A Burg’s Tale: Chapter 9

“This gelding is straight from Hengstacer,” the man near the southern gate told me as he slapped the animal’s rump. “Worth every bit of the 500 silver I’m asking, too! All the Hengstacer animals are.”

“I know.” I did, too. Second only to the Rohirrim, Hengstacer often brought in people from Eregion and beyond when they had a big sale planned during the year. Just hearing about an auction could do it. I had been with a caravan as a guard when word of one rippled through the merchants in Dale. I had never seen the rhythm of negotiations turn aside so quickly on both side with the new information. “Pretty sure they’re worth at least two or three gold if they’re part of the best stock, though.” I nodded at the horse the man was trying to sell off. “I just need one that isn’t going to be put down half a day out of Bree when its leg bone snaps under the weight of a rider. For 500 silver, I’m expecting that from a basic Hengstacer gelding.”

He leaned against the animal’s side. “And you’ll get it, too. Ol’ Hengstacer doesn’t only breed for show. Everyone knows that.”

“But not everyone has a Hengstacer horse for sale,” I countered. “Other than Hengstacer. How do I know it’s from where you say?”

He pushed the air at me as if to placate me. “I sell all of my horses with the papers they came with originally,” he assures me. “I buy them with that evidence, and when I sell them, I sell them with it as well. The paperwork goes with them along with the bill of sale.”

I looked toward the gelding once more. It was average sized, dark as sin, and seemed docile as a lamb. “What’s its temperament?” I finally asked. “Is it fit for a novice rider or an experienced one? Someone in between?”

He seemed to think that he had me, but the joke was on him. I paid him for the gelding with the silver in its pouch that I had brought along just for this purpose and went with him as he counted it out nearby. 500 silver. Half of the gold coin Mandrake had given me. The other half would go toward its tack and some supplies.

At least, it would’ve had I not promptly picked the salesman’s pockets for his gold while he remained distracted. Two for one. I happened to like my nimble fingers.

We shook on the deal, he handed me all of the parchments that I would need, I signed off on it, and everything found itself tucked away in my pockets. I had done business with the man sans mask – what would it look like for a masked man to try buying things, anyway? – but I put it back on as I collected my new investment’s lead rope. “Let’s get you dressed,” I told the dark bay horse. “And me, as well.” I still needed some better clothing and perhaps even some light armor if I meant to go gallivanting around like an idiot intent on endangering himself. I decided the horse’s name would be Neeker. It seemed better than the one that came on its pedigree papers.

I still found myself interested in the turtle situation even after the gelding had a good bridle, bit, and saddle fitted and I had what I wanted to wear plus some extra in the saddlebags. Every silver, I reasoned, is one less silver I’ll need to pay for things on the road. With that in mind, I turned Neeker north and followed the cobblestone road out to the Staddle gate. I found that my new gelding had a gait worth all 500 of the silver I had paid for him. He may not have been as expensive as some fine nobleman’s palfrey or a Rohirrim’s destrier, but he seemed to have enough stamina and speed, and most importantly sturdiness, to take me wherever I needed to go. He had a fine temperament, neither too hot nor too docile, that suited me just fine.

I found myself trotting down a familiar enough road in Staddle. I nodded at Constable Tanglerush as I neared her. “Hail, Morchandir. What brings you back to our neck of the woods?” she asked me with great curiosity.

I drew Neeker to a halt. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Grobo Dogwart lives?” I countered. “I’m on an errand for someone and need to get there.”

“Ah.” Tanglerush seemed amused for some reason. “This wouldn’t happen to do with his nephew, Benegar, and a large sack of turtles, would it?” At my heavy sigh and simple nod, she chuckled and pointed down the road west. “He’s one of Eldo’s neighbors, actually. Head that way and you can’t miss his hole.”

I knew more or less where I might be headed if Swatmidge was Grobo’s neighbor. Making a wide berth around the Widow Froghorn’s home lest she spot me with yet another task to try and win Eldo’s affections, rather than the other way around now that he had changed his mind, I finally slowed Neeker and halted him outside of the home I had been pointed to. Once dismounted, I knocked on the door and waited for an answer.

The hobbit who answered the door seemed fretful to say the least. He blinked and moved his gaze from where a normal man’s head might be to where mine sat further above. “Oh my!” I wasn’t sure if the exclamation had to do with my height or his current state of anxiety. What had him so afraid? “Are you here about the… the…” His voice dropped and filled with utter dread. “The turtles?” he whispered in horror, as if the very word might have been “Sauron” instead. “Please tell me that’s why you are here!” he begged, near tears.

A giant Man wearing a strange mask and black clothing knocks on your door, I thought, and you’re more terrified of turtles and want him to take them away? “Yes,” I replied simply. “Sig Mandrake sent me.” I had no idea how to feel about the situation other than to pity the poor hobbit. It had to be quite the fear.

The cavernous sigh of relief from Grobo confirmed my idea. “Good, good! You have no idea what that means to me!” He wrung his hands as he peered up at me with unshed tears. “My nephew Benegar collected a bunch of turtles and has apparently been keeping them in my shed.”

“He didn’t tell you he left them in there?” I blurted out. Nothing about this situation made any sense to me. Why am I finding all of these… these… odd situations? I wanted to demand of whatever powers that might be residing nearby.

He shook his head vehemently in answer. “I went in there this morning to fetch some supplies for breakfast, and what do I see?” His hands flailed toward the shed and I glanced that way, too. “Tu-tu-turtles everywhere!” he stammered, once again unable to get out the apparently hateful word. “They must have used their horrible little beaks to loosen the tie on the bag, and they have scampered loose!” He made little pinchers with his fingers at the mention of the beaks before clasping the sides of his face with his fists and shaking his head, almost his whole body, in a “no” fashion.

I just stared at him for a long moment before attempting to say, “I don’t think turtles scamp—”

He barged on obliviously in his panic. “They are crawling all around the shed!” he told me with a rising pitch of hysteria. “Do me a favour and pick up the bag inside the shed, then gather up the turtles! Let me know when you have done it. I am so scared of tu-tu-turtles I cannot stand to do it myself!” And with that, he scurried inside and shut the door but for a crack to peek out at me. “Oh, hurry and get them out of here!” he wailed, closing the door firmly afterward.

I turned slowly and walked to the shed, a smaller hole near Grobo’s larger one, and cautiously opened the door to peer within. Turtles didn’t immediately assault me, and I opened the door all the way to step in, closing it behind me. “Mandrake had better have more than a silver piece for this,” I grumbled as I let my eyes adjust.

I walked from the smaller front room to the larger one connecting it. My eyes quickly found the sack with a small hole torn out near the top and the severed rope that had held it closed lying nearby. I’ll need another length of twine to bind it fast once I collect the turtles, I reasoned and stepped inside the room to see if I could find said material. The sound of claws on the wooden floor, and of small creatures moving around bumping into things, confirmed Grobo’s words about the interlopers still being inside.

As if my boots on the floor, given I wasn’t being quiet at the moment, had startled one of them, the sack itself began to scoot over the planks away from me, most likely caught on one of the spines of the turtle’s back. I watched it go for a long, amused moment before turning back to the shelves and crates and boxes in the place. The hobbit had food stored here but also a few other items. Rope was one of them. I found some smaller, yet strong twine and secured it just inside my waistband near my belt for the time being. While I stood there, however, I realized I could burgle a bit of food while I was at it for my troubles.

Even as I thought it, I felt a set of quick nips along my ankles atop the new boots I had bought earlier that day. I hopped from foot to foot momentarily as I cursed, causing the turtles to shutter themselves away inside their shells to protect themselves, and finally said aloud, “Little biting blighters. I’m glad you’re bound for soup! Stop it!”

I strode to the still-scooting sack and pulled it up. The turtle beneath came free and landed with a solid rattle against the planks on the ground inside its shell. Shaking open the sack, I grasped the creature gingerly with one hand and stuffed it back into the burlap held in the other. Turtles first, I reasoned. Food second. Not in the same bag, though.

I moved around the room plucking up shells with turtles hiding inside them to replace them in their container, stooping low to get them at times when they decided to try for a low-lying opening that they couldn’t fit through. They weren’t exactly geniuses. One was even stuck, and I had to pull it out with a hammer as if it were a nail in order to get it back where it belonged. By the time I had finished, the bag, much larger than the one I had used previously, had notably more than six so-called tiny turtles inside – and only then did it occur to me. Why had Benegar come to Staddle to hold these things in his uncle’s shed instead of taking them directly back to Mandrake? Sig Mandrake’s home was far, far closer than he would’ve had to walk or ride to get from Halecatch Lake to west of Staddle, then from there to the Mud Gate area of Bree, and then all the way back.

Either there were places other than the lake to find the blasted things and we had all been bamboozled, or else these weren’t the right kind of turtle. Grobo’s nephew had done it on purpose, regardless.

I tied off the bag once more and, after a last check of the shed to make sure I hadn’t missed any, settled myself that there were eight of the things and no more. I found a smaller bag and filled it with some of the foods that I knew would keep easily in the store, tied it off, settled it on Neeker’s back opposite the hobbit’s line of sight once I had emerged from the shed, and called it a fair trade. As I approached the hobbit’s door, I heard Grobo talking to himself loudly within: “Terrifying little beasts! I cannot stand turtles! Their tiny little snapping beaks, their tough little shells, their deceptively-quick legs! I cannot stand them!” I knocked on the door, curtailing his litany, and waited for him to peek out through a crack once more. “That’s the turtle-carrying sack, is it?” His wary tone left no room for imagining his feelings about the objects within.

“It is,” I told him, hefting it up further for him to see out of a sense of perverse delight and pettiness.

He drew back and nearly shut the door at the motion, only opening it slightly up again when I lowered the bag to my side. “They are in there?” His face screwed up. “Oh, I can hear them plotting to escape again! The tiny little monsters!”

I looked down at the bag in my hand. It had no motion whatsoever to it given the turtles were all retracted in terror. “They aren’t that tiny,” I finally replied with a mild sense of defensiveness, wondering at the hobbit’s sanity if he could “hear them plotting” anything at all.

“Can you imagine how horrible it would be if they grew any larger than this?” He shuddered so violently the door rattled in his hands. “Oh, I cannot bear it! They are bad enough at this size!”

I took a moment to regard him once again through my mask and the crack in the door. “You… do realize they fold up inside the shell if you make a loud noise at them, don’t you? They aren’t exactly lethal to you.”

“I don’t know what Benegar was thinking, keeping them in my shed. He knows how I feel about turtles!” he cried in frustration.

I shook my head. “Did one kill your parents when you were a child or something?” I motioned before he could answer. “Your nephew probably did this as a prank on you, sir. The only place you can find these turtles is closer to the man wanting them than here. And if he knew that you were afraid of them…”

Silence followed, and then: “Blast that boy!” The scowl on Grobo’s face was clear enough for me to see even without the door being all the way open. “I should… should….” He trailed off and the scowl moderated to a frown. “You know, I haven’t seen my nephew Benegar since he left that bag of turtles in my shed. I hope the boy has not gotten himself into some turtle-related mischief!”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “They haven’t exactly eaten him, I’m sure. They hardly even nipped at my boots when I was in the shed with them.”

The sound of disgust he made at the thought almost had me laughing. I barely contained it. “Return that bag of turtles to Sig Mandrake at his shop in Bree,” Grobo demanded so fast that he nearly tripped on his own words, “and see if he has heard any more news of my nephew.” The door then shut firmly and with finality without an offer of payment in sight. I even waited a few more moments just in case the hobbit decided to open up again because he’d forgotten.

I secured the bag of beasties to the saddle so that their spines wouldn’t hurt Neeker or me and made off toward Bree with them. Food for the journey, I consoled myself as I thought about the other bag on the saddle. I at least had that, even if it might not last long.

My arrival at Mandrake’s home and the subsequent discussion left a great deal to be desired, however. “I just dragged a herd of turtles out of a hobbit’s shed while he nearly screamed and ran from them,” I told Mandrake with my fist clenched around the fee he’d paid me. “And you’re giving me one silver and fifty copper again for it?”

My flat tone had him baffled. “Well, yes. What else would I offer to you for your hard labor?” He motioned as if waving the topic away. “I did see the boy not long ago. He said he found a place where he’s sure to catch twice the turtles anyone else has caught and ran off to prove it.” He sighed and shook his head slowly. “I told him there were no turtles to be found at the place he described, as I have only ever seen frogs there, but he insisted.”

