Hellrien knew that the arrow would go astray, but it was too late to hold her fingers. In a blink of an eye a cloud of snow puffed below the prowler’s belly, proving her right. The robust white cat leaped straight upwards, grabbing a hold of some invisible crevasse in the rock face and instantly disappeared over the edge of the cliff.
Automatically Hellrien swung her bow on her back, swiped the sweat off her forehead and walked back over to the mouth of the pass, where she had left her horse. It was only a couple of hours to sunset. It would be hopeless to continue the hunt of the vale prowler so late in the evening. She was vexed over her missed shot. She was not fond of missing shots. It had been a tough one, but she should have succeeded. That damned cat had practically eaten her house – or camp – empty. With the unerring instincts and incredible courage of a cat it had leaped onto a gnarled pine and dragged the bear carcass with it. Hellrien had found it’s tracks straight after returning from a hunting trip and set out to pursue it immediately. For the whole day she had chased the lynx through snow-covered cliffs and frozen basins in the area of the Blue Mountains known as Vale of Thrain, between Thorin’s Gate and the Low-Lands. Twice she had managed to get within shooting range, but both times the prowler had managed to slip away. This last time she had thought she had got it. She had driven it into a pass that ended into a seemingly smooth and steep rock face. When Hellrien saw the prowler, it was crouching on a narrow, barely noticeable ledge below the edge of a cliff. The distance was over fifty yards but with a fine recurve bow she should have made it. In her hunting zest she had forgotten the simple factor that she was shooting upwards and failed to take it into account when she aimed.
Hellrien shrugged once she was on horseback again. Tomorrow morning she would find the prowler’s tracks again. She felt a kind of satisfaction over the thought that tomorrow would also bring forth thrills, risks and hard riding.
She allowed her horse to walk leisurely down the slope towards sparse pine and fir woods covering the bottom of the vale. The crunching of the snow beneath her horse’s hooves ceased when they passed the snow line below. Thick layer of needles muffled the sounds of hooves. Squirrels scrunched in trees above her. A heavy rush of wings from the bushes made the horse tremble. Hellrien patted it on the neck. She rode diagonally downwards through coniferous woods until she finally arrived in a small clearing. The road to Thorin’s Gate winded past in the east.
There was her camp. Rock face, tarpaulin shelter on two sticks, hay bed, sooty stones around the fireplace and a couple of saddle bags hanging from a tree branch.
She jumped off the horseback, released the cinch and pulled down the light leather saddle. The horse neighed and wandered off to eat snow. While Hellrien was still watching it began to nibble tiny shoots of yellow, stunted grass emerging from cracks in the rocks. Hellrien took off her cloak, hung it on a stick and yawned long and earnestly. Then she stretched her tall, robust body and gazed upon her modest camp with satisfaction. She was stiff and exhausted. But it was natural kind of exhaustion. She sighed with contentment as she took off her moccasins and wiggled her toes. She glanced towards south. There, about a mile’s trek away, writhed the river. She took her horse by the reins and walked it to the river where it could drink properly. She undressed and waded naked into the water. It was bitingly cold, so she settled for basting the water on her. Then she ran back up, dried herself to her ragged cloak and dressed up. Later, back in the camp, when the darkness was descending over the vale, the campfire illuminated the primitive surroundings better. Fool’s gold shimmered in the cliffs, rough pine bark received a darker tone, shadows in the vale grew deeper and Hellrien’s skin received an almost red hue.
