Prisoner of Númenor RPG

[piosenniel]

A heavy, grey sky hung over the capital city of Westernesse. Rain had fallen for the last three days and the air was thick with moisture. The white walls of Arminalêth shone dully in the semidarkness and the late Ivanneth trees clung stubbornly to their last brown leaves. The land trembled; the island had shifted several times in the recent past, and now she gave another quick heave as though irritated by the tall Men who walked on her shores. As the ground quieted the skies stirred, and the boiling grey clouds which hovered over Armenelos began to drop hail. A dark haired woman looked up at the sky as pea-sized bits of ice began to bounce off the ground around her feet. She grabbed the hands of two small children and ushered them inside. As the door closed loudly behind them the hail began to fall in earnest, egg sized hailstones hammering on the rooftops of the unnaturally quiet city. As the hailstorm passed, the grey clouds blew east on a brisk wind and a billowy white cloud shaped like a great eagle cast its shadow across the land.

Abârpânarú Karíbzîr and Kâthaanî, his daughter and only child, rode along the southern faces of the fir and larch covered moors of Forostar. They could afford to ride as fast as the wind, with seven Kariborim between them. Abâr was afraid that word of their route had reached the King's Men. Abârpânarú was riding night-black Lômi while Kâthaanî rode chestnut Izri, the youngest foal of Khibil and Kali, who with their other foals, Nitirú, Rûki, and Mani galloped close at hand.

Word had reached them before they left home, that the King's Men were looking for Abârpânarú as a traitor to the King. It was true enough, if being one of the Faithful amounted to betrayal. The Forostar, the least fertile of the Númenorean regions, was least populous, and Abârpânarú had deemed it the way that would give them most shelter from the eyes of the King's Men. The ground was stony, which would give greater difficulty to other horsemen, but not the sure-footed Kariborim.

Suddenly the land dropped and the air cooled, and they came among fertile fields of grain, which were the beginning of the Orrostar. They rounded a final hill and must stop of a sudden. They were faced by twenty horsemen.

"You may go no further, traitor!" called one man whose black helm rose taller than the others.

"Go back, Kâthaanî! Make haste!" Kâthaanî obeyed immediately, calling the barebacked Kariborim as she turned her mount and charged back around the hill. Khibil, Abârpânarú's usual mount, did not follow. Abârpânarú hollered and slapped Khibil's rump and sent him chasing after the others.

"Do not let them get away!" cried the leader of the King's Men.

"You have me! Let them go!" Abârpânarú bellowed. The ears of the horses of the King's Men laid back, such was the force of his voice. He took the eyes of their leader and held them. The two strove, and at last the leader gave way.

"We have our quarry."

Abârpânarú dismounted from Lômi. "Go find Kâthaanî." Lômi stood next to Abârpânarú, unmoving. He looked in Lômi's deep brown eyes. "Go!" he whispered. She breathed on his neck, looking straight into his eyes. "They will do you harm!" She nickered. He sighed. "May I prove worthy of your love, dear one."

Kâthaanî paused on the far side of the hill. The clatter of hard hooves in the stones fell to silence all around her as five of the Kariborim joined Izri in the dell behind the hill. Five. Lômi, then, had remained with her father; though whether she was kept by her own will or Abârpânarú’s, or by some design of his captors, Kâthaanî could not tell. Dismounting quickly from Izri, she left the horses and crept down through the brush and boulders to where she could see the road.

Cursing herself inwardly for her clumsiness, she stood behind a cluster of fir and looked out toward the place where her father had been taken. As she caught sight of the men gathered on the road below, Kâthaanî breathed a sigh of relief. She realized they were yet far enough away that her pitiful attempts at stealth would not have been heard, and cloaked in brown as she was, she judged herself unlikely to be seen. She watched as Abârpânarú’s hands were bound roughly behind him and Lômi’s reins were tied to the saddle of one of the waiting horses. The riders remounted, and the column moved along the road. South, toward Armenelos. Kâthaanî watched, unmoving, until the horses disappeared into the plains.

Turning back to where she had left the Kariborim, Kâthaanî ran to them, tying her dark hair into a tighter knot on her neck and pinning her cloak more securely. She paused as she reached the horses, the tension in their bodies evident. She kissed Izri’s soft nose before turning to Nitirú, the swiftest among them. “You must bear me now, friend; and we will run more swiftly than ever we have run before.” Although she knew that she would never find help in time to rescue her father before they reached Arandor and the Royal City, there was nothing else for her to do.

Upon mounting, Kâthaanî headed down out of the foothills toward the road. Once they reached the open lands of Andustar she could take to the fields, but for now great speed required great risk and they ran on the open road. Nitirú’s feet struck sparks from the gravel as the dark haired girl and the iron grey horse flew toward Andunië, the other five trailing behind them like so many leaves in the wind.


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-- Sophia the Thunder Mistress & littlemanpoet