A Beginning and an End 2.

[part 2 – escape]

To make my chance even smaller, I was beaten before the hunt, and this time I had not got even a knife, while the two dozen assassins were practically bristling with weapons; I would get the sacred hour before they started after me, but no more. I permitted myself a small smile inwards, I have had survived on such odds before, and it was only me who knew that the stakes were that much higher this time… I started out and got into the forest, if only I knew the magic, I could just simply step into a suitable and willing tree… but it was useless to wish something that was impossible, so I started to run, the run that I have perfected over the years, that I could keep up for days, and days it would have to be this time… by the time they started after me I was at the outskirts of the usual area, picking a direction more or less randomly, although the mountains seemed to somehow call to me, so be it, it was that way, and even though they had horses – on which I was counting – it still took them time to track me and run down… I ran and I felt my heart beating its strong and steady rhythm, at last I was running for freedom, for life, and for home… but enough of that, I can have no such thoughts now, for surely they will be upon me and instead of the chase it would be part two – fight. And it was, the first one simply wanting to run me down with his horse, swiping with his sword, what kind of a fool he took me for, I thought as I swayed to avoid the blade, it was easy to wrench it out from his grip and pull him from the saddle, good I thought, the fastest one is the clumsiest, it is easier than I have thought, he was dead by the time he hit the ground, and in the next second I was in the saddle, quieting the blood-splattered horse, all elves can befriend any horse any time, it was mine now, and now full gallop and don’t look back.

I did not look back for the next few days, but I was sure that a full and this time serious hunt was unfolding behind me, they could not let me escape, even though they could not know about the antidote I took, and now I’d have to carefully avoid any other settlement, I have gathered from the other slaves’ stories that in this country nobody was my friend, there were little law and much chaos, plenty of robbers and bandits and many kinds of humans who had one thing in common - that they would surely try to kill me on the spot. Apart from this, I had the time pressing me, and the fact that I still did not know which way to go to leave the country by the shortest route… so I had to approach a settlement, to find a map or somebody who told me what a map could… I did not really trust in finding a map, and I could not either, so I had to be content with a priestlike human, whom I threatened with disembowelment, started it in fact, until he told me in a hurried way to go north, through the mountains and on the other side it would be another country. I hoped he was telling the truth but of course I could not let him live. I even had to take the body and bury it later, farther away from this place. But what he said was hopeful, the mountains were looming over me and not very high, I could traverse them in a week if I am lucky, and have a few days to find a wizard, for the first time it actually looked as though I could even make it…

But it all went wrong from then on. I could not take any food with me, did not find any in that last place, and I wasn’t really fat to begin with – a skeleton with some skin on would more accurately describe me, so hunger was soon an issue, and as good a fighting weapon is a sword, as awkward it is to catch game with… game that wasn’t even plenty in the mountains, later I got to know that with all the wars sweeping back and forth over these mountains, whatever game lived here and had a little survival instinct had long ago migrated to more peaceful regions… I had found only some dark, bitter berries and dug up a kind of an onion which had an awful taste but I couldn’t be choosy… they, together with some worms were the only edible things that I could find, and it had taken to find them far more time than I had thought. The horse was showing tiredness too, and it would not eat the sparse yellow grass either for some reason, only some leaves from a bush, and of course it wasn’t enough for it either. After four days the assassins started to come, they of course had knowledge of the area’s geography and knew which way I was fleeing. In fact my lack of knowledge was why they couldn’t find me earlier, for I did not go where I should have gone, and where they expected me… but from then on it was fighting all the time too, and I lost even more time, I killed them as they came, we played a bloody hide and seek amongst the trees, I cannot really remember how many there were, but a lot certainly, and I was moving slow, far too slow, in fact I was running out of my time, even though I moved downhill now, so it must be that other country that the old man spoke of, but even from up high I could see no light at night, which meant no settlements, and that meant death to me soon.

I started to feel the symptoms the next day, I knew it was not a nice poison, they are cruel and they do not even give death quickly when they can prolong the suffering, I was hallucinating by nightfall, I imagined Rihanna coming to me but when I stretch my hand towards him he becomes an orc, and then worms come out of its mouth and shower on me, eating my face, I would scream but only painful groans come out of my mouth, then it becomes a zombie, and it hugs me, and I scream anyway, its foul, decaying breath is suffocating me, and then the dark spirits dance around my head, twisting and turning and the ground opens and I fall, and it closes over me and I have earth in my mouth, in my lungs and it bursts and I have my innards trailing out, and from then on I only remember snatches of nightmares, never really regaining consciousness, but slowly and agonizingly move closer and closer to death…

But the poison did not take me to the other side. I do not know even to this day, how long I have been dying there, alone on the mountainside… but slowly the pain and the hallucinations started to lessen in intensity, and a new pain come instead… I was starving, quite literally. The horse has long before escaped from me, and the bleak landscape offered nothing to eat. I have crawled, for I had no strength for even to stand and walk. The place where I was agonizing looked like a dozen angry spirits’ battleground, it was covered with blood and filth and spit and vomit, all from me… I have more or less fell into a stream, but it did me good, washed away some of the filth on me, cleared my head a bit, which was still half into a nightmare or hallucination, and it gave me a thing that probably saved my life… a burrow of crawdads, which I could still catch and eat as they were, raw, probably still alive, as I waited no time to have them… it wasn’t much but it gave me a little strength, to find some more food, slowly moving down the mountain. The pursuers probably gave it up some time back, or it was really another country, they must have thought me dead because of the poison, and really, I should be dead, how I survived it I don’t know… maybe the fact that I got it many times as well as the antidote, and my system somehow became used to it, insusceptible to it…

I must have looked like a demon from nether hell, for the very first human I met in this country screamed and run away as fast as he could, and still lacking the strength for it I decided against the tagging game. Instead I have stolen some clothes put out to dry at a small farmhouse – after making sure that the occupants were not nearby. I washed the best I could, put on the clean, although uncomfortable and ill-fitting clothes and set out to find a settlement. I found a village just after two days walk, but they weren’t very helpful, for as I learned later elves were not particularly welcome folk on these parts, complicated by the fact that I still did not speak the language some human slaves called Common, only a few words of it, and elvish only got me not too nice stares and eventually I was hustled out from the village, and I wanted no trouble as an introduction in this country, so I wandered forth. In the town it was only marginally better, for I have found a human who could speak a few words in elvish, and coupled with my few words in Common and much sign language I could tell him that I escaped from over the mountains and when he translated that it did achieve a little respect from them. At least I got some food and directions – hopefully they understood that I wanted to go home and pointed me that way – and one of them gave me a tattered cloak, which I welcomed as it was winter coming and my stolen clothes were more than inadequate for the weather. And so I wandered, roughly keeping to the right direction, sometimes finding helpful folks, sometimes having to scurry away rather quickly, and finally I got to a region that was probably noone’s land, for no people lived there, very little plants, few animals… but I doggedly moved on, the difficulties hardly registering on me any more, I became resigned and quiet inside and out, hope of anything seemed so far as to unattainable, after going through everything it was now the lack of anything happening that made me stoical, moving more out of sheer habit than anything else…

[to be continued]