”Eu cael! Peidiwch â gadael iddynt ddianc!”*<br/><br/>Water erupted into tendrils and ribbons as a stampede of hooves intruded upon the once unblemished stream, kicking up mud as they dug into the soft earth. The screams and hisses and obscenities of their pursuers were closing in, and no matter how hard she was kicked, Emira was already going as fast as her small legs could carry her. She had taken Rajah to the front of the group of five, but even she wasn’t fast enough to outrun the Rapaii forever. The thought scared Rajah, not for himself, but for the other four men traveling with him. If Emira wasn’t fast enough at the front of the herd, it was only a matter of time.<br/><br/>The impact of Emira’s hooves hitting the ground wore on Rajah’s legs, and his thighs trembled under the pressure and threatened to give out on him entirely. He wasn’t sure if he had stopped riding Emira as hard in his fatigue, but he quickly lost his place at the head of the group as a sudden surge of panic seemed to overtake one of the other riders. His horse carried him far ahead until he abruptly stopped and his horse reared. The rider, Aman, struggled to keep hold of his reins and hold himself up but to no avail. He slid off the horse’s back and made a sickening thud on the ground that reminded Rajah too much of dead weight, and despite the pain in his legs he pushed Emira to ride harder, though he got a sick feeling in his stomach when he thought of what could have been the reason for the horse to rear so suddenly. There were crags and hills in this area with sudden drops, and the nights in the Scorched Plains were dark and made it difficult to tell one way or the other. Emira picked up her slack to pull ahead, and Rajah leaned almost all the way off of her back with just a leg hooking around her hips to support himself as he offered his arm to his fallen companion as they approached. Emira, too, stopped suddenly, sending Rajah forward against the back of her neck.<br/><br/>It was a drop, as he had feared, but not nearly as horrible as it could be. Both of Aman’s hands wrapped around Rajah’s proffered arm and kicked the ground wildly in attempts to get to his feet. “Dawela, Emira, dawela!”** Rajah pleaded quietly, stroking her neck with his free hand in attempts to soothe her. She whined and protested loudly, and it only grew louder as the gentle hissing of arrows passed by her ears. She kicked up onto her hind legs and Rajah wrapped the reins around his arm, holding himself up by pure will alone. The weight on his other arm suddenly increased tenfold and almost dragged him right off Emira’s back, and Rajah looked down in horror to find Aman’s left eye protruding from his head, mounted on the tip of a crudely carved arrow head. A strangled, startled cry escaped the back of his throat, and Rajah’s arm swung wildly, independent of his will, and sent Aman to fall on his back, spitting up and choking on his own blood.<br/><br/>“Rajah! Ewch nawr!”***<br/><br/>Rajah’s head whipped around, his long and disheveled braid whipping around to send black scribbles arcing through the even blacker night. His eyes focused just in time to see his best friend and blood brother Radu take his horse in a jump, right over the ledge, followed by the other two Reclaimers that were with them. It wasn’t a far drop, and judging by the splashes he could hear below, they would have a body of water to cushion their fall. In a split second decision, Rajah quietly said his apologies to Aman, the gods and Emira before taking his horse over the ledge and waiting to see his life flash before his eyes. The flash he was waiting for never came, and he was instead brought back to the here-and-now by ice cold waters blanketing his legs and the sides of his horse. He was acutely aware of the plethora of sounds around him now; the shouts of the Rapaii above him, the frantic splashing of horses traveling through the water, the hiss and splash of arrows being rained down on them from up on the ledge. He could even hear the drowned screams of one of the Reclaimers, whose horse had broken its leg on the drop and fallen into the water, holding him down with it.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">”Rajah!”</span>he heard Radu urge, and Rajah obliged, kicking Emira into submission and pushing her forward through the chilled water. The rain of steel and wood didn’t stop, in fact becoming more incessant as they were closer to fording the stream, but at last he saw Radu’s horse get back on solid ground, and a few seconds later he got the same pleasure. They rode hard, hard enough to carry them at least far enough away to where the flurry of arrows was no longer a direct assault to them, before pulling their horses to a stop and looking around and realizing that they were the only two left.<br/><br/>They’d left with five men. One took an arrow through the head, one drowned under the weight of his own horse, and the other… Rajah couldn’t say for sure, but he likely fell victim to the barrage of arrows. His eyes locked with Radu’s for confirmation, but looked away in grief as soon as he got it. Radu pulled on his reins to turn his horse around, and Rajah did the same. Their right hands extended out to their fallen brothers, then came back in to form a fist over their hearts. Rajah almost felt he didn’t have one at this point, and that his fist was merely covering up the hole where his heart should have been.