Author’s Note (READ THIS FIRST):  This story is a gapfiller of sorts for my longer fic, “Ransom.”  If you haven’t read “Ransom,” this will make no sense.  Go read it.

If you have read “Ransom,” I’ve promised you a sequel, and while that story is progressing, this is not that fic.  This fic is set between Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 of “Ransom” and tells a story that wouldn’t fit in the longer fic, limited as it was by Hakim’s POV.  Here, I will explore Aragorn’s POV as well as Azzam’s.  I hope you enjoy!  This story contains violence and dark themes and is complete in two parts.

As usual, big thanks to Cairistiona for her work as beta.

Aragorn’s wrists ached sharply.  The shackles that bound them were made for smaller hands.  When Azzam had clapped him in irons three nights before, he’d left them looser than they were meant to be worn so as not to cut off Aragorn’s circulation.  Aragorn still wasn’t sure whether that could be attributed to the man’s mercurial sense of mercy or merely his desire for an undamaged slave by which he could derive maximum profit.  Regardless, three days and nights in chains had done Aragorn few favors.  His wrists were chafed and pinched from sharp edges.  With only a foot of chain separating the shackles, it was all but impossible to rest without putting pressure on the sore skin.

Not that rest was his objective at the moment.

He closed his eyes.  There was nothing to see, anyway—any moon was hidden behind storm clouds and he had not a single candle in his makeshift cell.  The only sounds were his own heartbeat and the steady drum of rain on the tiles high overhead.  He forgot about the pain in his wrists and ankles, forgot the lingering ache from the cut in his scalp, forgot everything except the feel of the bent wire he rolled between his fingers.  The lock pick slid easily into the keyhole of his left shackle.  He breathed slowly and made tiny adjustments—adding a bit of pressure here, a slight touch there, feeling for the mechanism that would cause the shackle to fall open.

For what felt like the thousandth time, the pick slipped and wedged itself in the casing.  Aragorn swallowed a curse as he pulled it free.  Patience, he reminded himself, but time was a necessary prerequisite for patience and his time had all but run out.  He cursed himself for not making good on his chance to escape three days earlier.  If he somehow survived this, he decided, he would tell no one the tale of how he’d been outwitted by a common goat herder and his son nor how a simple flash flood had nearly been the death of him.  Halbarad would never let him hear the end of it.

His dexterity, he admitted grimly, might be more equal to the task were he not so weary.  For night after night, these past few weeks, he’d slept little, and what rest he managed was disturbed by dark dreams.  It hadn’t been so bad before Azzam had chained him.  For weeks, he’d labored on the farm and simple exhaustion had guaranteed that his nights were undisturbed.  But, for more than a week, now, he’d been able to walk no more than six feet in any direction.  Bereft of anything useful to do with his time, worries had set in, no matter how hard he’d tried to resist them.

And the dreams had followed.  Dark dreams, full of blood and fire.  Now, though his skin nearly crawled with restless energy, his head felt sluggish and dull from too little sleep.

That line of thinking ran entirely too close to self-pity for Aragorn’s liking.  By force of will, he shook it off and pressed his mind back to the problem at hand.  The task would be harder now that he had to contend not with a single leg iron driven into the wall, but with paired shackles at his wrists and ankles.  He could neither run nor ride to freedom until he got the damnable things off.

But, if they came off, what then?

The question caused him more disquiet than it should have.  He had, without a doubt, worn out his welcome on this struggling homestead.  However much he might feel for this family and their difficult economic position, however grateful he might be to Azzam, who had saved him first from the desert and then from the flood, he did not owe it to them to go quietly into slavery and, likely, death. 

The painful truth was that he missed Eriador.  The pangs of homesickness, ignored for decades, now grew with each passing day.  Surely, he had done as much as he could—scouting alone through Mordor itself, learning much of the Enemy’s devices, braving the . . . creatures that dwelt there.  Surely he had done more than anyone could have asked of him.  It was time, at last, to fly back across the Misty Mountains to his own lands—to see again the harsh splendor of the Wilds he’d left half a lifetime ago.

And yet, something in him rebelled at the idea of fleeing back across the Haradwaith—of racing back to Rivendell or Fornost-Eden with his tail between his legs and only stories and rumors to show for two decades of work.

But, there was nothing more he could do here, surely?  Not for Harad, lost fallen Harad which had done the Enemy’s bidding for so long?

He thought of Hakim—the bright eyed, eager boy who wanted to see the world.  He imagined the inevitable slaughter that would ensue if Hakim ran afoul of any of the hundreds of Gondorian warriors Aragorn had helped train.  He felt his chest clench.

And, the Haradrim themselves were hardly the only victims in this burning land.  He thought of the nameless Gondorian captive who had died not so far from where he now sat—the man he’d been forced to bury in an unmarked grave.  A man with a family who would never know what had become of him.  It was too much to think of freeing Harad from the Shadow, but surely he could do something more for the slaves that languished here.  They were Men of the West—his own people.  Wasn’t it the first duty of a king to defend his own?

He banished his troubled thoughts with a firm shake of his head.  Unless he could get these accursed shackles open, he would soon be learning more than he wished to about the fate of slaves in Harad.  He could hardly expect to defend them while he was dragged in chains among them.

