Let it be remembered - I gave her a choice.
I place my pen down, push the stopper back into the blue-black ink bottle, lean back into my chair. The lad quietly takes away my papers, placing them neatly to one side. He gathers them reverently now, as though anything I touch is imbued with some vital essence.
No time to think of what I have sown there. It is done.
But what is sown now?
She chose to come unasked and unaccompanied to the edge of this camp. To hide in the shadows of the stone ruins of Arnor, a disembodied voice in the night. Tucked behind the old pillar, like a child sheltering behind an ancient grandsire.
I thought her a child at first. A whining reedy-voiced lad unaware of the danger - or bent on some reckless act of bravado - or merely lost from a band of thin hunters pursuing whatever sorry game still pick about these unwelcoming hills. But as she continued to speak, from her words and her tone, in the dim shadows she took form - the owner of the arrow that slew my horse. The watcher at the stone. A woman. Brave - perhaps. Foolish - certainly.
Only her blood saves her. Marked by her skill with the bow, the cast of her features, her eyes, her hair. Above lesser men as the moon rides above the clouds. And so - I gave her a choice... to walk away, back to her faded bretheren. In peace. Safe. A token of my esteem. A promise of my regard. My hand open to them should they wish to recall glory and stand beside me. Such Men we are. Such we were, and could be again.
But she would not leave with honour - and so showed her lack of judgement. Alas for the failing wisdom of the Men of the north. There could be no other course then - she must be taken. Again, I gave her a choice. To take my arm and walk unbound, honoured as a guest, into the camp. No man or orc would touch her. I give my sureity on that.
But she chose not to be treated as a lady, as befits her blood, determined instead to try some foolish attempt to wound me, some notion that she, by virtue of her heritage, would best me. I am what I am, and even were she equal in arms or cunning... I am a man, and she a woman. Sometimes it is that simple.
She refused to be taken as a woman, to submit in peace. She chose to be taken as a man - and thus lies bound and blooded with the Crow's hateful eyes upon her. She is safer in his charge than not. Charged with her safety and her security he knows that any 'accidents' that befall her will be meted out on him. How he hates her kind.
