Three Moons

The Lost Army

"A rather pale thing isn't she?" Prince Asier's eyes were fixed on Lile and yet were somehow distant, almost bored. "Deargish?" he asked, c*****g his head.

"We believe so," said Haizea. 

"Have you tried asking?"

"No Alpha, we haven't engaged her. She's a witch. I was concerned she might hex us if we let her speak," Haizea explained. Lile gaped, surveying the crowd around her. She wasn't a witch. 

"A witch?" Prince Asier quirked an eyebrow and crouched down so that he was face to face with Lile. "Are you Deargish, child?'

"Y-yes, Your Highness," Lile stammered. She had to speak Basa. She couldn't speak Basa. Not well.

 A joyless smile tugged at the corners of the prince's mouth. "Highness?" he asked, "So you know me then."

Lile only nodded. Of course, she knew him. He led his men on horseback through her village, dressed in fine armour of black, red and gold, carrying banners of a wolf howling before the moon, in a militant take-over that had reduced her people to subjugated peasants for the last five years. She knew him well. He looked different now. Older, scruffier. He was not dressed in fine clothes anymore, rather his garments, though more masterfully tailored, were almost as plain as Lile's. He wore brown leathers over top a thick, crimson, fabric that was foreign to her. She noted that all the Basamortans, both the men and women, wore shirts and trousers of the same thick fabric. They all looked so snug. She shivered with cold and envy.

"And are you a witch?" the prince asked.

"No, Your-Your Highness, I'm n-not, I prom- um, I um, I swear." Lile's trembling voice caught in her throat. She may be fighting for her life right now in a language she barely knew. It was now clear to her that they had brought her here believing she was a dangerous enchantress. She wondered why they hadn't taken Maeve also and then fearfully considered that the older woman may have already been dealt with. Her heart began to pound in her chest so violently it could bruise.

"My gamma has observed you studying spells and potions under the tuition of an elder. So if you are not a witch then what are you?"

"I'm just a um, a woman ah um, a knowledge woman? Your Highness, W-well, n-not really. I'm a baby, Your Highness. And I'm not bad, Your Highness, I swear. I just cook doctor and bless c-cabbages and and-." Lile was sobbing at this point. She couldn't find the words. She was babbling incomprehensible nonsense and she knew it. They were laughing at her, she could hear them snickering.

'Cabbages?" someone whispered from behind her. 

Lile continued to plead, "I don't hex. I'm not d-dange-da- I'm not bad-"

"Stop," Prince Asier held his hand up. "It doesn't make a difference, that's not why you're here. You can stop crying and you all can shut it," he snapped. The snickering stopped. The prince's lips had compressed into a frown and his eyes had grown, somehow, darker. He looked vexed as he stood up. 

"Harmless, pathetic even. She's freezing. Give her a bath, some food, she'll stay in Itzal's tent. No chatting with her, she's a prisoner tonight." He walked away, leaving the small crowd. "With me, Haizea!" he called back. 

A woman, tall with a square face and black hair secured in tight braids, followed him. Final glances were thrown at Lile, some amused, some pitiful, all curious, before the small crowd dispersed in different directions leaving her alone. Almost alone.

"You can't chat with her, Nahia, you may as well leave," said the woman with the dreary, deep voice, Sorne. 

"Nah, I'll help you," said Nahia. "First we should get all this rope off. How uncomfortable." The two women began to untie Lile, releasing her from the cords that had been wrapped around her torso for hours. As they worked. Lile took a moment to examine her surroundings. There were others in the clearing, a whole village worth of Basamortans wandering amongst large round tents, which appeared temporary yet sturdy and robust. A campsite designed to endure.

"How long have you been here?" Lile whispered. 

"No," Nahia snapped in jest. Her face suddenly appeared in front of Lile's, so close their noses almost touched. She had a fine heart-shaped face, which barely framed her large wild-looking eyes. "No chatting. You're our prisoner." She jumped back behind Lile and continued untying her.

At the entrance of one of the many tents, Lile spotted Prince Asier, speaking to Haizea and another, older man she didn't recognise. The prince's stern gaze fell on her for a moment and the others turned to follow his eyes. Lile dropped her head, embarrassed and the small party entered the tent disappearing from view. 

The binds that had held her for so long fell away. Her relief was immense. She flopped forward, stretching her arms out in front of her and sucking up the warmth of the fire. She was nauseous from her own fear. Whatever was happening she just wanted it to end. She had found the lost army and the missing prince, or rather, they had found her. It would be an incredible discovery. It would make quite a thrilling story if she knew that she would live to tell the tale. But she didn't know and she felt as though the uncertainty alone was enough to kill her. She lay on the soft grass under the blazing fire and closed her eyes hoping that it would all just disappear.