I grunted and pocketed the silver and copper. “He might be on to something. If it wasn’t just a prank on his turtle-hating uncle, this Benegar might have found a nest of these things somewhere other than Halecatch Lake. If he found them in one area, maybe he found them in another or thinks he can.”

Mandrake shrugged slightly. “If you are looking for him, you can see for yourself, I suppose. He was going to an island in the middle of one of the Everclear Lakes, north-west of Bree.” He tapped the tabletop with the blunt end of one finger in thought. “I doubt he’ll find any trouble out there from the turtles, like his uncle Grobo fears, but the number of brigands in the area might be a different story.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t think they’d hurt a young hobbit, would they?” I asked, knowing that they most certainly would. Because you would, if the pay was right, I told myself darkly. They’re worse than you are. They might just do it for fun. “Don’t answer that,” I stopped him. “I know the answer.” I nodded at him. “I hope you find the rest of the little shelled bothers you need for that soup.”

I left and turned Neeker toward the north to ride through the gate and find the east road out of Bree once more. Once out of the West Gate, I followed the road to the Greenway, followed it to a ford in the stream alongside it, and then rode more northeast toward the other lake there. I slowed as I finally came close enough to spot the banks with their reeds and cattails along the shore. I didn’t see any sign of Benegar at first. Dismounting and leading Neeker near his bridle, I peered out toward the island in the middle of the lake and sighed. “I’m getting soaked again,” I told the gelding.

I let him crop grass and tied the reins safely out of the way before removing my boots and cloak. “These were new clothes, too,” I growled amidst a string of invective. Wading out as far as I could, I hoped that the lake wasn’t that deep. My hopes vanished as I took a step too far and fell in past my head, still wearing my mask, and thrashed to the surface, sputtering. I swam to the island, walked out, and stood barefoot in the mud for a few moments, dripping.

I heard mad cackling laughter from nearby and swiveled around to glare at the source. A young hobbit rolled around on the ground with tears in his eyes, hairy feet patting the ground, until I greeted him with a cool, “Benegar Longbottom, I presume?”

He finally sat up, wiping at his eyes, and managed to reply breathlessly, “Oh dear… it seems that I was mistaken.” He calmed further, taking deep breaths. I noticed his clothing was just as wet in the way of one who had been out here a while so it could dry a bit more and stick to the skin. I wasn’t looking forward to that eventuality and hoped I could wash them back at the Pony before I had to leave. “There are no turtles here.” He got to his feet, took a deep breath, and stared at my tall figure with his hands on his hips. “There is something worse!”

“What could be worse than no turtles?” I heard myself ask. If only Grobo could hear you now, I told myself. “Other than being soaked through.” I shook out my hands and removed the gloves on them so that I could wring them out.

I caught him looking around quickly. He beckoned to me, leaned in close, and whispered, “Murder!” My hands froze in their motions as I looked up at him slowly. Turtle-related mischief, indeed. “Oh, bloody hell,” I sighed in resignation.

A Burg’s Tale: Chapter 8

Sleep for me that night became fitful despite my bath and food. I kept dreaming of vaguely threatening things that I couldn’t remember upon waking yet kept waking me all the same. The next morning, I found a note waiting for me from Gandalf when I went down to breakfast. It read, simply,

I frowned down at it as I had my porridge and fruit. The wizard had said all that he needed to say the night before, I thought? I scraped every last bit of the bowl clean before I made my way upstairs with his note in a pocket. I knocked, opened the door at his call, and stepped inside warily. “I didn’t expect you to still be here after our conversation last night,” I greeted him.

He motioned for me to close the door and I did so. “Morchandir,” he said with a nod. “I realized I had been hasty in my dismissal of you. I have little time left before I must leave and so must you. I needed to give you some information that will aid you with your next steps. What will they be?” He motioned slightly. “Will you travel to the north or to the east, now?”

I made a sound of thought. I hadn’t slept well partially because of how that question had weighed on my mind. “East,” I decided uncertainly. “Though I’m not sure who to speak to or where to begin. This isn’t my strong suit, heroism. I’m more comfortable sneaking and stabbing and stealing.”

“Those can be honorable enough pursuits when turned to the proper causes,” he informed me. “If it’s to the east that you’ve set your mind, then here is what I will say to you.” He moved through the room almost restlessly for a few moments of silence as he gathered his thoughts. “You have done much good for the people of Bree-land, but the Shadow out of Angmar spreads far and wide,” he began. “I have learned from Gwaihir the Windlord that another of my order has found corruption in the Lone-lands, east of Bree. It may even be related to the dangers you encountered in the Great Barrow.”

I lifted my head slightly. I didn’t know who Gwaihir might have been but I knew the Lone-lands were where I had to head if I traveled to the east. “Lone-lands,” I echoed. “So, is that where the name Eriador came from?”

He seemed amused. “I was under the impression you had little education.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been a place or two,” I replied brusquely. “You mentioned your order, though. Another wizard? How can I find him?”

He chuckled somewhat grimly. “Unfortunately, Radagast is given to wandering and will be difficult to find.” Not at all like yourself, I wanted to point out but held my tongue. “I would ask that you enlist the assistance of the Rangers in finding his location. There is one here in Bree-land, Saeradan, who will be able to aid you.”

“You mean one left after Amdir went on his killing spree.” I then shook my head at his scowl. “I can’t be that unkind. Lenglinn still remains to the west of Bree recuperating, I’m sure.”

He seemed to soften slightly at my verbal step back. “Head out of Bree through the West-gate and turn north along the Greenway. Seek Saeradan at his cabin on the east side of the Greenway across from Thornley’s Work Site,” he instructed. “Saerdan is not a young green Ranger, which means he’s capable and wiser than you may believe. Rangers don’t live to old age without incurring that sort of knowledge, much as elves and other races.”

“Maybe not dwarves or hobbits,” I muttered.

“Indeed,” Gandalf acknowledged. “Their wisdom is oft hidden or disguised. We far too often expect it in the form of elvish parables and the thoughts of wizards such as myself.” He motioned away the train of conversation. “However, back to the matter at hand. Having enlisted the aid of Strider, the continued defense of Bree-land and its borders falls to Saeradan. I think he will be amenable to helping you, Morchandir. Ask him for aid in this matter.”

“Saerdan,” I noted. “And Radagast the Brown.” I heaved a sigh. “Are you really certain it has to be me?”

Gandalf shook his head. “I would rather a more willing participant aid us, but the times are dire, and you are capable. There is nobody else I can ask. Though you may find yourself reluctant now, rest assured you will come to want this with time.”

“If you say so,” I replied, eyes rolling.

“Go, young Morchandir. Time is of the essence and I must be gone to aid Strider and the hobbits.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I turned with a goodbye that I knew to be more final this time and exited his quarters. I waved to Butterbur on the way out of the Pony and counted out my remaining coin in the hopes I might afford even a cheap horse. I found I couldn’t if I wanted to keep money for my next meal, wherever that might be, or a bed that didn’t have lice or manure in the straw.

Only three options remained to me, then: steal a horse, burgle coin, or come by the money everything in a legitimate fashion. I didn’t really have a desire to run through Bree avoiding the constables and their men – and, to be honest, the little fame that I’d received by putting the old spirit to bed in his tomb again felt strangely satisfying enough that I didn’t want to ruin it by becoming a wanted criminal in the town.

Pocketing my coins once more, I turned to the left and made my way through the Market Gate toward the Boar Fountain a bit further on. Horses clopped by on shod hooves, sometimes pulling wagons full of goods, and I easily avoided them. My destination was the task board with its many requests for various items. I could get good money for filling these orders. The work might not be as terrible as mining or looting tombs in the Barrow-Downs, either.

A posted paper on a nearby column of wood grabbed my attention before I reached the board, however. When I took a closer look out of curiosity, I found the following written on the bill:

“Greetings to you, friend! Have the delicious smells emanating on a hungry day from Mandrake’s Finest Stews and Sauces caused you to desire that meal-time was nearer? If so, you know the high quality of Sig Mandrake’s preparations and know what is at stake, should they be hindered.

“Sig Mandrake has a need for interested parties to help him with the preparation of such a stew. Speak with him at his shop here in Bree, east of the Mud-gate, for the details.”

My nose wrinkled, but the truth remained plain: I could very easily make some coin by catching this man’s turtles for his soup. I might even be able to get a free meal from it as well. I had very little time to waste; however, I wouldn’t be able to ride far without a horse and some gear at this point, if I truly did mean to take up Gandalf’s offer of heroism. The idea called to me with a whisper at the back of my mind. Maybe I wasn’t the best choice; to be honest, I was the least suitable for the job, given my proclivities and background. Yet, there in my mind stood my son and my erstwhile foster parents proudly welcoming me home with the entirety of Lake-town taking notice. My ex-wife and her new lover would never best the stories told about me or the reputation I had carved out for myself helping to save the world. If she came back, I could turn her away from our son and myself.

It was a beautiful future. The most important part of it, for me, would be giving Leith the ability to walk without shame and taunts thrown at him for his father’s line of work. His father bloody well saved you all, I would growl at them and their guardians. How dare you repay him by treating his son this way?

I snatched off one of the posted bills and smirked behind my mask as I turned from the task board. There would be time for that, once I collected these turtles. First, however, I would need to speak to this man and find out what I would be getting in return for my efforts.

The Mud Gate was a familiar enough name for me, but I was no native of Bree to know where it might be from this side of the town. I had been there once already to attend Albra Lowbanks after the hobbit requested for me to come to her for training, after all. A few queries as to its location, and finally a flash of the bill, had one of the natives of the town offering me an amused expression. “Oh, Mandrake’s Finest Stews and Sauces is where you’re headed. Thought about doing that, myself, but it’s a bit too dangerous out there for the likes of me these days.” He pointed down the cobbled street to one side that curved off to the right. “You’ll be wanting to go that way. Just follow the street. It’s right smack in the middle of the Mud Gate, Ironmonger’s Gate, and inside the Stone Quarter. High Bridge and High Stair are nearby too, in case you’re interested. Look for the hedge fencing.”

I set off and followed the bend of the road until it passed beneath a stone bridge. The High Bridge, I realized as I looked upward at it. Things began to seem oddly familiar to me, as if I had seen this area before…

My gaze floated from the bridge to the hedge fencing so common in Bree and I halted abruptly. Beyond the fence stood another one that I had been through once already. Within stood the Lowbanks’ Estate. Part of me suddenly wanted to wander in and surprise the hobbit with my presence, uncalled for, but I shook my head and studied the buildings instead. One of these was where I needed to go right now. At least I knew for certain I had come to the right place.

A woman dressed in bits of armor exited from a multi-story home while I stood there watching. I glanced at the sack she carried to the rest of her and then finally to the door from where she’d emerged. It seemed to be the right place, unless murder and mayhem had become commonplace here, so I headed to the door. I knocked before opening it and stepping within just in case. It wasn’t locked, which was a good sign, and nobody screamed at me to get out of their house – also quite heartening.

A brown-haired man stood sweeping the floor of the main room near the hearth. A large bed stood nearby, and a rug stretched over the floor. My feet stuttered to a halt in the archway as uncertainty overtook me. “Ummm…” I began, shuffling slightly to back out once more.

He looked up, blinked at my masked features, and seemed confused. “Are you well?” he greeted me worriedly. “Whyever do you have on that mask, sir?” He then looked even more confused. “It IS sir, isn’t it?”

“How many women have you met who are this height and have a voice as deep as mine?” I countered instantly, hands moving to my hips. I towered over the majority of Men and even Elves. “I should be asking if you’re the one who’s well!”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably and leaned the broom against the wall nearby. “You are here about the turtle soup, I presume?” he asked as politely as he could given how awkward things had become. At my nod, he continued. “I have had callers all day! Perhaps I prepared too many of those notices. My hobbit-friend has been very eager about posting them, I must say.”

“Hobbits seem to be very eager by nature when it comes to food-based items,” I agreed. “The name’s Morchandir. I was told your shop was here, but this… doesn’t really look like a shop?” People have come in all day, I thought with less enthusiasm. Will there even be a single turtle in a five-league radius of this place? Is that where all those wights came from? People trying to catch turtles in the Barrow-downs’ swamps?

