morchandir – Page 6 – LOTRO Players

A Burg’s Tale: Chapter 4

The moon set alight the fog spreading over the low areas of the Barrow-downs. It hovered at knee height for the moment to obscure the ground from my vision. I crouched behind a spar of stone watching shambling wights moving around and swirling the growing haze around their skeletal legs. I had already followed the ridge rising above the Old Barrows Road around and to the south, but I could only wonder how much farther it would be until I found the crebain and whatever evil force seemed to be leading them. Was it another of the Nazgûl? Were they female and male? Was it one of the red-robed cargûl instead? I couldn’t worry about it until I found them; yet, I found myself returning to the idea repeatedly when I had to pause and assess my path forward as I did presently.

When it wasn’t concern for what I might find at the end of my path, I wondered at how Bombadil had managed to get over the ridge to begin with by skipping and leaping around. I had yet to find a path over it to the south where he might have come over. I had no real idea whether the crebain had even flown to the south, to be frank, but it seemed the most logical notion to begin with. Bombadil might not have gone over the ridge but around, the same as I had, and he hadn’t been absent for long enough to have gone across the entirety of the barrows and back no matter which direction he had chosen. My target had to be close by, and that meant the other side of the ridge.

I lifted a hand and my mask to rub a gloved finger on the side of my nose with a frown. Something in the area plagued me so that I itched. A weed. A flower. The walking dead. Something. I had already killed three barghests, five huge rats, and two wights because of untimely sneezes. I didn’t actually know how the wights managed to wield swords, let alone bows, given they had no ligaments and muscles with which to pull back bowstrings or bend their joints. I tried not to think about it. It was most likely black sorcery of the foulest kind that I could only be thankful was penetrable by a good dagger throw or strike.

I had come to realize quickly that the scent of musty, old crypts meant that the dead had newly risen. It was easier to avoid those mounds before their inhabitants could find me than for others. The carrion dogs howled in the night and preyed upon creatures that simply wanted to make their homes there, when they weren’t actively rooting up the bones of the dead to chew on them. I knew their kind. We named them Black Dogs while I traveled with the caravans, though they had different names depending on where we went. The Scuttledells south of Lake-town had them as Black Dogs, though we rarely went through that war-torn area. It was more we took a boat down the Anduin instead to avoid it completely and reach Rohan or further. The travel wound up much faster as it was.

A tall stone spire reached for the dark heavens in the near distance on a hill. It was surrounded by smaller stones of a similar shape. It was one of the few landmarks that I knew from my time in Bree: the Dead Spire in the northern Barrow-downs. It was somewhat central to the area and visible from a far enough distance that I could guide myself by it. This didn’t make it safe; on the contrary, barghests, rats, and wights crawled over its surface in their mindless hunting for victims. People like me, though I counted myself only a potential victim rather than a foregone conclusion.

I continued on my way. I passed as a shadow might to avoid contact with the aggressive creatures who had stirred due to the dark influences and powers at work here. I could hear the crebain cawing long before I saw them and knew my destination was close. Their calls helped me pinpoint them, in fact, and I realized I might have overshot them had I not been using my senses appropriately.

I crept up until I could see what awaited me while they couldn’t see me. I had that much skill, at least. One strangely garbed woman stood tending almost lovingly to the four crebain accompanying her. I could hear her speaking to them in a low tone that kept me from understanding the content of her words. She would lift a hand to stroke one’s feathered chest with her fingers and feed it bits of what I could only say was meat of some form, given what they were. Another would mantle its wings and flap them with a jealous cry to see its brother receive a treat and hop or waddle closer to her on its perch to gently peck at her hands with little low warbling sounds so that she had to turn her attention to it, as well. She treated them as pets or children.

I wanted to flank her, but she had positioned herself against the boulders and stone of the ridge instead of in the open. I had no gap and no way of using it to my advantage, and the crebain themselves used the ridge as a watchtower. The only reason they hadn’t spotted me yet, other than my stealth, was because she was offering them treats for good behavior. Or out of her affection. Either way, their attention had been neatly diverted at the exact right time for me.

Or so I thought as I stole toward her turned back and slid my knives from my sleeves, carefully concealing their shining blades under the light of the stars and moon above. The crow-like monstrosities shared the fascination with sparkling objects with their black-plumed cousins. I could hear her as I approached in the shadows as she said, “Andraste is here, my loves. Your lost kin will be replaced. You were the strongest of the flock… rest and sleep a little while to forget your sorrows.”

Andraste, I thought to myself. That must be her name. It didn’t matter to me. She and the birds had to die if the Ring’s whereabouts were to be kept secret and safe. I never learned the names of my victims or asked questions. Those didn’t benefit me when I needed to silently kill someone for my reward, and when I accidentally learned them, it often caused me hesitation and guilt later that I couldn’t afford to feel. I might have liked the violence more than I was willing to admit but humanizing the target was never a good idea.

I was wrong that it was the exact right time to pull the attention of the crebain and that they hadn’t already spotted me coming. Before I could even reach her, a craban made a soft noise and Andraste looked over her shoulder. “I should have realized an idiot would come,” she greeted me with a sneer. She wasn’t an attractive woman, but she wasn’t a hideous one either. Something dark flitted over and through her features and eyes as she turned to me. “The skipping and singing idiot must have sent you.”

I bristled up at her comment about Orald. Despite my misgivings about the ancient being, I felt mildly protective over him. He was part of our culture, my culture, and those of the Free People. How dare she openly mock him? Never mind that I might have privately done the same. It didn’t feel right to mean it so much as this woman obviously did. “Do you think I fear you?” I asked coldly from behind my mask.

She laughed in scorn. “The Lord of the Nazgul returns to Othrongroth. You would be wise to flee before his arrival or you shall know true fear.”

I glanced between her and the quartet of crebain behind her. The breeze suddenly shifted enough to blow the stench of decaying flesh to my nostrils even under the mask, and I realized then that she was feeding her charges meat from corpses dead only a short time. Where she had gotten them, I didn’t know. Perhaps the victims of the shattered group of merchants I had seen camping on the Old Barrows Road. Their dead would be shambling wights at this point as well. “Those creatures have nothing of importance to offer your master,” I bluffed at her. “You’ll be struck down for your stupidity.”

