[h1]Of Wolves and Men[/h1]

[i]Late afternoon, 14th of Midyear, 4E208
The oasis, Alik’r desert, Hammerfell[/i]

What matters is your warrior spirit [i]burns[/i]...

[hr]

After safely delivering the rest of the party to the oasis, one that Mazrah hadn’t seen before (Shakti’s knowledge of the desert’s topography was very impressive), the she-orc unceremoniously dropped her gear on the ground where she stood, drank voraciously from the oasis, and sat down next to her pile of stuff. She watched the others mill about but there was one person in particular that she wanted to talk to: a savage killer with axe and dagger that had torn into the Dwemer with the unrestrained ferocity she had only ever seen in her own kind before. Latro. There was something primal inside that androgynous boy and her curiosity was drawn to it. Where had that come from? It had delighted her to see him go berserk like that, but she was aware that others in the party might have found it shocking. Mazrah thought it was important that Latro knew that he wasn’t alone in his bloodlust and battletrance. 

A little while later she saw him, free for the moment, and swiftly accosted him. “Latro,” she said, her voice gruff but not unkind. “We should talk. Come.”

Latro had been unpacking his things, thus far thankfully undisturbed by the others, though it pained him to think it. He needed quiet, needed peace, just some time to think on what had happened. Just as he was beginning to remember the first time and the last time he’d been pushed down the spiral to being Pale-Feather again, he was taken by what felt like a bear’s paw on his arm. When the owner, the large She-Orc, told him they needed to talk, he knew what she wanted to speak of.

Even so, he squawked as he was pulled along, “Of what?” He asked, unheard the first time until they finally settled on a pair of rocks in the sand near the water. He tried at the question again, “Of what?”

“Of you,” Mazrah said and leaned forwards, her elbow propped up on her knee and her face resting on her fist, golden eyes staring intently at Latro’s. “I saw you in the palace. You are not just Latro the bard. It was like Malacath’s blood was singing in your veins. Where did that killer come from?” Her words came fast and firm, but she saw the look on his face. Mazrah smiled and softened her tone. “Don’t worry, I liked what I saw. It was powerful and raw. But you must have worked very hard to hide that part of you. I had no idea. I want you to know that you are not alone.” She placed her other hand on her chest. “We are the same, you and I. Kindred spirits.”

“No,” Latro cringed, “No, no. Mazrah, I… you’re right, I hid that part of me deep. The first time I let myself do that I took my first life at the age of eight. It wasn’t even an enemy, it was my friend, strangled to death over words.” 

He shook his head, his fingers fiddling with the polished stone he’d had for years. Through everything. The only reminder of the good parts of being of the Crow-Wives. He stared at it as he spoke, “It isn’t courageous. It’s murder.” He said, voice low, “It’s a child taking the life of a friend. It’s a traitor to his Clan who Forswore his family to bring death. It’s a whore who set fire to a brothel to wipe clean the sins done unto him, it’s a raving killer putting nails through the scalps of his rapists and owner on the same night.”

“It’s a wolf with a frothing mouth snapping at everything. Who looks at his family with eyes that see only meat and bone.” He finished, letting his hands go limp and taking his eyes away from the stone to look at Mazrah, “Your people and mine, they are both spurned. Children of Malacath, where even some Reachmen have Orc blood. Tell me why then if I was to be of that ilk, why then did those spurned turn their backs on even me?”

Mazrah shrugged. “I don’t know your story,” she said flatly. “I don’t know your people. I cannot say why. What matters is that your warrior spirit [i]burns[/i]. It seems to me like your flame was not tempered correctly and turned into wildfire, grabbing at anything and everything around it. Some parts of your story are awful, I won’t lie. Others sound righteous. But the past is the past.” She smiled and took one of Latro’s hands, small compared to hers, in her own. “And I never said you were courageous, Latro. What we have isn’t that. People steeling themselves, facing their fears, and rising to the challenge, [i]that[/i] is courage. I know that.” 

