Chapter Text
I told you, these are raiders. Dangerous men. They shoot on sight.
And I am not a child any longer!
You’re not a member of the militia, neither. Now, stay behind. Don’t you off and saddle your horse—you’re not coming, d’you hear me? D’you hear me, Gelmir?
The mahogany stain of creosote grinds deep into his palms. The smoke-thick stench burrows its way through his nose and throat.
For months, their production of new ties was endless. Each batch prepared was burned by seemingly tireless enemies. The burning ended at the start of summer. It is not for Gwindor, nor for any other slave, to know why. When the burnings were no longer so frequent, the work of treating ties decreased, but every so often a new shipment is needed. After completion, it will be dragged and carted out into the free world.
Gwindor’s hands seem to sense what he wants better than his mind does, for they keep curling inwards, as if inviting him to bury his face in them and weep.
When was the last time he wept? He was angry, last night—hopping mad, as Lem was wont to say—and the feeling seems garish and shameful, now.
Christ, but Haldar was young.
The sun dries the rag on his neck before noon. The water-bucket is a precious thing, slopping its way up the hill to where the ties are laid side-by-side along the level plateau. Gwindor’s back aches, and his bad arm is afire as it always is, when he must stoop to work, and—
No, no. He mustn’t remember. Mustn’t remember the drawn white face and the arms spread-eagled, the flaming cap of hair. These things were the last remnants of what must have been, once, a comely specimen of humanity.
Gwindor shakes his head, ashamed that his thoughts have strayed. Shame. Shame. Haldar. The red lad. All, all red.
—D’you hear me—
None of the rumors were true. These men are not horse-thieves. Nor are they Natives, lately grown distrustful of Oregon-bound travelers.
No. These are men who might be farmhands offering their services, save for the guns in their hands. These are men who look not so very different from those with whom Gwindor traveled over the Mississippi River, when he was seventeen years old, and Gelmir only eight.
(Men who seemed, long ago, wise.)
Gelmir is saying, why are they attacking our town?
Gwindor is angry with him—afraid for him—does not want to answer him. Most importantly (most futily, he shall find), he must concentrate on keeping the raiders away from the wood-framed buildings, in the brush fields where there is cover.
Where he can fire back and stand his ground.
Anger, fear, and blindness.
These are what lose the day.
If he had only counted, this morning, to make certain that Haldar’s dark head was bobbing alongside Lem, none of this would have happened. Ordinarily, too, he would have missed the patter of Haldar’s endless questions, which were always loosed from the boy’s tongue the moment they were out of the overseers’ hearing.
But Gwindor was angry, and ashamed. The humiliation of five lashes from an upstart’s hand will do that—make a man blind. Make a man forget.
(Or remember.)
Oh, how it all might have been. They would scatter to paint the ties, and Haldar would sidle close to him, as he had for several years, now, to learn new words and new ways of working.
Haldar treated slavery as both a shock to the system and an apprenticeship of sorts. This, Gwindor had never understood. But he answered the questions, sometimes in one word, sometimes with a shrug and a warning to keep your head down, lad.
This was their life, and he convinced himself that he was living it.
And you, coward. What is this life, to you?
The silence is like a storm-cloud. Gwindor tears the pad of his palm on a vicious flake of untreated wood, and swears.
The redhead did not scream. Assuredly, no man could keep back the groans, the tormented gasps and choked-off sobs, that naturally accompanied such violence—
But he did not scream, even as his blood flecked the posts, his bone-pale knuckles, the granite face looming behind him. That face turned with each heavy arm-swing, turned like a weathervane swayed and brought back by the buffets of a most mechanical wind. That face did not change, when the victim of its hand shuddered and sprang forward (futily) as if the pain and blood could be fled, left behind.
Had Gwindor been anything other than stricken with shame, with guilt, with after-knowledge, he might have said,
We leave everything behind, and do not flee.
Gothmog is not the one who destroyed Gwindor (heart, life, purpose), but he is the one whom Gwindor serves.
When the ruthless sun has set, the day feels as if it has been as long as a year. Did no one collect poor Haldar’s bones? Haldar who will never again say, Gwindor, is the railroad as wide as the country? or, I am ready now, you know. You can teach me to fight.
