The moon set alight the fog spreading over the low areas of the Barrow-downs. It hovered at knee height for the moment to obscure the ground from my vision. I crouched behind a spar of stone watching shambling wights moving around and swirling the growing haze around their skeletal legs. I had already followed the ridge rising above the Old Barrows Road around and to the south, but I could only wonder how much farther it would be until I found the crebain and whatever evil force seemed to be leading them. Was it another of the Nazgûl? Were they female and male? Was it one of the red-robed cargûl instead? I couldn’t worry about it until I found them; yet, I found myself returning to the idea repeatedly when I had to pause and assess my path forward as I did presently.
When it wasn’t concern for what I might find at the end of my path, I wondered at how Bombadil had managed to get over the ridge to begin with by skipping and leaping around. I had yet to find a path over it to the south where he might have come over. I had no real idea whether the crebain had even flown to the south, to be frank, but it seemed the most logical notion to begin with. Bombadil might not have gone over the ridge but around, the same as I had, and he hadn’t been absent for long enough to have gone across the entirety of the barrows and back no matter which direction he had chosen. My target had to be close by, and that meant the other side of the ridge.
I lifted a hand and my mask to rub a gloved finger on the side of my nose with a frown. Something in the area plagued me so that I itched. A weed. A flower. The walking dead. Something. I had already killed three barghests, five huge rats, and two wights because of untimely sneezes. I didn’t actually know how the wights managed to wield swords, let alone bows, given they had no ligaments and muscles with which to pull back bowstrings or bend their joints. I tried not to think about it. It was most likely black sorcery of the foulest kind that I could only be thankful was penetrable by a good dagger throw or strike.
I had come to realize quickly that the scent of musty, old crypts meant that the dead had newly risen. It was easier to avoid those mounds before their inhabitants could find me than for others. The carrion dogs howled in the night and preyed upon creatures that simply wanted to make their homes there, when they weren’t actively rooting up the bones of the dead to chew on them. I knew their kind. We named them Black Dogs while I traveled with the caravans, though they had different names depending on where we went. The Scuttledells south of Lake-town had them as Black Dogs, though we rarely went through that war-torn area. It was more we took a boat down the Anduin instead to avoid it completely and reach Rohan or further. The travel wound up much faster as it was.
A tall stone spire reached for the dark heavens in the near distance on a hill. It was surrounded by smaller stones of a similar shape. It was one of the few landmarks that I knew from my time in Bree: the Dead Spire in the northern Barrow-downs. It was somewhat central to the area and visible from a far enough distance that I could guide myself by it. This didn’t make it safe; on the contrary, barghests, rats, and wights crawled over its surface in their mindless hunting for victims. People like me, though I counted myself only a potential victim rather than a foregone conclusion.
I continued on my way. I passed as a shadow might to avoid contact with the aggressive creatures who had stirred due to the dark influences and powers at work here. I could hear the crebain cawing long before I saw them and knew my destination was close. Their calls helped me pinpoint them, in fact, and I realized I might have overshot them had I not been using my senses appropriately.
I crept up until I could see what awaited me while they couldn’t see me. I had that much skill, at least. One strangely garbed woman stood tending almost lovingly to the four crebain accompanying her. I could hear her speaking to them in a low tone that kept me from understanding the content of her words. She would lift a hand to stroke one’s feathered chest with her fingers and feed it bits of what I could only say was meat of some form, given what they were. Another would mantle its wings and flap them with a jealous cry to see its brother receive a treat and hop or waddle closer to her on its perch to gently peck at her hands with little low warbling sounds so that she had to turn her attention to it, as well. She treated them as pets or children.
I wanted to flank her, but she had positioned herself against the boulders and stone of the ridge instead of in the open. I had no gap and no way of using it to my advantage, and the crebain themselves used the ridge as a watchtower. The only reason they hadn’t spotted me yet, other than my stealth, was because she was offering them treats for good behavior. Or out of her affection. Either way, their attention had been neatly diverted at the exact right time for me.
Or so I thought as I stole toward her turned back and slid my knives from my sleeves, carefully concealing their shining blades under the light of the stars and moon above. The crow-like monstrosities shared the fascination with sparkling objects with their black-plumed cousins. I could hear her as I approached in the shadows as she said, “Andraste is here, my loves. Your lost kin will be replaced. You were the strongest of the flock… rest and sleep a little while to forget your sorrows.”
Andraste, I thought to myself. That must be her name. It didn’t matter to me. She and the birds had to die if the Ring’s whereabouts were to be kept secret and safe. I never learned the names of my victims or asked questions. Those didn’t benefit me when I needed to silently kill someone for my reward, and when I accidentally learned them, it often caused me hesitation and guilt later that I couldn’t afford to feel. I might have liked the violence more than I was willing to admit but humanizing the target was never a good idea.
