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OOC - Author's Note:
This entry recounts a live RP session which revolved around the IC introduction of new player characters to the Company of the East Road - open to all. It is part of a chronicle aimed to be weekly called "Signs Along the Road". If you would like to join the Company and use this RP hook to do so, please reach out to Naridalis.
This session was held on 29th June 2025 | The next session was held on 6th July 2025, which can find here. | A quicklink to the previous session can be found: here.
Night gathered over the Brandywine, the moon high and full. The mist rolled low across the banks, veiling the stones in silver and soft dew. Lantern-light clung to Naridalis’ side, casting a narrow halo as she stood at the bridge’s midpoint, still and watchful, her breath shallow from the ache that hadn’t yet left her ribs.
The battle here had passed quickly, but its echoes lingered. The makeshift barricade; planks lashed with rope, crates stacked high like theatre props, hadn’t been designed to hold. It had been built to scare, to ward off, to delay and to send a message.
‘It was theatre,’ she thought, eyes narrowing at the memory of Ironhand being dragged to his knees, blood in his mouth, eyes full of fire even in defeat. ‘And Ironhand played the lead.’
He hadn’t begged or bargained. He had confessed with a kind of twisted pride.
‘The bridge don’t matter. The ferry does. This? Just a distraction.’
A distraction! Meant to draw eyes and swords away from the true purpose. But if Ironhand’s crew weren’t robbers, and the bridge was never the goal, then what was?
What lay at the ferry that needed such a distraction to conceal it?
Was it simply smuggling? Then why the force, why the numbers, why the risk of bloodshed in peaceful lands? She had to admit, the barricade did draw the attention of the bounders on both sides of the river.
The fellowship gathered once more: Bethrelfin, Garibald, Bratikus, and the newly arrived Sulgalion joined them. Oirano had gone on to Bree to see if he might raise the Bree-Watch for their aid.
And so they turned south, toward Buckland, toward answers they didn’t yet know.
As they neared Buckland a huge hedge rose before them under moonlight, much taller than a man’s reach and tangled with bramble and memory. It was known as the High Hay, an ancient thing, that had stood for generations, a living wall between hobbit peace and the wilds beyond. But tonight, the wild had seeped inward, quiet and slow.
A bounder stirred from slumber at the gate; Agloo was his name. He was sleepy-eyed and suspicious at first. It was Beth who stepped forward, her voice low and honest. She didn’t plead. She simply told the truth. A fight at the bridge. A lead pointing south. A duty to protect, not pry.
Agloo blinked and recognised her. The one from Haygate. The garden. The tall fellow.
‘Even here,’ Naridalis thought, ‘the Shire’s defence lies not in weapons, but in memory. In neighbours. In trust.’
The gate creaked open.
What greeted them inside was not warmth or laughter, but silence.
Newbury slept uneasily. Doors were latched. Windows shuttered. No lanterns danced in the windows. No music or idle talk between neighbours, as there usually was, even so late...
It felt as though the village itself was holding its breath.
She wondered if they had seen something, heard something… whether the smugglers had passed through here already? Or were the folk of Buckland wiser than they’re often given credit for… that they knew to steer clear of trouble.
No answer came of course. Only the hush of leaves as they walked along the lane way.
---
They moved like shadows through the narrowing lanes. Moonlight filtered between old beech limbs. The moss beneath their feet softened every step, as they took the lane that would lead them down toward the water.
And as they neared the bend that led toward the Bucklebury Ferry, Beth slowed to a halt. Her eyes narrowed, head tilting. “Wait…”
They all paused. Naridalis’ hand brushing the hilt at her side. Her balance still wasn’t right, not since Ironhand struck her at the bridge. She hadn’t said much. Pain was best ignored, until it couldn’t be.
But tonight, she knew better than to doubt her companions.
“What do you hear?”
Beth whispered of voices, faint and gruff. Sounds carried not by their volume, but by their rhythm…. like orders being barked in succession.
Sulgalion soon confirmed it. A murmur at first, then louder. Men at work. The smugglers, no doubt.
The party slid into the underbrush, veering off the path toward the river’s edge.
There, in the flicker of distant lamplight, they saw the ferry landing, quiet no longer.
Men moved crates atop one another. Others hauled at the ferry ropes; drawing it towards them from across the river. In the distance, they could just about make out the ferry itself. There seemed to be more shadows being carried by it.