Gwindor came late to that meeting; the meeting of man and boy and beast, spurred by he knows not what. He stood by, while the stranger pleaded for Haldar’s life.
Whatever the beginning, the stranger must have known what was coming. Gwindor ought to have known what was coming.
Perhaps he did.
Among the pistol-happy rogues rides a man with a shrew’s face and a skein of hair as white-blond as any of the Norwegians from the beleaguered town. As pale as Gelmir's.
The militia, such as it is, falls.
Where is Gelmir?
(Gwindor ought to have known what was coming.)
“I think—” Belle is all half-syllables, half-thoughts. She cannot bear this; Gwindor can only imagine what it is to look on a body freshly made as ghastly as one’s own. “You cut the bonds, I’ll catch him.”
(This is what they found when they were marched down the hill again. Gothmog, with his blunt fingers under the slack jaw, waiting. Even in dusk and across the yard, Gwindor could see the scorched flush cloaking every inch of unmarked skin. The fierce sunburn made him somehow look less dead.
He must be dead, mustn’t he? The man—the boy—with curses carved into him.
Gothmog turned his head and Gwindor met his eyes. Did not wish to; knew what it was to meet a man’s eyes, and be punished.
“Take him down,” Gothmog said. “Take him back to quarters.” He lets fall that ragged, drooping head—
And again, there is no sound.)
Gwindor has only seen this face so close when the still-strong limbs, long and hard, were ferociously striking him. He raises it in his hands, forgetting the duty he agreed to. The bones are sharp beneath thin skin. The eyes are bruised shut. Blood rings the mouth—but of course, he would have chewed his tongue. Gwindor has been lashed harshly before, and knows. (Gwindor screamed, for he was younger then.)
“His wrists, please,” Belle begs. “We must be quick.”
How could he even fight, with a body this ruined? Brands upon brands—this shoulder flayed deeply—
She said, cut the bonds, because they forget sometimes: they are slaves, with neither tools nor weapons to call their own. Gwindor pauses at the point where narrow bones are chafed by the thick cords, and sets about picking at the knots with his blunt, cracked nails.
“Of course,” Belle murmurs, not chiding him. She comes round beside him, and as if it takes no thought at all, as if it takes no effort, she strokes the boy’s sweat-plastered hair back from his burning brow. “Be brave, Russandol,” she says. “It is almost over.”
Lies, sweet lies, and yet—
“What did you call him?” Gwindor’s fingers ache.
Belle jerks her mangled jaw, back to wariness. Gwindor recalls himself—he has crumbled much, if he has to recall himself—and looks at the gathering throng of thralls. They do not linger, as they did for the horrible span of time this morning.
He has never heard an hour of silence like that. Never, never, not even when—
The first knot gives. Gwindor bites his own tongue, thinks, no, you rascal, you shall not bring him to my mind again. You shall not drive me mad…Russandol.
Belle darts quickly behind him. Gwindor has not seen his back, yet. “Can you catch him without—”
“Opening the wounds again?” Belle whispers. “I have no choice.”
First, the monster puts out his eyes.
The others are going in to supper. Gwindor does not know if he shall ever want to eat again. He has not given himself to exaggeration—hunger is a matter of truth unavoidable—but the raw wrists are so limp and sickly hot, the breathing so shallow, that he cannot trust himself.
Belle staggers under Russandol’s weight.
“Easy now,” Gwindor says, and comes to give her aid.
The wounds are oozing, the blood flaking dry in some places and tacky in others. The gashes are, for the most part, not terribly deep, but they span him from shoulder to waist, and some have gouged flesh as well as skin. Gwindor turns his attention to the crest of his shoulders, now, and to his neck. He reaches out to skim the rough-cut eye with a finger, then draws back. There, and there, is deep burning. The heat rising from his skin, and the many places where his skin is laid open, radiates fever-warmth.
It was hard to carry him back. Now, they have laid him on one of the barrack bunks. It was Haldar’s; Gwindor dares not think overlong of that. Most of the bunks are stacked high, but Haldar’s was shorter than the others, and was tucked in a corner. Belle sits at one end, with the boy’s face cradled on her knees. His legs are long, and they drag on the floor. Gwindor is standing, trying to decide what to do next.
Words. Names. Gelmir screamed them all, intelligibly—they do not tell you that about the cries of the dying, how sometimes you can understand.