The creak of a door opening drew his attention.  Quick as a flash, he wrenched the pick from its keyhole and wedged it between the floorboards under his pallet of straw.  His brow furrowed.  Midnight was approaching, if he was any judge.  Hakim had long since left for his bed, and all the estate should be asleep.  He heard the scrape of a bolt and then light washed in as the door to his cell was pushed open.

A man entered, bearing a lantern and dripping with rain.  Aragorn squinted against the sudden light, but when his eyes adjusted, he was unsurprised to see Azzam setting the lantern down and lifting a hand to brush water from his chin-length hair.

Aragorn sat, unmoving, until Azzam met his gaze.  After laboring side by side with him for nearly two months, he had a decent grasp of the man’s character—enough that he knew to tread light and careful.  Azzam was essentially a good man—charitable to strangers, deeply troubled by cruelty—but he often let his heart rule rather than his mind.  He was easily frustrated, quick to rise to anger or fear, and possessed of the prickly sort of pride often seen in men who don’t realize how completely they are oppressed.

He waited until the other man broke the silence.  “I expected you’d be asleep by now, Dakheel.”

He shrugged.  “I am unused to confinement.  It leaves me restless.”

Azzam looked away uncomfortably, but his face hardened a bit.  “You’d best become accustomed if you mean to continue this folly.”

“If you will not see reason,” Aragorn countered quietly, “Then I expect I’ll have no choice.”

Azzam’s jaw clenched.  “My hands are tied.”

“My hands are shackled,” Aragorn responded more sharply than he’d meant to, “Yours appear quite free by comparison.”  It was neither true nor fair, and Aragorn knew it.  He had a home, a family, perhaps an entire kingdom only a few weeks’ journey away, all of it free of the Shadow.  Azzam, meanwhile, had no home but fallen Harad and was hemmed in with painful choices on every side.  But, as he sat in a makeshift prison cell with rusted iron digging into his skin, Aragorn couldn’t quite bring himself to be fair.

“We’ve talked about this, Dakheel.  You know full well the options available to me.  You know what I would choose, were it in my power.”

“Indeed, we’ve talked about this,” Aragorn allowed his voice to soften, “I thought we’d said all there was to be said.  Why have you come, Azzam?”

“Perhaps I’m not as willing to give up on you as you seem to be.”

“You’re still trying to save me,” Aragorn allowed a touch of amusement to lighten his tone, “Yet freeing me is a bridge too far.”

“It’s not in my power to save you or to free you.  Only your name can free you now.”

“Do you truly believe that?”

Azzam’s face darkened.  Aragorn sensed immediately that he had committed some misstep.  “There are no slaves in Gondor, are there?”  His voice was suddenly menacing.

Aragorn searched the other man’s face but, shadowed as it was by the lamp behind him, it gave nothing away.  He shook his head slowly, fighting a growing sense of foreboding.  “Not since its founding.”

“You think you know what you face.  You were brave in war, so you think it will be just the same.”  The man’s eyes flashed.  “You have no idea.”  He stormed towards Aragorn, his face suddenly furious.  “You think you’ll be allowed to keep your dignity?  Your nobility?”  Seizing the front of his tunic, Azzam dragged him to his feet.  Aragorn was too startled to resist.  “You think abuse will just roll off of you like water?  You have been coddled, Dakheel!  Compared to what the slavers will do, we’ve treated you like a prince.”

A hook hung from the ceiling a few feet away, suspended by a chain attached to some sort of pulley system.  Aragorn had never given it much thought—assuming that it served to hang animal carcasses for cleaning.  He realized his error only when Azzam seized the chain between his wrists, looped it over the hook, and cranked the lever in the wall.  “Do you want to know what real slavery is?”  Before Aragorn could even think about fighting back, his arms were drawn up above his head.  His shoulders strained.  His feet left the ground, and he swayed like a pendulum, scrabbling desperately with his toes as the chain between his ankles scraped against the floorboards.  Azzam let him hang there for a moment.  Then, he cranked the lever back in the opposite direction, lowering the chain enough that Aragorn could regain his footing and take the weight off of his wrists, though he could not stretch high enough to lift the chain off of the hook.

Azzam wedged an iron bar into the mechanism, locking the chain in place.  He met Aragorn’s gaze, his own face now strangely calm in the flickering light.  “You ought to know just what it is that you’re resigning yourself to, Dakheel.  It’s only fair.”  Aragorn didn’t respond, except to bring his head up and fix Azzam with a glare.  He knew full well the effect that look could have on the man—had used it before when conciliatory words were not enough to defuse tensions.  But, he also knew that that tactic had its limitations.  Sure enough, he saw Azzam pause, saw him waver . . . and then saw his face harden.  Azzam stepped deliberately around to stand behind Aragorn.  When he felt the man’s hands at his sides, pushing up his ragged tunic, Aragorn couldn’t help but to twist and struggle.  It did no good.  The shackles held him fast, and all he managed to accomplish was to lose his footing again, wrenching his shoulders and ripping open the skin of his wrists.  Meanwhile, Azzam easily lifted the loose fabric, rolled it, and pushed it over Aragorn’s head.  It settled across his chest and neck, exposing his back completely.       