I was wrong that it was the exact right time to pull the attention of the crebain and that they hadn’t already spotted me coming. Before I could even reach her, a craban made a soft noise and Andraste looked over her shoulder. “I should have realized an idiot would come,” she greeted me with a sneer. She wasn’t an attractive woman, but she wasn’t a hideous one either. Something dark flitted over and through her features and eyes as she turned to me. “The skipping and singing idiot must have sent you.”
I bristled up at her comment about Orald. Despite my misgivings about the ancient being, I felt mildly protective over him. He was part of our culture, my culture, and those of the Free People. How dare she openly mock him? Never mind that I might have privately done the same. It didn’t feel right to mean it so much as this woman obviously did. “Do you think I fear you?” I asked coldly from behind my mask.
She laughed in scorn. “The Lord of the Nazgul returns to Othrongroth. You would be wise to flee before his arrival or you shall know true fear.”
I glanced between her and the quartet of crebain behind her. The breeze suddenly shifted enough to blow the stench of decaying flesh to my nostrils even under the mask, and I realized then that she was feeding her charges meat from corpses dead only a short time. Where she had gotten them, I didn’t know. Perhaps the victims of the shattered group of merchants I had seen camping on the Old Barrows Road. Their dead would be shambling wights at this point as well. “Those creatures have nothing of importance to offer your master,” I bluffed at her. “You’ll be struck down for your stupidity.”
She motioned with a high-pitched cackle of delight and I knew she’d called that bluff. “Fool! Did you think that my pets would not learn that the Ring now travels east in the hands of a hobbit named Frodo Baggins?”
They had overheard the hobbit’s words after all. “There is no such hobbit,” I began through gritted teeth, but she shouted over me. “You have failed utterly! When the master of the Nine returns, he shall learn of this – and of your untimely death!” she declared in triumph. Even as she swung her arm in an arc to motion the crebain forth, I shifted my stance to a defensive one. “Now, come my pets!”
They attacked in twos when in a flock, if the last fight I’d had in Buckland with them had been any indication. I was ready for the four of them to come for me at once all the same. They launched themselves in the gloom and I had to orient by moonlight and the sound of their wings moving. How many were there? I wasn’t sure.
The first blow landed across my head as a pair of beating, black appendages crashed against it from above and behind. When I turned to slash at the air, I felt a connection but couldn’t clearly see what I had hit: the attacker or one of its kin. Whichever one it was, the craban dropped to the ground and flapped spastically at my side. I turned my attention to the next one and clearly spotted it for just long enough to spit its hovering form on the end of my knife so it, too, fell. There was no time to check if they were dead, however, as within moments, an angry call from above heralded the second pair’s assault. I could hear Andraste screeching at them from nearby as they dodged my strikes so that they were non-lethal, yet bloody. I shattered the wing of one with a timed blow and faced the last one. A lucky strike sheared off it’s head in a spray of black in the night and I stood amidst the carnage I had wrought.
Andraste shrieked, “No… My beautiful birds!”
Turning to her, I sneered, “I killed their flock in Buckland and you expected them to kill me now? Who’s the fool, here?”
“You shall die for this!” she snarled in response and came for me with her weapon in hand. I evaded her first strike, turned, and threw my knife into her pale, exposed throat. She looked surprised as her hands lost their grip on the staff she held so it fell, clattering, to the ground. They came up to her neck as her knees gave way and she sank to the ground near her birds. She had time to take hold of the hilt and pull it as she crumpled over sideways and stared at me with incredulity. The night breeze ruffled my dark clothing as I stood staring at her for a long moment. I then calmly walked past her on silent feet and let her dying ears hear the squawks of the three remaining crebain as I lifted them one by one and twisted their heads with audible cracks to end them. When I bent down after to retrieve my bloodied dagger from one of her hands, she had tears in her swiftly dimming eyes.
“You should’ve feared me more,” I said simply, almost gently, to her. And then used her clothing to clean my weapons before replacing them in their hidden sheaths.
I stayed until she had died not because I wanted to but because I had to know for certain that the information she held would stay with her. A barghest howled in the distance as her blood poured from her slit throat and soaked into the ground beneath her. When I walked away, I made sure to cling to the shadows near the ridge once again and guided myself by the gleam of the moon on the Dead Spire.