She motioned with a high-pitched cackle of delight and I knew she’d called that bluff. “Fool! Did you think that my pets would not learn that the Ring now travels east in the hands of a hobbit named Frodo Baggins?”

They had overheard the hobbit’s words after all. “There is no such hobbit,” I began through gritted teeth, but she shouted over me. “You have failed utterly! When the master of the Nine returns, he shall learn of this – and of your untimely death!” she declared in triumph. Even as she swung her arm in an arc to motion the crebain forth, I shifted my stance to a defensive one. “Now, come my pets!”

They attacked in twos when in a flock, if the last fight I’d had in Buckland with them had been any indication. I was ready for the four of them to come for me at once all the same. They launched themselves in the gloom and I had to orient by moonlight and the sound of their wings moving. How many were there? I wasn’t sure.

The first blow landed across my head as a pair of beating, black appendages crashed against it from above and behind. When I turned to slash at the air, I felt a connection but couldn’t clearly see what I had hit: the attacker or one of its kin. Whichever one it was, the craban dropped to the ground and flapped spastically at my side. I turned my attention to the next one and clearly spotted it for just long enough to spit its hovering form on the end of my knife so it, too, fell. There was no time to check if they were dead, however, as within moments, an angry call from above heralded the second pair’s assault. I could hear Andraste screeching at them from nearby as they dodged my strikes so that they were non-lethal, yet bloody. I shattered the wing of one with a timed blow and faced the last one. A lucky strike sheared off it’s head in a spray of black in the night and I stood amidst the carnage I had wrought.

Andraste shrieked, “No… My beautiful birds!”

Turning to her, I sneered, “I killed their flock in Buckland and you expected them to kill me now? Who’s the fool, here?”

“You shall die for this!” she snarled in response and came for me with her weapon in hand. I evaded her first strike, turned, and threw my knife into her pale, exposed throat. She looked surprised as her hands lost their grip on the staff she held so it fell, clattering, to the ground. They came up to her neck as her knees gave way and she sank to the ground near her birds. She had time to take hold of the hilt and pull it as she crumpled over sideways and stared at me with incredulity. The night breeze ruffled my dark clothing as I stood staring at her for a long moment. I then calmly walked past her on silent feet and let her dying ears hear the squawks of the three remaining crebain as I lifted them one by one and twisted their heads with audible cracks to end them. When I bent down after to retrieve my bloodied dagger from one of her hands, she had tears in her swiftly dimming eyes.

“You should’ve feared me more,” I said simply, almost gently, to her. And then used her clothing to clean my weapons before replacing them in their hidden sheaths.

I stayed until she had died not because I wanted to but because I had to know for certain that the information she held would stay with her. A barghest howled in the distance as her blood poured from her slit throat and soaked into the ground beneath her. When I walked away, I made sure to cling to the shadows near the ridge once again and guided myself by the gleam of the moon on the Dead Spire.

I had come nearly abreast of it when a shimmering apparition intersected my path. It floated along what seemed to be a set track around the Spire’s base, paused to hover as if searching for something, and then moved on again. I tensed and prepared to defend myself, wondering how I would fight a ghost, when it spotted me and stopped once again. “Who are you?” I demanded warily of the armored, decaying shade. “What do you want of me?”

An airy, hoarse voice from the crypt wheezed in some kind of rhyme and meter,

“All was silence;

now the sound of steel

rings from battles past

long beyond the laying of bones;

stirred by evil’s passage

my brother walks again,

so too our foes.

Duty-bound we stand as one,

lost as he may be.

A lord he rose and, solemn,

buried me.

My shield calls to my arm,

my ring calls to my hand,

my sight departed as my life,

our oaths bind us still;

protect and serve this land.”

It didn’t attack, but I wasn’t the best at poetry. “Right,” I replied dubiously. I had to think a moment about the shade’s words. “All was silence. You were at peace?” It nodded its skeletal head once. “And now something has awakened you and… your brother, and your enemies that killed you?” Again, it nodded at my words in silent agreement. “You died first and aren’t sure where he is, though.” A nod. “But you and he want to protect this place again because… of that evil that awakened you.”

“Yesss,” it hissed with what I thought might be relief and even happiness. As happy as a dead spirit could be, I suppose.

I didn’t want to stay any longer. I needed to get back to Bombadil and Strider to let them know that the deed was done and the hobbits and Ring were safe for now. Something about the shade pulled at me, though, so that I stepped closer to it with a frown visible beneath my mask. “Then what is it you need from me?” I repeated with a shake of my head. “I don’t know how you can fight things that aren’t also spirits.”

“My shield calls to my arm, / my ring calls to my hand,” it replied with an air of a crypt long buried that had been newly opened.

I blinked once. “You need me to find your shield and ring?” When it nodded, I glanced around for a moment at the surrounding barrows. “Oh, this should be quick,” I muttered to myself with a sigh.

But it continued to speak, this time with something new. “Long did I rest, / now awake, as vengeance claims trinkets / to call a curse upon our bones.”

I made a noise. “Vengeance?” I echoed as I returned my attention to him. I was reminded of his words from before about enemies also walking again now. “One of your enemies has your items?”

The wraith nodded and then spoke again. “As it was in life, / so too in death. / His curse on us still / as we yearn for sleep.”

I made a face as I nodded, though I wasn’t sure that the shade could see it. “I think I understand that part. You just want to keep sleeping and this…” I paused before I could say the word I wanted to say, as vulgar as it was. “Moron,” I said instead, striving to be polite, “woke you up because he has your things, which is a bit of a holdover of a curse from when you were all still alive.” I sighed. “Where can I find him, do you know?”

The shade appeared more animated at my reluctant aid. “My ring, forgotten, / may still be found.” He motioned in such a vague manner that I had no real idea what direction he intended to point at. “Speed along, living, / to a tomb of ground.”

“Speed along?” I growled. “Don’t be impatient, wraith. You’ve been dead for this long. You can wait another few hours if needed.” I decided to move to my left first and go around the Spire toward some of the mounds that I saw in the near distance. Surely, it wouldn’t be far away from the wandering shade’s circular path around the Spire. Not if he had decided to stay nearby at least.