“Not yet,” he agreed. “I have hopes that it will, though!” He brightened considerably at the thought. “I have come into possession of an order for a large batch of turtle soup. Normally this would not be a problem, but the desired recipe is most specific about the sort of turtles that can be used.”

“There’s a difference?” I asked, bewildered. “What-“

“Not just any turtle will do,” Sig continued as if by rote. I wondered how many times he had said this exact thing over the course of the day. “They must be tiny turtles, and these are found only at very specific locations.”

I lifted a hand to rub at the back of my neck as I rolled my head around. “Tiny turtles,” I echoed dubiously. “Baby turtles?”

He shook his head. “No, tiny ones. They don’t grow terribly large.” He motioned at me. “You wish to join the ranks of the many, many adventurers who have agreed to help me with this?” I sighed and nodded, otherwise silent. It was fast and easy money. He seemed to notice the tone of that sigh. “Good, I suppose. Tiny turtles, like those I need, can be found south of Bree, along the northern bank of Halecatch Lake.” He chuckled. “You will see many other folk trying to catch turtles for me, I expect, so good luck trying to find any of the small creatures I need!”

I grimaced despite the fact he couldn’t see it. “I think I might surprise you. Do you have a bag?” I hooked a thumb back over my shoulder at the door. “I noticed the last person left with one. I don’t suppose I can carry an armload of baby-“

“Tiny,” he corrected.

“TINY,” I emphasized, “turtles back here without losing them all.”

He took up a burlap sack from a dwindled pile and offered it to me. “Or getting bitten repeatedly,” he agreed with such cheer that I had to rethink my urgent need for money for a few moments. I wound up taking the sack and turned to leave. “Halecatch Lake?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll return shortly.” There was no way in Eriador that I would let anyone clean out that lake of tiny turtles if it wasn’t me. This bag won’t be big enough, I vowed privately. I had half a mind to stop and ask for a second sack but felt it might be too cocky. I might have an ego about some things; however, this wasn’t one of them.

It took me a bit of time to get back to the Boar Fountain and head south to the gate some distance away. When I set out on the road, I passed a large camp full of armored individuals and merchants who seemed intent on staying exactly where they were rather than moving into the town proper. Tents, a campfire, goods in crates – surely, I thought as I kept moving past, it might be more comfortable in a building?

The sight of a large lake sparkling in the sunlight to the southwest drew my attention and sent me over hill and dale toward it. How many lakes surround Bree? I wondered as I traveled. Surely none to the south but this one? I heard the sound of hoofbeats passing me a little way to the right heading in the same direction. This is going to get ugly, I realized. I am not about to kill people over tiny turtles. I then had to amend, At least not if they don’t try to kill me first.

I found myself looking at the lake from a higher elevation shortly thereafter. Horses dotted the landscape here and there. People did, too. Some of them had already begun the ride back with full sacks of what had to be tiny turtles. A pair of dwarves wrestled on the ground near a pony as the turtles they had caught in their sacks fled slowly back toward the solace of the water. “Note to self,” I muttered under my breath as I began my descent, “stay away from angry little men.”

The northern bank, Mandrake had said, but people had fanned out all around the lake in their fierce, competitive needs to catch the most turtles. I tapped one index finger against my thigh as I contemplated where to go for my own search when a woman’s voice spoke nearby. “If I were you, I would try a little farther to the northeast.”

I shifted my attention to the left. Shapely, dark haired, and dressed in leathers, she had a bow, quiver full of arrows, and a sword at her side as well as a hunting knife. A Hunter, I thought warily. “Have you come to claim some to take in?” I asked her after a moment.

She smirked and I saw that a scar pulled at her lips. “No, actually. I’m just here to watch them and laugh at how they flounder around until they get lucky.” She jerked her chin toward the general lake area. “There’s no challenge in this for me.” She turned her bemused gaze to me. “Why? Are you afraid I’ll help you and then whack you over the head with a sack of turtles to take your loot?”

“Never been whacked with a sack of turtles,” I replied drolly. “Remind me to get into trouble that way some day.”

She laughed lightly and nodded slightly toward the northeast. “Come this way. I doubt there are many left out there. I’ll help you find them.” She turned and made her way off, saying over her shoulder, “Unless you want to flounder around like the rest of them all day and come out of it wet and miserable.”

I strode after her. “I got enough of that in the Barrow-downs and wading the Withywindle,” I replied with a roll of my eyes. “I might like to stay dry at least for a full day, if possible.”

I followed her around the northern edge of the lakeshore for a little bit before she spoke once again. “They like to rest and catch the sun on the shore. All of this flailing and splashing around drives them into the deeper waters.” She paused and sank into a crouch to point at marks along the muddy bank. “See these? They don’t move too far up. That way when predators come for them, they just push off into the water again. They’re much faster there than on land. It’s why you have to wait for them to sun themselves.” She looked up at the other people around the lake with disdain. “And why you should find a place to have a nap for a while until the activity dies down and they feel safe again.”

I frowned. “But we just got here,” I tried to argue. She lifted her hand to stop me. “Listen, Longshanks, I’ve been out here since dawn. It’s almost the heat of the day right now. There are fewer people than an hour ago and the quarry won’t be coming out anytime soon due to the heat being too much for them. Give it another hour, maybe two, and the ranks of people will thin out. They won’t catch anything. They’ll think there isn’t anything left to catch. It will be too hot for their tempers and they’ll be too hungry to work through it. Too wet, too. Tempers and a shortage of prey items will have most of them calling it quits. The ones you have to worry about then are the Hunters, like me, who want to keep going.” She examined the shoreline for a long moment. “But I’m not seeing anyone who acts like they know anything out here at this point, so you’re safe.” She turned her attention to me again, head tipped up to meet my gaze with her own. “It gets quiet, it gets a bit cooler, and the turtles show back up where the activity is NOT.”

I looked at the lakeshore again. “Noted,” I said in slight distraction. She waved for my attention and received it. “What?”

“You’re going to want some of that shade over there,” she told me. “Don’t get too close to the cones there.” She pointed them out. “Neekers live in them and they get territorial around their nests.”

I squinted at them. “Can their shells be valuable?”

She gave me a flat look. “Maybe. It depends on if anyone needs them. Didn’t you check the board before coming out here?” She shook her head. “Nevermind that. Get set up in the shade over there and wait it out. I don’t know how many of these turtles are left out here, but you’ll get to take some of them in if you do what I’ve told you.” She flipped her hand in a lazy wave as she began to walk off. “Good luck.”

“Mm. You as well.” I watched her leaving, aware we hadn’t even exchanged names, and then headed toward the patch of shade she had pointed out to me. My innate wariness told me to expect some kind of betrayal. The rest of me countered that she had no reason to do so and that I would be far more likely to betray her instead. I settled down with my back against the trunk of the tree, lifted my hood to cover my head above the mask, and got as comfortable as I could to nap while sitting on my burlap sack. A thief might lift it from my sleeping form were I to carry it, but they most certainly couldn’t take it from beneath me without tearing it apart first.

Time passed in a slightly hazy fashion in the way of the dozing. I could hear the clattering and splashing of the others as if in a dream that grew fainter and fainter. Soon, I did awaken fully with only the sounds of crickets and buzzing insects to welcome me. The angle of light and the shadow the tree cast told me that some time had passed. The heat had lessened. Waves lapped the shoreline in gentle ways. I casually, quietly, leaned up and twisted around to have a look at Halecatch Lake to make sure that I had heard things properly.

I had. The nearest people were halfway around the lake. I might not have a lot of time before the next wave of would-be Hunters came swarming the shores again. I finally got to my feet, dusted off my trousers, and took up my sack once again. Only then did I pad silently toward the banks as if sneaking up on someone – because I was. I spotted several turtles lying along the shoreline, spaced out here and there, resting just as the unknown Hunter had said they would. I could even see their tiny eyes were closed, though “tiny turtles” was not what I would call them. I had expected turtles the size of coins or even a small ball of twine. These turtles were the size of pumpkins and full of spikes. You aren’t turtles, I told them silently as I approached and opened my bag. You’re a really large morningstar.

I had no idea how to grab the thing and put it in the sack. I decided to take the mouth of the bag in both hands, plunge the thing over the turtle, and scoop it, mud and all, into the burlap. It worked, thankfully, but the thing hissed and struggled inside so that I frowned at it. It occurred to me only then that I wouldn’t be able to repeat the gesture with the next turtle given the first weighed down the sack too much. Looking at the next one sunning itself a bit down from me, I wondered how in Mordor I’d be able to grab it and keep the first turtle inside the bag.

The idea I had sounded idiotic at best, but it was the best I could come up with at this point. I retreated to the tree and searched for a fallen branch sturdy enough to use as leverage. This time, when I approached my next turtle victim, I slowly extended my stick to its tail end and gave it a quick flick. It didn’t fly farther up the bank like I’d thought and hoped; however, it did land on its back as a shell alone. I stared at it for a long moment before opening the bag. Checking on the one inside, which had remained silent the whole time, I found that it, too, had pulled itself within its shell. They slid into the water when startled, but if they couldn’t do so, they hid within their hard exteriors. The Hunter had neglected to tell me that part.

I picked up the turtle and put it into the bag with the first. I then proceeded to creep stealthily up to the others that had settled along the shoreline during my nap. With a flip of the stick, they pulled their soft bits inside their shells, and I captured them. Six of them filled the sack with just enough room for me to tie it off and I knew I was done.

I was halfway back to Bree’s south gate when I heard a familiar voice say, “Congratulations, Longshanks. You figured it out.” I looked up into the lower branches of a tree to find the Hunter waiting for me there with a look of amusement on her face.

“No thanks to you,” I replied gruffly. “You could’ve told me about them protecting themselves in such an easy way.”

“And ruin my entertainment? Pssh.” She lounged on the branch in a feline manner. “How many did you fit in your bag? Four?”

“Six.” I couldn’t keep the hint of pride from entering my voice.

She slapped her thigh a couple of times to applaud me, given her other hand stayed beneath her chin. “Very good! A mighty haul!”

I rolled my eyes. “Mockery doesn’t suit you.”

She snorted. “Who said I mocked you? You have a full sack when others only caught one if they were fortunate.” She grinned toothily down at me. “Though, I admit watching you flipping them over with a stick made my day. You do know you could have just picked them up and they would have tucked in, don’t you?”

I felt my brief pride vanish as I stared up at her. “No, actually. I was told they bit, and they’re covered in spines, besides. Why would I think I could just sneak up on them and pick them up?” I hefted the sack slightly. “If only a Hunter had been around to inform me of how to catch them properly.”

“Hey, you still caught them,” she retorted. “Go get them to their buyer before they overheat and die. You won’t get paid much for them, then, Longshanks.”

“Morchandir,” I corrected her.

She paused and peered down at me a little more. “Oh? Banisher of the lost spirit in Bree? Pleased to meet you.” She made a little salute with one hand near her forehead that was so lazy I knew she hardly meant it. “Sorsha is my name.”

“Never heard of it.” I lifted my shoulders in a little shrug. “Though I don’t know of too many Hunters that are world-renowned, to be fair.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t bother me. If I wanted to be famous, I would do things that would make me famous. But you?” She smirked. “You are going to be very famous if you don’t watch out. I can already tell.”

I set the bag of turtles over my shoulder. “And how is that? Magic?” I scoffed.

She poked her tongue out at me. “Hardly. Anyone who puts a spirit to rest without magic and is said to have helped Rangers out before that? Who shows up right around the time terrifying riders on black horses sweep through the town? Attack the Pony?”

I sighed. “I see your point.” I shifted the weight of the bag slightly. “I would love to stay and chat, but you were right – I need to get these things to their new owner if I want any kind of payment.” I started moving off. “Stay out of trouble.”

“Farewell, Longshanks!” she called after me too-sweetly.

Sorsha, I repeated to myself. “What kind of name is that? Elvish? Dwarvish? Did her parents even know how to speak properly when she was born?” I grumbled under my breath the entire way back to the gate.