Getting his feet under him once more, Aragorn twisted to face the farmer.  Azzam was unbuckling his belt.  Like most Men of Harad he belted his long robe with a broad leather strap wrapped double around his waist.  An effective lash, if Aragorn had bothered to think about it.

Aragorn forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly.  “This is madness, Azzam,” he said as calmly as he could, “It will gain you nothing.”

But, a desperate glint had entered the other man’s dark eyes.  “Malik,” he corrected sharply, “You’re so eager to be a slave?  You can start by showing the proper respect!”  At the last word, he spun Aragorn around and struck.  The strap caught Aragorn across the shoulder blades while his footing was still unstable.  His knees buckled and he had to clench his jaw to keep from crying out.  His wrists were scraped raw and the stunning impact across his back was quickly coalescing into a bright line of pain.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he swung from the chains.  After a moment, he heard a quiet sigh.  A hand caught his shoulder, stilling him until he could find his footing one more time.  For a moment, Azzam remained, steadying him with a hand that was surprisingly gentle.  “Just tell me your name, Dakheel.”  His voice held a tinge of desperation.  Resigning himself, at last, to the inevitable, Aragorn took a wide stance and set his jaw.  He clutched the short chain firmly to take the pressure off of his wrists.

After a moment, Azzam sighed again and pulled away.  “Then, I can do no more for you.”

At the next touch of the lash, Aragorn’s body jerked, but he did not fall.  He fixed his gaze on the rough brick wall just a few feet away.  There, the weak lamplight rendered two figures as sharp shadows.  Since Azzam stood closer to the lantern, his shadow was magnified, creating the illusion that he towered over Aragorn.  Another lash striped his back, but Aragorn was ready for it.  He did not even grunt.

“Nothing like taking a wound in battle, is it?”

As the next strike drew a line of fire across his ribs, Aragorn realized Azzam was right.  In combat, battle fever was usually enough to dull the pain of wounds.  The full toll was often not exacted until the battle was long over and Aragorn sat safe and sound in a healer’s tent.  He had the luxury of viewing battle wounds only as damage that could be repaired.

Though Azzam’s belt caused only minor and superficial damage, the pain—the hurt—it inflicted was inescapable.  There was no victory to be had here.  His pain would buy him nothing.  Hurt was the only objective and hurt was the only end.

“You can stop this, Dakheel.”  Azzam’s voice was strained, as if he were the one being hurt rather than the one inflicting the pain.  Aragorn had lost count of the strokes.  Something warm and wet trickled down his back.

He stumbled at the next strike.  Azzam paused, breaking his rhythm to let Aragorn regain his footing.  But, the next blow was no lighter.  “Tell me your name.”

A lash landed right along a line that already felt aflame.  Aragorn had to choke back a scream.  His whole body was trembling.  His knuckles were white where he clutched the chain.  This was worse even than the time when he’d let Azzam beat him with his fists.  At least then, he hadn’t been bound.  He’d known intellectually that he had no choice, but deciding to stand passive and take the abuse was nonetheless a decision.  He’d comforted himself with the knowledge that he could have stopped the other man at any time, had there been no other concerns.

His helplessness in the grip of the chains was worse than the pain.

Anger flared within him, sudden and overwhelming.  His arms strained as he pulled against the chains, but there was no give in the mechanism.  When a particularly sharp strike opened his skin, he let out a sound that was more of a growl than a cry.  He kicked out behind him, but Azzam was too far away.  All he managed to do was to overturn a bucket that stood nearby.  Through it all, Azzam did not react.  The steady, bruising rhythm of his strikes never altered, even as Aragorn struggled and fought.  At last, he was too drained to do anything but stand.

And before long, he did not have the strength even for that.  The ground seemed to rock beneath him.  He swayed.  The next strike knocked him solidly off his feet.  As he swung from his wrists, he could not quite stifle a groan.  He should get up, he knew.  He would . . . just as soon as the world stopped spinning.

Aragorn watched the floorboards swing beneath his feet and waited for the next strike.  It didn’t come.  He didn’t notice when the belt fell to the floor or when the other man stepped around him, but after a moment, the tension in the chain released and he fell heavily to his knees.  Trickles of sweat worked their way down his back, stinging where the skin was broken and mingling with his blood.  When he sensed Azzam squatting before him, Aragorn lifted his head and met his gaze.  The other man had been reaching for Aragorn’s manacled hands where they still hung from the lowered hook.  When he saw the look on Aragorn’s face, though, he visibly flinched and drew back.

For long moments, they were at an impasse.  Azzam did not meet Aragorn’s gaze or make any move to touch him, but neither did he step back.  Aragorn kept his head up and his eyes sharp and steady, though black spots were nibbling at the edges of his vision.  He kept Azzam at arm’s length by force of will, lest he discover the other man had some new cruelty in store.

At last, Azzam spoke without looking at him.  “It is over, Dakheel,” his voice was quiet, “You have my word.”

And Aragorn heard the truth in his words.  Reluctantly, his mind acknowledged what his eyes had already noted:  the obvious remorse etched into the lines of Azzam’s face.