I moved cautiously to the front of the first small barrow that I found. I didn’t know if a wight would leap out at me or down from the top or not. I needn’t have worried: the undisturbed area in the front told me that this wasn’t the tomb I needed. The next three, one to the north, another to the southwest, and the last to the west, all appeared the same. I felt some small comfort that whoever, or whatever, was inside hadn’t yet risen like so many other corpses. I turned at last to the south and firmed my resolve. If this wasn’t the barrow, then I would have to tell the shade that I couldn’t find it and had to be on my way. I had more important things to take care of.

This tomb was different. It had a strange tension to it as I approached and, upon searching the front where the slab stood against the door, had disturbed earth around it as if something had entered and exited recently. I wasn’t sure if it was the right tomb, but I knew there was a wight inside regardless. Was this the Wandering Shade’s own tomb, stolen from him? That would make some sense as well. I drew my knives, set my shoulder against the stone, and started to roll it out of the way of the opening.

The low scraping of stone on stone and the grinding of the earth beneath the heavy weight sounded like thunder in the silent night. Even the small insects still chirping nearby went dead. I scurried back after a sword slid out and barely missed my side. There wasn’t enough space for a body to leave, but skeletal hands made sure the stone rolled another few inches to allow the wight to exit. “Fool of a shade! My master the Bone Man has made a thrall of your shield-brother!” the hollow, raspy voice announced as it stepped forth into the night air.

It seemed surprised to see a living being in front of it instead. There were no lids to blink yet the hesitation once its sockets turned to me was almost palpable. “No eyes making it hard to see?” I cracked.

The barrow wight continued as if it hadn’t heard me. Maybe it hadn’t. The thing didn’t have ears, after all. “And you… a living fool soon to be dead… I will send you into the shadow world too!”

I made a soft tsking sound and drew my weapons. “I already move through them but thank you for the offer.”

“So come to me now, fool… Come and die!”

“You first,” I retorted, and sure enough, the undead thing stepped forward with sword raised. I expected it to fall within a couple of strikes as the others I’d fought had as I evaded the first swing and went in under its arm with my knives. Both found homes in the corpse’s body with an eerily hollow sound before I pulled them away, taking a slight bit of rib cage with them.

The blows didn’t even slow the creature down. It turned and stabbed downward at me with its sword and a gaping, denuded jaw. I barely made it out of the way in time and received a thin furrow down and across my back for my trouble. My hiss of pain wasn’t just for the new wound; it was also for the torn shirt I now had to wear. I didn’t know how I’d get it mended after this was over if I didn’t find some ready cash. On the other hand, if I didn’t get my head back into what I was doing, I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

I feinted and went low to sweep out one of its bony legs. The entire leg from the knee down broke off and flew a distance away so that the wight lost its balance. It still hacked at me in mindless fury until I managed to stomp a booted foot onto its sword-bearing arm. The thing cracked under my heel and I did the same to its head at the neck while it clawed at my legs and left scratches down them. Reaching down, I grabbed at its skull and yanked the whole thing back until it came free of the spine with a snap. Hurling it from me, I stabbed and twisted the wight’s body apart completely in a delighted rage for having shed my blood. Only after I had completed my macabre mission did I rise and make my way into the barrow where it had been.

The moonlight from the open entry allowed me to see inside just enough as I searched the small tomb for any evidence of the shade’s presence. The large stone casket inside had been shifted and opened so that the body within lay exposed. One skeletal arm lay broken off on the outside of the coffin. I wrinkled my nose as I gingerly lifted it to place it back inside with the body. “I don’t know if this is yours,” I said aloud to the absent shade, “but if it is, I might as well be nice.” I found no ring inside with the rotted body. I dragged the top of the stone back into place and looked around the barrow further. There had to be a ring here if it was the shade’s tomb. If not, I would have to go back empty-handed and leave, bloodied, without anything to show for it. My pride smarted at the very idea. Was I a burglar, or wasn’t I?

I found the ring when a glint of gold caught my eye near the slab at the doorway. Moving to it I found a simple men’s ring inlaid with two stones. Pocketing it, I stepped out of the barrow and pushed the stone back into place to seal it once more and went in search of the Wandering Shade.

Finding him took longer this time, mostly due to the fact I had to actually go in search of him rather than running across him accidentally. I saw his floating, half-visible blue figure ahead of me after a half hour and approached him with as much irritated civility as I could muster with a back and leg that still felt on fire. Digging the ring from my pocket, I opened it to show it to him. He floated closer and said, with more hope in his breathy, ghostly voice, “Help my hand, now to his arm, lost too, lost too.”

I stared at him for a long moment. “He… lost his arm?” The shade shook his head at me but didn’t elaborate. I sighed and asked, “Then what is it that you need from me? I wish you would speak plainly.”

The shade fell silent for a few moments before speaking in its riddling way once again:

“Sundered and shattered,

metal and bone,

life bled onto the ground.

In shade of stone,

a south facing wall

wherein the earth

slept once the dead.

On cold hallowed ground

where dead lay asleep

woke they to greet

our treasure claimed.

There, by our honored,

sleeping, and gone,

my brother bid me farewell.

Now, the dead rise,

stirring the earth

now cursed from where

I fell.

Our curse recalled;

we shall walk

until the dead

are quelled.”

I lifted a hand to my head and rubbed the back of my neck as I rolled my head around. “Again with this,” I grumbled. “Somewhere, near a wall,” I began slowly, “where you fought and died….” The shade nodded. “Something in the ground?” I hazarded. It nodded once again. “You want me to go kill wights there because they’re disturbing that area?”

“Yes,” it breathed. “Slept once the dead.”

“I’ll consider that a yes,” I replied. “You and your brother can’t rest until they’re gone.” I pressed my lips together. “Somewhere near a wall is where you died and your men were buried.” I looked up at him a touch sharply. “With treasure?”

“Yes,” it said again with a nod of its skull, and I cursed internally. I wouldn’t be able to find it and take it myself if it was linked to the spirit in front of me. “Which direction?” I asked hopefully.

The wraith’s head lifted toward the sky above. “Against many did we fight,” he replied, “for a treasure, which we stole.”

I smirked. “That’s the way of it sometimes. I can understand.” I had done my share of punching and stabbing for something I had stolen to begin with, just to keep it.