<br/><br/>With their brothers in arms fallen, and the weight of the Scorched Plains on their shoulders, they urged their horses back around and started forward. To Linden; to<span style="font-style: italic">help.</span><br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">*”Get them! Don’t let them escape!”<br/>**”Peace, Emira, peace.”<br/>***”Rajah! Go, now!”</span><br/><br/><div><hr style="height:2px; width:100%; border:0; color: black;background:black;"/></div><br/><br/>Rajah woke with a sharp inhale, reaching blindly for his bow only in a frenzied panic until he heard the gentle murmurings of Radu to calm down. ”Peace, Rajah,” he reassured his companion as he looked over his shoulder. It was only then that Rajah realized he was not on Emira, but instead saddled behind Radu.<br/><br/>Groaning, Rajah sat up straight and looked from side to side for Emira, following her reins from Radu’s hand to where she strode just behind them and to the right.<span style="color: #8080FF">“How long was I asleep?”</span>he mumbled, almost more to himself than to his friend, and straightened out his back in a series of stretches and turns. He hadn’t remembered falling asleep, or being tired or anything of the sort. He normally got plenty of sleep when they stopped to make camp, and he briefly contemplated how he could fall asleep riding on Emira, but relented and decided to just be thankful that Radu had taken him on.<br/><br/>“No more than two hours.” Radu made it sound so nonchalant, but Rajah looked at him incredulously as if that had been an eternity. Because when they were in such a rush, it<span style="font-style: italic">was</span>eternity. They could have been riding faster and harder in those two hours if Radu hadn’t been so polite as to let him sleep. The look on his face must have been hilarious, because Radu’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Calm down. We are almost to Linden; there’s no harm in a few hours of sleep.” With the reins still in hand, he pointed to the up and to the right a bit. “We just have to follow this road for a little longer and we’ll be there.”<br/><br/>Rajah hummed in acknowledgement and scooted back enough to where he was sitting on the horse’s hips, feeling himself being jarred side to side as it stepped, just enough to swing his leg to sit side-saddle and make the small jump to his own horse. Emira whinnied and snorted hot air in protest at the sudden jar, but a few solid pats to her neck were enough to soothe her.<span style="color: #8080FF">“Do you think they’ll send help?”</span>It was a hollow question, and one that he didn’t want to ask but felt was necessary. Radu seemed prepared for it.<br/><br/>“Oh yes,” he assured his friend, in that way that he always did. He looked over, those golden brown eyes glimmering in what could have been dubbed excitement and his thick, black braid loosened just slightly from where Radu insisted on keeping it wrapped loosely around his neck, the bells in his hair jingling at the movement.. “Hundreds of men. Entire battalions with their fiercest generals and warriors. You do not need to worry. Nor do our people, Rajah, I promise you that.”<br/><br/>The barest of smiles graced Rajah’s lips, not at the idea of Lindenians coming to their aid - because on that he was sincerely skeptical - but at how Radu always stepped in to immediately reassure him and dispel any doubts that he might have. Even if those reassurances were based in fantasies and rambling daydreams. He loved Radu, though, as much as he would love his own brother if he had one. And they were brothers, in a way. They’d both emigrated from the eastern plains when the Tutar attacked, and they had been together since, but more than that they had bled together. For each other, with each other, and because of each other they had bled together. And it was because of this that Radu had always held himself in the big brother stance, constantly protecting Rajah from things he did not necessarily need protecting from, and sometimes protecting him from reality itself. Much like now. He wanted to protest Radu’s hopeless romanticism of the situation, because in reality seeking aid from another country was difficult and you did not have a good chance of acquiring it without an already-standing alliance. He kept silent, though.<br/><br/>And he continued to keep that silence for the rest of the hour it took to finally see the silhouettes of buildings  Radu was the first to spot them, and he kicked his horse into gear immediately in excitement, rushing ahead and already seeming miles away by the time Rajah registered what was happening. He dug his heels into Emira’s sides a few times, urging her forward into a matching speed, and from there it erupted into fits of laughter and racing and contest as the two struggled to get to the city gates first. Radu maintained his lead, given his abrupt headstart, and Rajah watched fondly yet no less determined to beat him, even as he watched the other pass under the portcullis. And stop. Abruptly. Rajah pulled hard on the reins some yards away from where Radu’s horse stood, watching his brother struggle to pull the horse back away one step at a time.