He bowed his head and took a deep breath, trying to regain control over his storm of emotions.  What had been done could not be undone, he knew.  There was nothing to gain, now, by making Azzam fear him.  With the last of his strength, he forced his helpless rage down, to die a quiet death beneath a calm exterior.

When he looked up again, his eyes were soft.  Azzam hesitated a moment more, then reached up to lift Aragorn’s chained hands off of the hook.  Free of the hateful contraption at last, Aragorn swayed, but weathered, calloused hands braced his shoulders, not letting him fall.  As he had done before on more than one occasion, Azzam cupped the back of his neck and lifted a waterskin to his lips.  “Drink . . . easy, not too fast . . .”  Even so, he let Aragorn drink nearly half the skin before he pulled away.

“That was only a belt,” Azzam said quietly—almost sadly, “The sort of whip fathers use on unruly sons.  In a few days, your body will scarcely remember it.”

Aragorn’s head lolled.  He felt spent—utterly wrung out.  Even the lingering pain in his back paled in comparison to his weariness.  He let himself be guided the few steps back to his pallet to lie, face down on the straw.

“Slave drivers use horse whips.  They can strip the flesh right off a man’s bones.  I’ve seen it.”

Aragorn pillowed his head on his arms and managed, one more time, to catch Azzam’s gaze.  He saw something there that pulled him abruptly out of his growing stupor:  sincerity.  Azzam, he saw in an instant, truly believed that what he’d just done was for Aragorn’s own good.

Azzam still thought he was saving him.

Aragorn swallowed hard.  He had to do something, he knew—had to say something if only to dissuade the man from resorting to ever more drastic methods of persuasion.

Then, Azzam lifted a dripping wet rag and sponged gently over Aragorn’s back.  The water was fresh and cool and more soothing than it had any right to be.  And Aragorn decided.  This man was strange to him—full of pride and wrath with his sense of justice twisted and bent from years under Sauron’s thumb, but he had saved Aragorn’s life twice.  He would save it again if he only knew how.  He deserved at least a partial truth.

“Azzam,” he croaked.  The man of Harad made an encouraging noise as he continued his ministrations.  Aragorn swallowed.  “I could tell you my name,” he said at last, “I could give you one name and the Steward of Gondor himself would give you any ransom you asked for.  A name and a title, and even the Steward’s heir—a man with no love for me—would be honor-bound to seek my release.”  He ran his tongue along his lips, tasting blood where he’d bitten them without realizing it.  “But if a spy of Sauron heard the name I could give you, all would be lost.  You would be punished for giving me succor and for concealing my existence.  And I . . . I would be taken to Barad-dûr.  Where, if there is any mercy in the world, I would not long survive.”

A tremor worked its way up his body.  The other man placed a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“Please don’t ask me again, Azzam.  Every time you do, it grows more difficult to resist.”

For long moments, Azzam was silent.  Aragorn knew he’d said enough; Azzam would not risk the wrath of Sauron falling on his family.

But, had he said too much?

“I looked to save you,” Azzam said at last.  His voice was now infinitely sad.

“I know,” Aragorn whispered.

For a moment, the only sounds were the patter of rain and Aragorn’s labored breathing.

“I am sorry, Dakheel, for what I’ve done,” Azzam whispered, his voice breaking, “And sorrier still for what I must do.”

Aragorn closed his eyes and took a slow breath.  “Under Shadow, all choices seem evil,” he said quietly, “I forgive you.”

And he was startled to find that he meant it.

TBC

Azzam stayed with Dakheel until the foreigner lapsed into a fitful sleep.  It did not take long; Azzam scarcely had time to finish sponging the man’s raw skin before his eyelids began to flutter.  Beatings were exhausting, a fact Azzam had learned years ago as a young conscript in the Grand Army.  Still, he roused the Gondorian for just long enough to remove the manacles from his wrists and carefully wash the torn skin beneath.  Dakheel did not react to the treatment, though Azzam suspected it stung.  The warrior seemed to have run out of words, or perhaps he was no longer even aware of his surroundings.  When he released the man’s wrists, Dakheel immediately pulled them back to wrap around his head—an instinctively defensive posture.  Azzam stepped back and kept his peace while Dakheel’s breathing evened and his face relaxed.  What little he could do to ease the other’s pain had already been done.

He had retrieved his sputtering lantern and was making for the door when the slight billowing of his robe made Azzam realize he’d forgotten something.  He turned and spotted his belt still lying where he’d dropped it under the slowly swinging chains.  He eyed it with distaste, but after a moment, he crossed the floor to pick it up.  A few drops of blood streaked the leather, but he took no notice.  Wrapping it around his hand, he left the Gondorian, at last, to his rest.

The rain had stopped not long ago.  The air was thick and still.  For long moments, he stood still, staring at the leather around his hand while his feeble lamplight flickered and danced. 

Twenty-two years.

Twenty-two years since he’d mustered out of the Grand Army and married Asima.  He’d started his life afresh and tried to forget all that came before.  In twenty-two years, he’d never struck another person.

Until Dakheel.  Proud, stubborn Dakheel with his quiet dignity and fire-bright hatred of Mordor.

