[Amanaduial the archer]

Fionel heard the others gasp around her and Doranna for one looked away. As they marked Shivana, Fionel looked on, and it was indeed just, after all that she had done, after she had become that twisted, sadistic individual. But as Ekatran was marked...

Fionel couldn't look. She would have killed him, but just killed him, not scarred him badly for life, thereby destroying his. He was cruel, aye, and had hurt and destroyed the lives of so many...but for a short while in the city of Nurn he had shown kindness to her. She remembered how that time had been, maybe with rose tinted glasses now. She had spent four years in the House of Ekatran for two days a week, serving first simply as a low servant, scrubbing floors and making attempts to clean out the old rooms which had lain long neglected, but she had risen, in a way that was most unusual, soon serving at meals, and helping Ekatran and his son with their sword practise, although that was not exactly a treat; it was a priveledge though. She gained herself extra free time in this way and the years from when she was 16 to 17 were as happy as she could have been in slavery.

But things changed then. Ekatran's daughter, Malha, was growing up, and she possessed all the cruelty of her father, and the vanity and *****y sadisticness of her mother. Ekatran spent large amounts of time away from his only daughter, although he evidently doted on her, lavishing gifts and jewels on her so she became horribly spoilt, but she resented the way others could spend time with him. She didn't see the way Fionel was not taking pleasure in having to do sword practise with her brother and father, where the shield Fionel would hold, or the wooden sword, had a tendency to break, how she did sustain many, if not very serious, cuts from it; she only saw that this slave, this scum, was spending more time in her father's prescence than she was. And so she set out to make Fionel's life hell.

Malha was clever though. She would just do little things- in the one night that Fionel was now allowed to spend in the palace, so she could be up and at her chores without having to wait for the slave pens to be unlocked, Malha would put pins in her bed. She would find the scorpions that lived in some parts of the fields, and would put them into the cheap shoes that Fionel wore when in the palace, and in the early morning, when not fully awake, Fionel would put her feet right onto them. She would litter the floor of Fionel's room with pins- it did not have a lock, obviously- at night, would find out where she was working the next day and stand by, taunting her.

Eventually, Fionel snapped. This little brat of a child, about 10 years younger than her, was daring to do all these things to an older child, well, an adult really, something that would be unheard of in Gondor, and no one would reprimand her- Fionel herself was not allowed to even tell her off. But one day, she could not bear in any longer. As Malha stood, taunting her, mocking her, she brought up Fionel's family; the people Fionel loved most who had been torn away from her. In a second, Fionel had been down from the attic she was cleaning, and slapped Malha soundly around the face. As the girl turned to look at her, shocked, hand on her right cheek, Fionel had slapped the other one, then slapped Malha right across her thighs, as she had seen the nursemaids do with unruly children.

THe shock was gone now, and Malha ran, screaming, her yells echoing throughout the palace. They had disgusted Fionel then, and they still disgusted her now- even after a whipping, no slave would yell like that. But Ekatran would not see it like that. Roused from his bed, for it was early morning, he stormed up to where Malha led him, still sobbing fakely to hide her wicked smile, and confronted Fionel. And despite all she had done in the past few years, and the way she had been a faithful servant to him, he would only believe Malha's side of the story ("She jumped on me for no reason, when I was just helping her tidy up the attic, and she pulled my hair and slapped me, telling me I was horrible...."). Seizing a long piece of quite rounded wood, he had beaten Fionel, harder than she had been beaten since she first came to Nurn, and when he was done and her back bled and ached and felt like it would break, he had thrown her out into the fields again.

What Malha had done and how she had reacted had caused Fionel to be put into the Hunt. Her back had taken a week to heal, the only week she would have been allowed to take time off working; but Ekatran still burned with anger, and told the overseers she could rest for one day, then she must work again. He had been cruel to her then, and it had torn apart Fionel's ideas of what was right and wrong, at the time anyway, as she had worked hard and well for Ekatran, not believing everything the others told her of his personal cruelties to others...then he had done this to her.

"Come, we will move again. All have rested and we need to get moving once more." Rhunnaro's voice only half brought Fionel back to the present. She stood, sword by her feet, contemplating Ekatran, but she no longer felt anger, just an odd emptiness. The young man regarded her, chin up, still keeping his dignity despite what he had just suffered, as she always had after a beating, apart from that one beating that day. Tenzin was watching her from a few metres behind, remembering how she had run at him before, but she did not want to attack any more. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the sword, and Tenzin tensed...but all she did was cut off a length of her loose, worn tunic. It was stained with her own blood, but no matter. She stepped to the side of Ekatran and, carefully, wiped the dirt and excess blood from his face then, as a final kindness, tied the cloth around his face, she only his eyes could be seen, and most of the cuts were covered. If anyone came, they would not see the Lord humbled so.

She owed him nothing now: his kindness over that short while was now repaid. Standing, without a backward glance, she walked back to the others. Tenzin didn't say anything, but nodded to her- he didn't understand why she had done this, but he could see there must have been a good reason. Fionel smiled at him and, with his arm around her once more, they walked to where the others were preparing to leave, leaving Shivana and the great Lord Ekatran of Nurn alone.