"She can't walk anymore," observed the mysterious Sorne, whose face Lile was yet to see. "I need someone to carry her." 

"Jokin!" Nahia yelled.

Lile was carried in the large arms of Jokin who, she could now see, was an absolute beast of a man in both size and fleece. He was built like a bear and had a huge bushy beard that kept scratching at her face when he moved. He carried her away from the warm fire back into the chill of the evening toward a small and secluded tent on the edge of the campsite. 

Inside, the tent was furnished with several mattresses and a worktable covered in bottles, knives and bandages. A physician's tent. They passed through it to an exit out the back where a large bath, out in the open-air but screened off by a tall, three-walled fence, was being filled with hot water by two women. The area was lit by several candles which hung precariously from the wall. Jokin set her down on the ground which was laid with woven mats. He gave Nahia a tender kiss on the head and left. 

Lile was fixated on the strong, salty smell emitting from the bath when she felt a tug on her collar and heard the loud rip of Nahia's knife splitting the back of her dress. She gasped as the cold air hit her back. Nahia had just cut one of her only two dresses off her body. 

"No crying," Nahia snapped, suddenly appearing in Lile's face. "What even is this? It's awful." She pulled the dress from her front and it peeled off, revealing just how sticky with the sweat of fear and exertion Lile had become. Her mother had made that dress. 

Her underwear also fell victim to the knife. Nahia tore the pieces away, leaving Lile completely exposed and now without any clothes to her name. She whimpered and wrapped her hands around her chest trying to maintain some level of modesty and warmth. But as instructed, she did not cry. Nahia reached for the pendant around her neck. 

"No," Lile yelped and snapped up the pendant before Nahia could touch it. It dawned on her then that she hadn't been wearing her scarf. "My scarf?" she asked looking around her at the mats but unable to find it.

"Haizea has your scarf, it was removed earlier when we found you. Nahia will get it for you," assured one of the ladies as she poured a bucket of water into the tub. Her deep voice revealed her to be Sorne. They found me? Lile thought in timid frustration. Do they think me a wild animal to be captured and made a pet? 

Nahia was protesting. "But Alpha said to burn-"

Sorne cut her off, "It's just a scarf, Nahia. Leave the necklace too." Nahia huffed but didn't try to take Lile's pendant again. 

Together the women lifted Lile into the bath. She screeched as her body hit the water. It was hot. Her chilled skin burned and her open wounds stung. She tried to escape but she was held down by strong hands that firmly gripped her shoulders, Sorne's hands. 

"Leave," Sorne instructed the other women. They did as they were told though Nahia muttered something about being helpful. "Go find her scarf, Nahia," Sorne said. And as Nahia disappeared into the tent she called out, "She'll need food, Nahia!" Then to Lile she said, "It's just me and I'm the physician here so you don't have to worry about your decency. You study healing, yes?"

Lile nodded timidly. She was biting her lip, bracing against the stinging pain in her feet. 

"Has your elder taught you about medicinal baths?" Sorne asked. Lile shook her head.

"In this bath, there are herbs and salts that help clean your wounds and stave off infection. That's why it stings so much. Back in Basamortah, we used rock salts from dry lake beds. They were softer, didn't sting, gentle on wounds. But this salt comes from an underground spring here in Gael Forest. It hurts terribly, but it's potent, you'll only need to soak in it once. Have you seen this herb before?" Sorne held up a stem of small oblanceolate leaves - oval in shape with one end thinner than the other. Lile did recognise the herb. It was one of the many that old Maeve had shown her. 

"Pesnil," she said in Deargish. 

"Pesnil," Sorne repeated thoughtfully. The light of the candles twinkled in her dark, hooded eyes. She was a round-faced woman with skin darker than the others and hair that hung in two low braids.   

"My first Deargish word," Sorne murmered. "This 'pesnil' kills bacteria." Bacteria? Lile had never heard the word before. But she didn't ask about it. The stinging had subsided a bit and she was beginning to relax in the heat of the water. Sorne began washing her gently with a cloth. She didn't speak again so Lile just closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the camp. The sun had set and people were out socialising and enjoying dinner. She heard the sounds of a content village at the close of a long day. She wondered why they were here, why they hadn't returned home to Basamortah. Most of all, she wondered why she was here. 

Her heart began to pound again as her mind raced through the possibilities. Perhaps they would make her a slave or a concubine. They had travelled such a long way just to kidnap one girl who would add little to their labour force. And if they wanted to kill her they could have done it the moment they found her. Prince Asier had said that she was not brought here for being a witch, but Lile could not think of another reason. What did rogue Basamortans do with foreigners?