A scowl darkened his face as he wrapped his belt once more around his waist and buckled it.  His gambit had failed.  He’d sacrificed whatever pitiful shred of honor he had left, and it had done far more harm than good.

Not—he conceded as he walked toward the house on leaden feet—that this charade of his had stood much chance of success to begin with.  It relied, after all, on frightening Dakheel—a feat that might be within the Dark Lord’s power, but was certainly beyond Azzam.  Still, he’d held out hope that with enough pressure, he might find some give in the man.

He’d not intended to hurt Dakheel so badly—truly he hadn’t.  He’d thought that a bit of rough treatment and perhaps a few strokes of the lash would be enough to awaken the other man to the reality of what he faced.  He had not counted on the Gondorian bearing up so well under the blows, nor on how Dakheel’s stoicism would bleed over into a defiance that almost dared him to continue.  He’d sought only to rattle the man—had thought to return in a day or so with comforting words after Dakheel had had time to think.  Then, he had thought wildly and foolishly, the man might at last share his origins and a new course could be laid.  He hadn’t expected the truth to spill out so suddenly, nor for that truth to be so hopeless.

Azzam wondered, idly, what Dakheel could have done that’d he’d incurred the Dark Lord’s wrath—or at least thought he had.  It didn’t matter; Azzam knew he would never ask him.  There was always the risk, after all, that Dakheel might tell him.

The northerner did not understand.  He still viewed resistance to Mordor as a point of honor.  He did not see how Sauron had risen over Harad like a mighty wind—one that would soon cover all the world.  There was no shame in bowing before that power, like a tree bows before a gale.  Those that did not bend would shatter or be uprooted entirely.

But, Dakheel would not bow—would not bend.  In time, Azzam knew, he would break.  And if his spirit was typical of the Men of Gondor, he would be only the first of many.

Defiance, after all, was hardly an unusual phenomenon among Men.  There had once been many among the Haradrim who shared Dakheel’s fire, especially in the early days after Sauron’s return, when his people were still discovering what their storied alliance with the Dark Lord would cost.  Plenty of proud warriors had rejected their rulers’ commands and placed themselves in opposition to the falling Shadow.  They girded themselves with pride in noble houses or commitment to tribal codes of conduct or piety for forbidden gods.

And, one by one, they were shattered.  As Dakheel would be.

For reasons he couldn’t begin to explain, Azzam’s mind was drawn to the image of Jabari, the last high king of Harad on his pyre, with the crown of the Sixteen Tribes on his head and the bitter glint of triumph in his eyes.

He shook off these dark thoughts as he reached his front door.  The house beyond was pitch black and silent.  His sandaled feet made no sound on the fired-clay tiles.  The dying flame of his lantern flickered redly off crumbling adobe walls.  As he always did last thing at night, he paused before his children’s doors.  Hakim and Kalima were sound asleep; plowing time always exhausted them.  Of course, it was hardly less wearying for Asima, but she was sitting up in bed with her arms drawn around her knees when he finally reached their bedchamber.  “It grows late, husband.”

Azzam turned away from the unspoken question in her eyes.  As he hung the lantern on the lampstand, she stood, her body unfolding with the grace of a much younger woman.  Azzam sighed.  How often had he told her that he needed no help changing his own clothes?  She persisted, nonetheless.  It was tradition, after all, for a wife to help her husband with his garments, even if those garments were only the simple robes of a peasant.  After twenty-two years of marriage, Azzam found it easier to simply lift his feet so that she could remove first one sandal, then the other.  Slowly and with great reluctance, he removed his belt and dropped it into her waiting hands.

As he’d known she would, Asima suddenly froze, breaking the familiar rhythm of the ritual as she stared at the belt.  Turning away from him, she examined it more closely under the lamplight.  Azzam knew what she would find:  dark smears of blood clinging to the edges of the leather, beginning to go sticky as they dried.

When she turned back to him once more, her face was closed but her eyes burned.  With a single look, she took him in—saw his lack of a wound, saw the guilt in his face, saw so many things he wished he could hide from her.

“What did you do, Azzam?”  Her voice was barely a whisper.

He took a slow step back and sank down to sit on the edge of the bed, feeling the creak of the woven hemp that supported their thin mattress.  He stared at his hands, noting that they, too, bore signs of his crime in the form of drying red smudges.  “I thought I could make him tell us,” he said at last, matching her low tone, “Who he is, where his family dwells . . . I thought if he could only be made to speak, that it would be enough.  That the ends would justify.”

For a moment, she just stared at him.  Her face did not change.  Then she turned and reached for her overrobe where it hung from its peg.  Wordlessly, she pulled the loose garment on over her simple sleeping shift, not bothering to dress fully or even to cover her hair.  She disappeared into her bower for a moment only to emerge with sandals on her feet, her healer’s kit under her arm, and a jar of lamp oil in her hands.  While Azzam contemplated the blood under his fingernails, Asima refilled the lantern with quick, efficient movements and made to bear it out of the room.  Remembering himself at last, Azzam stood to follow, but Asima stopped him with a hand on his chest.  “You’ve done enough, husband,” she said in a voice that warned he would be a fool to argue.

