The Broken Ring

Journal of Rowana, daughter of Rowetha
17 / 02 / 2120 of the Fourth Age, cont'd

Far Harad, where rocky foothills dip down into sandy scrubland, the dry seasonal riverbeds, and eventually out to the true desert. The dark of the moon, when only the stars looked down at us from up above, as they had since Varda had set them burning long ago.

They took her while I had my pants down, watering a bush. I heard the shots fired, and cursed every second it took to re-buckle before I went after her. Instinct and wired reflexes saved my life from the Orcish blades in the dark, the silent stalkers that had lain in wait for me as their mates struck for Aedre.

I saw in an instant that they hadn't snuck past us. Sand and dirt dribbled from black cloth. The bastards had lain awake beneath the sands, buried with only a breathing tube showing, waiting for the right time to strike. I backpedaled and fired. Bullets burst through, center of mass, then head shots, and I had to retreat to keep distance, keep out of the reach of those knives.

Then the roar shook the air. Animal. Huge.

The Broken Ring still used oliphants. Command laughed at that, in a world with armored personnel carriers and tanks, but the damned things were huge, deadly at close quarters, and it took an anti-tank gun or grenade launcher to put it down in one hit. Otherwise, you had to basically fill the damned things with lead before they'd go down. I had heard tales of the old wars, when the oliphants bristled with arrows and still moved and dealt ****.

The last of my assailants painted the rocky ground with his brains. I reloaded, quickly, the Ironbeard Deathdealer model 16 at my shoulder. The dwarven bayonet was was a long, slender axehead, as good for chopping as stabbing, that turned the short-barreled rifle into a short halberd in close quarters. I resisted the urge to run straight back into camp and instead hunkered low, used the shrub for cover as I moved to hopefully flank the enemy.

There were at least twenty of them left alive. Aedre had emptied her weapon, but they'd overborne her with numbers. I couldn't see the oliphant, but I could hear it howl. The Orcs carried the struggling ranger between them, and Aedre hissed and cursed in Westron and a smattering of other languages.

My throat tightened. The Broken Ring had been raiding the villages of Men, stealing women. For a thousand years, they'd been crossing Goblins and Men, and the bastard daywalkers were prized. Aedre and I had scouted out their village, high in the hills, had seen what was left of the women there. If a woman died in childbirth, they fed her to the children. The little abominations literally ate their own mothers.

We'd smiled when we called in the airstrike. Job done, time to go home.

Apparently we missed a few.

The Broken Ring Orcs moved fast. So do I. The IM16 had better range then their jezzails and blackmarket SMGs. My low-light augments were more accurate than their natural night vision. As they ran, my shots rang out. I culled the stragglers first. Then five were set as a rear-guard, to try and ambush me. The firefight lasted seconds, and I cursed the waste of time and ammo as I put a bullet in the skull of every one of them after they hit the earth. I couldn't afford to leave any behind me. Reloaded and kept running.

Their encampment was closer than I figured, hidden in the lee of a low rise. The oliphant was there, like an ancient hill on legs. One tusk was broken, the other was six feet of smooth ivory. A cloaked figure was saying something to Aedre as she struggled. Not an Orc, but a Man. I saw her spit in the cowled Man's face. Then they lifted her up. The masked man uttered a command in the Black Speech, and the oliphant shifted its great head.

I couldn't stop it. A hundred yards away, running like my heart would burst. I could see the great tusk of the oliphant guided between Aedre's thighs, and then rise with sudden, terrible ****. The ivory tusk tore out her abdomen like a gore-splattered parody of a phallus. It rose upwards, pulled her from the Orcs' grasp even as I ran, and I tasted salt in my mouth as I saw her dangle there. My tearducts had been redirected to my mouth when they put the cybereyes in. When I wanted to cry, I spit.

Hundred yards away, and she was already dying. Her guts spilled out, and the Orcs closed on her for a feast. She lifted her head, saw me, and her lips moved. I knew what she asked of me.

I raised the Deathdealer to my shoulder. She smiled in thanks as my first bullet put an end to her agony.

The rest went into the Orcs. Steady. Methodical. One bullet, one kill. There was no need to rush anymore.

The cowled Man tried to retreat to a tent. I followed, and found him there, on his knees on a brightly-woven rug that depicted a great flaming eye. The side of the tent was painted with their symbol: a broken circle. He babbled something in that harsh tongue.

The bayonet caught him just above the neck, and his head fell to the side, to spray the symbol of his debased cult with his blood.

Then...then I saw something fade into view, around the broken ring. Letters in the Black Speech. Oddly familiar. I stopped to stare as they became more clear, as if they drank up the wet gore.

Azzie's shaking brought me awake. I panted, drenched with cold sweat, heart hammered in my chest. She was naked, except for the ring that hung by a knotted shoelace around her neck, in between those breasts. Her big dark eyes were wide with concern.

"It's...it's okay," I said, as realization dawned. "Just a nightmare."

The Uruk bared her fangs, which she did whenever she thought I was avoiding or hiding something.

"It is not okay," she said simply. Iron in her voice. Then her mouth closed, the lower lip stuck out in a pout. "Tell me."

So I did. In the last few hours before dawn. As Azzie pressed her body tightly against mine, unwilling to let me go, even for a moment. About Aedre. How she died. The long, lonely trek back. The report. Funeral. We'd piled the heads at her feet, the oliphant's skull gigantic against the carefully-wrapped form of her body as we raised the mound over her. Psych evals. Mandatory leave which segued into the end of my final tour. This time, I didn't re-up.

Azzie rolled on top of me and kissed me after I finished. Crushed her breasts against my chest. As much as I might joke about the therapeutic power of boobs, at the moment the feel of those warm, soft pillows against me was worth a thousand pills and therapy sessions. The hard metal of the ring pressed against my breastbone, and I was surprised at the heat of it. A tiny little circle that burned between us.

That drew me back, even as our lips mashed and tongues tasted each other. Slowly, without urgency. Sometimes Azzie would breathe deep, as if to suck the breath from my lungs, and drew my tongue into her mouth.

Yet even then, my mind went back to those letters that had appeared on the tent. Because while I wasn't sure...I thought they looked a lot like the inscription on Azzie's ring.