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.