‘So here it is,’ Naridalis thought. ‘The heart of it.’
‘But what are they moving? And why under cover of night?’
Ironhand had claimed the cargo was harmless, goods meant for those in need.
But men who help others do not set traps at bridges. They do not raise arms and leave villages silent behind them.
‘If this was charity,’ she thought grimly, ‘they would not need this much steel.’ She noted this after a quick count of the men; five armed with swords, three of whom had crossbows; ‘Likely the Brigands’ she thought. She counted another five who didn’t seem so armed, possibly the smugglers; but she couldn’t be certain. There could be more in wait just out of their sight.
They could not charge blind. Not with this fog. Not with the way the dock sat low by the water, flanked by crates and cover.
Beth glanced back, her tone quiet and measured. “Let me send Dumpling,” she said, tapping her satchel once. A small rustle answered. A shape darted from her shoulder and disappeared into the underbrush: a flash of fur and instinct, low to the ground and silent as moonlight on water.
Dumpling, her faithful cat, vanished into the reeds with remarkable speed.
They waited.
Moments passed. The voices below continued, unaware.
Then: a twitch in the undergrowth. Dumpling returned in a blur, bounding up Beth’s boot, leg and back into her carer’s satchel.
Beth frowned, murmuring, “Too many.”
Gari grimaced. Brat’s jaw tightened.
“So we are outnumbered,” Naridalis said. “But perhaps not outmatched.”
Naridalis pressed a hand to her side, where the ache still throbbed beneath the ribs. She had no strength for another pitched skirmish. But neither could they ignore what Dumpling had confirmed.
“We’ve no luxury for retreat. If they succeed in bringing across that ferry, we lose more than just answers.”
Between them they discussed possible ideas, options, tactics… “We lay snares. Ambush them on the slope. Let the first fall hard.”… came the deciding approach. It wasn’t clear from whom; they had all come to the view.
Without further word, they spread out along the incline taking up a formation. Only two in the party had the skill for such swift and skilled preparation as laying traps was. With a silent nod, Naridalis moved beside Beth, and the two disappeared into the underbrush.
They worked quickly. Naridalis found a narrow hollow near the path’s edge, dug shallow into the soft earth with the heel of her boot. She wedged broken stakes, discarded, perhaps, from some old mooring or fence, into the pit, then stretched a snare of thin cord across the trail just above it, low and near-invisible in the dark.
Beth moved with equal ease, setting a second tripline farther along, her own snare calibrated to pitch the target into an old iron stake buried upright beneath fallen leaves. A grim trick of leverage and instinct.
Their hands moved without sound, without waste. This was not their first night laying quiet death in the woods.
When all was set, they returned.
Naridalis gave a quiet gesture. “Trap here.”
Beth nodded. “And here.”
The air was thick with river mist and breathless anticipation. Naridalis’ thoughts turned bitter: ‘This should not be needed here. Not in the Shire. But peace, too, must be defended’.
Then Sulgalion and Garibald stepped forth, as planned. Brat taking to the tall reeds in stealth.
The pair emerged from the reeds slowly, openly, casting the appearance of wanderers with little threat. Sul stood tall, moonlight glinting off his coat. Gari’s shield was lifted, spear resting but ready.
“Good night to you, fine people. Are you perchance fishing in these parts?” Sul’s voice rang out like a bell, too calm, too mannered for a man who had wandered into danger. That was the point.
The dock fell to silence. Brigands turned.
One muttered, “He’s no Bounder, but that sword’s real enough.”
And then Sul drew it. Clean. Bright. Elven steel catching silver light.
The illusion broke.
The brigands surged.
---
The first brigand’s scream was the match to dry tinder.
He had barely hit the buried stakes before the rest had charged. His blade half-drawn and curses on his lips. He didn’t see the snare until his boot caught the cord. His momentum pitched him forward, and with a sickening crunch, he plunged chest-first into the pit Naridalis had hollowed.
The scream was bone chilling, followed by the wet sound of gargling, as the old wood driven now between the man’s ribs by his own weight sent air out of his lungs in one final, rattling gasp. He spasmed once and then stilled, his body draped awkwardly over the stakes, limbs twitching in the mud like a discarded puppet.
The second followed fast, too close to see what had happened. He shouted something crude and stumbled across Beth’s line. It yanked taut between his boots. He flailed, lost his balance, and crashed sideways, straight into the old iron mooring spike she had half-buried beneath the leaves.
