Pipe-weed Dreams

Journal of Rowana, daughter of Rowetha

01 / 02 / 2120 of the Fourth Age.

After twenty years in the rangers, girl and woman, I've taken my severance package in the southlands. Lost too many friends in far Harad; and I've no stomach for the core cities and the arcologies in the north and west. My father's farm was long ago swallowed by the conglomerates, and I've no desire to be a corporate mercenary or to spend the rest of my life in a cubicle working for the greater glory of the Reunited Megacorp.

Forty acres in the high tablelands of Gorgoroth, past the mountains. A thousand years of rain have turned the rich volcanic soil and hills into wide plains, most of which hadn't known hand or hoe since the last Dark Lord minus one died. Hot springs spilled down water that smelled of rotten eggs, and the ground still rumbled at times. Yet there were growing things here. The last wilderness.

I took the highway east from the White City, two lanes of tarmac that climbed right into the mountains. I didn't have to look back; I could still see the gleaming skyward spires of glass and steel in the rearview mirror all the way to what used to be called the Morgul Vale. The ATV was an Ironhills Pathfinder, and it purred along as it ate up the miles; dwarf work, as good as the military-grade vehicles of Men. I didn't need four-wheeled drive for the blacktop, but once it got off-road, I would.

The last gas station was called Bardur's Rest, the neon runes flickering in the dusk. Crows with cold steel eyes watched me pull up to the pump, and walk through the door. The old Dwarf's metal eyes were plugged into wires, which led into an array of black boxes, but the crow on his shoulder saw for him. This was as far as the palantir-fiber-optic network went into the old lands; from here on out, it was satlinks or nothing to connect to the global Matrix. Bardur was gas station, general store, net cafe, and post office all at one. He was happy to draw me a map, once I told him I was a settler.

"Lonely country," he grunted. The accent reminded me of the Lonely Mountain. "Not even ghosts or wights. You hunter, eh? Ex-military?"

It was a good guess. I was tall and whipcord-lean, dressed in faded desert fatigues and boots, my dog-tags still hung on a chain between my breasts. I was sixteen when I signed up, and my tanned skin made me look older than my thirty-seven years. Combine that with the close-cropped brown hair and the dull flat military-issue chrome eyes, it wasn't hard to peg me as former army.

His crows had also seen the gun rack on the Pathfinder, and the .45 Great Eagle on my hip. The faint tracery of scars on my bare arms and neck, where they'd laid the mithril wires in along the nerves. There wasn't much magic left in this old world, but there was cyberware, and one of the perks of service had been the augmentation. Reflexes like greased lightning.

"Ex-army. Gonna do a bit of farming," I said, and didn't elaborate.

Just past a small bridge, I turned off and followed the stream up into the hills. Between Bardur's map and the GPS, it only took a couple hours to arrive at the site, but it was full dark by then. I stepped out to stretch my legs and take a piss. Cracked open a warm beer and poured a sip to the Elf in the Moon, like we used to do back in the sandy hell of far Harad. Tomorrow there would be time to set the geomarkers, survey the site. Plan out where I was going to build the house, where I'd lay out the rolls. Most of my severence pay had gone into the pipe-weed seeds, and if a crop failed...

Well. That was the risk.

I was on the second beer and had built a fire in a ring of stones when the orc stumbled out of the tall, waving grass. My hand immediately went to the leadthrower at my hip, and I cleared leather before her eyes adjusted to the firelight. I could have plugged her then...but I hesitated.

She was only a few inches past four feet, which was a good two feet shorter than I was, though I'm counted tall enough among Men. Dressed in only a thin sort of shift, feet and head bare. The ears and eyes were too large, the skin too bright a yellowish-green, the hair that fell down to mid-back was blacker than the night, the breasts—I blinked. Her tits were the size of my head, and would have made her absurdly top-heavy if her ass wasn't similarly oversized for her height.

Vat-grown orc. Maybe even an Uruk. I'd fought Orcs in Harad, but there were the remnants of the old peoples, insurgents that fought against the encroachment and exploitation of the megacorps that wanted the oil and whatever other mineral wealth they could extract from the East. Uruk were rarer. Breeding them right took money. This one, with her proportions, had to be...I don't know.

Then I saw the ankle bracelet. My stomach curled.

Her lips quivered as she said something, to show neat fangs, white as ivory. Expensive dentistry. I shook my head.

"I don't know Black Speech."

The dark eyes widened at my voice and said, in halting Westron:

"Pleaz. Ha-alp."

Instincts urged caution. But I didn't like this picture. Unarmed, barely clothed, no scars, and that wasn't the kind of ankle brace that cops used. I'd seen the corporate mercs use those kind of things out in Harad, the contractors and bounty hunters. They had a small explosive charge, enough to take off a limb...and a GPS tracker, too.

Which meant she was a prisoner. Or a ****.

That made my decision for me.

"I've got a toolkit in the car," I told her. Then I pointed toward the fire. "You go over there. I'll need the light."

Demolitions hadn't been my specialty in the rangers. But I'd done the course and all the refresher training, every year. The anklet came off after half an hour of slow and meticulous work. I hefted the thing, and its small charge of plastic explosives. Wasn't safe to keep it. Wasn't safe to not keep it.

I threw it up into the air, as hard as I could. Lightning sang along my arm as wired reflexes reacted. The pistol was in my hand and tracking. The gun barked. The small explosive in the restraint went off with a bang, and the pieces fell into the stream.

By the fire, the orc-woman squatted. Eyes wide, but not afraid. Her lips worked out the words.

"T'ank. You."

Now, if I'd been thinking straight, I would have realized that the explosion would have brought some attention. Or that the orc-woman had to come from somewhere. My old sargeant would have whipped me bloody for not immediately securing the perimeter of the camp site. She realized it, though. She started pulling at the doors to the Pathfinder, trying to get in.

"Run. Now. Bad Man."

"Bad man?" I said.

"That would be me," a Man's voice came from the darkness. "And that would be my property."

He was tall, rawboned, straw-haired, grey-eyed. Acne had left scars like scattershot across his cheeks, and he either hadn't cared or didn't want to get the cosmetic surgeons to fix it. Yet his ears had a bit of a point, the eyes a bit of a slant, the nose was too long and narrow for the face. I'd seen folk in the White City do that, hinting at Elf-blood they didn't have. There was a shotgun in his hand, a very no-nonsense weapon with a sawn-off barrel, pointed at my chest.

"Is that a fact?" I smiled, as I carefully holstered the Great Eagle.

"Corporate property," he said. "I'm the delivery agent. Of course, there's a reward..."

Reflexes are a funny thing. I can draw and fire faster than I can just aim and fire when the gun is in my hand. Something about muscle memory, thousands of hours of practice, and elf-silver that made thought and motion seem as one. The bastard was visiting the halls of his fathers before his trigger finger could twitch. The orc-woman clung to the door of the Pathfinder, those big dark eyes wide, the yellow-green skin a little paler around her face.

My smile widened. Twenty years in the rangers, and I'd finally freed my first ****. And here I'd been afraid pipe-weed farming would be boring.

I holstered the pistol again and turned toward her. Touched my hand to my chest.

"Rowana," I said. "daughter of Rowetha."

She blinked. Babbled something in the Black Speech. I picked out a couple syllables.

"Azzie," I said. "Nice to meet you. Want a beer?"

"Um. Ya-az?" she said.

Which is how I met my partner.