It was late afternoon by the time I made it to Sig Mandrake’s so-called shop once more. I didn’t bother knocking this time, entirely aware that it wasn’t supposed to be a private home if he thought of it as a place of business, and strolled into the living area as if I owned the building itself. He sat at a table and looked up as I entered, brightening at the sight of the bag. “Ah! So, you’ve returned, Mor…” He faltered. “Mordir? Moridir?”

“Morchandir. And, yes, here are the turtles you wanted, though they aren’t very tiny,” I replied irritably as I set them down on the floor in front of me.

He rose from his seat and moved to the bag. He didn’t open it, but instead nudged it with one boot. “How many are there?”

I smirked. “Six.” When he glanced up at me sharply, I smirked even wider. “I don’t do anything by halves. You said I’d need luck to find any. I don’t like being challenged.”

His brows lifted. “It seems not.” He turned to go back to his table. These will do, these will do, Morchandir. I am waiting for more people to bring in turtles.”

My eyes went from him to the sack and then back to him again behind the mask. “How big is this soup pot going to be, anyway?”

He looked back at me as he got out a small pouch. “This is a very large order of turtle soup, and it will take many more turtles than I have received so far.” He opened the pouch. “Fortunately, it seems as if everyone in Bree is pitching in! It is a wonder there are still turtles to find!” He fished out some coins and sounded distracted as he did so. “I have not yet begun to prepare the soup. I am waiting until I have enough turtles for it.”

I pressed my lips together briefly. “So, you mentioned.” Quit stalling, I wanted to tell him impatiently. Did you not expect anyone to even bring you what you wanted? Not enough money to pay us all? I could feel my inner senses flaring up the longer that he took to pull his coins out to pay me. If you try to cheat me, I swear I’m taking these turtles right back to that bloody lake! I swore to myself as I waited.

He finally moved to me and I lifted my hand to receive his coins. I stared at what he gave me: one silver and 50 copper. “You have to be fooling me,” I murmured to myself.

Mandrake didn’t hear me as he walked away talking. “Actually….” He turned back to me with a bright smile. “You did good work out there, Morchandir. You made it back more quickly than a lot of these so-called adventurers. Perhaps you would be willing to help me with something else?”

I pocketed the money with the mask hiding my disgust in how little I had gotten for my efforts. “It depends on the payment,” I grated out.

“More of the same, I assure you!” he said confidently. “One of the Little Folk who lives up Staddle way sent word that he was eager to help me gather turtles for the turtle soup. Benegar Longbottom, he said his name was, and he’s been keeping the turtles he gathered for me in his uncle’s shed.”

I blinked slightly. Did I get overheated out there? I asked myself. Is this a hallucination? “He’s keeping them… where? In his uncle’s shed?”

He waved it off as if it were of no consequence. “Go to the village of Staddle and ask Grobo Dogwort if you can collect the turtles his nephew has gathered for me. Be sure to ask him in his house first; don’t just barge into his shed without asking.”

I sat back on my heels. “Did you just…” I began, meaning to call him out on the whole “barging in without asking” part given I had done exactly that to bring him his accursed turtles, but I decided to let it go. Shaking my head, I simply told him, “Fine. It may take me a bit, though. I don’t have a horse.”

“Oh. Well.” He paused a moment and then offered me another coin, this one gold. “See if that will get you a ride to Staddle. I’m sure Grobo or his nephew will give you something for taking the turtles off their hands as well.” All I responded with was a grunt, and I left the turtles with him when I exited his home. Let’s hope so, Mandrake, I told him mentally. You don’t know how tempted I am to just take this money and run.

A Burg’s Tale: Chapter 7

In my haste to get my errand done, I entered the Pony’s common room and immediately turned to the right to leave it via the hallway on that side. I passed a growling Southerner leaned up against the wall before turning left to make my way further inside. By this point, I knew the route to Strider’s room by heart. The scent of food and drink had my mind drifting toward other matters of the delicious variety as I walked past the kitchens, and I had to stop myself from veering off. One apple hardly made a meal after going as long as I had without eating. It reminded me too much of my childhood.

I stopped in front of Strider’s door, knocked, and grabbed the latch to pull the thing open. My words shriveled up on my tongue as the wooden obstruction refused to do more than rattle, locked. I stood and blinked stupidly for a moment before the truth finally rushed through my brain: the man had left already, probably with the hobbits in tow, which meant… what, exactly? I refused to believe that it meant I had gone through Othrongroth for no reason and my wounds had made useless scars. My hand dropped from the latch as I turned and hurried back the way I came. Butterbur would know. Strider had probably left the room for a time, that was all. Barliman could perhaps tell me if Strider had left a message as to when he’d return. He knew I was coming back with news.

I set both hands on the bar with a slight growl of my own. Butterbur stopped drying a mug and nodded at me. “Oh, hello there, again! I was so busy that I didn’t see you, but there’s never a moment’s peace here, if I may say so.”

“Strider,” I replied in irritation. “Where has he gone? Has he left a message?”

The innkeep shook his head with a furtive look around that told me everything I needed to know before he spoke again. I rocked back on my heels and felt the first wash of regret for ever getting involved in this mess. Now what do I do? I demanded silently. What am I supposed to do with this information I decided to go after? I should have walked away, I knew I should’ve….

“I was so worried that he’d sour my beer for letting Mr., uh, Underhill and his friends go off with that Ranger!” Butterbur continued with a heavy sigh.

What he said broke my inner monologue so that I frowned in confusion. “Butterbur, what are you going on about? He who?” I demanded. Not to be mistaken for “he haw” which is the sound you should be making right now, you stupid donkey, I told myself bitterly.

“He who?” Barliman replied with a blank look. It seemed to dawn on him immediately after, though. “Oh! Why that would be Mr. Gandalf, of course!” Gandalf? I wondered. Surely not the same one from stories I had heard… Butterbur leaned in and lowered his voice. “They say he’s a Wizard or some such, and I’ll say there must be something to those tales, for my beer’s never been better! He was so pleased….” I must have looked less than enthused beneath my mask since he waved a hand and shook his head. “Begging your pardon, but I do run on sometimes. Gandalf said to send anyone looking for Strider up to his room! It’s up the stairs just beyond Strider’s room.”

“He… did?” I asked. I didn’t know how I felt about anything at this point other than peeved and tired. So tired. “Look, Butterbur, I need a room for the night and a hot bath if you have it available.” I fished my coin purse from where I’d hidden it. “Just one night. And a good, hot meal. I’ll head up to see this supposed wizard while you get it sorted.” I placed the coin on the bar top. “Is this enough? I’d like to get this business over with so that I can finally relax and get some sleep.”

He took the coin from me and examined it before nodding and pocketing it. “You’ll need another of these to make for the rest, but that can wait until you’re back in case you change your mind.” He leaned in again. “I wouldn’t make him too angry in case he really is a wizard, though.”

I snorted. “I’ll try to keep that in mind,” I said as I turned to make my way, yet again, back toward the sleeping quarters. I continued past where I usually turned to enter Strider’s room and, instead, went up the stairs to a door on the second floor. I almost opened the door before I caught myself, knocked, and waited for a call of “Enter!” from within.

I beheld, beyond the door, a man robed in grey with a conical blue hat that seemed worn and beaten. A staff sat nearby as gnarled and old as the hills while Gandalf himself, long white beard and all, reminded me somehow of Tom Bombadil. I didn’t know how; Bombadil didn’t look as aged in the face and Gandalf was a full foot shorter than I was without stooping. The sharp quality in his gaze as he turned it to me, though, drove out the remnants of familiarity between the two. I would never see this man skipping and singing, I knew that instantly, and I could only assume that the link between them had been their great age compared to the lives of Men. I closed the door behind me and greeted him with a quiet, “Am I intruding?”

He replied after a momentary regard of me without actually answering my question. “You are lost or seek me with intent. By the look in your eye, I gather the latter, though I also sense you sought another… Strider perhaps?” Sensing it rather than seeing it. I reached up and removed my mask so that he could see my features as clearly as I saw his.

“Yes, to both of those issues,” I said with a nod. “Linked as they are.”

He made a gruff sound. “Then we have both come too late. Our mutual friend has left, bearing with him a terrible burden.”

“I wouldn’t call hobbits a terrible burden,” I drawled. At his sharp expression, I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. “I know the burden. My name, by the by, is Morchandir.”

He nodded and turned with a faint sound of his robes brushing against something to move a few paces through his room. “I am Gandalf the Grey, a friend of Strider’s,” he said as he stopped in front of his fireplace. “If he set you to a task, it could not be much less urgent than his own.” He turned to me. “Tell me your tale, and I will deliver it to him.”

“At least one of us knows where the man has gone,” I sighed. “After we destroyed the Ranger, Amdir, because one of the Nazgûl used a morgûl blade on him and he turned into a cargûl, Strider needed me to check on where the remaining four Nazgûl were. The five that had been with Amdir had attacked the Pony while I was out, but Strider had kept them from finding the hobbits.”

Gandalf frowned. “Those are ill tidings in themselves. Did you discover their whereabouts?”

I nodded again. “He sent me to the Ranger, Lenglinn, to the east of Bree to see if he had any knowledge. Lenglinn did – he had been ridden down by the Riders when he responded to the horn call in Buckland and tried to stop them. He’s recovering, but I had to remove crebain from the area and then speak to the hobbit in Mr. Underhill’s home, there.”

His bushy, pale brows beetled. “Mr. Under… ah.” He smiled faintly. “Clever of the young hobbit.” He sounded fond enough of the individual that I didn’t press further on the name or why it might be. It was really none of my business.

“Indeed.” I moved on. “Crebain attacked the hobbit there while I spoke to him about the Riders coming before. He spoke of Mr. Underhill’s burden and the birds overheard.”

Gandalf’s breath was a hiss as he sucked it in. “Does the fool know what he has done?” he demanded in a fit of pique. “What of the crebain? The Enemy must not learn of—”

I lifted my hands and made a calming gesture toward him that cut him off mid-rant. “I brought the news back and Strider sent me to see Tom Bombadil.”

From wrath to surprise in moments, Gandalf’s features softened slightly as his brows shot up. “And what of that venture, young Morchandir?” he asked.

I grimaced. “I just returned from it, more or less.” I rubbed my aching shoulder as I spoke, aware of how my body hurt despite its healing from earlier. “He found out where the remaining crebain and their keeper were for me. I went through the Barrow-downs and killed all those involved. Andraste told me, before she died, that the Lord of the Nazgûl would be meeting in the Great Barrow and that she would bring him the information about the Ring and who carried it. I removed that option from her.” I decided to leave out the adventure with the Wandering Shade. I doubted that Gandalf the Grey wanted to hear about it.

The wizard nodded and the lines of his shoulders relaxed at last as he turned back to the fire. He produced a long pipe from the end of his staff and proceeded to fill it. “Very good,” he told me with what could only be relief. “Then Strider and the hobbits have gone in as much safety as possible.” He looked toward me and paused. “But I see there is more to this than just your success in the mission he gave you.”

I nodded as solemnly as I could. “I returned to Tom Bombadil with the news. He offered to lead me to the Great Barrow, and I accepted.”

The wizard harrumphed a little as he finished with his pipe. “A fool’s errand. Spying on the Lord of the Nazgûl would only lead to death.”

I spread my hands. “And yet, I’m here,” I retorted. “I figured if he were there, he wouldn’t be alone. Strider might need the information I found out if I could find out any. I didn’t have to do it. I did it anyway.”

He pointed at me with the stem of his pipe. “And if you’d been wrong?”

I crossed my arms at my chest. “I wouldn’t need to worry about whether or not the Ring found itself back in its creator’s hands, would I? Bit beyond my ability to care after I’d died.”

“There are worse fates than death, young man,” Gandalf reminded me with a dark look. “Especially when dealing with the Dark Lord.”

I leveled a look at him. “Do you want to hear what I found out or not?” I would have liked to claim I didn’t mean to sound as curt as I did but the truth was, I fully meant it that way. He wasn’t the one I had come to see, after all. At Gandalf’s wave for me to continue, I did so. “First, he met with a dwarf named Skorgrím and a creature named Ivar.”

This news had the wizard nodding slowly. “I know these names,” he assured me. “Fell spirits, indeed. Did they speak of what they meant to do?”

“Ivar has a ward in the east. He’s supposed to utilize that ward to counter Amdir’s loss.” I searched for any further recognition in the other man’s face and found only a kindling fire in his dark eyes. “I take it that you know something about it?”