Then the monster reached into Gelmir’s mouth.
“We must have something,” Belle is saying. “With which to bandage him. To protect—” Russandol shudders, and moans, and something twists across Belle’s already twisted face.
“He is going to die.” Gwindor speaks dully, knowingly. He wonders why he spent all the hours of the day grieving for this hated boy, if he was only going to pronounce him dead later, but there it is.
Life, and slavery.
“Do not speak so in front of him,” Belle hisses. “Perhaps he can still hear.” Leaning down, she says softly, “Russandol, Russandol, don’t give in. So much is yours.”
“What is his?” Gwindor kneels.
Belle blinks at him, a lonely movement. “His eyes, for one.”
(Belle is better at knots than he is. They didn’t break her fingers. They didn’t cut off her hands. Gwindor was weak, though; he could not fathom the task of taking a body in his arms.
Did she know that? Did she guess?)
Russandol, stupefied with fever and exhaustion, may never wake up. Gwindor is nearly sure of this, until the still-bright head thrashes a little in Belle’s gentle hold. He coughs, and blood and phlegm mingle on his poor lips. Gwindor stoops, swipes at the mess with his sleeve. So. Now he shall wake, and die begging.
“Easy now,” Belle says. Is she speaking to the boy? She must be. On account of her level head and good heart, she is Gwindor’s best ally, here. He’s a coward and a broken hammer that cannot trust itself even it to fall, but he isn’t a fool.
Or maybe, he thinks, looking at the purple-hollowed eyes, he is.
Backwards, then. Back from the tear of the first lash, and the wrenched shock on a face that looked younger than it had when it loomed triumphant against torchlight and night. Back from—
When the guards have stripped him and bound his arms as far apart as his body can bear, there is no breath exchanged by the crowd. That they followed in plodding march, away from Haldar’s stiff-flung remains, was a testament to their inhumanity. That they stay sick and silent now is half proof of something else.
This is what the cattle-crowd can see:
Below the neck is a long word, likely a name, mayhap an Irish one. It was done with the tip of a knife, Gwindor thinks, because it can be discerned and read from yards away. Farther down than that is a twisted mass of scars and burns that look only half-healed.
Then—Lem’s epithet for the lanky redhead is carved across the lad’s hips. The word is burned in the memory of all, Gwindor is certain. Worse, it is as if he himself wrote it there and here, by his suspicions and distrust. Belle was right; always right. This is Mairon’s work, and Mairon’s work is never earned. Never survived, that Gwindor knew of, before Belle and this near-naked stranger.
It is difficult to say without reflecting deeply and cruelly, why he chose to believe that the redhead was a mercenary whose only purpose in life was to claw his way back.
It is difficult, to sever bone, but Mairon did it skillfully when he cut off Gelmir’s hands.
When they have cleared his mouth, Gwindor returns to staring at his savaged back. “I have nothing clean, Belle. You know what ill a dirty bandage does.”
Dubiously, she replies: “I have whiskey.”
“That—” he tries to imagine the harshness on skin that is either torn or burned. “I do not—”
The whole place around them is silent. This feels illicit, secretive, except that Gothmog ordered them here.
Belle’s eye surveys him, as close to desperate in its intensity as he has ever seen her. At times like this, Gwindor knows: he could ask her what it felt like, that pain.
Was it very bad, or did you most fear what happened afterwards? The long years of living, as an even bitterer curse?
What he wants to ask, really, is that which he already knows. He knows how it hurts to be left with sight, when human becomes creature in the moments before pathetic death.
“Pretend you’re his mother,” Gwindor says harshly. He takes a few steps away from Belle and her charge. “That is what men want to hear when they slip off. It’s over, Belle. I—” He nearly collides with Sticks, the skinny little errand-runner of overseer and thrall alike. She is too small for a child of almost any age, bones spare enough to have earned her the name they all know best.
Where were the children, in all of this?
The question is frayed by the scream of a memory, a scream like Russandol’s, in that it does not leave Gwindor’s lips.
One of the men forces him to his knees, and when he fights, his head is seized in a chokehold, his right arm twisted to the point of impossible pain. The sound that follows is not the snap of bone but a snap like rubber pulled taut and sheared.
His arm hangs limp.