<br/><br/><span style="color: #8080FF">“What is it, <span style="font-style: italic">m’rawd</span>?*”</span>Rajah called out, urging Emira forward in a small, wary trot. The smile was still tugging at the edge of his lips, but very quickly faltering.<br/><br/>Radu turned at the hip on his horse, a desperately broken look on his face that Rajah could spot even from this distance. The trot turned into a canter, and then to a run as he raced forward to see what could so defeat Radu, who just a few hours ago had been so sure that Linden would be well. Emira closed the distance between them quickly enough, and Rajah remained at Radu’s side as they both beheld what was - or was formerly - the capital of Linden.<br/><br/>Rajah took forward in slow, cautious steps as he passed under the portcullis that opened to a courtyard, his eyes roaming from building to dilapidated building. Each hoof that dropped made a sickening crunch, though whether it was rubble or bone, he could not be sure. The thought made him ill, like he could be leading Emira over the bones of his own brothers. The remains of bodies lay haphazardly strewn about the ground, and his mouth fell agape to ask what could have possibly done this, though his jaw snapped shut tight as the sight of a Tutari body answered his question.<br/><br/>“What are the chances that there are survivors?” Radu asked, all expression and enthusiasm dissolved from his voice. Rajah merely shook his head and looked down at his hands fumbling with the reins. Radu hummed thoughtfully, then kicked his horse into a trot. “I suppose there’s no way to know other than to look.”<br/><br/>Rajah stared blankly after him, and briefly wondered how Radu always maintained a sense of optimism even in the bleakest of scenarios. Then he kept wondering, wondered some more, and then forgot about it altogether and chalked it up to the fact that he was simply Radu. Emira soon followed after the other horse, and together they wandered up and down city streets until eventually they found themselves in the belly of the shadow cast by the castle itself. Radu and Rajah exchanged a glance, and then in unison slid off the sides of their beasts and took the stairs to at a time until they reached the top.<br/><br/>Rajah pushed on one of the grandiose castle doors, first with his hands and then ramming his shoulder into it. He jerked his chin in the direction of the other door, urging Radu to help him with it. The other obliged, and together they pushed their shoulders into the doors. Once, twice, and on the third time they gave way, sending both men stumbling into a gruesome scene. Radu looked away immediately, putting his hand over his mouth to stop from wretching. Rajah kept his eyes open though, taking in the grisly sight before him.<br/><br/>What had obstructed the doors were none other than a massive pile of Tutari bodies, some of them blatantly in pieces and others without all of their organs inside of them. There was a multitude of bodies, not all of them belonging to the Tutar, but a plethora of Tutari bodies converging into some elementary version of a circle. The newfound sunlight caught the reflection of something in one of their hands, gracing his vision with brief glimmers, but Rajah couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it came from. Hazel eyes squinted, trying to locate it to no avail. He pushed one of the doors shut suddenly, then opened it again just as quickly, eagle eyes watching for any hint of glitter. And sure enough, there was that sparkle again, masked in the clutches of a decaying Tutari hand.<br/><br/>“Rajah, what are you doing?” he heard Radu ask from behind him, but Rajah was determined.<br/><br/>Nimble feet carefully stepped over, around and through bodies, careful not to touch any of them directly. That is, until he made his pause at the Tutar ring, and the one body in particular whose hand clutched so desperately to that one object. He bent down at the waist, as kneeling down would soak his knees in blood and gore, and dug his much smaller hands into that of the Tutar. There was definitely something solid in there, and cold. Metal?<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">”Rajah!”</span>Radu repeated, though it came out as more of a quiet hiss this time, as if he were afraid that one of these bodies would hear him and kill them both.<br/><br/><span style="color: #8080FF">“Just.. hold on a moment, would you?”</span>he asked, rhetorically of course. He had no intention of hurrying up even if Radu<span style="font-style: italic">did</span>mine. He almost had it, whatever ‘it’ was. Spindly fingers hooked around whatever the mysterious object was, and he pulled as hard as he could. So hard, in fact, that he heard the sickening sound of one of the deceased Tutar’s fingers snap off. He held in a horrified noise and kept pulling until the object was revealed.<span style="color: #8080FF">“... It’s a crown.”</span><br/><br/>“What?”<br/><br/>Rajah turned at the waist and held the newly discovered above his head for Radu, the gods and all of the corpses to see. His expression was not one of someone who had found some great treasure to barter, or some adornment to wear and flaunt. Instead, the look he held was one of a broken man who had lost all hope. This was the crown of the king of Linden, without a doubt.