“I do.” He didn’t expand further. Instead, he set the lit pipe between his lips and gathered a look of thought.

I waited, hoping I might know more, and relented after his silence stretched into awkwardness. “Skorgrím, the dwarf lord, is supposed to focus his efforts to the north and east. The Nazgûl claimed that his champion hadn’t finished her task for him yet.”

This news drew a sound of dismay from Gandalf that somehow didn’t seem worrisome. I wondered what news, exactly, might do so. “Interesting.”

When he didn’t say anything further, yet again, I felt my irritation rising and knew how Sambrog had felt. “When they finished, they were to join Mordirith in the north.”

He lowered his pipe and turned to look at me in full. “What else?” he asked after a long moment. Whatever it was that I had said, I finally felt that I had drawn his worry out.

“He also seems to know that the Ring is going to the east toward a place named Imladris,” I continued. “And he told the other two to ignore Saruman in the south as their plans were bearing fruit there.”

Something strange passed over Gandalf’s face at the mention of Saruman. I didn’t know if it was bitterness, anger, or sadness. Perhaps all three. It was most definitely weariness, though. I hurriedly completed my tale with, “I found a little more information from a wight lord in the Barrow that almost killed me before Tom Bombadil came to my rescue.”

“Sambrog,” Gandalf offered almost distractedly.

“Mm. Yes. When he goes north, Skorgrím is meant to gather an army for Angmar and the Witch-King. Ivar is meant to awaken something in a place called Agamaur, something sleeping beneath the waters.” I motioned. “And don’t even get me started on the dream I had before all of this with an elf queen involved showing me all of these visions of me involved in things I have no business being…”

He stopped me. “So Angmar once again arises?” He nodded slightly and his lips thinned beneath his beard. “It is grim news, but I am not surprised.” Liar, I wanted to tell him. I saw the surprise on your face for some of it. My irritation grew. “Nevertheless, I cannot turn aside from my own task, for the fate of all Middle-earth hangs upon it.”

“That’s the same thing that Strider claimed when he left Archet to burn and Amdir to become evil, and then when I found him in the Pony here,” I snapped. “If he is getting the hobbits and their burden to safety, why can’t you help with the rest?”

He seemed to flare with power for a moment and it struck me dumb. I didn’t know what it was that I had felt; something far stronger than the Witch-King’s aura yet not as powerfully dreadful. All the same, it stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth and kept it there. His expression became less forbidding after a moment or two and he shook his head. “There is neither time nor reason for you to know where my path leads,” he stated quite firmly. “Simply know that I go where the burden must go in order for it to reach its destination.” He pointed at me with the stem of his pipe once more. “This burden I place upon you in the name of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth: hinder the Witch-king’s plan, if you may.”

I straightened sharply. “Wait, no, my part in this is—” I began to protest to no avail.

His tone remained grim but dismissive at the same time. “Whether east or north, I bid you good fortune. Farewell, Morchandir.”

I stood there staring at him for several long moments. I didn’t go through all of this just to have the weight of the world thrown onto my shoulders, I railed privately. The desire to say “No” as I walked out kept the word on the tip of my tongue for longer than I would like to admit as I stood there. Instead, what came forth was, “Surely, there has to be a better choice? I’m hardly a hero. I’m a burglar and murderer!”

Gandalf gave me a seemingly amused look then. “Bilbo Baggins was only a hobbit before he was a burglar, my friend. Heroes are not born but made. If the queen of the elves believes you are important enough to speak to you through your dreams, rest assured that my choice to lay this weight upon you is hardly given lightly. You should rest now.”

My hands, balled into fists, loosened as I turned and left without another word. What choice did I really have? What will happen if you don’t agree? I thought. The Witch-King and his army sweeps through Eriador first and Rhovanion second. Nothing, nowhere, is going to be safe any longer. Who else would he find? “I should’ve kept my bloody mouth shut about the elf,” I growled as I stalked back down the hall toward the common room of the inn. Somehow, I knew that piece of information had tipped the wizard’s opinion as to whom to give this great task.

A Burg’s Tale: Chapter 6

Othrongroth. Andraste had said the Nazgûl’s leader would be here. I had to wonder what exactly he thought he could accomplish alone in the Great Barrow. It meant he wouldn’t be alone, though, because I hadn’t heard of anything, or any spirit, living within the barrows that might spell the doom of Bree and its surroundings. As I halted where Tom Bombadil had led me, skipping, through the barrows into the marshes, I rocked back on my heels. Bombadil had gone unmolested during his walk. As he had stated, he was the Master.

I didn’t know if I would return from this venture. What lay in store for me within the giant hill except death? I thought of Leith, safely with his guardians, and knew that not returning wouldn’t impact his life much so long as I could gather my information and convince Bombadil to share it with someone who could take it to the Rangers or Strider. I privately conceded that last part might be far more colossal than getting into and out of the Great Barrow alive to do it myself.

I had been so involved in my thoughts that I had missed whatever the yellow-booted ancient had just said as he halted. I blinked and he pointed toward the dark figures moving toward the hummock, or the hill itself, perhaps both. “Between those stones is what you look for, the Great Barrow of the Downs.”

“And my targets are just now arriving, to boot,” I agreed as I moved up to Bombadil’s side.

Before I could ask him if he wanted to accompany me, Orald turned and started skipping away again. “Careful now, or there your bones will lie, until the wights have you dancing!” he informed me cheerily.

“As long as the music’s good,” I muttered to myself under my breath. There was no sense in waiting any longer. I had to follow the Witch-King and his dwarf companion to know of what they spoke. Silent as shadows, I firmly told myself. That’s how you survive this venture, Leich. I took a deep breath and moved down the hill path toward the torches that Bombadil had pointed out to me.

The two dark figures moved unhurriedly toward the entrance. Dwarves guarded it and bowed deeply as the duo approached them. I managed to lurk behind a large stone as they paused and, a moment later, the Witch-King stated plainly, coldly, “Come, Skorgrím.”

So that’s your name, dwarf? I noted with a little smirk. Aragorn will want to know that, for sure. He didn’t know your identity, before. He will this time. I let them pass through into the blackness of the barrow before slipping away from my hiding place to trail them. I knew by keeping to the shadows, the guarding dwarves would stand less chance of spotting me with my stealth. I was correct in that knowledge, though it took me long enough that I hardly needed a count of one hundred to make sure that the two creatures I hunted would stay just ahead of me without noticing my presence.

I hadn’t gone inside too far when a trio of dwarves ran around the far corner with uncertainty. The one in the lead declared, “I tell you I heard something!”

Wasn’t me, you blithering idiot, I replied, having frozen in place as soon as they appeared. I don’t make enough noise.

Which was, of course, when my boot kicked a loose pebble so it rattled over the ground like a peal of thunder. They immediately swung their attention to me and one of the torch bearers cried, “Who goes there!” My hope that I could simply remain still until they labeled it settling stones and retreated splintered as they came closer to where I lay hidden. They would spot me in moments. I had to move fast.

So, I very literally moved fast. Instead of darting back toward the exit like a sane man, I became a blur of shadow and night made flesh. A throwing knife whirled through the air toward one of the dwarves. It helped distract two of them enough so that, while it found its mark in the shoulder of its target, I leaped in with my knives to pierce the leader in the middle of his back with one blade. Three to one had never been odds I particularly enjoyed but they weren’t unknown to me. It took me a short time to end them. I cleaned my blades on their clothing, dragged them into the shadows – and dwarves are quite a bit heavier than you may expect – before continuing on my way. They wouldn’t be found easily by any further patrols. I needed every moment that I could spare.

The next set of dwarves caught me unaware; they spotted me before I had a chance to hide better. Their captain bellowed, “You heard Lord Skorgrím! No one gets past us! Kill them! For the Dourhands!”

Who names their clan that? I wondered as I entered my next fray. Unfriendly-hands? Surly-hands? No suspicious characters in there, surely. The captain who led them was the last to fall. He was much tougher than his subordinates and I felt some grudging respect for the dwarf as a result. I knew, could remember, the training that soldiers went through to become that tough and even tougher. But fall, he did, and I once again wiped my blades and carried on.

The tunnel widened into a chamber with pillars. I managed to kill one of the Dourhands within before the rest noticed me and came running. They, too, had a captain in their midst – but this one refused to engage until his men were slain. Only then did he growl, “All right! You’ve killed my men, but you won’t kill me!”

“Care to place bets, little Sad-hand?” I retorted.

He snarled and leaped for me. It was no use, though. Just like the others who I had faced thus far, this dwarf proved no match for me. The problem was that he seemed to think he could escape. I was more than willing to let him until I realized he would only alert others – and if three to one odds wasn’t one I appreciated, more than that would most certainly ruin my day. “I… I can’t be defeated!” he claimed desperately as he scurried back from me, unarmed. “Stay back!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I replied as I advanced on him. Hobbits and dwarves made me feel taller than I already was, and I was blindingly tall for a human man. Giant-nose, giant-toes, I could hear the other children taunt. Why isn’t your hair white from all the snow, troll?

He kept evading me and running toward a blocked off exit. “Skorgrím promised… he said we couldn’t be defeated….”

“It’s like nobody has ever lied to you before,” I said, shaking my head. “Are you that gullible? Maybe I need to kill you so you don’t pass this on to your future children.”

The captain froze and frowned as he looked around, his back pressed to the wall. I had heard it too: a strange, metallic sound like metal on stone. Unlike the Dourhand, however, I recognized it immediately. It was the same sound that the wight at the Shade’s tomb had produced when his weapon had contacted the boulder I’d had to roll away. “What…what was that noise?”

My gaze went to the wall behind him. “Get away from the-” I began to shout in warning, hand flying out, but it was too late. The whole wall burst inward as if struck by something powerful. Chunks of it rained down upon the captain, who found himself buried with a dismayed final cry.

From the dark interior beyond strode a tall, armored wight with a sword in its hand. The smell of must and old death billowed from the loosed air as it rasped at me, “The dead suffer no intruders…” That was why the Dourhands had been out here, I realized, while the dead remained trapped beyond. I shot a look toward the doorway to my left and knew that the Witch-King and Skorgrím had undoubtedly used it and sealed it behind them as they passed through. My gaze went back to the wight as it charged me.

I had no time to sneak. I had no idea how many more of its kind lay beyond. I deflected a sword strike and rolled away. A sword lay nearby from the Dourhands I had killed. I grabbed it on the way up. I could use it well enough. I had the training. They had wanted me to wield a two-handed sword before I left and I had run through argument after argument as to why I didn’t have the strength despite my height. In some ways, I was actually better with the one-handed arming sword than my knives, given I still needed mastery of the latter. I was faster with the knives, though, and that often made all the difference.

Not so, here. I needed to kill the dead thing quickly and keep moving. I had already fought twice in fairly quick succession and had an unknown number of foes ahead of me, to boot. The further I had come, the more certain I had become that my ability to stealth my way through safely might not work well. If I had to fight my way in and out again, would I even be able to escape once I had made it back outside? Bombadil’s home lay quite some distance away, after all…

I took the opportunity to strike off the wight’s head when it came. It flailed wildly with its sword trying to catch me with it, but I moved from behind to strike it down at last. I decided to keep the sword for the time being and collected a scabbard for it that I settled around my waist as I stepped cautiously into the darkness of the tomb.

I did make it through to the next chamber safely, but the voices up ahead only became distinct as I closed on them. The Witch-king’s raspy voice fell silent for a moment before saying, “Come, Ivar awaits us.” The two figures moved off down the corridors of the barrow and I counted to one hundred this time. Ivar. I wasn’t sure who that was, but it made for a third person involved. If I turned back now, I would have information enough that I didn’t think that Strider and the Rangers, or anyone else, might have.

I could continue, however, and perhaps find out what the three of them had planned.

I finished my count and moved forward once again. I wound up having to fight again before I found stairs leading down. Voices echoed from the bottom chamber and I crept across it as slowly and lightly as possible. I’d taken another couple of minor wounds in the last fight that stung and throbbed terribly. All the same, I listened as I glued myself to the shadows and stole down the old wooden stairs so that they wouldn’t creak or give me away.

