Carpe Diem – Part 24
Arkadhur / ”Lowendir”
Abandoning the abandoned Farmhourse, Pelennor Fields. The last day of Autumn (last year)
with
Cali Dringolben and
Iole Ishen aboard.
@Rillewen
The day continued to tax the Umbarian, as the means he had employed to make his life easier, proved in fact the very opposite. The girl was in the barrel, yes. But seeking to seize and re-tie her wrists, even in front of her, was turning out to be far less like shooting fish in a barrel. Far more like trying to grasp a bobbing apple with nothing but his teeth from a barrel of water.
Cali’s distress saw her arms writhing like snakes and his access to them impeded, forced as the man was to lean over the opening and try to get a hold of things. First his wrist and, then, the back of his hand were thrust against the side of the tub, which saw him curse. And once he almost dropped the already bloodied ropes into the barrel where he would have to dive past her to retrieve them. Fortunately, this was just an almost. But it did not improve his mood. And when she began screaming like a Nazgul on top of squirming around, he began to miss the old days of bearing dead bodies about.
Corpses did not fight back. Corpses did not emit piercing sirens that inspired headaches. Corpses did not stare, or pant, or demonstrate that they were in fact people still. They may have stunk worse, and occasionally come apart in his hands, but still, he missed dealing with
Keket’s corpses.
In retrospect, his threat of cutting .. her .. may have been the tipping point which set off this latest desperate display. His last victim had been easier. His last victim had been older, scrawnier. His last victim was now .. missing from where he had left her. Time was really of the essence here.
Arkadhur grit his teeth and thrust
Cali’s head back with his elbow, into the side of her confinement. He glanced then for the lid of the thing, from where he’d discarded it; thinking that he might be able to bring it down on her now, hard, and knock her out again. But it was too far from reach for him to accomplish that before she got the bonnet pulled back up from over her eyes. And he was not about to hand her any advantage, however slight.
Drawing on the moment where he might have dazed his captive,
Arkadhur employed the strength he possessed as a full-grown man, albeit one not trained against combat. He manipulated his position to push down and crush the flailing limbs beneath his weight so that he could subdue her, or at least keep her from thrashing about. The resulting and sickening crack surprised even he.
A moment of panic struck at the Umbarian before he remembered, where he was and just what he was doing. It did not matter if this one got broken, he recalled. There was no Blood Priest at hand to demand a fitting tribute to his God.
Arkadhur thus released the shuddering breath he had been holding as colour slowly began to return to his blanched cheeks. Ignoring his victim’s protests which had turned now from panic to include pain, he managed to bind the shocked young woman’s one wrist to the other, as though he had not just clearly disfigured one forearm to achieve it. For good measure, he then jerked the young woman’s head hard again, against the barrel; forward, and then back, before loosening the bonnet that was tangled over her eyes.
Huge brown eyes were waiting, but they did not keep him from tearing off part of the costume’s now mightily dishevelled apron. Balling the cloth up, he held the young woman’s nostrils closed between his fingers until she opened her mouth and, forcing the makeshift gag into the cave of her muffled maw, he secured the bonnet instead around her mouth and tied it tightly at the back of her neck.
Coming away afterwards, his deed done, he wiped his bloodied lip with the back of one hand, and licked his nose blood off his flesh with some grim satisfaction. A further gash across his thumb betrayed where he must have caught himself on a buckle or a broach during the scuffle. But he certainly did not have time nor the inclination to now grope about in the barrel to find where it may have fallen. There were dank rancid puddles at the bottom of the barrel, where something indiscernable was briefly shining, but he did not relish having the unreasonable young woman kick him on top of everything else. Let it lie, if it even were anything at all. Now that he thought about it, he might have just as easily nicked his own thumb with the knife during the chaos.
Drawing that same knife now that he had the time and space to better manage it, without cutting himself further,
Arkadhur brought the blade up close to
Cali’s face. Recounting how much of an impact the weapon had upon her before. Slicing though naught but a small twist of her dark hair, he held the severed tendril up between them like a trophy, twirling it between two fingers, before he sniffed it rather deliberately, so that she might make of that what she would. Then and only then, did the Umbarian take time enough to locate the barrel lid, and secure it neatly over the stifled (and hopefully subdued now) contents. He still had another one to manage, after all.
The drive from then on, toward the South Gate was considerably less stressful, after his labours. And though forced to sniff several more times, and blow his throbbing nose, the bleeding stalled it’s trickle eventually. The screaming of both girls though resounded inside his head for some time after he had stowed their mouths. There was a small enough hole in each of their keepings, that they would not be starved of breath, smothered though it might now prove. But that was their doing, not his. They, particularly the first, had just
had to make it harder on themselves than it needed to be.
In time the gate came into sight, and thoughts of being rid of his tiresome luggage began to gnaw at the Umbarian’s impatience.
Ademar couldn't take them off his hands soon enough, as far as he was concerned. Since he so wanted answers about that damned red-headed girl whom he was hunting. While
Arkadhur had not managed to find any red-headed girl, it should take some time for the obsessed Tark to figure out this pair did not in fact have any idea where he could find his prize.
It was fair to say that, by this point, he was not so much blasé at the thought of his ‘unwanted associate' torturing them for information they did not have. He was actually of the opinion that it was only fair, after all they’d put him through. Coming to this city had turned out to be a horrible idea. So if this was the price of his leaving without arrest, then he would take it and good riddance. He’d not gained what he was hoping for from the ill-fated visit, so why should any other of them escape the pangs of disappointment. The 'keepsakes' he had taken of each of the young women, he idly discarded into the grass on his way: their actual purpose in causing confusion and concern had, after all, already been managed and he had no further want of any evidence to be found upon him. Who only knew what
Ademar had done by now with the real
Lowendir's wife !
(
The injuring of Cali was agreed with her writer/creator OOC)
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