His brother sees him—this is before—and calls his name—this is before—and Gwindor has nothing to give him, but words.
“Found this,” Sticks whispers, pushing impatiently past him. She has all the busy purpose of a mother, as if a mother is something she knows. Belle twists, throws one arm up, as if to shield Russandol and Sticks from each other.
“Sticks, do not come closer.”
Sticks stamps her foot. Bare, against the packed earth floor, it makes little sound. She twists her offering in her hands. “Blond’un’s dead,” she snaps. “He had a clean shirt. Russandol ain’t have any.”
Gwindor blinks. “You…”
“Sticks!” Belle slurs, her lips moving wrong as her careful control breaks. “I’ve told you not to poke around there. I’ve told you—”
—D’you hear me—
“Never mind,” Gwindor says, staring down the stubborn saucer-eyes of this scrap of a girl. When has he last spoken to her, or to the little ghost-shadow of a boy whose mother’s grave he dug, nigh on five years ago? “Never mind, Belle. This here’ll do better than anything we have.”
Belle rolls her head from side to side, as if she considers the evil already done, and takes the shirt from Sticks.
“It’s cambric,” she says. “That’ll do, but I’ll still need my whiskey.”
“I know where you keep it,” Sticks mumbles. Her whole face is turned towards the man who sprawls across Belle’s lap and the bed beyond. The smell of blood hangs in the air. His face is a death-mask of spoiled beauty.
It is not a sight for a child’s eyes, but Gwindor—
Gwindor can never be reasonable on that subject.
Where were the children in all of this? Gwindor saw Sticks run, a flash and gone, after Haldar was dead, no doubt searching for the little one.
Belle spreads the stolen shirt out beside her. It is sickly white beside Russandol’s hair, beside his scorched and bleeding skin. Since his coughing fit, they have turned him half on his side. “Tear it into strips,” Belle mutters, half to herself, “though there isn’t enough to tie around him.”
But now he is waking again, his crusted eyelids tugging open, and Gwindor has not touched him since he cut him down and carried him (since taking his face in his hands), but he crouches, still useless, by the side of the too-short cot.
“Hoy there,” he says. “Russandol.” There is no answer.
Belle presses her free hand to Russandol’s forehead. She has shifted her knees, clad in the same rough trousers that the men wear, to make him more—comfortable cannot be the word.
“He’s burning up,” Belle says. “Sun fever.”
If Gwindor had not made him an enemy, would he be losing him as something else today?
“He needs water.”
“Can you fetch some?”
“And leave you here?”
She shrugs one shoulder. “I can manage. Sticks’ll come with the whiskey.” She turns her hand so that the palm cradles Russandol’s brow. “Forgive him.”
Gwindor asks, hoarsely, “What?”
Belle’s eye blinks in the ruin of her face. “He meant no harm. He tried to save—”
The sick snap of bone, this time. Haldar’s neck. Gwindor cuts her off, so that more memory doesn’t. “I saw.”
If Russandol is trying to speak, his lips yield nothing more than a feeble croak. Gwindor goes to find water. Gothmog won’t kill him for that, for leaving to find water, will he?
Gothmog cares not for the slave. He thinks that in the deep recesses of his mind, as if it’s a secret. It isn’t—the secret is who does care for him. And even then…even if he was in foul service to Bauglir, what of it?
Gwindor admits, confesses—no man would do it willingly. No, nor woman neither.
Belle is proof of that.
Why didn’t he listen to Belle?
“We are fetching you a little water,” Belle is mumbling, when he returns. “Not so much that it is hard to drink. I promise.”
A groan, a twitch. And then his whole body convulses, straightens, his eyelids fluttering like beating wings, his hands balled into bruised fists.
It is like this—trying to stymie the wrenching shivers of Russandol’s fever and pain—that Sticks finds them. Gwindor has only half a moment to snatch the whiskey from her hand, to think of pouring it down his own throat instead of using it for wounds, when he realizes Sticks is not even looking at Russandol.
She is tearing at Gwindor’s sleeve.
“What is it?” Russandol has gone still again, and his eyes are closed. His breathing is not steady, yet, but nor is it frantic.
“The Dark Man,” Sticks squeaks. “The Dark Man is coming.”
In all the years that Gwindor has known him, mostly from afar, Melkor Bauglir has never changed.