Chapter Two - The Courage to Accept
By Peeling

Reprinted with permission.
Added 07/19/2002.

The courage to accept. The phrase circled Choth's mind, its meaning just beyond his grasp. His sword swung. Accept... what? Iron bit through flesh; he could feel the kill, distantly, in the last nuance of the stroke. The courage to accept. One of his eyes wasn't working properly; he shifted his stance to compensate.

I am tired, he thought.

A blade hummed towards him in a blurred arc; he watched his arm rise, shield angled, and deflect the blow into the body of another attacker. The two fell away, weapons discarded, clawing at one another. He felt the warmth of the sun on his face for a moment, before another shadow fell across him. And another. And another. He parried an attack, but badly, and bright pain blazed in his side where the point struck home. Agony lifted the fog from his mind a little, and he bellowed defiance into the Banderling's grinning face even as he removed it.

They shrank from his renewed fury, but it could not be sustained. In that moment of clarity though, he knew. The courage to accept - his enemy had found it. They had seen him offer his life to them, and they had the courage. He would die here. His body fought on regardless, keeping itself alive for one more breath. It was almost - peaceful, watching from the inside.

Then the moment came. His sword was struck from fingers clawed with cramp, and was trampled away. The screech of Banderling voices filled his ears. Surprisingly, he felt no pain. The sun though; he could feel the sun upon him again, its warmth and brightness filling his eyes. And... a figure? A shape sillhouetted against the white, hands raised.

"...Brok?" he croaked. A smile - the first for many years - lifted the corners of his mouth. More blood ran unnoticed down his chin. "Then it is done." He sank to his knees, staring at the beckoning figure. Beckoning? Not quite. A strange gesture...

"I don't know who this 'Brok' is," came the shouted reply - far too high-pitched and musical to be Lugian - "But if you'd prefer someone else to save your ugly grey butt I don't mind looking for him."

Choth blinked and shook his head. He became aware that he was no longer surrounded. His attackers contorted on the ground. And the figure... was not beckoning. Arrow after arrow flew from the bow it held, and each one found its mark. The Banderlings' screams were not of triumph, but death.

"Hey, are you all right? Can you walk?" Choth swayed. The animal screams rose and merged; a roaring in his ears. "Just hang in there, friend, I'll be right with you..." The voice followed him down into darkness.

It was night when he awoke. He found himself sitting propped against the same crumbling wall where he'd made his stand, the ancient ruins around him bathed in soft blue moonlight. He felt... nothing. His wounds were gone. A little way away a campfire crackled, casting its own pool of yellow radiance and illuminating a diminutive figure sitting cross-legged nearby. Choth didn’t move.

"I thought you'd never wake up" said the figure, unfolding gracefully and standing. A human, a human female in fact, clad in plated leather armour. "Hanging around here all night isn't my idea of a good time." Choth tried to speak but his throat was bone dry. "I'd have moved you away from here but, well" she gestured at Choth, who was perhaps six times her weight. "I might have broken a nail. Here," she said, unhooking a canteen from her belt and tossing it to him, "you must be thirsty. I patched you up the best I could, but you'd exhausted yourself pretty thoroughly."

Choth caught the canteen and drained it in one swallow.

"You're welcome" said the woman – more girl than woman, Choth could see from her face as she stepped closer.

"Why did you save me?" Choth rasped. The girl shrugged.

"Does it matter? You’re alive, anyway."

"Why did you SAVE me?" demanded Choth, and this time the anger in his voice was clear. The girl frowned at him and stuck her hands on her hips.

"Look, I don't know about you, but I don't find being reconstructed by a lifestone the most pleasant of experiences. I was doing you a favour, you ungrateful lump of rubble." Choth laughed bitterly and began heaving himself upright.

"A favour? I was..." – a figure, beckoning from the light, welcoming him home. Duty served. Honour fulfilled. "I thought… Bah; you could never understand." Had it ever been Brok? Or would it have been just another life ended, to be reborn in the agony of the lifestone's womb? He would never know now. "Never help me again, girl." Her eyes widened.

Quite suddenly, Choth found himself back on the ground, with the girl sat cross-legged on his chest. She wagged a finger in his astonished face.