<br/><br/>Linden had fallen, and with it, their only hope of seeking aid.<br/><br/>The descent down the castle steps was a sad and defeated one. Rajah vaguely wondered what, exactly, he had expected. The entire capital had been overthrown and reduced to rubble and debris and corpses. Why should the king have been spared? To grant the miracle dreaming of some Plainsmen? His thoughts left a bitter taste in his mouth and he wished for the world he had left the crown where he’d found it, but nevertheless found himself instead hitching it to one of the packs Emira carried at her sides and resumed his place on her back.<br/><br/>They were halfway to the portcullis they’d entered through when Rajah voiced the question that was weighing on both of their minds.<span style="color: #8080FF">“Where do we go from here?”</span><br/><br/>“Lebidan,” Radu answered simply, giving his horse a quick squeeze to the sides to speed up, as if that somehow reaffirmed his thinking.<br/><br/>Rajah stared blankly after him as his companion trotted further ahead of him. It astounded him that even in the face of absolute adversity, in the worst possible scenarios, Radu still had an answer for everything. Or at least, he<span style="font-style: italic">pretended</span>to. So far, Radu’s answers had gotten them nothing but disappointment.<span style="color: #8080FF">“And what will we find in Lebidan?”</span>he called out, urging Emira to catch pace with Radu’s horse.<span style="color: #8080FF">“Men who cannot see us past their wealth and ego enough to help us?”</span><br/><br/>Radu’s head spun around to face him, and Rajah felt himself be studied for a moment before he got another hollow answer. “I suppose we’ll just have to see.”<br/><br/>Time passed by them; seconds, minutes, hours, days. It was the evening of the second day that they saw the camp. Or, the remains of a camp, anyway - though from the Tutar bodies scattered here and there across the ground Rajah thought it looked to be more a battlefield than anything. The beating of hooves slowed as the horses circled their way through, taking careful movements to not step on the corpses.<br/><br/>“A Tutari camp?” Radu asked, though that was not a question that Rajah could answer. The remnants of torn tent fabric and poles and<span style="font-style: italic">nothing else</span>made him shake his head, though. There was something wrong here. If this had been a Tutari camp, where was the camp itself? Surely no small group of bandits had killed this many Tutar and taken up their entire camp. No, this was something else, something..<br/><br/>With a sense of morbid curiosity, Rajah swung off his horse and dropped down onto solid ground. The reverberations caught him from the ankles up and made his legs tremble. The sound of bells and a soft thump let Rajah know that he was not alone. With their reins in hand, both men padded their way through the macabre scene.<br/><br/>“Hey.” Rajah hummed in response, waiting for Radu to continue, but all he did was repeat it more incessantly. If Rajah had rolled his eyes any further back into his head, he was sure he would have been able to see his own mind reeling from whatever menial finding could possibly be so important to make him turn around, but his thoughts stopped in their tracks the moment he did and he jumped at the sight of a scimitar pointed<span style="font-style: italic">right at him.</span><br/><br/>The look on his face must have been incredulous and hysterical at the same time, because Radu almost doubled over laughing. A sigh mixed with agitation and relief escaped his lips, and Rajah merely pushed the blade aside.<span style="color: #8080FF">“That’s not funny, Radu.” </span><br/><br/>“No, take it,” Radu insisted, pushing the flat of the blade to his chest. “They’re everywhere. Spears, too.”<br/><br/><span style="color: #8080FF">“You’re looting bodies.”</span><br/><br/>“Are you particularly surprised?” Rajah had to think about that for only a moment before he decided that no, he wasn’t surprised at all. “Besides,” Radu continued, dropping down to his knees to find whatever else was left on this particular body. “Do you honestly think that they will need weapons now?”<br/><br/>Rajah only murmured some sort of incoherent protest before dropping down beside of his friend anyway to wrestle the scimitar’s sheath away from the body. After some fashioning, Rajah managed to slip the cloth belt around his waist through the two metal loops at the back of the sheath, then refastening his belt in a knot at his side. He jumped up and down a few times just to make sure the sheath would stay in place before slipping the sword inside.<br/><br/>They continued these motions for some time, poking and prodding at bodies while their mounts were tied to a spear that Radu had plunged into the ground. The first noise that Rajah heard sounded like it had come from Radu, so of course he largely ignored it. The second noise, then the third, and so on and so forth became more persistent in demanding his attention. He looked up from what he was doing, what he was doing being of course looking for any food on the Tutar that didn’t happen to be spoiled meat, and let his eyes dart in every direction to pinpoint the source. He was so focused on finding whatever it was that he didn’t notice Radu come up behind him. If the other man’s hand hadn’t clapped itself over his mouth, Rajah was sure he would have screamed.