Suddenly she was on him, her face only an inch from his, his wrists in the iron grip of her hands, and Mazrah’s eyes were flooded with scarlet as the summoned her rage. “We are fearless,” she growled, her voice having dropped an octave, thrumming with power, and for a split second it looked like she might unhinge her jaw and swallow him whole. Then the moment passed, her eyes returned to normal and Mazrah diminished, retreating back to the rock she’d been sitting on. Her breaths came hard and heavy and she wiped a fresh layer of sweat from her brow. 

“And it makes us dangerous. Control,” she said with a smirk. “That is what you need. I can teach you.”

Latro let go a shuddering breath from Mazrah’s display. For a split second, some animal part of his mind called out that he run or fight when she was upon him. But just as quickly, she was back, normal. “I don’t know…” his voice trailed off as he sank back when she settled back in her place, “I don’t know. When I was like that, it felt like it wasn’t… Latro. It was me, but not. I don’t even know if that makes sense. A red joy, to plant my foot on my enemy’s chest, to see fear in his last moments until I take it all from them.”

Latro shook his head, “But that enemy… sometimes, I’m scared I won’t be able to see who is enemy and who is friend. Just corpses.” He swallowed, taking a glance at his pebble before he tucked it away in his pocket, “Was it like that? At first? At all?”

“The rage sings its own song,” Mazrah said, nodding along slowly with Latro’s words. “I have known Ornim who could not distinguish between friend and foe, yes. My brother was mostly left to my father’s methods as a whelp and he grew up to be a monster. Temper like a werewolf, we used to say. My mother eased me into it so it was not so bad for me.” 

She regarded him with curiosity, silent while she thought, her head cocked. “I know what your problem is,” Mazrah said eventually. “You are not whole. There is Latro and there is not-Latro. The snapping wolf. But you do not accept him. He lives in your head, or your heart, but you buried him there. When he comes out, he has no choice but to do so with everything he has. The rage must be [i]inside[/i] you, not [/i]beside[/i] you, a stranger in your skin. Do you understand? There are ways to do that. The lessons my mother taught me, about acceptance and control, are things I can pass onto you. But you have to be open to it,” she said, speaking the last words with compassion, and she smiled a smile of kindness and pity. She knew that this would not be easy for Latro. 

He needed something. That was something, what Mazrah offered. Where Francis had taught him to press back the urge to do violent deeds until it was like a dam breaking and a pent river spilling blood that swallowed all in its path… Mazrah told him to let the water flow. But he thought back on what good for anyone that had done in the past. Violence begets violence. His own clan’s history told him such that East was a word almost an insult in itself. “Maybe.” He said, “Just let me think on it. On everything.”

After a spell, he turned his head, tongue a little looser after all the talk of tribes and kindred souls and some sense of camaraderie in that. “Your people, the Orcs. Your tribe has never crossed the Reachmen of the East or West in your lifetime?”

She shook her head, the beads that hung from her skull clacking together softly. “I am from Orsinium, which now lies far away from the Reach. Between Hammerfell and Skyrim. We might cross it if we keep going north. Anyway, we keep to ourselves. The king knows what happened to the last Orsinium. And the one before that. And before even [i]that.[/i] I have fought Nords and Redguards that came too close to our lands, but not your kind,” Mazrah explained and laughed. “Based on what I have seen you do, I am glad I never did. Why do you ask?” 

Latro nodded, quite interested in Mazrah’s words. It struck a chord with him, oddly but not, to have someone who came from somewhere not entirely unlike the peoples he did. Sometimes, even these days, the Reach tugged him back by the last string it still held to him. “The Witch-Mothers, the ones old enough to know only Reachspeech, the Valley Tongue, they tell of times where the Reachman and the Orc traded traditions.” He said, “Our magic, feared and misunderstood as it is, is rooted from those first shamans to talk with those Orsimer. It’s where some Clans hold to the traditions of Malacath, instead of Namira or others.”

