Mugwort
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Character Name: Mugwort
Account Login: perciviliuslenfantThe girl clutched the hideous infant to her breast. Still gasping and bleeding from the birth she ran into the dark forest in the rain. Her father and the priest said the baby must die. They chased her into the wood with sputtering torches and naked knives. They thrashed after her and yelled her name. But even bleeding and in pain, she was faster.
She ran until her numb legs could carry her no more and her heart felt it would burst. She fell near a little stream on a bed of soft mosses. Even with her last breath she hugged the one thing that was ever truly hers to her chest. And then the sharp shrieks of the infant filled the night.
The cries might have brought a beast seeking a meal, but as luck would have it, the Druid heard the cries first. He woke from dreamless slumber and moved into the forest with certainty and without fear. A soft green light seemed to shine around him.
He could do nothing for the girl. She had lost too much blood and was already quite cold to the touch. But he plucked the horrid baby from the mosses where it had tumbled and carried it back to his shack. There he stilled its cries with the milk of the she wolf and gentle herbs. And he laid it to bed on dried rushes. Gods know why, but he kept the child for some time. Perhaps he was lonely in his forest hermitage. He named the ugly creature Mugwort, for the little plants that grew in the bed of mosses where it was found. After all, he reasoned, they were both were small and green.
But Mugwort was not small for long. He grew quite quickly. By the time the boy was six he was almost as tall as the Druid himself. And his strength was that of the ancestry on his father’s side, brutal and quick.
The Druid tried to teach Mugwort the ways of herb craft, but the boy’s mind was like a blunt rock and he quickly tired of the lessons. Still, he imparted what little wisdom he could on the blank canvas of the boy’s mind.
Realizing the futility of this sort of training, he sought out the Chief of a tribe of nomadic hunters and warriors that frequented this part of the wood at this time of year. The Chief was wise. He and the Druid would speak together if they chanced to meet in the forest. He asked the Chief to take Mugwort and train him as a warrior (since this better suited his temperament, and mental and physical capacities than the subtle teachings of nature). It took some convincing, and some judicious bribery with various herbal concoctions, but finally the Chief relented.
Mugwort was put with the youths of the tribe who were being made into warriors. The training was brutal as were his compatriots. All the callousness of childhood and the inventiveness of their quick minds were directed at Mugwort’s physical differences and stupidity. But Mugwort had little of the frailty of the fully human, and took to the warrior’s ways with ease. As Mugwort grew inhumanly strong and his tusks more fully formed, the other warriors-to-be grew to fear as well as hate him.
Sometimes Mugwort would visit the aging Druid and, as of old, they would talk about the world, about trees and other growing things, and about the ways of nature. Mugwort loved the Druid as a father and though he carried scant knowledge away from these talks, he still looked forward to them.
Mugwort became a prolific hunter. His eyesight was better than that of his peers. So much so that he could invade the sanctuary of the darkness that the animals had come to rely on. He brought down deer, rabbits, foxes, and the like with greater skill and frequency than anyone else in the tribe. And when battles needed to be fought, Mugwort's skills and power were unmatched. This did not go unnoticed by the Chief and Mugwort was favored with gifts of rings and necklaces. Which, of course, only increased the hatred of his fellows, especially Borsa the son of the Chief’s favorite concubine.
Borsa would not use the name Mugwort and called him only “Orc”. For many years Mugwort accepted this quietly, even as favored Ring-Bearer of the Chief and “Son” of the Druid. But one night by the fire, when Borsa said “Orc, get me a drink!”, something in Mugwort’s brain snapped. He knocked Borsa to the ground and beat him nearly to death before the others could pull him off. Then Borsa wanted to kill Mugwort more than ever before and he plotted with the other warriors.
The Chief was grown old and frail when the Druid finally died and the time of the plot was ripe. Mugwort was mourning the Druid deep in the forest as the warriors gathered. But the Chief, wise in the ways of men, understood what the plotters were up to and he sent a warning to Mugwort. The Chief’s pet crow came to him in the midst of his grief. It cawed loudly then it said one word over and over – “Run…. run run run run run”. An arrow whistled overhead just then and Mugwort turned to see the bunched warriors approaching. He took one last look at the grove of the Druid. Then he ran.
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Reviewd, XP Pending.