"Now, that's two you owe me, Lugian – twice I’ve saved your life." Her other hand moved slightly, and Choth felt the prick of a dagger point in the side of his neck. He lay very still. He had never seen anyone move so fast. The girl nodded appreciatively. "Not a total fool then." She sprang lightly up and off him, landing several feet away. He stood slowly, never taking his eyes off her. "So, as payment for your debt, you can tell me something: why did you want to die then, but not now?"

A long silence stretched between them. Honour battled anger. Finally Choth spoke.

"I am the last of my clan. The others... died." He held up a hand as the girl moved to speak. "It was in the last year of the Twisting, when the earth itself screamed in our bones. Food was very scarce; many creatures had been killed or driven insane by the magics of the Dominion. Or the Shadow. It matters little which. I was a hunter, ranging far to find food. My friend, Brok, traveled with me." Choth paused, eyes gleaming in the moonlight. The girl did not interrupt. Finally he continued.

Snow shimmered underfoot in the shifting sky-glow. Darktide had been named when the nights truly were dark; nobody still lived who remembered that time. Now the sky burned endlessly with the aftermath of battles long forgotten.

"If you walk any slower, Choth, you’ll take root." Brok called back over his shoulder. Choth grinned wearily. The hunting had been especially hard this time, and both Lugians were exhausted. The sledges they dragged were not piled so high with cured carcasses either.

"Don't worry about me, my friend, look after your own feet. It would be a shame if your concern for my well-being took you through the wrong portal again." Brok laughed.

"You never will let me forget that, will you?"

"Hauling your sledge twenty miles through a swamp is not something likely to slip my mind, no."

The wind gusted, and the two fell silent as they exerted themselves against it. As they crested a ridge, the glow of the home-portal came into view.

"At last. Remind me again why we love the mountains so?"

Choth chuckled, and pulled on the sledge with renewed energy. As they reached the portal, Brok dropped his ropes and stretched.

"You go on through. I'm going to attune to the clan-stone; I’m so tired I won't notice the difference."

Choth nodded. He clapped hands with Brok, but his face grew somber.

"Have we done enough?" he asked.

Brok punched him on the shoulder. Choth winced elaborately.

"Enough? We shall feast! And Meeran will hang on my every word as I tell her how I saved you from the Grievvers." Brok winked. Choth laughed uproariously.

"Saved ME? By heroically falling into a nest of them? Or by tripping over a cliff with them chasing you?"

Brok turned away, grinning, heading for the clan-stone on the far side of the pass. Choth shoved Brok's sledge through the portal, then his own. He shouted after the retreating figure.

"Better hurry, or I shall eat all the Tusker meat myself!" Brok waved without turning around. Choth stepped through the portal.../p>

...into Bedlam.

For a moment he could not think what was happening. The stone halls rang with bestial screams, and stooped, lanky shapes were everywhere. Flickering torchlight had replaced the normal cool gemstone glow. He could hear the sounds of battle in the distance. Several of the creatures saw him, and shrieked a warning. Banderlings. They poured towards him in an unstoppable tide, driving him backwards. He swung desperately with his sword, but they dodged out of range, taunting him, then pressing forward again, forcing him to give ground or be swamped. Why would they not commit to attack? They were a hundred blades to his one, and yet they did not kill him. Where was his clan? He retreated, knowing the tunnels of his home instinctively. He bumped into something behind him that wasn't stone. Spinning around, he was confronted by – another Lugian, blood streaming from many wounds. Behind him were more Lugians, back to back facing a wall of Banderlings.

"What’s happening?" shouted Choth over the noise.

"They came out of nowhere – a new portal we think" the Lugian shouted in reply. Choth recognized him as Golut, the leader of the Clan Guard. "They haven't killed any of us, though we have slaughtered many of them. I've never seen Banderlings behave this way. It's as if they're holding us for something."

At that moment Choth felt the earth convulse beneath him. He was knocked off his feet – but the reaction of his clan mates was far worse. As one they clutched their heads, shrieking. Choth had never heard Lugians make such a sound. Weapons clattered to the ground. Choth stared incomprehendingly. His clan, his family, writhed in intolerable agony all around him, bellowing like mindless animals. Louder still were the triumphant shrieks of the Banderlings as they broke and charged. Choth regained his feet and his sword, but he was immobile with horror. His clan was being slaughtered. They didn't even react as the Banderling scythes and fists and claws rained down upon them – just continued that terrible wailing. Someone was screaming for it to stop, and after a while Choth realized it was him. Still screaming, he charged blindly at the horde. It drew back, inviting him in, and closed around him.