But he continued without acknowledging me, saying, “Rise they from the ground / at his call / his cackle, cough and cry. / Fighting at the edge of stone / in a hollow where we lay the bones.”

“Cackle, cough, and cry?” I echoed, baffled. “Have you lost your… you know what? If an evil being can call forth the dead by coughing, I’m sure he has to be formidable. So, these enemies are at the edge of a stone wall in a hollow with people buried under the ground.” I gave him a long-suffering look. “Could you just point?”

The shade turned and did so. I didn’t expect it and therefore took a moment before nodding my thanks and setting off. The distance was farther this time, north of the shade’s tomb. It took time to get there given I had to fight through several enemies and incur a few more shallow wounds. Barghests have an extraordinarily strong bite that I had no desire to feel fully clamped on one of my limbs.

The place where the Barrow-downs more or less seemed to end on this side of the valley backed up against a separate set of ridges leading into the Old Forest that circled around. There existed more than one barrow, at least three that I could see, and I rubbed my sore right shoulder as I stood examining the area. A south facing wall caught my eye and I crept toward it. The vicinity remained quiet but for chittering rats and scuttling crawlers for the moment. The hazy scud here had thickened so I couldn’t see the ground well the lower I descended. I didn’t like the look of it one bit.

My instincts proved correct as I came close to the wall and the ground erupted nearby. Two wights made a strange growling, coughing noise of snarls as they somehow rose from the earth with their weapons. I leaped back in alarm, knives out, as they attacked. I had no time to toss out a witticism this time before I hacked and slashed them back to rest. The sound of more remains clattering up from somewhere nearby alerted me to a second onslaught of wights to put down, but the third and final pair nearly took me by surprise as I moved away from the freshly killed undead body. One reached out from beneath the thick fog to grab at my wounded leg while the other attempted to stab me from a lower position at the same time. The maneuver I had to complete to avoid being impaled from below was catlike enough that I knew I’d regret those muscles come time to wake up from my future well-deserved sleep.

I had slain all of the wights that seemed willing to show themselves near the wall. I made sure of it as I paced up and down, even stamping the ground more than once with a hiss of, “Come out, you worms! Out! Or are you too afraid even now?” My temper brought no more to the surface and I exited the area hoping that I had found the right one and defeated all of the wights the shade would need.

I found him once again and described the area where the wights had risen. “Was that the right place?” I asked at the end.

“Yes,” it breathed. It paused for a few moments and I felt some stirring of hope that perhaps I had done all that was required of me. “Still I linger,” it finally intoned. “One foe remains.”

I rolled my eyes heavenward. “Of course it does.” What am I doing? I asked myself. I have to be on my way already. I can’t keep running these hills endlessly for this shade.

The ghost set off on another enigmatic lyrical journey describing a wight in the southern area of the barrows who the brothers slew while they still lived. Or it was a man they slew and buried there, while they all still lived. I wasn’t entirely sure. Regardless, the wraith claimed, “Brothers, cursed, / return again / to face this foe / from whom they stole.”

My glance sharpened on him. “The treasure you fought and died for, that you buried off to the north – you stole it from this person to begin with and started this whole thing?” I felt myself try to bite my tongue when I said it. The hypocrisy involved didn’t escape me, given my profession. I had tried to steal something from a forest cottage and look where it had landed me.

“For deeds most noble / in intent,” the Wandering Shade answered. I frowned. Noble deeds and burglary? I wasn’t entirely certain how the two might go in hand. The idea was one that I wanted to explore later, would have to, given the current circumstances. “Whilst evil walks / so too will we.”

“Mm. You keep mentioning that part.” I rolled my shoulders a bit. “This… Bone Man,” I said, calling the spirit by a name that seemed to fit with the shade’s narrative, “he’s to the south, then?”

The shade nodded. “Seek you he, / beyond the border / south towards stone / the land of Cardolan / his Bones there still roam.”

“And that will be everything you need me to do for you here so you can rest again, I hope?” I asked dubiously. It was never that easy.

The spirit nodded once and moved to continue its floating path around the Dead Spire. I set off to the south and whatever pass might exist through the ridge bisecting the two areas. I had a strange feeling of dread as I walked the hills and barrows that I was moving from the pan to the fire the farther south that I went.

A Burg’s Tale: Chapter Three

He greeted me as soon as he saw me and didn’t even mind that I had on my new mask. Halting his skipping around, Tom waved a hand – a whole arm, really – and called out, “Hoy now! Hey now! What’s all this fussing? We’ve not had so many guests since our wedding! There is time enough for bird-watching, but perhaps first a song or two, my hearty?”

Bird-watching? I thought as I came to rest before him. Does he already know what I’m here for? Of course he does, he’s Orald! What others is he talking about, though? The hobbits, perhaps? “Let your heart fly free and put aside your worries. You are in the house of Tom Bombadil!” he cheerily informed me.

“I wish it were that easy,” I began seriously, reaching for my mask to remove it in respect. I did have some, after all. Remembering Strider’s words, I then added, “Aragorn has sent me to you for your aid in finding some crebain in the Old Forest. They may tell the wrong people about something of great importance.” My face thus freed, the air of the forest rushed in with its clean scent of old trees and clear water, so unlike what I remembered of Lake-town. Bombadil’s clearing allowed for sunlight in golden shafts to pierce to the grassy knoll. Or perhaps it was Orald himself who allowed it to grow so green here. I could sense the peace of the glade through my twitching thoughts and anxiety and had to privately admit it felt soothing.

He spoke and at first, I didn’t know if he had even acknowledged my fears. “‘My Goldberry is away at her spring, and I was going lily-hunting! I’ve no time for chasing birds.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued on and I subsided. “But hoy now! Aragorn’s a name I know, and a friend of Old Tom’s! Hear then my offer: While Old Tom Bombadil looks for sour crows, you’ll gather lilies for my lovely. I saw some along the river, just a hop and a jump away. Just follow along until, ring a ding dillo, you find Old Man Willow!”

I let his request sink in and rocked back on my heels. “Gather lilies?” I echoed incredulously. “For your… wife, I take it?” I wondered how the first thing in creation might get married. Who would officiate that ceremony? What kind of ceremony might it have been? No traditions like those of Men and, I had heard, Elves, like exchanging rings or binding hands, had even been thought of, surely? Instead, I offered with finality, “Why are you so baffling?”