She heard the wine sizzling in the campfire and salvaged her kettle. She sprinkled some spices, dried cherries, raisins and almonds into the kettle, stirred it and set it on a flat stone next to the campfire so it wouldn’t boil over. Then she put the frying pan – full of clotted fat – on the embers. She fried salted meat and peas and kept thinking about the vale prowler, obviously gorging her bear at the moment. She had hoisted the carcass hanging to tenderize the meat. Two days earlier – when she had shot herself a young vale bear – she had feasted on liver, kidneys and brain. Slices of meat shriveled on the pan. Frying fat sizzled and boiled. She poured it all on a tin plate and took out a fork. She poured mulled wine on a tin mug and stepped aside to have a meal under a tree. She sat on a roll of blankets while she ate and drank boiling hot mulled wine. The campfire sparked and purple flames flew into the air. The darkness got denser and covered the bottom of the vale. Far away in the vale a wolf howled. Hellrien stared automatically in the direction of the sound. The lone wolf out there got a response – it came far away from the coniferous forest like a quiet sigh. Hellrien wiped the last shreds of fat into a piece of bread, cleaned the plate with fine sand and filled her mug with mulled wine again. Then she sat down, leaning her back against the tree, observing the darkness growing denser. A pipe chamber filled with pipe-weed – the first in many hours – tasted excellent. She tasted mulled wine, smoked and felt euphoria spreading all over her body. On the ground next to her was her fine recurve bow. She enjoyed wiping clean the limbs and the grip. Next to the campfire on the ground lied the spear and the warhammer. She had not used them during this hunting trip. It was best to clean them of dust and dirt anyway. It was just a small chore, but right now it was something more, it was an important task – no, not a task… it was preparation for a new day, like yesterday and the day before. It was a custom she loved. To cook food, eat it, drink mulled wine from a sooty kettle, clean the weapons, check the arrows, smoke, rest, plan… And then, when the stars began to twinkle coldly in the sky and the mist descended over the vale, it was time to think whether it was time to go to sleep. But no, one more chamberful of pipe-weed – one more mug of mulled wine still! Then she had to throw some more wood in the fire, wrap the blanket a little better around her back and shoulders and after a while she would notice how good, healthy lassitude spread over her body. Then the final, drowsy sip of mulled wine, spices coming in her mouth; the last sign that this day too was over.
The fog dissipated. The warmth of the sun seemed to spread over the vale slowly. It was dawn. She emptied the kettle of mulled wine, saw that it was not necessary to clean the plate and put the mug and the knife away. The plate she placed next to the fireplace so it wouldn’t reflect light in the direction of the road. That she did without thinking about it.
She stamped out the fire, picked up the saddle and called her horse with a sharp whistle. The chestnut stallion ran forth right away. She saddled it quickly, swung the bow on her shoulder and stroked her quiver to make sure she had enough arrows. Then she jumped on the saddle, glanced one more time over her surroundings and rode up the slope through the pine woods. She had advanced barely more than five hundred yards among the moist woods when her arrival scared a big, robust hendroval into a flight. Fast as lightning, Hellrien drew her bow and released an arrow, arm bent over the horse’s head. The hendroval squeaked and fluttered behind the trees.
Hellrien picked up the hendroval from the ground, removed the arrow from it’s dense coat and shoved her prey into a spacious saddle bag. Then she kept riding along, filling the chamber of her pipe, totally concentrated on that activity. All living things nearby had gotten scared of the hendroval’s death cry.
Early in the forenoon she had found a mountain path up the cliff where she had tried to shoot the vale prowler yesterday. When she looked down she could see clearly the three foot wide ledge where the prowler had sat. She saw what was left of her arrow, splintered on the ledge. Hellrien stretched up and looked around her.
The mountain road kept sloping upwards and creasing left along the rock face. Hard basalt rock glimmered like fool’s gold. Hellrien climbed up the road until it began to slope downwards into another pass. She trended the path back and forth, examining carefully all the animal tracks on the snow. Then she found what she was looking for – tracks of a big male prowler. Satisfied, Hellrien spurred her horse and followed the tracks. It was rough, and before the sun had reached mid-sky she was sweaty and dusty. Prickly basalt dust permeated under her clothes, but she didn’t care about that. She wasn’t that far from the white thief anymore. A prowler can achieve enormous speed on a short distance, but it’s not very durable on longer journeys. It regularly homes in on mazes of rocks and shrubberies, trying to hide. Hellrien was aware of this, and when she saw fresh tracks leading into a labyrinth formed by basalt boulders and rocks, she hesitated a bit. She knew that a prowler would attack a human or a dwarf only on very rare occasion. But it could do so – and did – when it was cornered.
Hellrien dismounted and tied up her horse. Then she took her bow to her left hand, an arrow to her right and began following the tracks leading in the midst of the boulders. She hoped there wasn’t similar invisible cracks and ledges on the rock face she saw half a mile ahead like there had been where the prowler had disappeared yesterday.
The tracks showed that the prowler had disappeared into the pass calmly and quietly. It meant either that the animal was tired or that it thought it was safe from it’s pursuers. Hellrien walked carefully in the middle of the wide pass where the tracks led. Cliffs rose high overhead on both sides. Was the prowler lying in wait somewhere up there – flat and invisible – waiting for an opportunity to leap on her back? Or had it made a circle and was waiting for her in some dark hole in between the rocks?