“Thank you,” he looked at the sand, his toes wriggling deeper into it and feeling the coarseness between them, “Some look at me different. Even Sora, and her gaze hurts me most.”

Mazrah’s eyes widened while Latro talked. That was news to her. Because the strongholds and Orsinium itself kept being razed to the ground, much of Orsimer history was lost. “Strange turn, then, that there is little magic to be found among the Ornim today,” Mazrah said ruefully. “It is good to know that your people did not forget.” 

When he spoke of Sora, Mazrah felt a pang of sympathy and she had to resist the urge to cradle him in her arms and press him to her bosom. “I’m sorry. I can imagine the pain that causes you. You don’t want to be something that she is afraid of.” She tapped her chin. Now Latro’s reluctance to accept her offer made more sense. Even if they could find a way to harness Latro’s inner fury and allow him to control it, would Sora ever approve of it? She did not seem to mind it when Mazrah succumbed to it, but then again, they were not lovers, and Mazrah figured that Sora did not doubt her ability to keep her rage under control. 

“I heard dogs were bred from wolves,” she said suddenly after a moment of silence. “Sora does not fear dogs, does she?” 

“Eh?” Latro’s brow crooked a bit, what was this about dogs of a sudden?

That made her laugh. “We must find a way to turn you from a wolf into a dog, you silly boy. Something she can trust.”

Latro nodded, eyes wide, “I see.” He was about to tell her that he didn’t know if bringing Pale-Feather back from the recesses of his mind would be good, but he scarcely thought he’d be more than a very even match for her, and even that was up for debate. The tempest winds can not break the tree that knows not to tense when it should flex. She had control, he had rage. “I see. Perhaps.” He had already come this far with her in this idea, what was a little more, “How will you teach me?”

“I’ll have to think long and hard about the way my mother taught me,” Mazrah said and waved reassuringly at the wide-eyed look on Latro’s face. “Don’t worry, you’ll have time to prepare yourself. But it’s mostly exercises and practice sessions. You will have to discover what you can use as your anchor. It can be an object, a memory, a feeling. Anything, really. Something powerful that means a lot to you that ties your focus together. For me, it’s the old ways of the huntress that my mother taught me and the ancient tradition it represents. I think of her and all the women that came before her that carried that art, like a lit torch, into the world of today. I cannot let them down. I must stay in control.” She smiled at the thought and and looked down at her tattoos. “Every time I see my own arm, I am reminded of this. It is my anchor.”

“An anchor.” He muttered, looking at Mazrah’s tattoos as she talked. It wasn’t a tradition only to the Orsimer. He’d seen his own people adorned in the symbols and runes of their ancestors long, long past. He thought on what could be an anchor for him. The pebble, he thought, or the lute? He chewed his lip while thinking, “How long did it take you to control it? It’s like you can will yourself into it.”

“I can. How long it took is hard to say. I learn more every day. But I have not succumbed to the rage unwillingly since I came of age, if that is what you mean,” Mazrah said. “Is there anything in this world that is more important to you than Sora?”

He looked to his and Sora’s tent at that. Then he looked around, the people that stuck by him and each other all this time. Like a family. Like his family. He saw Sora about the camp, his eyes steadily on her, his lover. His everything. He shook his head at Mazrah’s question, speaking with a resolve and certainty he thought had left him, “No.”

That made her smile. Mazrah nodded. “Good. Your anchor should be related to her. Give it some thought and come to me when you feel you are ready to begin.”

He nodded, giving her his easy smile now that it felt a bit easier to come to him, “Thank you.” He said, “I will, definitely. Expect me sometime.”

He smiled at her as he stood and stretched. It was then he remembered he owed a fine lady a song. Now was the best time, when his muse struck him. It was a very long time since he’d written anything, a shame. With that, he took his leave, bare feet sinking into the sand and lichen as he walked. For the first time in a long time, he felt like himself again.