The Witch-king’s voice traveled to me and I actually had to stop as I realized what I was hearing. “Ivar, we shall have need of your ward in the east. We must counter the loss of Amdir.” East? I wondered. How far east? Who is this Ivar’s ward? But the Nazgûl lord continued. “Skorgrím, your dwarves should focus their efforts in the north and east. My champion has not yet finished her task.” I managed to peek around to see the three figures: a gaunt looking creature had joined the Nazgûl and the dwarf. “A great reward awaits you, if you both succeed.”

Of course it does, I thought to myself. Isn’t that what Skorgrím promised his underlings, too? Is this part of the evildoer’s standard operating style? A rule they follow?

The raspy voice sounded thoughtful. “The Ring moves east, to Imladris, no doubt.” I felt my jaw clench and my blood start going cold in my veins. If the Witch-king already knew the Ring headed east, did he also know who carried it? Had killing Andraste been for nothing? Or was there something else at play here and we still had at least one advantage in that he didn’t know the hobbit’s identity further than Baggins? “Once your tasks are complete, Mordirith awaits you both in the north.”

Mordirith, I repeated, trying to commit the name to memory. Skorgrím, Mordirith, Ivar, Ivar’s ward, the north and east… Surely, someone will move to the aid of these places? Are there enough people to do so?

But another shock was coming. “Pay no heed to the twice fool, Saruman,” the Nazgûl hissed. I felt myself go pale. Saruman was a name I knew from my travels with trade routes into Rohan. He was said to be the wisest of the wizards – and yet, the Witch-king either dismissed him out of hand or intimated that Saruman had been defanged. “Our plans in the south are reaching fruition.” Rohan, I understood. Perhaps that was why Saruman was being mentioned. Had the Witch-king made sure that the wizard couldn’t help the efforts of the Free People? It was dire news either way.

The final stair creaked underfoot in my brief surprise. All three beings turned to me and a terrifying screech arose from the Black Rider. Between it and the surge of dread and terror that nearly suffocated me, all I could do was drop to my knees with my head covered. I was about to die. I knew it. The creature would flow over to me and stab me with its blade, and I would become like Amdir… “Fool! I shall suffer your presence no longer!” it raged. “You have hounded my steps for too long!”

It knew I was here? I wondered, knowing that if my eyes hadn’t squeezed tightly shut, I might have felt them widen. Sealing the door meant that it had laid a trap for me. The Nazgûl had expected the dead to kill me, and more than likely, Skorgrím had said that his dwarves would do so beforehand. Everything that I hadn’t heard…. How much of that would be critical as well? I had to make it out of here alive, now.

The Witch-king knew that as well. “And now the Dead shall take you,” he proclaimed even as he and the other two turned to walk through a stone doorway that yawned open before them. When it closed, only then did the dead rise from in front of it, clawing their way out, and the abject terror I felt only passed once the Black Rider had been gone for several moments. “As the great king commands….” one of them replied to the Nazgûl. “Only the Dead…shall pass….”

I barely had enough time to lurch to my feet again and draw my sword before the wights were upon me at the urge of their leader, “Kill him….” I could feel myself responding with more energy and strength than before as a thrill passed through me. I felt faster, better, with the heavy dread lifted and the threat of death directly in front of me. One wight fell, then a second, and the third scored a cut across the top of my shoulder before I put it down.

I panted and my sword dropped slightly. I looked back at the stairwell coming down and then at the door where the three monsters had vanished. A perverse sort of defiance entered me in the knowledge that they probably thought I was dead or that I would leave from the front entrance. Sword in hand, I took a deep breath and strode toward the set of stone doors to prove them wrong. I would hound them right out of the Great Barrow and prove the Witch-king weaker than he thought! It was a matter of pride at this point!

Except a wight appeared from directly outside as I walked toward the doors. I cursed soundly as I spotted it. “Arise…arise, my brothers…” it commanded, and other wights appeared from the shadows and ground. Even as they did, though, I had charged toward the main wight with my sword at the ready. By the time it was done, I had a shallow gouge in my side near one hip and found myself clubbing apart one of the wights with the femur from another, snarling, “You… get… back… down… there!” I rose and flung the bone from me so that it shattered against the nearby stone wall of the tomb. Sweat and dust, dirt as well, covered me so that I was a mess. I just wanted a bath and some healing draughts. If the doors were the way out, then I meant to take them.

Heavy yet still serviceable, they pushed open with effort when I attempted it. I stepped into a dimly lit corridor while I still panted from my exertions. I was finished with this barrow and the dead inside. If I didn’t now carry critical information, I would be finished with the whole hero bit as well. I found myself wondering, as I made my way as cautiously as possible down the tunnel, if the Witch-king had a face to slap before I died screaming horribly. I found myself sorely tempted.

The lighting brightened at the end of the hall in such a way that I knew it had to be a larger, more open chamber. Before I could wonder if anyone were inside, I heard a distant voice call out, “Thou may come forward….” Part of me immediately wanted to turn right back around and thwart its designs in spite. It wasn’t the part that won out. Once I approached the corridor’s end, I could see a large throne in the center, on a raised platform, that became clearer by the time I had come into the penumbra of the lights within. A figure sat on the throne, a wight by the looks of it, and I wondered how many more of them I would need to fight before I could leave the blasted Great Barrow. Furthermore, I found no sign of the Witch-king and his cronies, which meant they had departed by some unknown means. A path out of this room had to exist.

I halted on the threshold and the wight spoke again. “Greetings, fool. If thou seekest an audience, thou mayest approach.”

A look around the chamber as it spoke and rose from its seat told me the way out had to be at the back of the room, opposite of where I now stood. Squaring my shoulders, I approached the wight where he waited at the top of the small set of steps leading up to his throne. I didn’t reply for the moment.

It seemed to take my silence as permission to continue. “I am Sambrog, ruler of the Great Barrow and all the Barrow-downs without,” it informed me. “Thou hast come a long way to stand before me.”

I halted and looked up at him through my mask. “Not that long. I just need to pop out of that back door you have behind you and I’ll be out of your hair,” I explained with a nod toward the area in question.

“Thou wouldst not grace me with thy name?” Sambrog inquired almost in amusement. “Hast thou no manners?”

I rolled my eyes. “No. But sure, why not? Morchandir.” I bowed slightly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me?” I pointed toward the back wall expressively.

“Well met! My Master sends thee greetings,” the wight lord continued. I stopped before I’d taken a step and looked back at the creature.

“Master?” I replied. “The Witch-king, I assume?” How much more did this high-ranking wight know about the plans I had overheard just outside?

Sambrog laughed and I wasn’t sure how, given he wasn’t much more than bones. “I grant thee the boon of an audience before I kill thee. Thou seemed desirous of certain knowledge, so I will give it thee.” He paused. “For the Dead speak not!” he finished with a mad cackle.

“Great, I have an undead jester in front of me,” I grunted at him. “Forgetting for the moment that I can probably beat you in a fight, let’s entertain my curiosity, then. Go on.” I crossed my arms at my chest. “I’m listening.”

He obliged me without a moment’s hesitation. “My Master seeks a great power for the Dark Lord, but the Dark Lord hast more designs than this. The Pale Dwarf shall go to the north and gather an army in the name of Angmar and the Witch-king!”

“Heard that part outside,” I pointed out. “You’ll have to do better than that, Sambrog. The dwarf is named Skorgrím, did you know? And I hear the Witch-king’s champion is on a mission.”

The wight continued with a hint of dismay at first that vanished back into confidence within a few words. “The gaunt one, a great power himself and to whom I owe this form, goes to the east. There, in Agamaur, he shall awaken a Power that lies sleeping in the waters. With her under his command, the skies will turn to blood and all shall despair!”

“Ivar,” I agreed. “He did look pretty gaunt, I admit.” I lifted a hand to scratch at my opposing bicep. “Then the two of them are supposed to head to the north and join Mordirith in Angmar. Know anything about that, Sambrog?”

He didn’t reply for several moments. I could feel the abrupt malice that rolled off of him and dropped my arms back to my sides. “Now thy audience comes to an end,” the wight grated with satisfaction. “Thy death awaits thee.” He motioned with a hand and commanded, “Arise, my warriors!”

Lesser wights shifted stone and began to lurch and claw their way up from the ground and out of the surrounding walls at his summons. “Cheating coward!” I spat at him as he moved to engage me. My sword snickered free of its sheath to meet his and I leaped away from his return blow. I managed to boot the skull off of one of the emerging wights so that it flailed blindly to the surface before again turning my attention back to the wight lord. I knew the headless wight would find a way to attack me, but I had given myself a few more seconds. I attacked Sambrog viciously and scored several hard blows to his undead form before the first wight showed up and I had to turn my attention away. Sambrog, however, didn’t take up position to become the pincer. Instead, he stepped away. By the time that the first wight fell, the second wight had seemingly found and replaced its head onto its body once again and came to attack me. I had barely defeated it when a whistling sound warned me too late of my error.

Whipping round, I found Sambrog back to normal once again as if I had never harmed him. I also found his sword thrusting itself into my side. The wound wasn’t mortal immediately but all the same, I knew that it could well become so. “Thou canst not defeat me!” he declared with glee.

I stepped back and turned to slash at the undead creature again, knocking a rib away in the process, and hacked off one of his arms after evading his strike at me. It wasn’t the arm with his weapon, unfortunately, and even as I watched, the wounds I had made on his form began to vanish and the arm I had removed made its way back to him. He casually stepped back to it so that it flew up toward his stump to reattach itself. I watched it happen in horror. The wight was right: I couldn’t defeat him when he could heal himself so quickly and I couldn’t. My limbs already felt heavy and the heat of my own blood as it trickled down my side reminded me that I wouldn’t last much longer if I kept at it.

Gritting my teeth, I threw one of my knives at him. He blocked it with his weapon and left himself open in the process so that one of my knives found itself buried where his kidneys would otherwise have been. Before I could get free, however, he backhanded me so that I felt my world spin as I flew several feet away to land on the stone heavily. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe for a few moments. All I could do was watch the wight approach me, cackling, with his sword raised to kill me.

“Hey do! Merry do!”

The muffled, distant voice gave Sambrog pause. You have to be joking with me, I thought to myself. “What? It cannot be!” the wight raged as it turned around toward the back wall. Three strides later, the stone hiding the exit burst open to allow in the skipping, yellow-booted form of Tom Bombadil.

I tried to roll and rise to my feet while Orald had the wight lord distracted, intent on finishing the battle, but my stomach had yet to unclench so that I could take in a deep breath. My hand flopped helplessly toward my knife just out of reach. He wouldn’t accompany me through this, but he shows up now? I asked in frustration.

Tom sounded as if he were scolding the wight. “What be you a-thinking? Dead men should not be waking!” A motion of his hand brought the whole of the ceiling down upon Sambrog in a moment. The wight lord didn’t even have the chance to react with more than a shriek of dismay before the heavy blocks of stone had crushed him. I wasn’t sure if he was dead, or at least dead again, yet, but I knew I had to take the chance to leave.

As soon as I could breathe again, that is.

“Vanish into sunlight, leave your barrows empty!” commanded Bombadil, and I could almost feel how the spirits within the tomb did just that. The air itself felt lighter, cleaner, and I finally managed to suck air down into my chest with a relieved sound. I lay prone for another few moments, just breathing, before rolling wearily to my side and collecting my weapons once again.

Once I had them, I stumbled to where Tom Bombadil waited for me in the tomb. Pulling off my mask to stuff it in a side pouch, I laid a hand to my bleeding side and nodded at him in soundless thanks. He wasn’t finished scolding, however, as he asked me, “Was it worth the trouble? Did you learn your lesson? Leave the Dead to sleep their dreamless sleep and walk yourself upon the green grass under the sun!”

“Worth it,” I agreed with a quick nod and a grimace. “Definitely worth it. Until I wake up sore tomorrow and start cursing myself for being a fool.”

Something about my reply seemed to lighten Tom’s mood. He clapped a hand on my shoulder, which had me grimacing in pain, and chirped to me, “Come now, my merry friend, warm fire is awaiting…” He then skipped off to the hole in the wall to lead me out.

It took long enough to reach his home that I had begun to feel a little light-headed. Goldberry sat me in a chair and fussed over my wounds to clean them and heal them while Tom helped her straighten up the house and prepare for supper. “Was it really the old spirits?” she asked me as I sat there.

