Death Without Dying

Manacles and chains sang a disheartened symphony of slavery and defeat. What few remnants of Taurajo that did not escape were captured by the Alliance and chained in a column down the center of their ruined camp. They could not understand the harsh, guttural language of the humans, but the tone of hatred was unmistakable. Each of them knew that their survival would be short-lived.
 
Het’heru sat on the ground among the prisoners, huddled into herself as tightly as she could. Her brown eyes stared, unseeing, at the hard-packed earth. Over and over within her mind’s eye, she replayed Shashona’s death. She should have done more to protect her dearest friend. She should have pushed Shashona ahead of her, instead of dragging her behind. She mentally flagellated herself for every misstep, every action she could have done differently. Her guts twisted themselves in knots as she blamed herself in an endless loop of self-loathing.
 
One of the humans approached her, kicking her hard in the thigh. She lifted her head from where she’d buried it against her knees. Get up, the human growled in his foul tongue.
 
“Imako sten iche,” Het’heru replied, shaking her head.
 
“Don’t you speak your heathen tongue at me, you monstrosity!” The man bellowed, swinging a fist to punch Het’heru on the end of her snout, as if she were nothing more than some uncooperative livestock.
 
Het’heru’s hands flew to her offended nose as she mumbled, “Imako sten iche…” again for him. She didn’t understand him, couldn’t he see that? She hunkered down into herself, trying to make herself as small a target as possible – which was ludicrous when comparing a tauren to a human.
 
The human grabbed her by one of her horns, jerking her head around painfully. He drew the sword belted at his waist and waved it at her. “Get up!”
 
Uncertain of what else to do, but not wanting to get cut, Het’heru shambled to her feet. The human rattled his sword again and pointed toward a large tent beyond the smoke of Taurajo’s ruins. “Walk,” he barked, though Het’heru still had no comprehension of what he was saying. He shoved and jostled her toward that tent and she shuffled her way toward it, feeling as if she were walking toward her own death. The human moved ahead of her as they neared their destination, his blade preventing her from taking another step forward. All Het’heru would ever remember was the dark hatred in his eyes.
 
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“Where is the Horde amassing their armies?” The human demanded.
 
Het’heru sat on the ground, numb from pain. With each answer in Taura-he or each non-answer she gave, the humans would beat her until she dared not stand, lest they take it as defiance. Could they not see that she didn’t understand them? She did not speak their tongue and they clearly could not understand hers. Each day they questioned her, as they questioned all of the prisoners they had taken from Taurajo, and each day they were given no answers. It drove the humans into frenzy.
The largest and angriest of them was a man in splendid, tooled armor. His voice was enough to set his own men scrambling to whatever task he ordered them. It was to this man they were all taken every day and each of them forced to endure torture and endless questions. This was Het’heru’s fifth day before him.
 
He turned to a nearby brazier, burning a sheaf of documents he held in his hand. His eyes once more swept over the taller tauren, though the coldness of his gaze made her cringe. He smiled at that --smiled, as if her fear and uncertainty were something that pleased him.
 
“Tell me…” He enunciated slowly, as if that would make her understand. All she understood was the deadly threat in the tone of his voice and the dark, evil things lurking in the depths of his eyes. “Where the Horde is hiding.”
 
“Imako—“
 
No sooner than she began to utter the phrase, the man reached out, grabbing her by the horn. By sheer strength and the weight of his armor alone, he hauled her head down and slammed the left side of her face into the brazier. Het’heru could only scream in agonized terror as she flailed and, in her pained confusion, managed to throw the human off her and through the wall of the tent. Outraged cries mingled with the clangor of drawn weapons. Death loomed so close that Het’heru could feel his icy fingers upon her spine.
 
RUN! Her mind screamed. She obeyed. Hooves moved with a will of their own, sending her leaping over the fallen commander and through the shocked crowd of soldiers. With her girth and height, she bowled through them like a scythe through dry winter wheat. She thought of nothing, save egress. She ran until the angry yells of the humans faded to nothingness and there was nothing left around her save dry earth and raw desert. Only then did she lie down, bury her face in the coarse, crackling grass.
 
Only then did she weep. Not just for herself, her ruined face, or her devastated people – but for Shashona, the ache of loss, and the feeling of death without dying.