"Relax, your muscles are tensing up." Sorne began gently washing Lile's face. Small cuts on her cheeks, from when she had been thrown face-first onto the forest floor, stung when the cloth touched them. She winced. "I'm sorry we were so rough with you," Sorne said. "Haizea is more concerned with tasks than people. But you're safe here tonight. No one is going to hurt you."

"Only tonight?" Lile asked. Sorne compressed her lips and averted her gaze. "Why am I here?" Lile prodded further. 

"Sshhh," Sorne hissed. She shook her head. "Don't ask me these things. It's not my place." She dropped the cloth into the tub and left Lile alone for a moment in the strange salt bath pondering her current circumstance. Lile was thinking about Old Maeve and Gren and Cleow and what they were doing now. Were they worried about her? Why had Gren and Cleow not done anything? They had both been right there with her when she had been abducted, yet they were absent and silent as though they had never been there at all. The trees too were silent, dead silent. Somehow the whole world that Lile had come to know during her time at Gael Forest had come to an end the moment the Basamortans laid hands on her. 

Sorne returned with two other women. Lile thought she had seen one of them earlier filling the tub, but despite some differences in shape, size and dress the Basamortans looked largely the same to her. These two women were similarly dressed, and both had their hair tied low and loose. With identical tanned skin, black hair and dark brown eyes she could not distinguish them from each other. 

They pulled her out of the tub and carried her into the tent where Sorne dried her naked body. It was humiliating. Lile's own mother hadn't seen her without clothing since her body had developed into that of a woman and on top of that, she was being washed and dried like an infant.  

Over her skin Sorne rubbed a potent smelling ointment the stung her nose and eyes and heated her muscles. It was a strange sensation. Sorne began explaining what medicinal plants were in the ointment and exactly what they did but Lile wasn't listening anymore. Her head was beginning to ache, from the long journey, from the stress, from all the Basa, she didn't know, but her mind was prioritising, shutting down unnecessary functions, and listening was the first to go. 

Her feet and hands were then firmly bound in bandages. As Sorne attended to her feet, Lile got a good look at them for the first time. They were in an awful state, pale and wrinkled from hours in wet shoes, slit with red and dabbed with splotches of blue and purple. This was only the top of her feet, she imagined that the soles looked worse. Once her feet were thoroughly bandaged she was made to stand. She protested but Sorne hushed her. 

They dressed her in a shirt and trousers made of the same thick fabric that they were wearing, dark green in colour. She had never worn pants before. It was unusual to feel fabric between her thighs. The trousers were loose around the legs and had the flow of a skirt but the ends clung tight to the ankles which she found irritating. Her shirt, with billowing sleeves, was pulled in at her waist by a red sash that would have matched her scarf if she had it. She was given no leather jack like the rest of them, or a belt or shoes, and was comparably underdressed.

Once dressed she was carried by Jokin, who had returned on command, back across the clearing and past the roaring fire and the crowd of curious onlookers to another, much larger tent. Avoiding the eyes of everyone around Lile fixed her gaze on the night sky which was alight with stars and the moon, just a day or two shy of being full. She thought she heard the soft, sad song of the bahl trees, but the noise of the camp was too loud and perhaps it was just a musician and their instrument. 

Inside, the tent could only be described as cosy. In its centre was a stone pit in which a small fire burned. Its smoke wafted up and out through a round hole in the tent ceiling. Arranged around the fire, was an array of dark wooden furniture which stood upon woven mats and animals pelts. It was clearly someone's quarters, with a bed, writing desk, draws and a table surrounded by cushions of varying sizes. Lile was placed gently on one such cushion so that she sat cross-legged in front of the table. 

The lost army of Basamortah was clearly not in want of much. In their tents, they possessed more comforts than Lile could have ever dreamed of having in her own home These people were masters of every craft. Their clothes and furnishings, while simple, were well-designed and well-made. Lile admired the cushions around her which had been so expertly sewn that she couldn't see a single stitch. The table was made of polished wood that was without blemish. Not a single scratch or dent, as though it had never been used. How had they sourced and maintained all these materials from the heart of Gael Forest for three years without anyone knowing that they were here? They were supposed to be dead and yet they lived better than many of the subjects they had left behind. 

She was admiring all this when something caught her eye. It was sitting atop a dresser across the firepit. Her breath caught, her heart stopped, her skin turned cold. She remembered the princes' words 'She'll stay in Itzal's tent.' And then she knew where she was and in whose tent she currently sat, for on top of that dresser, gleaming softly in the light of the fire, was a bronze helm moulded into the head of a wolf. The helm of the general of Prince Asier's army. The general who had ordered the conscription of her brother. The general who had devised a military campaign that conquered all of Eileland and ripped her family apart. General Itzal.