It was Tom who replied, though, and he did so to the both of us. “Old barrow-wights from Angmar came. They disturb the peace and trouble folk who wander through their mounds. Let the Dead sleep and leave their troubles in the earth. Unless of course you wake them, dancing on their rooftops!”

“It’s the truth, Morchandir,” Goldberry agreed lightly. “Nothing originating from that land has ever been good.” She rose and patted my arm gently. “Let’s have you eat a little and then you can rest here overnight.” Drifting over to her husband, she reached up to gently tug on his beard with a fond expression. He chuckled happily, in return and it reminded me of my past and my loneliness now. I felt awkward at having seen them.

I sighed softly as I turned from them. Tom seemed to have heard me as he swapped places with Goldberry, now that she was free, to move toward me. “Hey, come, my friend. Linger here no longer. To Bree you should be a-going. You’ve a friend there who awaits you!”

I knew he wasn’t trying to get rid of me. If he’d had his way, I would’ve stayed overnight to heal a little more. Goldberry clucked her tongue and waved her wooden spoon slightly at him. “He should be resting,” she pointed out.

“No, don’t scold him,” I offered politely. “He’s right. Everything in me wants to rest here and take you up on your offer, but I’m afraid I do have to return to Bree as quickly as possible.” I stood with more grimaces as my body complained. It wanted to stay put for a while, too. Let me deliver this message and I’ll take a room at the Pony to do just that, I promised myself.

“If you’re set on going,” Goldberry said, “then you’ll want to take the shortcut through the Old Forest up the Old Barrows Road. It leads to that camp of men and hobbits that you fetched my water for.” She explained where I would find it when I was going along the old road.

I closed my eyes. “Perfect. I don’t think I could stand going through the barrows again right now,” I admitted to them both.

The beautiful River-daughter turned to me and pulled something from a nearby shelf. She held it out to me, and I saw it was the shade’s ring. “I knew you would return,” she said with a brilliant smile. “Be safe, Morchandir.”

I inclined my head to the both of them and made my farewells after pocketing the ring. I collected the items I had left behind, strapped them to my back, and set off on the Old Barrows Road once again. I made sure to avoid the wild animals that I found as well as the bloody roots and vines that wanted to lash at me when I traveled too near, until I had to veer away from the bend in the road to continue straight. It saved me loads of time, given it was still late afternoon when I found my boots treading the path out of the forest and into Adso’s camp.

I explained where their borrowed horse was in Buckland and apologized for not returning it. I still looked frightful enough that they didn’t ask too many questions. I sold my gear to one of them and took a horse from their public stable to the west gate of Bree. It was a long enough ride that I had time to consider my next move once I had delivered my news to Aragorn. Leave, I reminded myself. You’ve done more than enough in this tale. You have no reason to do anything further. You’ve gone beyond what you were asked to do at this point and have the blood spilled to show for it. It’s time to find some good paying burgling jobs and go back to Lake-town for a while so that you can enjoy your son growing up.

I stood near the west gate after handing over the horse to the stablemaster nearby. Before I moved on to deliver my news to Strider, I wanted to complete the task that the wandering shade had given me. I spent a little coin on a horse to the southern gate’s stablemaster, dismounted, and headed toward some nearby merchants. My query regarding a ghostly spirit resulted in a fearful account of having seen it roaming through the streets in the night. They called the area The Haunted Alley and pointed it out as west of where they were, running to the Hunter’s Lodge. I took it as a good sign and set off.

The paved street between the buildings moved in a slow half-circle around several long-standing and ancient looking structures. It was still daylight and I couldn’t spot the shade at all. At night, I recalled then. His brother said he wanders at night. How does he know, though? He’s all the way in the barrows.

I passed an ornate stone area and halted. Backing up, I moved to the collection of stone and found myself looking at a tomb. “Ah, there you are,” I said aloud from behind my mask. Approaching the tomb, I could read the inscription on the sarcophagus: “A tomb made for a Lord of the kingdom of Arnor.” Placing my hands on the top of the stone lid, I shoved with all my strength to dislodge it in some fashion. I needed to place the ring within. It finally budged a fraction after several minutes and I leaned against it, sweating, to collect myself.

I felt the chill of the shade’s presence before I looked up to see him. Lifting my hands, I said hurriedly, “I disturbed you for a reason. Don’t get upset. Your brother sent me here.” I pulled the ring from one of my pockets and held it out in my palm so that he could see it.

The slight sense of anger faded instantly. “Shining and gleaming,” the ghost offered in his equally ghostly voice, “I hath seen this before / on hand of my kin / as death pulled him forth.”

I nodded quickly. “He sent me to fetch it from a wight that had taken it. The barrows were disturbed by evil spirits from Angmar and the Bone Man… well, he won’t bother you any longer.” I smiled behind the mask as helpfully as I could.

He pointed at the crack in the lid where I had slid it aside. “In the stone alcove, / where life ebbed away, / we had hid treasure / and summoned forth death,” he continued to explain.

I turned and stuffed the ring as gently as I could manage into the slot I’d made. “He mentioned that, too,” I offered. “There were wights there. I handled them for you. He wanted me to bring you this ring after it was all said and done so that you would know everything has been put right.”

He sighed in weary relief. “Now shall I rest, / as my brother the same. / At last at peace, / at last to dream.” He drifted to the tomb and began to sink back within it. “Seek the black rock….” he said before vanishing.

“Black rock?” I asked, baffled. “What black rock?” No answer came. I knocked on the top of the lid. “Shade? King – lord – dead Arnorian?” I tried to peek within the crack I had made between the lid and the coffin. “Don’t sleep yet, you have to explain what that last thing you said meant!” When silence greeted me, I huffed a sigh and moved to the other side of the lid so I could slip it closed once more. “Not even a thank you,” I grunted with effort as I heaved. “Just talking about mysteries on more mysteries.”

I looked up to find several people staring at me in wide-eyed awe. I blinked at them stupidly until one pointed at the sarcophagus and exclaimed, “You got rid of the ghost!? Hero, what’s your name?”

I looked down at the shade’s tomb and replied, haltingly, “Uhhh… Morchandir. I suppose I did? Though I don’t know that getting rid of—”

“He put the wraith to rest!” a woman gasped in joy, clapping. “Wait until the mayor hears!”

“I’m telling everyone who lives here right away!” a man beside her agreed and darted off to do just that.

I motioned with both hands quickly to stop them, but it was too late. “No, please, you don’t have…” My shoulders slumped momentarily, and I rubbed the back of my neck. “Hot bath and a room at the Pony,” I stated firmly. “A healing draught. A good dinner. A long sleep. And some new clothes if I can manage it. That sounds about right.”

I looked toward the setting sun and my steps slowed to a stop. Turning back toward the nobleman’s tomb, I couldn’t help but smile slightly. “Right. No wandering tonight or any other night. Get some rest, you and that brother of yours.”

Setting my sights on the path ahead, I somberly ran through what I would need to tell Strider in fifteen or so minutes, given I had to walk to the inn. I swear, if the man tells me to do something else, though, I’ll have to say no, I promised myself. He’ll just have to find someone else. My part in this is done as soon as I tell him what I need to.

A Burg’s Tale: Chapter 5

“So, this was once Cardolan,” I mused aloud as I stood, hands on hips, surveying the swampy mess that was the southern part of the Barrow-downs. “Bit wetter than I expected, for sure.” Smellier, too, given the bogs and dead things roaming around, but I had limited exposure to it from my position and the mask I currently wore. “Why would anyone want to live here?”

I heaved a deep sigh and picked my way down the ridge as carefully as I could. The last thing I wanted was to turn my ankle and be at the mercies of barghests and wights. I had no intentions of becoming part of the natural cycle of life as food for those around me. Not before I had to, that is, and certainly not while attempting to help both a long-dead man and a bunch of panicked hobbits. I couldn’t really help them at all if I became a shambling wight possessed by some evil power and I couldn’t help but doubt that Sauron’s forces were in need of a thief-turned-cargûl. The robes were a pretty crimson, though.

I wasn’t sure where to head as I set off. All that I knew was that this Bone Man resided in this area somewhere. I aimed for the silhouettes of a ruin atop a huge hill in the southern distance on a hunch. If I’d had to steal a treasure from someone important enough to have a treasure in the first place, they would have to live in something that size. The worst that could happen (barring my horrible screaming death on the way) would be I was wrong. Even then, the ruins were high enough on the landscape that I could get a very good view of where I might proceed next in my search. I could really only hope that Strider had the hobbits safe and sound in Bree. I recalled how the Nazgûl had ridden out of Buckland and attacked the Pony in search of them and grimaced beneath my mask. Brigand camps, a settlement of hobbits, and now a full and healthy town of Men? They had more audacity than most might credit them with, given their master had no real strength yet.

Or does he? I wondered as I paused to let a trio of wights shuffle past. I didn’t know if the wights caused my sudden shiver of dread or the thought of Sauron returned to his full nefarious glory.

The track I took toward the high ruin bottomed out at the foot of the ridge in a muck-filled hollow brimming with the dead. I had to quickly retreat and kill several as I backtracked around to find a way up the ridge and then further up the hill approaching the broken towers of stone. The moon had begun to set by the time I arrived. It would be darker still in short order. The old saying about how things grew darkest before the dawning held more than a simple kernel of philosophical truth.

Even as I stepped foot on the cracked, decaying paving stones, several of them perhaps a hundred feet away scraped and moved. A tall, skeletal figure in armor and nearly rotted clothing, so far gone that I had no way of telling what their colors or patterns might have once been, climbed forth from the remnants of a cairn. What I did notice, however, was the ancient bow in his hand. It didn’t look as if it would snap at the first use, as it should have had the weapon been truly ancient and disused. Wood rotted just as flesh. Cat-gut string and wool rotted even faster.

The evil that came off of the wight caused me to step back once in a moment of fear before I could master myself. Somehow, my leg and back stung harder for the creature’s nearness. It saw me without attacking first. A hideous laugh erupted from the Bone Man that I likened to a serpent’s hiss before it proclaimed, “The wretched shades of Arthedain shall be my slaves.”

You just had to stop and help a ghost, didn’t you? I cursed myself silently. Just had to be a good person because bloody Strider the King of the Rangers flouted how honorable and great he was and you feel the need to match him or look foolish!

The Bone Man pointed with the hand not holding his bow and laughed once again. “Bow down, slave! The Bone Man will rend your flesh!”

I found myself transported back for a few moments into my memory. It came upon me so strongly I felt I dreamt for those handful of heartbeats. I was once again a young child, newly abandoned, caught by the wrist as I tried to pick a wealthy man’s pocket. He threw me down hard enough that I felt stunned. When I tried to scramble up and flee, his foot met my chest and shoved me down again. “Bow down and beg for forgiveness, boy!” the man had sneered down at me. “Perhaps you won’t lose your hand!”

Thinking of it now, I could hear the same arrogant sneer in the wight’s raspy voice though they had lived centuries apart. The same hand that I had nearly lost that day long ago clenched into a fist. “I am nobody’s slave, dead man,” I growled, sliding my knives out from their sheaths with soft singing sounds. “Come and have a go, if you’re tough enough.”

I had no way of creeping up behind him to get a good stab in from stealth. Even had I tried, the aura of fear that seemed to curl around him made it impossible to sneak up to him in that way. Instead, I moved to flank him, and he took it as a charge. He lifted his bow, fired an arrow that barely missed me, and switched to a sword as I closed to melee range too quickly for him to get off another shot. I went in and slashed at his bow arm, given it was closest to me, and rolled out of the way of his return thrust. I didn’t fight in a formal manner. I had never been taught a polite way of warfare. I knew the dirty, ugly methods of survival on the streets and back alleys of Lake-town, full of leg sweeps, kicks, and quick knives to the kidneys and major vessels. I wasn’t some champion or protector who would run head-first into battle screaming a war-cry and using brute strength to overpower my opponents. No, I was the sneak-thief who didn’t work well face-to-face and within striking distance. Agility and speed were my hallmarks.

But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t knock someone’s teeth out with my fist or break their bloody noses given even a sliver of a chance.