The point took him under the arm and burst clean through his back with a sharp, wet pop. His breath caught on its own blood. He tried to scream but only gurgled. His hands clawed the air, then fell limp.
In a heartbeat, two were down… one impaled, the other skewered through lung and spine.
The rest did not have the time to hesitate, as they had been running too.
Steel flashed and the dock exploded in motion.
Sul met the next with a grace so sudden it seemed unearthly. His blade caught a charging brigand’s axe at the haft, turned it aside, and slipped beneath the man’s guard in one liquid motion. The brigand dropped like a felled tree.
Gari, sturdy as bedrock, locked his shield as another came at him with wild swings. The hobbit didn’t flinch. He absorbed the first blow, then rammed upward with his spear, sinking it into the man’s thigh and throwing him back into the reeds.
Beth loosed two arrows. One missed, the other struck a shoulder, sending a man stumbling. She shifted her position immediately, drawing again.
Naridalis fired as well, dropping one smuggler with a clean shot to the gut. But another had already broken through the confusion; using her former target as cover.
He rushed her, cudgel raised, eyes wild.
She loosed another arrow. It clipped his thigh but didn’t stop him. The cudgel swung down, catching her across the ribs. She crumpled, the world spinning, pain blooming bright behind her eyes.
As the man raised the cudgel for a finishing strike, a stone whistled through the air and cracked across his temple. He staggered, fell, unconscious or dead.
But Naridalis didn’t see who saved her. She was already scrabbling in the mud for her knife.
---
Elsewhere, in the tall reeds just east of the dock, Bratikus waited, crouched low.
She had not joined the others in the forward assault. Instead, she had crept in from the side, belly nearly to the ground, boots sunk in marshy earth, cloak muddied to blend into the grasses.
A brigand had even dashed past her, cursing, never seeing the hobbit beneath the stalks. Brat didn’t move.
She had eyes elsewhere… fixed on the three smugglers on the far dock, frantically hauling at a thick rope strung across the Brandywine. The ferry was sliding into motion, inch by inch, ever quicker now… drawn from the western shore. Lantern light swayed. Silhouettes aboard. Reinforcements.
Her heart kicked.
“Stop the rope,” Brat thought. She plucked a sharp riverstone from her pouch, tested the weight in her palm, then stood just high enough to clear the reeds.
But then… movement to her left. She caught sight of the brigand who had passed her moments before… rising now over Naridalis with cudgel raised.
“No.”
She twisted her hips, changed aim in a blink, and let the stone fly.
It cracked across the side of the brigand’s head with a flat whap. He reeled, stumbled, and dropped the cudgel. Naridalis scrambled out from under him, gasping.
Brat didn’t wait. She was already winding up her sling again, eyes back on the dock.
The smugglers still strained at the ferry rope, trying to pull it up to the bank. Brat’s second throw hit one of them square in the knuckles. He shouted, dropped the rope, and fell back with a string of curses, clutching his hand and critically knocking into the other two while doing so.
The rope slid loose of them. The ferry rocked wildly, its forward drift slowed.
The smugglers hesitated, no longer sure of their position, or even from where they were under attack.
Brat ducked low once more, already pulling her next stone from the pouch at her hip.
---
No one was now pulling the ferry rope. But it hadn’t stopped…
The raft continued its slow glide toward the Buckland bank, drifting, still coming. Whether its weight and the earlier pulls had given it just enough momentum to land, or whether the current would catch it and draw it off-course again... no one could yet say.
Naridalis forced herself upright from the reeds. Her ribs were aflame, breath shallow, vision ringing at the edges. The smuggler who had struck her still lay half in the mud behind her, unmoving. Her hands were slick with damp earth and blood, some of it hers.
She scanned the fight. It was going badly.
Sul and Gari were outnumbered again. The brigands who had survived the traps and arrows had regrouped, and now surged with desperation and fury. Three more smugglers had come up from the dock, abandoning the rope and joining the fray. Their blades were crude, but fast.
Naridalis wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and gripped her dagger tighter. She couldn’t see Beth, or Brat.
The fight was not yet won. Not even close.
And the ferry, heavier than it looked, was also still drawing in towards the dock. Its lanterns swayed softly with the current.
It might land.
Or the river might take it.
Either way, time was running out.
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You can find more tales along the road here: "Signs Along the Road"