He didn’t answer me directly. “You watch that old Grey Willow-man. He’s a mighty singer. He’ll sing you down to sleep and drown you, if you don’t be careful.” He then skipped away merrily as I watched him, singing as he went. I didn’t know how he would find the crows being as loud as he was, but I had more pressing matters in front of me: whoever Old Man Willow was, he was apparently very dangerous. A wizard or forest spirit? I wondered with a deep frown as I settled the mask around my neck against my chest. Even the trees seemed intent on sending their roots after me all the way down the path I took, and a few had even up and walked around. One had decided to fight me. I still didn’t know how I felt about killing a tree by stabbing and slashing it repeatedly. All I did know was that I would need my full vision for this errand – no mask. It made sense to me that an aggressive sorcerer lived in the Old Forest, now. I wasn’t sure why Bombadil allowed him to survive, though. Surely, the presence of something so malevolent would stir him into action?

I swiveled slowly toward the sound of the Withywindle down the slope from me. I trekked down the path toward the bridge and turned to follow the shoreline before I reached the crossing. It didn’t take long before I found myself unable to really go any farther without entering the water itself. Beyond, on a small jut of land, rose a gigantic willow. In the water around it, floating amidst the tendrils draped over the surface of the slowly flowing stream, floated the lilies I needed. I didn’t see anyone else about. With a shrug and silent word of thanks for my luck, I set myself to getting wet and waded in after climbing over the rocks to a shallower area.

Seconds after the water touched my skin through my trousers, I felt myself growing slightly irritable. By the time it got to my knees, I could feel the beginnings of weariness settling through me. The closer I got to the willow, the heavier I felt. Even climbing back up onto land near the sallow didn’t seem to stop it. I squinted up at the large thing and grunted in heavy-eyed realization: Old Man Willow was the willow itself. This was no natural creeping exhaustion. He’ll sing you down to sleep and drown you, I recalled Tom saying. I made a rude gesture at the tree in defiance and turned to gather up the white-flowered lilies. If it hadn’t moved yet, I was probably not in any danger of a physical attack. I had to admit that those long tendrils would probably hurt like a…

The searing pain of a root whipping the backs of my thighs through my trousers had me cursing. I’d already felt that sort of thing plenty of times on the way down the river; why I wasn’t already one big welt was beyond me. Both of my knives flashed out to hack at the offending thing. The fight wasn’t long, but by the time it ended, I wanted to curl up somewhere for a long nap. Sheathing my weapons, I hurriedly harvested four white lilies from the nearby water and struggled through it to the rocks. I almost didn’t make it back across to shore before my legs gave out. I wavered while on my knees, on dry land, but the feeling of intense exhaustion faded from me. It took a few minutes for my eyes to feel like they could stay open and my legs to push me to my feet once more. With a relieved exhale, I made the walk back up to Bombadil’s cottage.

I wasn’t sure how much time it had taken me to get there and get back, but I knew it couldn’t have been terribly long. Not long enough for even the great Orald to find the crows and return here, on foot, I knew. I sank down on the steps of the porch, lilies in hand, and settled them onto my damp stomach after I had laid back with my legs down the steps. At this point, a bear could wander in and eat me from the feet up and I wouldn’t stop it. “Water lilies,” I grumbled to myself and threw an arm over my face. “The whole world is in danger and you have to pick water lilies for a madman.” When I thought about it, though, it had been what I should’ve expected given everything that had happened thus far. Running around Archet without a horse, fighting giant spiders when a dwarf specializing in them ignored them, Rangers turned evil by a scratch from a Black Rider, attacking crows and roots… why not go pick lilies near a murderous tree that wanted to eat me? Tomorrow, I’ll probably be fighting Sauron himself, I groused.

I wasn’t sure how long I laid there before I drowsed, but it was still light when I heard Tom’s singing growing louder from somewhere nearby. I moved the lilies from my stomach to my lap along my thighs so that I could sit up properly. By the time I did, Tom had arrived and come to a halt from his skipping. As I lifted one of the water lilies up for him with both hands, he took it with a look of delight. “Lilies white for the River-daughter! Stronger than hobbit-folk are you if you outsang Willow-man! Not a lily crushed, nor leaf bent!”

“I’m pretty sure hobbits aren’t as strong as Men struggling to get away from killer foliage,” I replied as I handed him the rest of the flowers. Then it struck me: the hobbits had come this way. Had they come into contact with Old Man Willow? I blinked and looked at Orald to ask him, but he had already moved to the next bit of the conversation.

“Old Tom’s a merry fellow, but he knows when it’s time for dancing or to go a-wighting,” Tom proclaimed. “He’s found your birds and none too soon. If you seek them out, then seek them now, unless you wish to sleep beneath green grass!”

He’s… speaking of himself as if he’s not himself? I couldn’t continue the thought. It was on my mind as I replied, however, so that I began, “He…” I made a face. “You found them?” Why are you this way? I wanted to ask, but figured he’d either ignore me or respond as if talking about someone else instead of himself.

He went on about black birds coming to rest “where the restless walk,” and I could feel a headache threatening me already. He couldn’t be straightforward, could he? He then said words that, even thinking before about how things were going, still surprised me: “Beware the old barrows, they stir when they should be a-sleeping!”

I held up my hands. “Wait one moment, sir,” I tried to interject, but he would have none of it. “‘Go north up the path and follow the Old Barrows Road,” he explained as he settled the water lilies into a nearby bucket full of water that I hadn’t noticed before, “then south within the barrows wall along the forest eaves. Hey dol! Merry dol! And there you’ll find them! Watch for the lady dreary.”

“Now, see here,” I tried again, wondering why he hadn’t actually taken care of the wights if he knew when it was time to go a-wighting and time for dancing. He had yet to stop the latter, as far as I’d seen. “The barrows? And the dead are walking in them, awake now? I can’t—”

“Now hop along, my hearty! Tom’s a-going leaping!” He said this as he began to, once more, skip with great vigor, as if trying to fly by doing so. I stood watching him, mouth slightly agape, before I shut it and snatched up my mask from where it hung on my chest.