Hellrien hung her bow at her hip and kept an eye on every possible hideout, every shadow. Gradually she entered deeper into the pass. Here and there she saw dense brambles and coniferous trees. Suddenly some small bird fluttered into flight from a coppice growing in a burrow in the cliff behind her to her left. It was enough for Hellrien. She turned around and froze like a stone statue, trying to stare through trees and bushes into the dark shadow beyond them. From the corner of her eye she saw fresh tracks leading straight into the brambles.
Without warning – without a sound – the white killer emerged from the shadows. Hellrien nocked her bow and released an arrow. There was a ghastly roar, and something white approached her fast. Hellrien aimed and shot another arrow on the vale prowler, the last arrow she had time to shoot before it would be all over her. She heard a thud as the arrow hit. The prowler roared and rolled around like a ball in the snow. Hellrien nocked her bow again. The beast grumbled and rolled around, trying to bite it’s own flank. Hellrien stretched up and felt her excitement disappear. Almost ruthlessly she aimed and released another arrow. The heavy arrow hit the head of the prowler less than fifteen yards away. The animal rolled on it’s back. Still she could hear hoarse grumbling from it’s throat, as long, powerful feet kicked the snow. Then the prowler’s slender body turned limp and the animal stretched out on the snow.
Hellrien stood calmly, waiting. Finally she swung the bow on her shoulder. She stepped over to the prowler. She had hit with all three arrows. The first one had hit the beast on the chest, but too low to be lethal. The second one had penetrated it’s flank and pierced both lungs. That would have caused death. The third arrow had impacted a little below an ear.
Hellrien watched her prey. Even in death the ghastly maw was distorted into a cruel growl. Long eyeteeth were shining white. The eyes – the citron, piercing cat’s eyes – had a cold and merciless glow about them, even in death.
For as long as possible Hellrien tried not to think about the coming days. Tomorrow she would have to ride through Thorin’s Gate. She leaned her back against the tree, and mulled wine grew cold in the tin mug. What would it be like to return this time? What would be waiting for her over there?
Her broken bones had healed, her wounds cicatrised during those long weeks she had spent in Tinnudir Keep under constant care of the Rangers, fighting to stay alive. For the first week she had been in a coma and the Rangers had to force broth through her clenched teeth to sustain her. But her body and her will to live were strong, and she had fought her way back into the land of the living. It had taken a couple more weeks before she could even get up from the bed. But now she was completely healed and fit to ride again, though there were still wounds and other marks visible on her face and other parts of her body. The Rangers had sent missives over to the Stronghold, but they had gotten no response from Ered Luin. Grateful over everything Hellrien had done for them, they had given her a horse, provisions and a hefty sum of money to ensure her ride back home would be as safe and comfortable as possible, and to donate a token of their gratitude for the Order. Hellrien had left her own horse, Half Pint, in the good care of the Sworn Brotherhood stables before embarking upon the mission.
For a moment those gruesome events in that grand marble mausoleum returned into her mind – that dramatic episode under the ceiling and everything that had happened to her in Rantost and as Ernil’s captive in the boats. Nimbellas had dragged her out of the tomb a moment before the ceiling had collapsed completely. Only the inner ceiling had collapsed, so the tomb of Eärendur still stood on that small inlet by the Way of King’s – but Ernil, Avice and all their treasures were forever buried under tons of stone, rubble and dust inside the tomb.
Something cold and malign began gnawing at her. These dreamlike days she had decided to spend up here in the mountains instead of heading straight back home formed a stark contrast to the image she had built in her mind – The Sworn Brotherhood Stronghold below the Blue Mountains – dark and bleak place deep inside dwarven-made tunnels and caverns where the sun never shined. Men and women hustling back and forth without pause, steel clashing against steel from the training grounds, tiny stitches to the nerves, small blows against consciousness. Hellrien knew better than ever before now what it meant to be sent out on a mission – and what it meant when somebody never returned. She had almost become one of those unsung heroes of the Sworn Brotherhood herself, a fallen comrade, a name carved on a stone wall. She had killed people – so many she had already lost count when she had only had two missions so far, and only one of them unsupervised. It wasn’t always enough to know she was doing it to defend the Free Peoples of Middle-Earth. There were always moments of doubt. She remembered that man who’s throat she had slit open in cold blood – a premeditated, cold-blooded murder against an unarmed, helpless foe. She had decided his price. Who took the responsibility for those victims of hers? The Grandmaster of the Sworn Brotherhood, Dorvairse Ordthrain? No. Burwod, the Heir of the Order? Not him. Ranesora? Hell no! Nobody. Nobody cared about the dead, as long as the mission was accomplished. Hellrien remembered Ranesora’s cold, calculating eyes. How she hated them at times! There were times she hated, from the bottom of her heart, Ranesora’s talent for reckoning, his almost unnatural ability to push the troops into inhumane deeds. Hellrien had herself given in to Ranesora’s loathing towards everything he saw as indolence and incompetence. ”Well, Hellrien, feeling scared, are you? You’re beginning get soft, aren’t you?” There was no escape from it, that atmosphere floated around everywhere in that dark, damp cavern beneath the Blue Mountains!