Choth scratched meaningless patterns in the dirt with the tip of his sword. The girl was silent for a long time.

"What happened?" she asked softly.

"They killed me," Choth said. "It took me three days to return from the hunting-stone I had attuned to. When I reached the home-portal again..." he looked straight at the girl. "The land itself had changed. The clan stone was gone.

"Gone? Where? Nobody can move the stones."

"Not moved. Gone."

"Destroyed?" The girl's eyes were wide and bright. "How?" Choth shrugged heavily.

"I don't know. Some sorcery I do not understand. Not Banderling magic, I think. The bodies of my clan were still there. They had not been reconstructed. Brok was there too, just inside the portal. He had attuned to the clan stone."

"And that's why you fight them, to the death." The girl's voice was tinged with wonder and horror. "You want them to take you too."

"You know nothing of what I want." Choth's voice was rough, and he turned away from her so she could not see his face.

"I know that the life you need the courage to accept is your own.

With a roar Choth spun and grabbed the girl by the throat, slamming her against the wall. Dust and pebbles bounced down.

"How DARE you speak those words to me? How DARE you?" With a fraction more effort he could snap her spine, and yet her gaze was level and calm.

"So, I am not the only one who can move quickly when necessary" she wheezed. Choth trembled with rage, breathing heavily. "Kill me if it makes you feel better. Go ahead; killing yourself isn't working, is it?" He had her entirely at his mercy, and yet the compassion in her eyes made him feel as if he were the one pinned. "You will see your clan again, Choth." He jerked in surprise, loosening his grip. The girl breathed deeply, still dangling above the ground. "It IS Choth, isn't it? I knew when I first saw you. Nobody fights like that; so bravely and yet hoping for death, not life. Only Choth, the Clanless One."

"You gamble a great deal on what you think you know of me," Choth rumbled.

"Oh, I gamble fairly well," said the girl, looking down pointedly. Choth peered around the arm he was using to pin her to the wall. He blinked. He was sure her bow had been slung across her back when he grabbed her; nevertheless, it was now braced across her feet, an arrow nocked and drawn, aiming straight at his groin. A long moment, and then Choth began to laugh. The girl grinned, and brought her knees up, relaxing the bowstring. Choth lowered her to the ground. She slung her bow across her back again, and rolled her head in circles, wincing.

"Remind me never to arm-wrestle you for anything." She shivered as Choth healed the bruises and – to his chagrin – cracked ribs he had given her. She walked over to the fire, and squatted beside it, staring into the flames. "I meant what I said, Choth. You will find your clan. It may be when the mountains become dust, and the high places are no more. It may be when the last fire goes out, and the world is forever dark." A smile crossed her face, but it was bitter and filled with her own pain. "It may even be after I myself am ready to rest." She turned to look straight at him. "But you will not find them in a stinking Banderling pit, and for as long as you continue to search there, the man or thing who killed them forever will laugh at your fury."

For a while there was no sound but the crackle of burning wood. Then Choth moved, and sat beside her. He too gazed at the flames.

"I have wasted many years, for lack of the words you have spoken. For lack of someone with the courage to speak them to me. I can only hope enough remain for me to redeem myself." He turned to the girl. "I owe you three times now: twice for my life and once for my soul. What would you have me do?"

To his surprise it was her turn to look away.

"You owe me nothing, and I am nobody. I will not have you do my bidding as if it were otherwise."

Choth thought for a while.

"Then, I will return the favour you cannot deny giving: I will listen when you are ready to tell your story."

She looked at him, and for a second her eyes were pits of despair. Then she blinked, and smiled.

"That could take some time," she said lightly. "Are you sure?"

Choth shrugged.

"I did have other plans," he said. "But they mainly involved Banderlings, and to be honest, I think they've earned a rest." The girl looked at him incredulously.

"A rest? Did you know they have a WORD for you? They barely have a language, but a full third of what they do have is devoted to getting out of YOUR way! Damn right they've earned a rest."

Choth frowned.

"They have a word for me?"

"Yes; you haven’t heard it?"

"No, what does it sound like?"

The girl cleared her throat and warbled in an uncannily Banderling-like voice:

"Ohhhhshiiiiiiiiii...."

She was laughing helplessly even before he pushed her over.

And as the insects trilled, and the moon rose higher, and the creatures in the ruins watched with blank, hungry eyes, the firelight kept the night at bay.