“Lady dreary,” I sighed to myself. “I wonder if that’s like Old Man Willow? Lady Dreary is probably a ravenous cairn stone who’ll crush my bones to make her bread.” I slid the mask back on as I walked, securing it firmly.

I had left my horse in Buckland to keep it safe. Had I owned the animal, rather than borrowed it, I would have ridden it through the Old Forest and out once again. It would take far more time for me to get back to Buckland and ride around than to follow Bombadil’s directions on foot. Far easier to sneak around the wights and dead things without a horse, too, I reminded myself. I would’ve liked to take my horse to the Old Barrows Road and ride, I began to think and paused in sudden amusement. You know, there might be a song in that, were I minstrel.

I heard a soft voice that sounded familiar before I’d left the grounds. Feminine and sweet, yet powerful. I turned with my mask on and discovered, standing by the house, the same exquisite woman from the fresh springs I had to fetch water from for Adso. I found myself once again dumbstruck. It took me another moment of gawking to realize that she had called my name. “You… you’re Orald’s wife?” I stammered stupidly. Ever the charming gentleman, I berated myself silently.

“I said to you that my Tom was the Master of the forest when we first met,” she reminded me with good humor and grace. “How soon Men forget.”

I kicked myself mentally for not making the connection sooner. “Beg your pardon, Missus,” I said with a little bow for her, “but I’ve had a great deal on my mind and—”

Goldberry laughed like silver bells and waterfalls. “Pay it no mind. I’m not offended, and neither is my Tom.” She smiled fondly as she looked off in the direction that the man had skipped. “I know he must seem strange to you and yours, but he… is Tom.” She turned her warm smile to me. “You’re on a dangerous road, Morchandir, and I don’t just mean the Old Barrows.”

I sobered even though her smile made me want to do so in return, mask or not. “On foot, no less,” I offered in return as lightly as possible. “I’ll have to be particularly sneaky, I suppose. Though I’ve never tried to steal up to a wight, nor do I think it has anything worth pickpocketing.” I paused. “Mostly because it has no pockets.”

She laughed again. I could see why Tom had married her. She left things blooming around her, including inside people whose insides were long thought dead. “Use care. The Barrows have ever been dangerous, but now they are almost lethal. Something stirs there, and though I might wish for my Tom to face it so the taint on the land subsides, I know that it isn’t in his nature unless absolutely necessary. He seeks ever to soothe the hatred and evil in the hearts of others before turning to other means. When he deems the trouble is too great, I know he will act.”

Something in her tone soothed me but also worried me at the same time, somehow. I realized what it was soon after she stopped speaking. “You hope he doesn’t have to get involved.”

“No,” she countered with a little shake of her head. “I’m hoping that you will help calm the Barrows so that Tom may continue to be Tom. Our cares are not of your world, or have not been for many days, at least. I am, unlike some of my sisters, somewhat closer to Men and the other races – enough to see and hear and know that the threat you and the hobbits wish to stop is a threat that will come for Tom in time.” She grew sad. “If it isn’t stopped, at least. I have faith in the Shire-folk and I have faith in you, burglar, for I must have that faith. I will not be alive to see Tom fall, otherwise. He was the First, and if the Ring is not destroyed, he will be the Last as well.”

I wasn’t sure what to say in response. “I would have thought you and your sisters and Tom and… others like you would be too powerful for Sauron,” I finally said.

She smiled brightly again. “Burglar you are, but your silver tongue is no match for a hobbit’s, and my heart is not for stealing!” she teased me. “Ancient we may be, my sisters and I, but our mother is older still, and Tom the Oldest of all things! The Wise know not much about us, but the power of the Maiar rivals our own, and Sauron has become stronger still.” She trailed off and shook her head. “But no more. You have your path and I shan’t keep you from it. I dare not. Perhaps if you find yourself here again someday, you can stay an evening for supper and rest when this is done.”

I could do nothing more than bow to Goldberry again. All thoughts of turning and fleeing or simply stopping the crebain and their master and returning to a normal life had no meaning for the moment. I had no idea what to think, in all honesty, nor how to feel. “I will do what I can, lady Goldberry.” It was all that I could say before I forced myself to walk away from her down the path to the Old Barrows Road. The silvery elf queen from my dream came unbidden to my mind in memory, speaking once again of my having a part to play in the destiny of Middle Earth. I’m no hero, I told myself firmly. No getting delusions. Who’s to say everything you experienced in the Blackwold camp and Archet brought on a simple dream?

Yet, a voice in my head that was still my own countered, Who’s to say it was?

A Burg’s Tale: Chapter 1

One moment, I was sneaking into a cottage in the Chetwood north-east of Bree-town that looked abandoned. The next thing I knew, something heavy clubbed me from behind and I dropped like a stone, unconscious. When I woke, I found myself in the last place I wanted to be: a cell.

I wasn’t alone, though. A hooded man, a Ranger by the looks of it, stood outside the bars. My head hurt and before I could really ask many questions, the Ranger broke me out of the cell. I had no real gear or clothing. It had all been taken from me. Brigands, I realized even as we found a weapon for me to use. Once outside, Strider, as he was called, told me he had to hunt down a servant of Mordor in the camp, but that I had another job to do. There were two hobbits, little folk, also trapped in the prison that we – or at least the Ranger – wanted free. I wanted to leave and save myself. I know what I did to get in the place. I don’t know what the Ranger thought we were there for, to be honest; however, if Mordor got involved with Blackwolds, I didn’t want to stick around to find out and figured the other captives felt the same. Given I pay my debts, if the Ranger wanted me to break the lock for the hobbits so we could all escape, I would do it without question. In my profession, you don’t ask those.

He wasn’t alone, though. Another Ranger, Amdir, would help us once I got the hobbits freed. One was there unnecessarily and the other due to mistaken identity. I quickly moved to free one, killed at least four Blackwolds guarding her to do it, and let her take the lead to find her companion. She set fire to the camp as a distraction along the way. Clever girl. It did the trick and left one guard at the hobbit’s cell, which she and I quickly dispatched. He mentioned something about a Black Rider before he died. The Mordor servant, perhaps? I would quickly find out – once the nasty little hobbit fellow finished being rude enough that I almost left him there tied to his bloody pole.