So Azzam stayed behind in darkness while Asima left the house.  After a moment, flickers of light slipped past the window coverings as she walked past outside, following the well-worn path that led down to the barn.  Azzam drew a slow breath.  With clumsy fingers, he pulled off his overrobe and hung it on the wall.  Blindly, he fumbled at the clasps that closed his ankle-length body shirt.  It took longer than it should have, but at last, the garment fell open and he was able to remove that as well.

Sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but his loincloth, Azzam reached up to rub an old scar—the deep one that ran from just beside his spine almost to the point of his shoulder.  Even after more than twenty-two years, it still ached at times.  Few had laid eyes on that scar in twenty-two years—not even his own children.  Only Asima knew its full meaning.

As he waited in the dark, he tried, with limited success, to think of nothing at all.  After what felt like several eternities, he again glimpsed Asima’s bobbing lantern through the slit in the window coverings.

She entered the room silently and hung the lantern again from its stand.  As she removed her overrobe, her arm bumped against the iron lampstand, causing the frame to rock and the woman to wince.  In the process of hanging her robe, she paused and rubbed her wrist.

Azzam stood.  “Asima?”  She turned away from him, but he stepped around her and caught her hand.  Lifting it gently, he could easily see where the skin of her wrist was reddened—where bruises like fingerprints were beginning to form.  “What happened?”

She looked away.  “What does ‘baudaro’ mean?”

Azzam shook his head in bewilderment.  “I do not know.  The Gondorian speaks other languages besides Westron.  What did he do?”

“He seemed deep in dreams when I entered his quarters.  Troubled dreams.  He whispered that word over and over:  ‘baudaro.’  And other words in strange tongues.  I recognized only one word, a name.  ‘Mordor.’”  She swallowed.  “I worried for a moment that the illness that plagued him when he first came to us had returned.  I touched his forehead, but there was no fever and he did not stir.”

Azzam waited silently, still not releasing her hand.  After a moment, she shrugged.  “I thought I could check his pulse without waking him.  I was wrong.”

Azzam winced.  He could imagine the rest easily enough:  waking disoriented from dreams of the Black Land only to find himself wounded and chained, confused and not alone . . . Dakheel could hardly be blamed for reacting like any soldier who suddenly found himself in enemy hands.  In such a state, men could behave like trapped animals.  Asima’s hand twisted to grip his wrist, her eyes suddenly sharp.  “Don’t you even think of holding this against him, Azzam.  All he did was grab my arm.  I don’t believe he was even fully awake until I cried out.  And then he apologized at once, as if he were the one who’d dealt some grievous hurt.”

Azzam closed his eyes.  Tenderly, he placed his other hand over her wrist.  This, then, was one more wound on his conscience—this time not on a near-stranger like Dakheel, but on the person most precious to him in the world.

“Were you able to do anything for him?”

She pulled her arm back and turned away.  “Little enough.  I gave him one herb to ease his pain and another to ease his sleep.”  She extinguished the lamp; they’d used too much oil already.  Azzam sensed more than saw her pad around to her side of the bed and sit.  Wearily, he, too, pushed back the light covers and got into bed.  Once his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could just make out Asima, silhouetted against the faint light from the window.  She was staring off into the darkness, but he thought her face had softened a little.  “There was little enough to be done,” she said quietly, “His spine is intact as are his ribs.  The cuts are shallow, and he said you’d cleaned them already.  He will have a few scars, but no worse.”

Azzam looked away.  Neither of them would speak of how he’d learned to deal out so much pain without leaving an injury.  It was a skill he apparently hadn’t lost, despite wishing to.  Even after twenty-two years.

“Did he say anything?”

Azzam closed his eyes and wished he could close his ears to the cautious hope in her voice.  He said ‘I forgive you’ . . . He swallowed.  “Nothing that could help him.”

Without looking at him, Asima reached over to place her hand on his bare shoulder.  Her fingers quickly found the old scar and massaged deep circles into the flesh around it.  Somehow, she always knew when the wound was troubling him.  Her touch was gentle and soothing.  But it was not enough.

It never was.

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Breakfast the next morning was a quiet affair.  The children drooped over their porridge, not truly rested enough given the previous days’ long labor.  Kalima was allowed, but every time Hakim began to slump, Azzam caught his gaze and glared until the boy straightened.  He would not be accused of raising a weak son.

As they scraped up the last of the morning meal, Azzam looked at his son and cleared his throat.  “I will see to Dakheel.  Hakim, you check on the fold with your sister and then haul the plow out of the shed.  We’ll start on the south field today.”

Hakim’s face fell.  He opened his mouth to ask for an explanation, but then closed it again.  Azzam and Asima hadn’t raised him to question orders.  The youth’s face was glum as he cleared his bowl and trudged out the door.  Azzam felt a twinge of regret; relegated to manual labor and deprived of his morning visit with Dakheel, Hakim probably thought he was being punished for something.  The man shook off that thought.  Hakim was fond of Dakheel, and for that reason he should not see the man in his current state.  At least not until Azzam had found a chance to explain.  A way to explain.