<br/><br/>“Get to the horses,” he whispered, his hoarse voice cracking under the pressure of trying to keep so silent. Rajah turned his head the best he could in the vice grip, but Radu was having none of it and kept his head straight. “Rajah,<span style="font-style: italic">go.</span>I’ll be right behind you.”<br/><br/>Rajah took a deep breath as soon as Radu removed his hand, and then everything seemed to happen both all at once and in slow motion. The sounds, which Rajah could clearly make out as footsteps now that they were so close, got quicker as the Tutar realized they were here. His feet kicked up dirt and grass as he struggled to stand, breaking into a run for the horses as soon as he found his footing. He could hardly hear anything over the sound of his own ragged breathing by the time he got to the spear protruding from the ground, and what he<span style="font-style: italic">could</span>hear seemed to be flashbacks of their escape from the Rapaii all over again.<br/><br/>Nimble, spindly fingers made quick work of the knots in the reins and he held them both with one clenched fist to keep both wild beasts from fleeing. He heard his name called over his shoulder in desperation, and his free hand found itself wrapping tightly around the spear, wretching it free from its place in the ground to turn on his heel and thrust it toward Radu’s chest. Rajah scrambled onto Emira’s back, seating himself as quickly as he could to watch in horror as Radu spun around in place and rammed the head of the spear into the jugular of one of their Tutar pursuers, clenching his eyes against the spray of blood and gore that coated his face. Closing his eyes was his downfall, and just as Rajah was notching an arrow, Radu’s entire head was taken into the claws of the next Tutar. He could only watch in horror as his friend and brother was picked up and slammed down, and two more times after that until Rajah was sure that he was dead.<br/><br/>Then the focus was on him. The thought to flee didn’t cross his mind until the Tutar was already descending on him, scimitar drawn and ready for more bloodshed. In a split second decision, Rajah kicked Radu’s horse in the haunches as hard as he could, sending the beast flying in the opposite direction and forcing Emira forward instead, making a wide circle around the disfigured, bestial murderer and leaning sideways off his horse, only keeping himself propelled by hooking his leg around her middle. The way he leaned over made him think of Aman, and how this hadn’t worked the last time. But it would work now, it had to. He couldn’t leave Radu.<br/><br/>Emira closed the distance between them and Radu’s body, and Rajah leaned down even further to grab at the back of Radu’s pants. He missed, and he rode another wide circle around the Tutar in the almost unbearably painful position to try again. This time he got a good hold, hooking his fingers under the waist of Radu’s pants and dragging him along the ground for good few feet before he found the explosion of upper body strength to hoist him up, his entire body going rigid when he felt Radu’s dead weight on his lap, jarring side to side from the impact of Emira’s rough riding. The horse raced in the direction of its counterpart, and Rajah leaned over to the best of his ability to snatch up the reins of the other, more startled beast.<br/><br/>He rode hard after that. He couldn’t say in which direction, but away from that camp. He was miles and myriads away before he slowed Emira down to a halt and slid off her bad, cradling Radu’s body in his arms and dropping down to his knees. He cried for a long time; he’d lost track of just how long. Long enough for the Tutar to have caught up to him if he was being pursued, but that didn’t matter. When he stopped crying was when he got down to work.<br/><br/>With Radu propped up into a sitting position against his chest, Rajah slowly unbraided his hair and removed the bells and other adornments he insisted on wearing in it, straightening out the ravelled hair as best he could before laying him down on the ground. His horse was butchered, and Rajah took only enough meat from it to last him a couple of days. Then, as was custom, a pyre was built. Radu lay peacefully on a bed of sticks and branches and kindling next to his horse, who had a bed of the same fashion. Rajah didn’t watch them burn, but instead rode far enough away to where he could see the pyre grow ferociously, flames licking the air in a dance that truly befitted Radu. Choking back a dry sob - his tears had run dry by now, he was sure - Rajah slowly extended an outstretched hand to his brother’s burning body and brought it back into a tight fist at his chest.<br/><br/>With that, he was alone; the burden of the Scorched Plains on his shoulders and his alone. With or without Radu, his people needed him, and that meant Lebidan.<br/><br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">*brother</span>