We fled for the main gates, where Amdir stood between us and some horrific figure on a black horse. Strider could do nothing as the… man?… hissed and stabbed Amdir. I hardly know from the way the fires danced and the shadows swirled. The horse itself seemed odd, too, not quite right. Strider managed to drive off the Black Rider, swearing revenge, but the Rider claimed the hobbits weren’t the ones it was after. “This is not the Baggins I seek,” it raged. I remember it clearly against the flames before the horse reared and it fled.

I don’t really know how long we stumbled and staggered about through the trees with Strider supporting Amdir. It was near morning when we found ourselves near the torch-lit walls of a town – Archet, Strider had said. My head hadn’t stopped throbbing and we hadn’t stopped once to rest or find something cool to drink after Strider had bound up Amdir’s wound. The female hobbit, Celandine, seemed reasonable enough, if worried about Amdir’s paling features and shadowing eyes. The male hobbit, Mundo, mostly complained about his empty belly and all the walking we were doing until Celandine shushed him in irritation. Amdir didn’t speak much. Neither did Strider, though when he did, it was to the hobbits and he sounded firm but gentle with them.

We settled just inside Archet with permission from Captain Brackenbrook, the official in the town, though I don’t have to tell you how much legal officials comfort me. The sun had already risen for at least a few hours when I woke from a restless sleep. Celandine bade me check on Amdir’s state, worried more than when we had arrived, but Mundo only whined about his hunger. Amdir was dying. He claimed to be fine; that the blade had barely pierced his shoulder, but his look was a man nearing his end through his increasingly violent chills. Whatever business Strider had with “a different Baggins” would see him off before the village of Archet, and his companion, could be saved.

I should’ve left then and there. Gathered some food and started walking south toward the next town or Bree itself. Strider, however, gave me a charge: talk to the Captain and warn him of the Blackwolds. I tried. He didn’t believe me. I went around the town on his orders asking key people if they felt threatened and of course, none of them did. Strider grew frustrated at their lack of concern and sent me to a trainer, more, I think, for his peace of mind than my own given I knew how to fight. Then, he said the words that had me groaning inside: “Are you ready to begin your great venture?”

Angmar had awakened? Mordor had come? The village and others nearby would be razed to the ground? Everything inside me told me to leave. I had a son to think of far, far away from this madness. But I was tasked by the Ranger to aid his companion, and I knew I had to at least do that much before I slipped away. Whatever would make Amdir more comfortable in the end. He deserved that much for helping us and sacrificing his own life. Strider claimed the Black Rider was the most fell thing I would meet in my travels. Apparently, he’s never met my accursed ex-wife.

I was sent to ask the Captain for the location of kingsfoil and to offer my assistance to him. All I could do was sigh and agree. Attaching the second request to the first assured Strider I would do it for him. I couldn’t return with one thing and not show myself doing the other. I was told where they were and to assist a man named Calder Cob with some wolves. Cob would tell me where they were.

Off I went down the road with a bit of new gear in place given to me by one or two of the people of Archet. When I reached the man, Cob said both the wolves, the source of them, and the kingsfoil were all in the same set of ruins to the south. It took me a little while to get there by foot – a place named Bronwë’s Folly, though I wonder at the name – and I picked the kingsfoil first. I had to fight aggressive wolves on the way up to the top of the ruins, only to find a strange banner there. When I threw it down, a Blackwold man walked toward me claiming that Cob had informed him I’d be showing up there. After I killed him, I returned to Cob in a fury and demanded to know why he had betrayed me.

“I’ll have all the gold.” I wasn’t in my right mind all of a sudden. I had been knocked out, rescued, watched a Mordor servant stab a man who was now slowly dying, been rooked into helping this town of idiots rather than leaving, and ran halfway across what felt like all of Bree to gather kingsfoil and kill vicious wolves just so a bunch of brigands could get rich? And Cob had the audacity to say I’d die too if I didn’t clear out before nightfall. For gold.

I like gold, mind, but not enough to ally myself with Mordor and an awakened Angmar to do it. There is honor among thieves.

But he was right about one thing: Captain Brackenbrook wouldn’t believe me about him if I told him. Strider’s advice, when I gave him the kingsfoil, was to question a Blackwold in the stocks about Cob before offering that information to the Captain. The brigand yelled about being a friend to Cob and that it was all a mistake. “I suppose that might have worked at some point — if I hadn’t just been betrayed by Cob,” I informed him. He squealed like a piglet about the truth while the jailer stood there listening. He believed me and sent me back to Brackenbrook with that news – who still refused to believe it until I went to talk to some man on a farm to the south named Cal Sprigley. If I’d had a horse of my own, I would have ridden it away from all of this nonsense. Toodle-oo!

Celandine wanted me to pick up some berries in that area for a tea that she thought would help Amdir. Mundo wanted some pig to eat. I had to run back toward Bronwë’s Folly and then further on to get to the farm. Cob sneered at me as I ran past, and I had to force myself not to stop and blacken both of his eyes and leave my knife in his gut. Amdir wouldn’t be the only one dying slowly, I swore it.

I killed a few piglets along the way and made it to Sprigley’s farm. Imagine my shock – shock, I say – when Sprigley informed me the Blackwolds had attacked and some of his farmhands had chased after them. One of them who had stayed behind asked me to find the four men to make sure they were all right. Sprigley asked me to head the rest of the way to Combe and get help before the Blackwolds attacked again that night. Why must everyone rely on me for this? How am I trustworthy? I don’t even have a trustworthy face!

I’m not, actually. I fully intended on entering Combe and sending help their way before stealing enough to pay for a night at an inn in Bree. I’d had enough of this hero business. I’m not a hero and never have been. I’m no better than the brigands threatening everyone. Maybe slightly better, now that they’ve gone to Sauron.

My escape plans were foiled as soon as I found Blackwolds guarding the gate into Combe. They heckled and jeered at me until I had to turn back and let Sprigley know the situation. I then went off to find the missing farmhands.