I had come nearly abreast of it when a shimmering apparition intersected my path. It floated along what seemed to be a set track around the Spire’s base, paused to hover as if searching for something, and then moved on again. I tensed and prepared to defend myself, wondering how I would fight a ghost, when it spotted me and stopped once again. “Who are you?” I demanded warily of the armored, decaying shade. “What do you want of me?”
An airy, hoarse voice from the crypt wheezed in some kind of rhyme and meter,
“All was silence;
now the sound of steel
rings from battles past
long beyond the laying of bones;
stirred by evil’s passage
my brother walks again,
so too our foes.
Duty-bound we stand as one,
lost as he may be.
A lord he rose and, solemn,
buried me.
My shield calls to my arm,
my ring calls to my hand,
my sight departed as my life,
our oaths bind us still;
protect and serve this land.”
It didn’t attack, but I wasn’t the best at poetry. “Right,” I replied dubiously. I had to think a moment about the shade’s words. “All was silence. You were at peace?” It nodded its skeletal head once. “And now something has awakened you and… your brother, and your enemies that killed you?” Again, it nodded at my words in silent agreement. “You died first and aren’t sure where he is, though.” A nod. “But you and he want to protect this place again because… of that evil that awakened you.”
“Yesss,” it hissed with what I thought might be relief and even happiness. As happy as a dead spirit could be, I suppose.
I didn’t want to stay any longer. I needed to get back to Bombadil and Strider to let them know that the deed was done and the hobbits and Ring were safe for now. Something about the shade pulled at me, though, so that I stepped closer to it with a frown visible beneath my mask. “Then what is it you need from me?” I repeated with a shake of my head. “I don’t know how you can fight things that aren’t also spirits.”
“My shield calls to my arm, / my ring calls to my hand,” it replied with an air of a crypt long buried that had been newly opened.
I blinked once. “You need me to find your shield and ring?” When it nodded, I glanced around for a moment at the surrounding barrows. “Oh, this should be quick,” I muttered to myself with a sigh.
But it continued to speak, this time with something new. “Long did I rest, / now awake, as vengeance claims trinkets / to call a curse upon our bones.”
I made a noise. “Vengeance?” I echoed as I returned my attention to him. I was reminded of his words from before about enemies also walking again now. “One of your enemies has your items?”
The wraith nodded and then spoke again. “As it was in life, / so too in death. / His curse on us still / as we yearn for sleep.”
I made a face as I nodded, though I wasn’t sure that the shade could see it. “I think I understand that part. You just want to keep sleeping and this…” I paused before I could say the word I wanted to say, as vulgar as it was. “Moron,” I said instead, striving to be polite, “woke you up because he has your things, which is a bit of a holdover of a curse from when you were all still alive.” I sighed. “Where can I find him, do you know?”
The shade appeared more animated at my reluctant aid. “My ring, forgotten, / may still be found.” He motioned in such a vague manner that I had no real idea what direction he intended to point at. “Speed along, living, / to a tomb of ground.”
“Speed along?” I growled. “Don’t be impatient, wraith. You’ve been dead for this long. You can wait another few hours if needed.” I decided to move to my left first and go around the Spire toward some of the mounds that I saw in the near distance. Surely, it wouldn’t be far away from the wandering shade’s circular path around the Spire. Not if he had decided to stay nearby at least.
I moved cautiously to the front of the first small barrow that I found. I didn’t know if a wight would leap out at me or down from the top or not. I needn’t have worried: the undisturbed area in the front told me that this wasn’t the tomb I needed. The next three, one to the north, another to the southwest, and the last to the west, all appeared the same. I felt some small comfort that whoever, or whatever, was inside hadn’t yet risen like so many other corpses. I turned at last to the south and firmed my resolve. If this wasn’t the barrow, then I would have to tell the shade that I couldn’t find it and had to be on my way. I had more important things to take care of.
This tomb was different. It had a strange tension to it as I approached and, upon searching the front where the slab stood against the door, had disturbed earth around it as if something had entered and exited recently. I wasn’t sure if it was the right tomb, but I knew there was a wight inside regardless. Was this the Wandering Shade’s own tomb, stolen from him? That would make some sense as well. I drew my knives, set my shoulder against the stone, and started to roll it out of the way of the opening.
The low scraping of stone on stone and the grinding of the earth beneath the heavy weight sounded like thunder in the silent night. Even the small insects still chirping nearby went dead. I scurried back after a sword slid out and barely missed my side. There wasn’t enough space for a body to leave, but skeletal hands made sure the stone rolled another few inches to allow the wight to exit. “Fool of a shade! My master the Bone Man has made a thrall of your shield-brother!” the hollow, raspy voice announced as it stepped forth into the night air.