A kick to the Bone Man’s midsection sent it staggered away and I followed it with a quickly thrown dagger meant for one of its hollow eye sockets. The knife stuck and yet the undead monstrosity came back at me with its sword lifted. “Why can’t you have a brain like a normal thing?” I groused mostly to myself. I kept dodging its strikes while waiting for openings to use to my advantage. I didn’t know if my knives were even doing much damage to it given it kept coming for me long after its lesser wight brethren would have fallen.

A blow with the butt of my dagger to the back of the wight’s spinal column, at his neck, produced a satisfying crack. I had little time to enjoy my success, however, since the Bone Man whipped around and planted the end of his bow into my temple. I saw stars for several dangerous moments as I tottered, woozy, away from him trying to get out of his reach. Instinct more than anything screamed for me to dodge right – and I heard the distinct sound of a sword passing so close to my ear that I knew I’d barely evaded death. I found myself in luck when a glance up showed the undead creature moving in for another attempt. I faked my continued wobbliness long enough to let it close and lashed out for its sword-hand with a booted foot without warning. It connected, the Bone Man dropped its entire hand complete with weapon still gripped in it, and I scooped up the bony extremity and hilt.

I wasn’t good with a sword. I didn’t have to be for what I had in mind. The hand twitched and jerked until it found it couldn’t make me lose my own grip. Only then did it open and fall to the ground with a clatter upon the stones. When the Bone Man tried to use its bow as a club, I swept the sword out to parry and then used my position to slice at the wight’s head with all of my strength. Bone didn’t usually sever readily, but in this case, it had a long-dead body rather than a fresh, living one that a headsman might encounter. The spine had already been weakened by me earlier. The Bone Man’s helmed skull flew from its shoulders as the sword itself clanged against the stone, sparking slightly.

As the body dropped at last in front of me, I had only a moment before something unseen, like a wave of pressure, struck me like a physical blow to my chest. The power of it sent me to my back onto the ruins, sword out of my reach, and I lay there once again unable to move. My vision swam as darkness threatened to overtake me; yet, through the growing darkness before the pre-dawn, I watched as a brief flare occurred and dozens of spirits burst from the falling form of the Bone Man to scatter in all directions. “Free!” they cried in their triumphant, ghostly voices, full of inexpressible joy in that one word.

I lay there for a long set of moments gathering my wits about me again and wondering what I had just done. I was reminded once again of the Shade’s words about those who had died alongside him, before his brother, and wondered if I had misunderstood something the wraith had said. Had he meant his brother as well as his fellow soldiers had been cursed to wake and defend the realm from the Bone Man and whoever had awakened these souls?  It seemed, at least, that more than just the Wandering Shade had been involved, regardless.

I sat up and rubbed where I had been struck and then where I had struck my head on the rough, rocky ground. I got to my feet slowly and retrieved my weapons, looting the Bone Man’s form afterward too (I wanted some kind of reward for my efforts in this), and dragged his bow and sword along strapped to me. I could sell them for some coin once I got back to Bree.

I made my way back around the deep hole that had so many of the dead in it at the foot of the hill, over the ridge that made the border between the northern and southern Barrow-downs, and aimed for the Dead Spire. I was already tired. I had been awake all night. It wasn’t the first time for me, but I hadn’t had to work quite so hard while doing it. I wanted to tend to my scrapes and bruises and have at least an hour or two for a nap before continuing on. Perhaps, once I delivered the news to Tom Bombadil and Strider of what I’d found out from Andraste, I could be free of the situation and return to a normal life.

This thought helped me as I walked. I began a counter-clockwise path around the Spire to find the ghostly figure I sought sooner rather than later, given the other direction would mean I chased him instead. He floated toward me at last and I came to a halt to wait for him. I didn’t even get the chance to say anything before he exhaled in a happy sounding sigh. “I suppose you know I was successful,” I said instead.

The shade replied, “Hear you this brother? / Hear you absolution? / Rest now, brother, / rest as we were / as we shall be.”

“I’ll take that as a thank you,” I remarked drolly. “You and your brother can go back to sleep, now. I suppose all the other spirits that came from the Bone Man are your… shield brothers, right?”

“Yes,” it breathed, sounding even more pleased somehow.

“They can rest, now, too.” I nodded at him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

I turned to move off, but the Shade lifted a hand. Great, I thought. What now? “Duty done, again, to rest at last I yearn.”

I closed my eyes. “You and me, both, ghost.” Get on with it, I wanted to tell the thing.

“So too my brother, wandering by night. A spirit lost brings naught but fright,” it continued, as if explaining the situation to me.

I opened my eyes. “I can only imagine so,” I said after a moment, trying not to sound too impatient. “You need something from me, still. I can tell. What is it?”

He held out his hand. I could see the ring I had returned through the blue-tinged being and wondered how it could hold on to anything material in this state. Then again, I reminded myself, how is any of this possible? Magic, most likely. Something beyond your ken. “Provide this ring, show him it is done,” the Wandering Shade told me. “Then we rest ‘neath Moon and Sun.” He turned and looked to the east and said aloud, “Our duty done, brother, / hear the call of slumber. / Know at last peace, / rest, interred again eternal.”

I looked the direction it had faced. The only thing I knew of in that direction was Bree. I pocketed the shade’s ring and frowned. “He’s in the town of Bree?” I asked the figure.

It turned back to me. “Yes. Wandering by night.”

I nodded slightly. “I have to return to Bree ‘ere long. I’ll find him there.” I smirked faintly. “A ghost wandering around, as you said, tends to scare people. I shouldn’t have a hard time following that trail to him.” I nodded at him. “Rest well. Hopefully, eternally this time in truth.”

I turned and headed back to the ridge line that separated the Barrows from the Old Barrows Road and forest beyond. I found that the creatures no longer worried me as they had when I first entered the area at the beginning of the night. Perhaps I had simply grown used to the idea of them enough that it took more to frighten me, now. The sword and bow at my back made for more weight so that, by the time Bombadil’s home came back into view, my thighs and calves burned in ways I hadn’t felt since my training in Dale before I got married.

Goldberry was nowhere to be seen and I found myself relieved, mostly. I set the sword and bow down on Orald’s front porch and made my way down to the edge of the Withywindle for a drink and to freshen up slightly. I removed my mask to do it and, when I heard no skipping and singing, pulled off my shirt to let the cold water wash the gash across my back as best it could. I replaced my shirt and such afterward and removed the boot on my wounded leg so that I could run it in the clean water, too. It was all that I could afford given the time I had. I could find a surgeon in Bree to check them over, and perhaps the sale of the weapons would help me afford some healing draughts.

By the time I made it back to the porch, dawn was coming. It wasn’t ideal when I laid out on Bombadil’s porch, but it was better than the ground and I was just too exhausted to care much. I pillowed my head on my arms for a little rest and dropped off fast.

I woke to the sound of birds nearby and soft, feminine laughter. I could hear someone speaking and a man replying, both happily, but it took me several minutes to swim up from my tired state to remember where I was. When I did, I lifted my head quickly and instantly regretted it. The pain from how I’d lain was enough to have me cursing softly. The birds fluttered away quickly as I managed to push myself up. Someone had lain a blanket over me and, by the sense of things with the amount of light that came from above, I judged it to be close to late afternoon. My stomach growled and I tried to loosen up my neck and shoulders, my limbs, from how stiff and sore they all were.

Goldberry called my name. When I looked up toward her, I reacted fast enough to catch the apple she tossed in my direction. She winked at me, laughed, and moved past me to enter her home. She left me with Tom’s smiling face for company. “Hey do, merry do!” he greeted me cheerily. “Did you find the sour crows and dreary lady?”

I crunched into the apple hungrily and nodded. “I did,” I replied around the mouth full of fruit that I had taken. “Neither will be troubling us any longer.”

“You seem troubled and weary, friend,” he told me. “My lovely found you a blanket when we came upon you. Resting away your worries makes the day seem brighter even in the gloom.”

I swallowed and motioned with the apple in my hand. “It’s not over just yet. I’m not sure what to do next. I should probably take my information back to Strider so that he can find someone to handle it.” I paused with the apple at my mouth and grimaced. “He’ll just tell me to. Ask me to, I suppose, but what choice do I have? He can’t leave the hobbits and every Ranger I know right now seems to either be dead or in recovery from attempted murder.”

I had another bite of my apple and then said, around it, “The woman with the crebain, her name was Andraste. She wasn’t dressed like anyone from this area. She said the lord of the Nazgûl was coming to Othrongroth and she was going to tell him about the Ring and the hobbits.” I shook my head, crunching the bite I had taken, and swallowed it. “He won’t get the information, now, but if he’s still on his way…” I frowned. “There were some, I think he was one of them, that turned Amdir into a cargûl. And that strange dwarf…” I trailed off again, an idea creeping unbidden into my mind.

Orald was cannier and wiser than he looked or seemed. “The Great Barrow is not a place for weak hearts or frail limbs. Wicked wights and evil lords make merry in their terror. They’ve never caught Old Tom and never will they. He’s the Master!” He skipped around for a few moments as I watched him.

“Then you’re saying if I go there, I should be careful.” I tapped my lips with the apple. “It would be a good thing if I could slip in and spy on them, overhear what plans they might have.” I lifted my index finger. “But that’s a suicide mission, isn’t it? If everything in the Great Barrow is that strong, what chance do I have of even getting through it? Let alone facing down the lord of the Nazgûl and that powerful dwarf lord with him if they should find me there?” I crunched the apple again, still pondering.

Bombadil said nothing. I watched him skip in his yellow boots and listened to him singing for a time as I considered. I hadn’t been asked to go to Othrongroth. Strider had no idea this was happening. The only one who did was me. I could take my information to Strider at this point and not say anything about the meeting. I could walk off into my old life without worrying about the Ring or putting myself into danger for other people. I could give the shade’s ring to his equally ghostly brother so they rested and call my part in this whole play done. Go back to life as a thief and assassin. Watch my son grow up to become something I wasn’t; something better than I could ever be.

Thoughts of Leith struck me as surely as the unseen wave that came from the Bone Man a few hours ago. The One Ring was in the lands. Sauron’s strength grew ever more powerful. The Nazgûl rode out looking for that Ring, but what were they doing otherwise? Creating cargûl out of wounded Rangers? Meeting with strange dwarf lords? Allying themselves with brigands and ne’er-do-wells as Angmar stirred in the north? They had more than just their quest to retrieve their Master’s ring to do out in these lands. I knew it and now that I knew where their leader would be going, I wanted to forget I had ever heard about it. I was the only one who knew who could find out what was happening here. I had a chance to do something so very right, for a change, that it would help balance out all of my lifelong wrongs. But, more importantly, it would mean I could protect my son from slavery and worse were Sauron to reach, via Angmar, past the Misty Mountains cold to touch the lands where my only reason for living remained.

I couldn’t not do this, I finally decided as I finished my apple and studied the core. Not if I truly loved my son.

When I looked up, Bombadil stood in front of me with his hands clasped behind his back. I startled at his presence and he held out a hand for the core. I placed it in his palm. “New life from the old, as it should be,” he told me warmly. “I can plant these seeds and the forest will nurture them so they grow big and strong.”

I blinked at him and tipped my head slightly. “Sometimes, the greatest thing we can do is not interfere with those that know best,” I agreed.

He beamed at me. “If you be a-going,” he declared, “Tom will take you!”

I rose to my feet and moved the bow and sword out of the way. I then turned and dug the ring out of my pocket. I went to his door and knocked on it lightly. When I was told to enter, I did so. I offered Goldberry the ring and told her, “If I don’t return, wait for someone else and have them give this to the ghost in Bree. It’s his brother’s ring. Or, perhaps, one of the hobbits in Buckland who’s going that way. If I do come back, I’ll take it there myself. And the weapons outside.”

She accepted the band and nodded at me. “I remember the battle where this was lost,” she told me with brief sobriety. It vanished as she laughed again. “I’ll wait for your return, Morchandir. I have no doubt that you will.”

I bowed to her and exited. Once outside again, I walked down the steps and faced the much shorter Orald. “Well, my merry fellow! Ready to go a-leaping over barrows?” he asked brightly. “Bring your friends and skip along. We’ll sing a song that will make the Dark Ones rattle.”

I shook my head. “It’s just me. I don’t have any friends.”

He motioned and began to skip up the Old Barrows Road. “Never fear! You will find some soon, I wager. No man can walk alone forever, my hearty!” He gestured with a hand. “Not even old Tom!”