I couldn’t bring them home, though. The Blackwolds had cut them down in various places along the stream I found. I did find the berries for Celandine’s tea and brought everything back to Archet. Sweet Eru, my legs were twitching and tired by then. Mundo could stop his incessant whinging. Celandine could feel she had helped, though Amdir didn’t eat or drink anything and only pretended to, and Brackenbrook read Sprigley’s letter and finally realized how much of a fool he had been. He had left no time for Archet to prepare its defenses given he sent me running around. To be honest, neither had Strider.

The idiot Captain even admitted his own son had tried to warn him of Cob’s treachery three years before, and Brackenbrook had exiled him, dismissed him, and called him a jealous child. If I hadn’t needed the old idiot, I might’ve stabbed him in the eye then and there. I can’t even see my own son and this man refused to believe his and sent him away! Strider, anxious to leave for whatever purpose he had, sent me off to Jon Brackenbrook and his hunters as the only hope to save Archet, despite the Captain’s despair and resolve to fall with the village. I could see Amdir losing his fight. “Amdir assures me he just needs rest,” Strider claimed. Lies. He knew it’s a lie, too. The kingsfoil wasn’t working. I knew Strider could see the truth as well, but abandoning him before his death…? Before an attack that might destroy the town? What could possibly have that much importance for a man who acted as if he had more honor in him than I did? His actions said he didn’t.

I still had no horse. Why was nobody offering me a bloody mount if there was so little time? I had to run on foot once again down a road, this time to the east of Archet, to a cabin near a pond full of massive insects and choked with reeds. At least Jon Brackenbrook agreed to help his father. Did he send someone along with that message? Of course not. He sent me off to the Blackwold Roost to find their plans, though, and bring them back. Once I had, another hunter in the cabin offered a sleeping bag to me since I looked so exhausted. I don’t know when they thought I had the time, but given the hunters meant to scout the East Path into Archet, where the Blackwolds and Angmar meant to sneak inside, I figured it wouldn’t hurt. That, and I actually felt like I might fall over at any moment. Had I even eaten since the day before?

I don’t know how long I slept, almost certainly no longer than an hour, but the vivid dreams I had… an elf-queen, a beautiful garden, a dark castle in Angmar stirring. So many visions and the queen assuring me that I was in them all somehow, involved, and that my fate was tied to that of our world. I woke in a cold sweat knowing it wasn’t just a dream. It didn’t feel like one. Either I was losing my mind or needed to run for cover and soon.

I stepped outside to speak to Atli Spider-bane, a dwarf from east of the Misties somewhere north of my own chosen home of Lake-town, to find that the East Path contained giant spiders and thus the hunters had avoided it all this time. “So, I have to be the one to scout it?” I wanted to know, already regretting my choice to burgle a cottage in the woods and get into this mess. “How is your name Spider-bane and you’re still sitting here and sending me in there?”

By this point, I had regained some adequate gear once again. I don’t know how many spiders I stabbed and sliced and maimed, but by the time I found a Blackwold’s body at the end near the walls of Archet, I stabbed it another few times just out of frustration. I had to fight my way back out, too, and informed the hunters that the wall was indeed intact and a scout for the enemy had become a victim of the eight-legged denizens of the place. Why Archet hadn’t been overrun by the blasted things, I’ll never know. It’s not as if they couldn’t climb over the wall.

That’s when Jon Brackenbrook went to Archet and his father, of course. After all the hard work had been done by me. Why didn’t I just leave at that point? Mostly, because I needed to stab something repeatedly until it died screaming and gurgling. That would be most satisfying after the day I’d had and given the people responsible for most of that frustration wanted to attack the town I happened to still be in, I felt I should oblige my murderous side. I headed to the town with them determined to find Cob in the fighting to come so that I could punch his face and put a knife in his throat.

The worst that would happen was that I’d die trying to save a town. I had to admit that Leith and his guardians wouldn’t mind that story of my end, rather than the one that said I had died on the wrong end of a hangman’s noose. That one was the one I knew would be headed for them at some point or another.

I think I saw more death in a few minutes than I had ever thought possible, though. I shouldn’t have slept. One hour earlier… the town wouldn’t be ablaze and the fighting wouldn’t have already begun. The jailer died and his wife ran to his body. Strider was long since gone. We lost several hunters and it seemed that for every building and area that we freed from the Blackwolds’ grasps, the more cries for help that rose from just another bend. We found Atli alive and pressed on toward the Captain’s position, where he stood protecting the two hobbits and the sickly Amdir. We fought against waves of brigands that seemed unending. Each one dropped and satisfied my vengeance a little more. And then… It showed up.

It walked through the fires as if nothing bothered it, dressed in crimson robes, but looking like the Black Rider all the same. The same wave of dread overcame me so that I could do nothing more than shield myself and quiver in terror, just as Atli and Jon Brackenbrook. With it came Calder Cob, curse him for seeing me cowering, and though the Captain tried to stand against this creature, it called to Amdir – and the Ranger obeyed it willingly. Had he always been its servant? Or had this been his fate since the wound he took? Why, then, did Strider not slay him before he left?

The robed figure and the Ranger left, and Cob killed his one-time mentor. It seemed to help break the hold that the creature had on us as the dread lifted and we could attack once more. Never have I felt such deep terror as what that Thing laid against us. We dispatched Cob, with me punching him in the nose and then stabbing him as I’d been thinking of all day, and the Blackwolds followed his fate. I helped dampen the flames of the town along with the surviving townsfolk. By morning, smoking rubble is all that remained of so much of Archet, and within another day, coffins had lined the places where market stalls once stood. Weeping was all that could be heard. The hobbits were sent back to their home, a place named the Shire, west of Bree, and Jon Brackenbrook took up his father’s legacy to help start rebuilding Archet. I stayed only a little while, to clean up and eat and rest, before moving on to Combe.

Little did I know that these same Blackwolds weren’t finished troubling me yet. Not in Combe, where I wound up having to clean out the Chetwood and destroy warg-wolf hybrids, and not in Staddle, where it seemed every hobbit and his dog needed my aid saving pipe-weed or romantic relationships. To be honest, getting a mysterious note to come to Adso’s Camp west of Bree in order to learn some new burglar skills was a relief since it meant I could vanish into the big town and have a breather. No more heroics, I told myself, remembering my dream. You are not going to tie yourself to the fate of an entire world. That would doom it utterly. You can’t even save yourself!

Right.