Something Avice Twynam had said kept haunting her mind. ”You’re not normal… there’s something wrong with you… something missing…” Had she been right? Was she abnormal… inhuman? What kind of normal person would have given up the comfortable, simple life she had in Archet in order to pursue… what? Fame? Glory? And now, finally she had been molded into what she had always thought she had wanted to be: a truly dangerous individual, a trained killer. A glorified assassin. Was that the glory she had been after? She shook the thoughts out of her mind. It was so easy to dramatize one’s own destiny. It was her duty. She was a defender of the Free People’s. She committed those heinous, ruthless acts of murder so they wouldn’t have to.
Hellrien stood up, shivering from the cold. Her hands fumbled after her weapons. They felt cold and nasty against her fingers. She drew them out and was just about to throw them into the bushes one after another, but then she let her arms sink.
That was not a solution. Getting rid of her weapons would not solve anything, it would be a foolish thing to do. Out here in the wild her very survival depended on those weapons. Weapons were not responsible for anything that had happened to her up in Evendim.
She lit her pipe with trembling hands. What will you do, Hellrien? Think!
Would she turn back and ride and ride, until she would finally disappear?
And then what? Nobody could escape their own past, or themselves. Many had tried.
Should she talk to Dorvairse, Burwod or Ranesora – talk straight – get different kinds of tasks?
Like what? Cooking? Cleaning? Wasn’t that exactly the sort of work she had fled from in Archet in the first place? Again, it was not Dorvairse or Ranesora who was responsible for who she was. Nobody had ever forced her hand into anything. They had given her the weapons, they had trained her how to use them – but how she chose to use them was all on her. Every decision. It was just like Avice had said – she was not normal. She had never been normal, she was born to be this way. She had chosen this life for herself. Every bit of it.
Hellrien smoked quickly and nervously. She cursed herself for embarking upon this hunting trip. If she had needed a few more days off, she could have spent them in Thorin’s Hall Inn – drowned herself in strong dwarven brandy. All this solitude, all this peace only lured her into thinking, making comparisons. It forced her to make choices when there were none to choose from. Now she had created another nonexistent choice for herself. If she belonged to the Sworn Brotherhood, she should live like it in between missions as well.
The moon rose up to the sky and smiled upon her. It was already late. Hellrien walked over to the river and drank. Suddenly she felt frantic craving for alcohol. She stepped back to her primitive camp. Blankets were cold and damp. She lied down, freezing. Her thoughts ground in impatient circles, demanding answers and solutions before the sleep could come. Once she sat up.
There was something else too. Something she hadn’t wanted to think about so far. Many, many weeks had passed since the day Ranesora had sent her for a mission up in Evendim. Some time before that Burwod, accompanied by most of the Sworn Brotherhood troops and all the allies they had managed to muster up, had ridden towards Fornost, where the warlock had taken Dorvairse and Haschirgael, to a desperate rescue mission. Even back then the consensus had been that Dorv and Hasch were most likely both dead by then. And Ranesora had believed Burwod was leading all the others to their sure deaths as well. Only a skeleton crew of fighting troops had stayed behind to run the Stronghold in their absence, among them Ranesora, his son Jorgon and Hellrien herself.
Why had there been no response from the Stronghold when the Rangers of Tinnudir had sent out missives? There would have been time for a response. What if Ranesora had been right – what if they were all dead? Dorvairse, Haschirgael, Burwod, Theawynn… and all the others, all her friends, all of them dead?
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would ride back and find out.
