.”
“Right,” she said. “So sorry.”
“You came back,” he said.
“I did.”
“Did we win?” he said, lifting one of his massive orcish shoulders. “Did the orc army get the elves to acknowledge us?”
“Well, not yet,” she said. “But, well, we have taken the capital.”
“Did you come back to celebrate?”
“What happened?” She gestured to his family’s farmhouse.
“Ah,” he said. “Dragons.”
She stiffened, shaking her head. “Dragons?”
“Well, one dragon, really, just the one. They are solitary, after all.”
“A dragon did this?” came Iahir’s voice.
“Who is that?” Maldred squinted as Iahir appeared in the darkness. “Is that an elf?”
“Ignore him. He is not here. He is not important,” said Gathren. “A dragon?”
“Yes, it was large and had massive wings and it was blue. Bright blue. Like a robin’s egg is blue,” said Maldred. “And it burned everything, just back and forth, spewing fire out of its mouth, and then it took your mother—”
“What?” she squeaked.
“Yes, sorry about that,” said Maldred. “We all said it was better to go as my parents did, as your uncle did, to go in the flames. Because Haem only knows what a dragon wants with an aging orc woman.”
“Haem only knows,” she repeated, stunned.
“What do you mean, took her?” said Iahir.
“Grasped her up in its claws, flew off,” said Maldred. “Really, you’re not just an elf, you’re nae Oir, are you not?” The Valaedor elves were sometimes called nae Oir, which translated to “of gold.”
“As I said, ignore him,” said Gathren. “You’re saying my mother’s alive?”
“Like those stories,” said Iahir. “The ones where the dragon takes some woman off and imprisons her in his lair, or something? It really took her?”
“Gathren, it’s very difficult to ignore someone who keeps speaking and asking questions,” said Maldred.
Gathren sighed heavily. She turned and gave Iahir the most lethal stare she could summon. “Not now,” she said to him.
Iahir bowed his head.
Gathren went back to Maldred. “How long ago did this happen?”
“Three weeks give or take,” said Maldred.
“We would have sent word to you, but we had no notion where you were. We could not tell Ratharg either, because he left Arzakh to join the invasion when you did.” Ratharg was the orc from a neighboring farm who’d been sent across the pass, the one she’d gone to Arzakh to try to help.
They’d all been able to get letters from home for a time in Arzakh, but not recently.
“Was his family’s farm damaged?”
“Not their house,” said Maldred. “But fields and fields of their crops.”
“That’s horrible,” she said. “And we have no indication why the dragon did this?”
“They’re dragons,” said Maldred. “They breathe fire.”