Asima pressed a bowl into his hands with a look that was sad and far too knowing.  As he left the house, Azzam studied the bowl’s contents to give himself something to do as his reluctant feet carried him towards the barn.  Dakheel’s breakfast was somewhat richer than what the rest of them had eaten; the porridge was fortified with chopped nuts, milk, and green specks that were probably Asima’s herbs against pain.  Azzam sighed.  Clearly, his wife was trying to build up Dakheel’s strength while she still had the opportunity.  That was classic Asima:  nurturing from afar and hoping no one would notice.

When he reached the slave quarters and pushed the door open, Azzam’s first thought was that perhaps he could have sent Hakim after all.  Dakheel sat with his back perfectly straight.  He’d pulled his tunic back on and rolled the loose sleeves down until they covered the abrasions on his wrists.  But for the absence of shackles on his arms, the previous night could have been a foul dream.  When Dakheel saw Azzam, though, his posture relaxed and he slumped a little with what seemed strangely like relief.  Absent the need to pretend nothing had happened, the northerner’s face tightened slightly with pain.

Azzam handed him the bowl.  “You were expecting Hakim,” he said conversationally.

Dakheel nodded.  “I take it you’ve not told him.”

Azzam frowned.  “I do not keep secrets from my son, but . . .”  He shook his head.  “No matter.  I’ll tell him today.”

But, Dakheel shook his head.  “There is no need for that, Azzam.  I will be well enough by nightfall.  He need never know.”

Azzam arched an eyebrow.  Dakheel took a bite of porridge.  “Hakim is sensitive,” he said by way of explanation, “He cannot change what happened and it would only trouble him.  He would not understand.”

“But you do?” Azzam said skeptically.  Dakheel merely shrugged and turned his attention to his meal.  Azzam sighed and turned away.  Stepping past Dakheel, he lifted the lid from a barrel holding fresh water and stooped to retrieve a washbasin.  Once the bowl was full, he hesitated but then scolded himself for his hesitation.  Perhaps there were legitimate reasons to allow another to suffer, but appeasing his own squeamishness was not one of them.  Dipping a few rags in the basin, he knelt beside Dakheel and reached for the hem of his tunic.  “If I may . . .”

Dakheel started and pulled away from his touch.  He twisted to regard Azzam with wary eyes.  After a moment, though, he pulled his tunic off, set it aside, and returned to his meal, his expression carefully blank.  Azzam’s lips pressed into a thin line.  He remembered that reaction well:  how concealed fear faded to resignation.  Then he looked at Dakheel’s back and realized that the man was still offering far more trust than Azzam deserved.  With sunlight streaming through the upper windows, Azzam could see that the other man’s injuries were far more extensive than a cursory examination by lamplight had suggested.  Bruises were rising, red and purple, along what seemed like every inch of Dakheel’s upper back.  The skin was crisscrossed with small scratches and several deeper wounds had scabbed over.  Asima was right:  even if everything healed perfectly, Dakheel would have at least three or four scars.  Three or four new scars, Azzam amended mentally.  His eyes had alighted on a thin white line that suggested a sword cut just above the man’s kidneys.

Though it was still early, the air was growing warm, and Dakheel had begun to sweat already.  Azzam sponged over the other man’s back as gently as he could.  The fresh water would keep the sweat from stinging the abraded skin, at least for a while.

“How long?” Dakheel’s voice startled him out of his contemplations.  “If your mind is made up, I would just as soon not linger.”  But his voice wavered just a little, and Azzam suspected his words were mostly bravado.

“At least three days,” Azzam responded evenly, “Perhaps four.  I cannot leave even for a day until the fields are ready for sowing.”  Dakheel did not respond, but at the next touch of the cloth, a slight tremor ran through his shoulders.  It was probably a sign of pain.  Probably.  Azzam swallowed.  “You will have a chance in Umbar,” he offered, though Dakheel did not need to know how slim that chance was.  “The nobles always seek out a few of the more educated Tarks to be servants in their houses.  They are slaves, yet, but they receive better treatment than most.  Better even than some free men of Harad.”

Dakheel snorted.  “I will not grovel,” he said scornfully, “Nor seek to curry favor simply for a more comfortable cage.”

Azzam sighed.  Defying the Shadow was one thing, but would Dakheel not bend at all?  Did he not realize that his life was worth more than his pride?  “More to the point,” he continued as if the other had not spoken, “They have access.  There are resources at their disposal that a simple galley slave could not hope to touch.  Opportunities, you might say.”

Dakheel was silent.  He seemed to consider that.  Still, Azzam knew it was unlikely the man would take his advice.  But he also knew that when Kalima inevitably asked what had become of Dakheel, he would tell her about the manservants who lived in mansions with their noble masters rather than the galley slaves kept chained in dark holds.

Dakheel’s back was as clean as it was likely to get, and he was beginning to flinch from the pressure on his bruises.  Azzam set the basin aside, accepted Dakheel’s empty bowl, and waited while the Gondorian pulled his tunic back on.  Setting the bowl down next to the basin, Azzam picked up the abandoned wrist manacles and turned them over and over in his hands.

He hesitated.  Dakheel’s arms, he could see, were nearly as scraped and bloodied as his back—bruised and torn from catching his weight as he fell.

Bruised like Asima’s wrist.

