It was less than an hour to sunset. Delioron had promised to be back by nightfall. If he was not, she should flee Amon Hen and never look back. That’s what he had told her.
Radawen looked around the courtyard again, desperately attempting to spot movement in the shadows, but nothing was moving down there. Even the birds had stopped singing.
Radawen inhaled deeply, once, twice, then again. She was just as afraid as she had been two years ago when she had met Delioron for the first time and her life had been in danger. Did Delioron feel like this all the time? Was this the price she was ready to pay to be with him?
Her next thought chilled her soul. She realized she was sweating and her eyes were wide open. What if it was Delioron who was moving down there in the shadows? What if Delioron had decided that Radawen knew too much about whatever game he was playing now and had returned to silence her for good?
Uinen’s tears, Radawen, that is delusional!
But the thought did not leave her alone. Delioron was a killer, and he killed just as ruthlessly and efficiently as a healer cuts off a gangrenous limb. She had seen him kill a man who had chased her in an alley in Linhir two years ago, and she knew he had killed men both before and after the incident in Linhir. When he had touched her so gently in his home in the Cape of Belfalas she had essentially forgotten what kind of man he actually was.
How can you love someone if you cannot trust them?
Radawen closed her eyes. The thought burned and gnawed at her, this thought that nothing but deception existed in Delioron’s world of shadows, that there was no trust, no truth, not a shred of decency, no ideals, no right and no wrong. That the only thing that mattered was survival; just that you had been alive today and would still exist tomorrow.
The barren landscape around Amon Hen was still and soundless. The cold sun and biting winds were ruthlessly wintry, even if spring was already right around the corner.
Suddenly a horrifying figure appeared above the stairway to the courtyard. It was an orc, skinny and cadaverous like death, dressed all in black. It was difficult to determine if the frozen grin on its skull-like face was a smile or a grimace. It was wearing a long, ugly and spiked bow on its back and holding an even uglier knife in its right hand.
Radawen’s face grew pale. She jumped up on her feet, lurched backwards and looked for a support from the balustrade. The orc strode towards her without a single wasted movement.
Radawen let out a stifled yelp and drew out her letter-knife; a ridiculously ineffective weapon against the orc’s terrifying blade, imaginatively designed to maim, mutilate and skin its victims. She ran along the balustrade holding the letter-knife and then retreated into a corner. There was no way to escape. She could not run past the orc to the stairs, and going over the balustrade would have meant leaping into her certain death on the rocks on the steep hill below.
”You sow”, the orc rasped in a dry, ugly voice.
Radawen’s nostrils flared, her eyes were wide open, her face was glowing red and she breathed heavily as if she was fighting or running. She held the letter-knife in front of her, pressing the grip against her belly.
”Nobody tells Hivras who to kill and who not to kill”, the orc kept talking. ”I am an artist! I will kill whoever I want, whenever I want. Time to teach those boot-licking worms of Mordor a lesson.”
”Go away”, Radawen said. ”Go away or I will kill you!”
The orc took another step towards her. Radawen gathered her strength and smelled the scent of her own fear. The image of Delioron glimpsed on her mind, but soon the image got buried beneath thousands of other images of her life. Now I die, she thought and waited.
The orc swung its knife down once, cutting Radawen’s sleeve slowly and neatly and scratching a crimson red wound on her arm. The letter-knife dropped from her hand on the marble floor with a clang. Radawen tried to push herself backwards, but there was nowhere to retreat to. She did not feel pain, but she could see the blood streaming down her arm.
She kicked vigorously and the tip of her right boot hit the orc on its shin. The orc startled and the blade in its hand curved downwards. Radawen lost her balance and fell against the orc, making it miss the blow.
”When I kill you, you sow, you will scream first and then you will stop screaming. Not because you don’t feel the pain but because you are suffocating in your own blood”, the orc said. Radawen saw how its black eyes gleamed with perverse pleasure.
”You stupid sow”, said the orc, took a step forward and grabbed hold of Radawen’s bloody right arm. ”On your knees!”
Radawen was dazed. She could not talk or move, everything had turned into drowsy apathy. She was like a small animal in the jaws of a wolf a moment before death, when sleep and calmness takes hold. Her arm was completely powerless. The orc lifted the blade in its hand.
Suddenly a blade of a sword burst through the orc’s sternum. The orc spread out its arms, still clutching to its knife, and looked up into the sky, surprised. A stream of blood flowed through its gritted teeth. The blade of the sword was pulled out of the orc’s back, and it collapsed on the dilapidated marble floor. Behind it stood a man holding a one-handed sword – a blond, bearded man in a steel bascinet and chainmail armor. He was strong and heavy-set, and the expression in his blue eyes in his flat, wide face was severe.
Radawen did not say anything. She stood staring at the corpse of the orc. There was no wind. It was dead silent atop Amon Hen. The blond man stepped over the corpse, took Radawen’s bloodied hand and wiped it with a cloth.
”It’s not serious”, he said harshly. ”Just a scratch.”
”It was going to kill me”, Radawen said without a hint of emotion in her muted voice. Her face was as pale as death.
”That’s right. Do you know why?”
”I don’t”, she said, looking at the cloth wrapped around her arm. ”It just climbed the stairs…”
”Yes. You come from Gondor?”
Radawen shut her mouth. Her eyes grew wide and she looked at the man closely for the first time. ”Who are you?”
”Egelferth. I am the Guard-Captain of Walstow.”
”I don’t understand…”
”Please don’t say anything. Come, let me take you down to the courtyard where we can sit and talk.”
”I am a scholar…”
Egelferth’s cold eyes narrowed. ”…from Minas Tirith, come here to study these old ruins. Yes, I have heard that story before. You are a spy, just like the other one. But this one I do know”, he said, kicking the dead orc. ”This one killed poor Mildrith. I only wish I could have cut and mauled it the same way it cut and mauled Mildrith. The same way it would have cut and mauled you.”
”I am a historian…”
”You are a liar, but I expected nothing more. I don’t want orcs near Walstow. I don’t want… you people here. Have I expressed myself clearly enough? But first I have to examine you. Let me look at your scratch and then you and I will have a little chat.”
”But, I…” But then she did not know what else to say. Again she thought about Delioron. No, she could not believe Delioron would want to kill her. He had saved her life after all, had he not?
Then it dawned on her. This was the reason why Delioron had rejected her love two years ago, this world of betrayals and shadows that was all he had to offer her. Now every thought was tainted with doubt, each alliance only temporary, each truth but a reformed lie. It did not matter what they had vowed to each other, it did not matter what they had given to each other, this gnawing doubt would never seize to exist, this infection that does not kill you but slowly poisons all things good and decent until very little remains of the person you once were.
