IC Story Thread: Ch.1,Ad.1 - A Sensitive Matter

That first night after fleeing Umbar was the first of many hard nights.

Word of the search for arsonists was not far behind you all to the gates, and afterward access to and egress from Umbar became more restricted as more intensive screenings of people and cargo began.

And although it would not begin in ernest until the light of dawn began to break through the dark of night, the search soon took to the roads as well.

But fortunately, and in some ways unfortunately, the desert of the Harad is vast. Fortunate in that it enables you all to take to the wilderness when needed to avoid notice. Unfortunate in that it is not easy to live out in that vastness with two children.

The flow of refugees is a huge help to your survival and escape though.

Particularly in the days immediately following your flight from the Southron city, you find that more and more caravans of people from Khand head north.

The refugee groups provide some degree of safety (and concealment) for you in their numbers, and indeed most villages that are passed through try to provide what aid they can to the refugees, whom are fleeing from goblin and orcish hordes moving across their lands and into the north. Though it is never enough to keep everyone well fed.

Most of the refugee movements occur in the relative cool in the hours surrounding dusk and dawn, with much less progress being made during the height of the day and darkest of night. But in this way, moving with them when convenient and striking out on your own, when not, you find yourselves entering into Harondor after almost two weeks of hard travel, on sparse resources, avoiding anyone that looks like a Haradrim authority figure.

And this is when you notice some perplexing changes...

Even once past their initial exhaustion, the children don't immediately open up to you.

The youngest is quickest to do so though, and it's actually Skunktail that breaks the ice. The young boy can't stop staring at the horse and eventually decides the situation is okay and just starts asking questions about him and wanting to pet and feed him, and then soon after he's talking to you all like he's known you for years. Enarion is his name, and you come to learn he is "five ALMOST six". He frequently asks to hold anyone's sword, or bow, and assures you that his papa has taught him how to do it too.

The girl is more reticent. After the second night's rest she will make brief eye contact, and nod or shake her head politely, but her words are few. You figure she must be 9 or 10, and she tells you her name is Morwen, but you can tell she has likely understood what happened, and what has been going on, better. As well as the precariousness of what is going on now, with your escape, and the continued peril. And this seems to lead to her being very cautious and guarded of herself but mostly her brother.

The young boy will respond enthusiastically to Seonaid's questions, but his perspective as a 5 year old is limited, quite sensational, and very inconsistent.

It disturbs Morwen more to be asked about the abduction or the time after with her abductors. She clearly doesn't like talking about it, but confirms they weren't harmed beyond occasional rough handling.

It seems like they weren't told much, other than that "they were being sent to live with them", the abductors, for awhile, and that they claimed to have been doing this at the request of her mother, the Gondorian diplomat to Umbar. But she didn't think any of that was true.

Once the Company has crossed the Harnen River and reaches central Harondor, there is a change... a change in the activity on the roads, a change in the goings on in the towns.

First, most normally to you all is that the local townsfolk are markedly less receptive to the migrant caravans. But it doesn't seem to stem out of xenophobia, or lack of resources, or anything like that, but rather there are activities going on that seem to be directing energies toward preparation for something else.

And so there is just no time or resources to spare, to be made available to them.

Also, there is no longer much visible activity of well equipped, Harad Guardsmen on the roads, but instead there is the movements of more poorly equipped citizen militias.

Some towns are clearly more culturally rooted in the Harad, and some are more of Gondor. But in truth most are quite mixed and blended, and in this atmosphere you can sense a tension.

Westron is much more common here, and you are able to learn that there has been a rift in the national relations between Gondor and the Harad.

And you learn that the Gondorian embassadorial detachment has left Umbar, and is marching north with it's Gondorian army host, to return to Minas Tirith.

And indeed they're only a day or two out, when you learn of this, from passing through the village you are in.

As you continue your progress north, you find that the going gets a bit easier by way of - as the further you get north - there is less and less Haradrim influence. It never decreases to zero, just from the clear majority to a significant minority, but a minority nonetheless.

So the settlements do become more Gondorian in culture and in apparent loyalty, judging by the banners of the mustering militias, and so there is just a degree of less constant pressure perhaps to avoid all authority figures so thoroughly, and no real sense of pursuit any longer.

In a couple days you are overtaken and passed by the Gondorian embassadorial detachment from Umbar. They are well outfitted for travel, well provisioned, and march with militaristic determination, discipline, and fitness. And so even though they are greater in number, perhaps fifty soldiers and several caravan wagons of what you figure must be civilian passengers - the families of the Gondorian personnel and likely the children's mother judging by the adornment of one of the carriages, you watch from a distance as they come and go.

By that time you are less than a week out from Pelargir. And so it is with relative ease that you all are able to cross into the city from which this all began, a bit more than a month ago.The naval headquarters are a well known location to you all in Pelargir. Unfortunately it is far on the northern side of the waters from where you all enter the southern gate. But, so, while it is a hot and humid (summer is nearly here) walk through the dusty and at times smelly streets, you are able to reach them without trouble.

Really the only trouble you do face is once inside the headquarters, it is hard to make the clerk you find understand who you are or what it even is that you claim to be doing there, and so it is mildly difficult to convince them to summon Commander Andireg for you.

But finally you do convince the clerk, and they tell you that they will retrieve the Commander, if they can. And so it is that you find yourselves in a drawing room of some sort, and while it is austerely furnished with just wooden chairs and a table in the military fashion, you are all brought water, and a plate of bread and cheese.

You're left in there for more than an hour, a steward occasionally checking in on you. But at the end of that time, you hear footsteps coming down the hall at a running pace, the creaking and clattering of light leather raiments full of buckles and grommets, as that kinetic energy is brought to a stop and changes directions, and it is thusly that Andireg enters into the room, red faced and breathless, eyes wide with unbelieving, and he rasps, "By the valar's heavenly voices...", and he swallows hard against his dry throat, and looks like he might collapse were it not for the support of the doorframe he stands in.