He cut his deliberation short when he felt Dakheel’s gaze on him.  The man’s eyes were hooded, his expression carefully neutral.  Making up his mind, Azzam squatted and dipped two cloths in the wash basin.  Lifting Dakheel’s unresisting hand, he wrapped the thin cloth around the battered skin of his wrist.  Then, he took the shackle and closed it over the crude bandage.  Dakheel’s expression didn’t change, but he looked away as Azzam gave his other wrist the same treatment.  The rags, at least, would cushion the skin slightly.

This wasn’t vengeance, Azzam told himself sternly.  Merely prudence.  Dakheel, after all, had proven himself quite resourceful, and he would be understandably desperate to escape.  That was a risk Azzam simply couldn’t take.

He locked the second shackle but did not release Dakheel’s arm at once.  He waited until the man met his gaze.  “Don’t throw your life away, Dakheel,” he all but pleaded, “Not for something as superfluous as pride.”

Something flickered in the foreigner’s eyes.  Not for the first time, Azzam had the strange impression that, though Dakheel’s eyes were fixed on his, the other man was looking through him and somehow past him.  Like he was making a mental record of some larger story, with implications far beyond the humble question of two men and their lives.  Strangely, a slight smile played across his face.

It occurred to Azzam that even among condemned men, he’d never seen a smile so sad.

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An afternoon rainstorm drummed steadily against the roof.  Aragorn leaned forward, his elbows propped on his knees.  Sweat trickled down his back, stinging where it touched his cuts, but he gave it no thought.  That irritation had been his constant companion all day; it could no longer trouble him.  Worse than the lingering pain of cut skin was the general feeling of being pounded—as if he’d fallen off a horse or perhaps been trampled by one.

Overall, though, he felt well enough.  In fact, his chief trouble was a sort of embarrassment.  By light of day, it was clear that his injuries from Azzam’s whipping were quite mild compared to some of the wounds he’d suffered over the years.  There was, he felt, little reason for him to react as he had last night.  Such minor wounds should not have been enough to render him helpless and all but insensate. 

He tried to push all that out of his mind and focus on nothing but the pick in his hand.  Still, dark thoughts kept creeping back in.  If this was what a whipping was like when the assailant had only good intentions, what must his captured countrymen be enduring?  Without even bothering to think, Aragorn could call to mind the names and faces of a half dozen men who had fought by his side and had disappeared or been captured after battles with the Haradrim.  Was this their life now?  Chains and whips and the loss of all dignity and control?  Was this this their reward for defending Gondor?

So suddenly it surprised him, the shackle on his left wrist fell open and clattered to the ground, taking the lock pick with it.  Aragorn’s eyes widened.  He recovered the pick with fumbling fingers.  He had done it.  He’d finally worked out the trick . . . and because he’d allowed his mind to wander, he didn’t even remember how he’d done it.

Or, did he?  Lifting the pick with his left hand, he slid it into the shackle on his right wrist, trying to replicate half-remembered sensations.  Slip and catch the mechanism . . . a bit more pressure . . . adjust the angle slightly . . . and then his right wrist, too, was free and the manacles were falling to the floor.  Fighting to keep an excited tremor out of his fingers, he repeated the process with the chains at his ankles and found that they fell away just as easily.  Hardly daring to believe his sudden success, he stretched slowly, working the kinks out of his shoulders for the first time in days.  He was free at last.

Which meant a decision long put off was now upon him.

He lifted the shackles and turned them over in his hands, feeling the roughness of the iron.  A trickle of sweat stung his deepest cut and he heard again Azzam’s words.

“Do you want to know what real slavery is?”

That was what far too many of his allies faced every day:  real slavery.  The loss of choice, the loss of hope.  Was there truly nothing more he could do for them?

And as he stared at the empty shackles, an idea began to form.  Perhaps there was something he could do—something the Haradric lords would never expect.

Because they’d never imagine anyone would be crazy enough to try.

But, he’d known since he was barely a man that it was his duty to oppose the Enemy.  This was just one more thing—one more seemingly impossible mission that he would somehow have to make possible.

And if, along the way, he could do something for this nation of starving children and dying sons—anything that might lift fallen Harad and weaken her bonds to Sauron—then surely that was his duty as well.  What Azzam and his family endured, after all, was just another kind of slavery.  Their chains were invisible, but no less real.

He let the shackles drop to the ground and for a moment, he almost wanted to laugh at his own arrogance.  All he’d accomplished, after all, was to pick a dilapidated set of manacles.  There was no guarantee that he would even be able to escape the next time he was chained, much less defeat his captors, free his fellows, and liberate all of Harad from Sauron’s influence.

He rolled his shoulders and winced as the motion agitated his torn skin.  He closed his eyes and breathed deep.  He could almost see the sparkling waterfalls of Rivendell and the verdant forests of the Angle.  Though home lay countless leagues away, for a moment, it felt so close he could almost touch it.

He opened his eyes, picked up the shackles, and locked them around his wrists and ankles before he could change his mind.

Easier roads were for other Men, after all.

And when it was done—when he was sure that he had done everything in his power—maybe then he could finally get some sleep.

Fin

A/N:  “Baudaro” is actually two words, which Asima mistook for one—“Baw, daro”—Sindarin for “No, stop.”