The Orc hunched over, swaybacked, reaching out a chafed pair of hands toward the clean brook that moved like liquid silver in the light of the coming dawn. He splashed himself, his face, his rusty-armoured chest, caring not for cleanliness – for the rivulets of water came off his filthy form almost black with dirt and grime and sweat. Instead, the creature sought refreshment, so far as his kind could ever attain, for the chilly water cooled his muscles, the muscles that drove the fingers that could grip as hard as blacksmith’s tongs, the arms that could crush the breath out of any man unlucky enough to be caught in them.
Further along, the man clad in brown and green watched, silently. It was still cold enough that his breath formed mist before his eyes, though the day would banish it in short order. It might not yet be dawn by the reckoning of Men, but to the birds, it had long been time to rise. And so they sang, to serenade the man’s own awakening by their clock. The trees here in this forest were close, making the sound of birds surround him, cover every footstep or snap of twig with their merry, mingling tunes. The camp of the Orcs might be nearby, close to the main river that this stream branched out from, but even the great power of the Enemy that they served could not stifle the simple pleasure the birds expressed in their songs to greet the day.
Brave Alagel was loosely tethered in a thick copse nearby, shielded by the multitude of leafy holly bushes that lost not their coat in winter. Strong, fast, courageous and loyal he might be… a better and more faithful companion than most Men, in fact; but these woods - so full of uneven ground and low branches and the many homes of rabbits and hares and badgers’ setts - were no place for a warhorse to do anything but tread carefully. And so the man would do this alone, and perhaps in doing so help to return the forest to a place that Alagel might remain unhindered, without having to be hidden in copse, thicket, or dell.
The trees were so numerous that - aside from had he tried the foolish idea of advancing along the path of the brook and being seen immediately by his foe – the man could get no solid aim upon the Orc from further away than perhaps twenty yards. He sighted along the arrow-shaft, drawing the fletching to near his eye, having neither the born talent nor the strength to trust to instinct and draw the cord back to his ear. Thankfully, the exquisite Elven-made thing, made of so many different types of wood blended together so finely and seamlessly that one would think that they had all grown together in that shape, preserved the man’s athletic muscle-power better than brute yew or ash. The man exhaled, slowly, the mist rising from his breath in a brief cloud before him, and let the broadhead fly, the only sound its hiss through the air amidst the birds’ songs.
The arrow, its point meant to rend flesh, tear sinew, cut muscle, did not strike neatly under the creature’s armpit, as intended, but instead struck its armoured back, the brief clang hidden by the grunt of surprise and anger. It turned, took a moment to spot its nearby enemy thanks to its poor eyesight, and then charged, weaving through the trees and leaving its crude axe behind by the water. The man, alarmed by his failure, bolted, his booted feet crashing against the decaying, once-leafy ground, having barely time to stow his bow on his back. His moment’s hesitation – to shoot again and stand his ground, or to flee – had cost him, and the beast was nearly upon him. Hearing the heavy, disgusting breathing behind him, his fingers darted to the rough, leather-wrapped hilt of his sword, leaping to the cover of the nearest tree as he did so. He drew the blade, and the foul thing could not check itself in time, crashing past him and stumbling to a halt a few feet away, before almost instantly turning its murderous gaze upon the man whose arrow was still caught in the crude, thick mail it wore.
He stepped forward, blade in hand, not allowing himself to hesitate this time, and then immediately dancing back as the beast swung at him with one arm. On the surface, it hardly seemed an even conflict, for this Orc stood a little higher even than this tall Man, and its whole body crackled with raw muscles, legs thicker than a man could put two hands around. The opponent, in contrast, was not weak, but possessed the look more of an athlete than a warrior – enduring, and strong enough, but not capable of any great feats, nor even to put great force behind a thrust or punch.
The beast growled at the silent man, pulling its rusted iron blade from the loop where it hung from its leg. It was more of a tool than a weapon, for cutting firewood, for chopping meat, for crunching bone with the flat and its great, base weight. It was sharpened, but the rust continued to take its toll, and it would soon be thrown away, replaced with another exactly like it but newer, one of tens of thousands wrought and discarded so often. The man’s blade was nothing special either. It was a one-handed longsword, ornate in its way, but made of simple steel. Traces of oil still adorned it from when it had last been cleaned, polished, and whetted. It was no great symbol, nor heirloom, nor owned by one before. A practical weapon, made and carried for no purpose but to kill.
It was then that the man struck, with soldier’s precision. He leapt forward again, his feet instinctively finding unobstructed ground, and swung the honed blade at his foe’s leg, with seemingly no time at all passing until he felt the painful jolt tense up his arm as the Orc blocked the swing with its knife. Rather than drawing back, he turned his movement towards the beast, away from the hand which held the cleaver, and thrust forward, his steel kissing the iron rings and sliding through into its side. Brackish, dark blood poured as he withdrew the blade, and the Orc gave a grunting peal of agony, but even as it tried to swipe at its enemy again, the blade came up in a low arc and hacked into its wrist, tendons snapping and the cleaver falling from its now-useless hand. A third short, sharp thrust put the blade under its other shoulder, sinking in behind its great ribs and ending a life with nothing greater or more significant than a dying, bloody gurgle.
The man stood for a moment, panting, not with the effort, for it had all been over from shot fired to his enemy’s death in less than twenty seconds, but from the rush of adrenaline, the sudden realisation, and the slow return of the sense of the world about him as something more than movement and terror and life and death being decided in less space than lay between heartbeats.
In that moment, the man thought not of the war, or of his people, nor even of the emerging beauty of the rising dawn about him, though it surrounded him and faintly permeated his being with happiness at the new day, as the birds continued their song uninterrupted.
Instead, he thought of gazing upon one of many, one that twinkled, danced, suspended in scintillating air in his memory. One special to him, having caught his eye by simple chance, but kept his eye enthralled ever since even at a distance. A gift to him, most certainly, a gift that led to pensive thought in the lonely late watches, wondering what others might too have seen what he beheld, and desired to learn the inherent mysteries of that small, unremarkable thing. A giver of hope and comfort and joy in the knowing, through the cool, lucent moonlight, burning bright and forever, though cloud and haze might sometimes interfere. Not the only point of light in the sky, as he sometimes had to remind himself, when he contemplated overmuch, but perhaps the most significant just for having been noticed.
His little star.