It seemed surprised to see a living being in front of it instead. There were no lids to blink yet the hesitation once its sockets turned to me was almost palpable. “No eyes making it hard to see?” I cracked.
The barrow wight continued as if it hadn’t heard me. Maybe it hadn’t. The thing didn’t have ears, after all. “And you… a living fool soon to be dead… I will send you into the shadow world too!”
I made a soft tsking sound and drew my weapons. “I already move through them but thank you for the offer.”
“So come to me now, fool… Come and die!”
“You first,” I retorted, and sure enough, the undead thing stepped forward with sword raised. I expected it to fall within a couple of strikes as the others I’d fought had as I evaded the first swing and went in under its arm with my knives. Both found homes in the corpse’s body with an eerily hollow sound before I pulled them away, taking a slight bit of rib cage with them.
The blows didn’t even slow the creature down. It turned and stabbed downward at me with its sword and a gaping, denuded jaw. I barely made it out of the way in time and received a thin furrow down and across my back for my trouble. My hiss of pain wasn’t just for the new wound; it was also for the torn shirt I now had to wear. I didn’t know how I’d get it mended after this was over if I didn’t find some ready cash. On the other hand, if I didn’t get my head back into what I was doing, I wouldn’t have to worry about it.
I feinted and went low to sweep out one of its bony legs. The entire leg from the knee down broke off and flew a distance away so that the wight lost its balance. It still hacked at me in mindless fury until I managed to stomp a booted foot onto its sword-bearing arm. The thing cracked under my heel and I did the same to its head at the neck while it clawed at my legs and left scratches down them. Reaching down, I grabbed at its skull and yanked the whole thing back until it came free of the spine with a snap. Hurling it from me, I stabbed and twisted the wight’s body apart completely in a delighted rage for having shed my blood. Only after I had completed my macabre mission did I rise and make my way into the barrow where it had been.
The moonlight from the open entry allowed me to see inside just enough as I searched the small tomb for any evidence of the shade’s presence. The large stone casket inside had been shifted and opened so that the body within lay exposed. One skeletal arm lay broken off on the outside of the coffin. I wrinkled my nose as I gingerly lifted it to place it back inside with the body. “I don’t know if this is yours,” I said aloud to the absent shade, “but if it is, I might as well be nice.” I found no ring inside with the rotted body. I dragged the top of the stone back into place and looked around the barrow further. There had to be a ring here if it was the shade’s tomb. If not, I would have to go back empty-handed and leave, bloodied, without anything to show for it. My pride smarted at the very idea. Was I a burglar, or wasn’t I?
I found the ring when a glint of gold caught my eye near the slab at the doorway. Moving to it I found a simple men’s ring inlaid with two stones. Pocketing it, I stepped out of the barrow and pushed the stone back into place to seal it once more and went in search of the Wandering Shade.
Finding him took longer this time, mostly due to the fact I had to actually go in search of him rather than running across him accidentally. I saw his floating, half-visible blue figure ahead of me after a half hour and approached him with as much irritated civility as I could muster with a back and leg that still felt on fire. Digging the ring from my pocket, I opened it to show it to him. He floated closer and said, with more hope in his breathy, ghostly voice, “Help my hand, now to his arm, lost too, lost too.”
I stared at him for a long moment. “He… lost his arm?” The shade shook his head at me but didn’t elaborate. I sighed and asked, “Then what is it that you need from me? I wish you would speak plainly.”
The shade fell silent for a few moments before speaking in its riddling way once again:
“Sundered and shattered,
metal and bone,
life bled onto the ground.
In shade of stone,
a south facing wall
wherein the earth
slept once the dead.
On cold hallowed ground
where dead lay asleep
woke they to greet
our treasure claimed.
There, by our honored,
sleeping, and gone,
my brother bid me farewell.
Now, the dead rise,
stirring the earth
now cursed from where
I fell.
Our curse recalled;
we shall walk
until the dead
are quelled.”
I lifted a hand to my head and rubbed the back of my neck as I rolled my head around. “Again with this,” I grumbled. “Somewhere, near a wall,” I began slowly, “where you fought and died….” The shade nodded. “Something in the ground?” I hazarded. It nodded once again. “You want me to go kill wights there because they’re disturbing that area?”
“Yes,” it breathed. “Slept once the dead.”
“I’ll consider that a yes,” I replied. “You and your brother can’t rest until they’re gone.” I pressed my lips together. “Somewhere near a wall is where you died and your men were buried.” I looked up at him a touch sharply. “With treasure?”
“Yes,” it said again with a nod of its skull, and I cursed internally. I wouldn’t be able to find it and take it myself if it was linked to the spirit in front of me. “Which direction?” I asked hopefully.
