13 #2
She kept turning over the idea that all men thought of all women as conquests, and she could see that there was some truth to this idea.
She had spent quite a great deal of time in the company of men during her time with the orc army and she had listened to the way they talked about women, and she could see that it was quite so.
In their discussions with each other, at any rate, the men might as well have been talking about mountains they wanted to climb, streams they wanted to ford.
The women were challenges, and they wanted to take them on.
Getting a woman to acquiesce was winning, and they wanted to win.
She had been telling herself, however, that there were certain women that men did not treat this way.
And perhaps there were. But it did not happen to be because the woman was typically feminine, which was what she had told herself.
She had told herself that the reason that men did not want to fall in love with her was because she was not feminine enough.
Now, she realized that men treated plenty of feminine women the same way.
This was a freeing feeling.
But it still begged the question: what made a man fall in love instead of simply treating a woman like a challenge to be conquered?
And it actually brought another question to the surface of her mind: why did she suddenly care?
She would not say that she had been much concerned with making men fall in love with her when she left the orc army with Dathor. She had been only focused on bringing about the death of High King Findas.
She sat down in front of Iahir and felt it cut through her, a horrible knowledge that she wished she had not even uncovered about herself.
She had been hiding it from herself because she, indeed, did not need to know this about herself.
It was better not to know. It was another sign of her sheer idiocy and weakness.
It wasn’t all men she cared about.
It was him.
She wanted to know how to make Iahir fall in love with a woman.
Because Gathren had already fallen for him.
Why was she always doing this? Why was she always falling for men who were entirely awful sort of men, men who would never love her back, men who she had no future with? What was it about the wrong sort of man?
She actually let out a moan.
“Are you all right, warrioress? Or am I ruining the eggs?” he said.
She shook her head at him. “It’s nothing.”
He gave her a little smile. “Have I mentioned recently how glad I am that you are letting me come along?”
She moaned again. “I should not let you come along. I should be much better off if you were not around, being… whatever way you are with me.”
He blinked at her. “Are you changing your mind?”
She let out yet another moan.
“Don’t change your mind, Gathren.” He was very sincere. “Please, I beg you, don’t. I tell you, I cannot go home.”
“What’s so awful about home?” she said.
“I told you I don’t want to talk about that,” he said.
“Do you have some sort of terrible father?”
“I suppose, but doesn’t everyone?” he said.
“No, everyone does not,” she said.
“Well, you do, don’t you?” he said. “Your father, you said, barely knows you exist.”
She had to admit this was true enough. “But there are lots of good fathers out there.”
“Yes, well, I don’t know anyone with a good father,” he said.
“That can’t be true,” she countered. “What is it that makes your father so awful, anyway?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
“What if I said that if you wanted to come along with me, you had to tell me,” she said.
His eyes widened. “When did you become so positively horrid, warrioress?”
She gave him a sour look.
“I have made you eggs, have I not? Can that not be worth something?”
“Oh, perhaps, yes,” she said, giving up on everything.
After breakfast, they went together to scour the larder, which was still standing, for whatever food had been left behind that had not gone bad.
They were able to pack up enough supplies to last them for a trek off into the mountains, which would probably take at least two days, even on horseback.
Then, assuming they got her mother back, they’d need two days back.
She had hoped to be able to find more of her own clothing, but it had all burned up.
Similarly, there wasn’t much in the way blankets or anything of that nature to pack.
They were able to take some horse blankets from the barn.
She washed them out in the nearby stream, squeezed them out and hung them to dry.
After they had packed up the food, they checked the blankets and they were still damp, but they managed to rig up a pole to fasten to the horses’ saddles to fasten them to. They should dry as they rode, fluttering in the breeze like flags.
They ate more eggs for lunch, and then they left together.
They rode for hours, mostly silent, and Gathren kept her eyes on the mountain range, willing herself to believe that it was growing closer as they rode for it, even though she doubted that such a thing could be noticed so quickly.
They had a brief discussion about when they might stop for dinner and both decided it would be best to wait until they were going to stop for the night, especially if they wanted to make a fire and a camp and all that business.
So, they rode on as the sun sank and as the shadows grew taller, deeper, and longer. The Cirdan elves often swore by the shadows. They had an affinity with the trees, with the forests. This was why they were called silvan elves.
As the last of the light began to fade, they came across several silvan elves on horseback, coming the opposite direction on the road. The leader of these elves, an older man with long black hair streaked with silver, waved them down.
Gathren did not wish to stop, because things had become untenable between elves and orcs, especially in the north, in the past ten years. The silvan elves had long chafed against the rule of the elves to the south, but they had gloried in Findas’s hatred of the orcs.
She did not think that these elves would be polite to either her or Iahir, and she did not think that the elves would take well to the idea of them traveling together.
She and Iahir reined in side by side, waiting for the approach of the other elves.
“Best let me do the talking,” Iahir whispered to her.
She nodded, seeing the wisdom in this. “I’d rather you did not say I was your whore,” she breathed fiercely.
“Oh, give me some credit, warrioress,” he said.
They waited.
The elves approached, the eldest, gray-streaked one coming first and the other three men coming in behind him, a sort of triangle of Cirdan elves.
They all had dark hair and pale skin and large, luminous eyes.
Their ears pointed to the darkening sky.
Their shadows fell in front of them as the sun set behind them.
“Do you come from Renegahan?” said the leader of the silvans.
“We do,” said Iahir.
The leader looked at Gathren and then back at Iahir. “Is it as bad as they say?”
Iahir gave a quick nod. “It is… bad.”
The leader sucked in a breath and looked back at the others. “So, there is nothing, there is no resistance from the southern forces against the orcs? There will be no one coming to free the keeps which have been taken over?”
“That I could not say,” said Iahir. “We left in a hurry, and it was right in the thick of things. I cannot think the orcs can hold the capital forever against the Valaedor.”
“But if they have taken it,” said the leader, “they have all the resources of the High King, all his cannons and all his gunpowder and all his stores of food.”
This seemed to have just occurred to Iahir, who nodded, looking stricken.
The leader nodded at Gathren. “Is she your prisoner?”
Iahir licked his lips and looked at Gathren. “She is… an important bargaining chip that I must protect if we hope to end this conflict. She is an orc princess.”
The silvan elves looked her up and down, and then narrowed their eyes.
“We must be on our way, I’m afraid,” said Iahir. “You will let us pass?”
The leader hesitated for long, long moments, but then he nodded. “Of course. The road belongs to us all, after all.” He smiled a thin smile, one that seemed cold and a bit ironic.
But the elves did not stop them as they rode past.