“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.