The wraith’s head lifted toward the sky above. “Against many did we fight,” he replied, “for a treasure, which we stole.”
I smirked. “That’s the way of it sometimes. I can understand.” I had done my share of punching and stabbing for something I had stolen to begin with, just to keep it.
But he continued without acknowledging me, saying, “Rise they from the ground / at his call / his cackle, cough and cry. / Fighting at the edge of stone / in a hollow where we lay the bones.”
“Cackle, cough, and cry?” I echoed, baffled. “Have you lost your… you know what? If an evil being can call forth the dead by coughing, I’m sure he has to be formidable. So, these enemies are at the edge of a stone wall in a hollow with people buried under the ground.” I gave him a long-suffering look. “Could you just point?”
The shade turned and did so. I didn’t expect it and therefore took a moment before nodding my thanks and setting off. The distance was farther this time, north of the shade’s tomb. It took time to get there given I had to fight through several enemies and incur a few more shallow wounds. Barghests have an extraordinarily strong bite that I had no desire to feel fully clamped on one of my limbs.
The place where the Barrow-downs more or less seemed to end on this side of the valley backed up against a separate set of ridges leading into the Old Forest that circled around. There existed more than one barrow, at least three that I could see, and I rubbed my sore right shoulder as I stood examining the area. A south facing wall caught my eye and I crept toward it. The vicinity remained quiet but for chittering rats and scuttling crawlers for the moment. The hazy scud here had thickened so I couldn’t see the ground well the lower I descended. I didn’t like the look of it one bit.
My instincts proved correct as I came close to the wall and the ground erupted nearby. Two wights made a strange growling, coughing noise of snarls as they somehow rose from the earth with their weapons. I leaped back in alarm, knives out, as they attacked. I had no time to toss out a witticism this time before I hacked and slashed them back to rest. The sound of more remains clattering up from somewhere nearby alerted me to a second onslaught of wights to put down, but the third and final pair nearly took me by surprise as I moved away from the freshly killed undead body. One reached out from beneath the thick fog to grab at my wounded leg while the other attempted to stab me from a lower position at the same time. The maneuver I had to complete to avoid being impaled from below was catlike enough that I knew I’d regret those muscles come time to wake up from my future well-deserved sleep.
I had slain all of the wights that seemed willing to show themselves near the wall. I made sure of it as I paced up and down, even stamping the ground more than once with a hiss of, “Come out, you worms! Out! Or are you too afraid even now?” My temper brought no more to the surface and I exited the area hoping that I had found the right one and defeated all of the wights the shade would need.
I found him once again and described the area where the wights had risen. “Was that the right place?” I asked at the end.
“Yes,” it breathed. It paused for a few moments and I felt some stirring of hope that perhaps I had done all that was required of me. “Still I linger,” it finally intoned. “One foe remains.”
I rolled my eyes heavenward. “Of course it does.” What am I doing? I asked myself. I have to be on my way already. I can’t keep running these hills endlessly for this shade.
The ghost set off on another enigmatic lyrical journey describing a wight in the southern area of the barrows who the brothers slew while they still lived. Or it was a man they slew and buried there, while they all still lived. I wasn’t entirely sure. Regardless, the wraith claimed, “Brothers, cursed, / return again / to face this foe / from whom they stole.”
My glance sharpened on him. “The treasure you fought and died for, that you buried off to the north – you stole it from this person to begin with and started this whole thing?” I felt myself try to bite my tongue when I said it. The hypocrisy involved didn’t escape me, given my profession. I had tried to steal something from a forest cottage and look where it had landed me.
“For deeds most noble / in intent,” the Wandering Shade answered. I frowned. Noble deeds and burglary? I wasn’t entirely certain how the two might go in hand. The idea was one that I wanted to explore later, would have to, given the current circumstances. “Whilst evil walks / so too will we.”
“Mm. You keep mentioning that part.” I rolled my shoulders a bit. “This… Bone Man,” I said, calling the spirit by a name that seemed to fit with the shade’s narrative, “he’s to the south, then?”
The shade nodded. “Seek you he, / beyond the border / south towards stone / the land of Cardolan / his Bones there still roam.”
“And that will be everything you need me to do for you here so you can rest again, I hope?” I asked dubiously. It was never that easy.
The spirit nodded once and moved to continue its floating path around the Dead Spire. I set off to the south and whatever pass might exist through the ridge bisecting the two areas. I had a strange feeling of dread as I walked the hills and barrows that I was moving from the pan to the fire the farther south that I went.
Loading ...
Recent Comments