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Old 09-24-2006, 04:04 PM   #203
Durelin
Estelo dagnir, Melo ring
 
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 3,121
Durelin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Durelin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Khamir

Remembering when he had first learned Hadith’s name, Khamir’s eyes were locked on the young man. Eighteen years old, but he had the emotional strength one might expect from someone much older. The older man had always thought of himself as a weathered veteran, having seen and done much more than a young one such as Hadith had. But he had underestimated him once. How long had the boy been a slave? True, he could be naïve at times, but only in an idealistic sort of way, and not a foolish sort of way, that was quite refreshing.

“I will make my choice as a free man not to join the suicidal party of Khamir!”

Those words were like a stab through the heart. “Suicidal party?” Khamir and his gang had raided huge plantations without losing a single man before. Suicidal? What did this boy think? They weren’t out to be heroic – the plan wasn’t to run in and slaughter the bounty hunters. That would be suicide. But the one-armed man hadn’t given up on living the two years he had been a slave, nor the nineteen years he had been struggling for survival in Mordor as a supposed “free man.” Dying a true free man was not even something the man looked forward to.

Khamir spat, but said nothing, listening to the rest of what the boy had to say.

“Let Khamir do as he wishes, but let us others come up with a defense for the rest of us. We maybe forced to fight tonight! I intend to be ready for that... we need a plan...”

The Southron man glanced at Beloan, who could only stare back at him. The former gang leader shook his head, knowing no other way to show his disappointment. Here was the idealist. In his self-righteousness and head-in-the-clouds ways, he forgot that his feet were stuck on the ground, on accursed ground, on ground that had soaked up the Dark Lord’s evil for millennia.

As if this bunch could defend itself from behind two-foot thick stone walls…

But they were not his concern right now.

“You wish to join their defense council?” he asked Beloan, bitingly sarcastic. The other man still made no answer.

Khamir turned away from him, and stalked off further from the camp, his hand reaching into his bag to retrieve one of his throwing knives. He gripped it while it was still concealed by the ragged cloth, and removed it swiftly and yet carelessly, flinging it to come to rest with a thud in a small, sickly looking tree: a sapling that had been bold enough to attempt to grow tall above the plains of Mordor, but was struck down by its disease, an invisible sickness with no physical symptoms but that still ended in death and destruction.

Suddenly he felt something crunch under his feet, and he felt something hard even through his boots. Removing his foot from it, he crouched down to see what it was. Moonlight glinted off metal, and Khamir quickly slipped the necklace into his bag.

That woman…

He would go alone if he had to.
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