The dwarf looked at the spear on Hellrien’s back and the hammer on her belt. ”That so”, he said dryly, ”ready to do some damage again?”
Four days had passed and Hellrien was ready to move along. The bandage wasn’t visible under her hood.
”Yes”, she said brusquely. ”What do I owe you?”
The dwarf mentioned a sum, and Hellrien paid up. There was a slight disapproving line in the corner of Pall’s mouth.
”Where are you riding?” he asked indifferently.
Hellrien looked at him, squinting her eyes. She was irritated by the condescending airs of moral superiority the healer seemed to regard her with. What did that dwarf thought he knew about her anyway? He didn’t know one bit about Hellrien or her life, that’s what!
”Can I ask what’s your problem with me, Pall?”
The dwarf stared at her, taken aback by the surprising question. He considered it carefully. ”Why, I have nothing against you, miss Hellrien. It’s just that I don’t get it. You and your kind. And I’m not just talking about the mannish folk here, for I’ve seen plenty of Durin’s folk who are the same way. Getting involved in fist fights and other high risk behaviors, not giving a damn about your own safety or anyone else’s, just drifting aimlessly through life like nothing mattered. Why do you do that? Is it the alcohol?” Pall was genuinely curious.
”What do you want to know, Pall?”
”Who are you?”
”I used to be a scout. With the Sworn Brotherhood, if you’ve ever heard of them.”
”Discharged?”
”No. I don’t believe the order exists anymore. I was sent out on a mission, and when I came back… most of them had gone to Fornost and never came back. The rest had disappeared too. I’ve no idea where they went.”
”Are you trying to find out what happened to them?”
Hellrien shook her head. ”No. I have no clues, except that a powerful wizard captured Dorvairse and his wife in Fornost. The Order sent a whole army, everything we could muster, to rescue them. None came back. What could I do alone?”
”Who beat you up?”
Hellrien hesitated. She didn’t want to tell Pall what had happened in Thorin’s Hall, about the tavern brawl or the brutal beating Unnarr and his guard-lieutenant had sent her off with. But suddenly she felt a strong urge to talk, to confide with someone, to tell her story to another living person. And Pall seemed eager to listen, eager to understand what circumstances brought up people like Hellrien. And so she sat down and talked.
She talked about her childhood in Pelargir, about her mother Eirien, who had been a maid in the house of Lord Geoffray, a minor noble and a high-ranking naval officer in the Pelargir Navy. Geoffray was, in fact, also Hellrien’s father, a public secret that was no secret to anyone - not even to Hellrien as Eirien had told her who her real father was. Geoffray had been a widower when he had had his affair with Eirien, but he had also legitimate children from his late wife, a son and a daughter. As time passed, Hellrien’s presence in the house became more and more embarrassing for Geoffray, as her striking resemblance with her father turned more pronounced with each passing year. A curious and accident-prone child she had been, a daydreaming tomboy who had been more interested in playing with swords than with dolls and who could spend hours just sitting on the pier, watching the mighty warships of Gondor sail and dreaming about the adventures and fierce battles they had against the pirates of Umbar. It had been a relatively happy and childhood, as much as she could remember about it.
When she had been perhaps twelve years old Geoffray had decided it was time to get rid of the nuisance and embarrassment his love-child had become, as he was courting and planning to marry a noble Lady from Minas Tirith with a most distinguished pedigree. He needed to get Hellrien out of the way before he could present his home for the bride-to-be.
So one day some of Geoffray’s most loyal and trusted men had taken Hellrien from her bed at night and put her on a ship, headed for the Grey Havens. From there the journey had continued on land all the way to a little town called Archet in Bree-Land. It had been a journey wrought with peril, and perhaps Hellrien should have been afraid, but in truth she had been more thrilled than anything else. It had been her first great adventure, her first journey out of Pelargir, and she had taken great pleasure in every day on board and on the road.
She didn’t know how Geoffray knew that old mercenary captain, but somehow the agreement had been made – Hellrien would be raised as a maid in captain Brackenbrook’s household in Archet. Brackenbrook had not been an evil or unreasonable man, but Hellrien had not been able to cope with the prospect of dull, uneventful life as a housemaid in that small, drowsy village. She had already gotten her first taste of adventure, and as years passed her discontentment only grew. One night she simply fled.
She became a vagrant, a homeless drifter, and she did whatever was necessary to make ends meet. In Combe she had worked as a dishwasher, cook and waitress, but she had been an unreliable worker who spent all her money on ale and was frequently too drunk or hungover to perform her duties, so before long Lizbeth Honeymead, the proprietor of The Comb and Wattle Inn, had laid her off. In Bree she had carried on the same irresponsible and self-serving lifestyle, taking whatever odd jobs she could find, even resorting to prostituting herself on a couple of occasions, sometimes just for a meal and a roof over her head – but never professionally. She had quickly acquired a reputation as a notorious, dissolute character, and before long the wanderlust had taken a hold of her and she had hit the road again.
She wandered along the Great East Road to west, all the way through Bree and Shire, sleeping in barns and stables until she eventually found herself in an elven outpost called Celondim, not that far from the Grey Havens, where she had first landed in Archet. In Celondim she learned how to hunt for a living. The first time was an accident. When she had first arrived in Celondim she had dwelled in the docks with the other drifters and unemployed sailors and dockworkers, sleeping under boats and the open sky. Unlike in Combe and Bree there was no work opportunities for her kind in Celondim – none. One day she was roaming in the woods surrounding Celondim to hunt for something to eat with a crude rowan bow she had traded to a jug of cheap wine from an old, boozy sailor, when a wolf attacked her. Hellrien killed it with her bow, skinned it and brought the skin in Celondim, where she found out that the elves of Celondim were paying good money for wolf skins. Hellrien killed more wolves, and found out she had a talent for hunting, archery and surviving in the wild. One day she had found a sheltered mountain lake hidden inside a deep valley the elves called Nen Hilith, and made a permanent camp there.
She had resided there for many weeks, making a decent living as a wolf-hunter, but eventually her feet got restless again and she moved on. Some time later she found herself in Thorin’s Gate in the Blue Mountains, and that’s where she first met Theawynn Goldenshield and Dorvairse Ordthain, who had recruited her in a mysterious military order called The Sworn Brotherhood – sworn to protect the Free Peoples of Middle-Earth. Dorvairse had, in fact, met Hellrien before in his father’s house, when she had been very little, but Hellrien couldn’t remember that. But she had told her story to Dorvairse, who seemed to understand. The Order maintained a stronghold deep within the dwarven-made tunnels of the Blue Mountains.
That’s where she had found her true calling. Hellrien told Pall about her initiation, the months of rigorous military training under her mentors Burwod and Ranesora, and the remarkable natural talent she had shown with all kinds of weapons, Gondorian elite combat arts and Dúnedain survival skills. She had adjusted surprisingly well to the rigorous discipline of the military life, a life that provided her with forced boundaries, routine and structure she had never been able to impose on herself. It had provided her with sense of pride and purpose. She told Pall some details about her first missions to the Lone-Lands and Lake Evendim, but left a lot of things unsaid. She couldn’t talk about the torture and the brutal gang-rape she had endured as a captive of the tomb-robbers. She didn’t want to talk about all the blood in her hands and the nightmares that tormented her at nights.
Pall listened to her story in silence, and by the time Hellrien had finally finished, he seemed to have forgotten about his original question.
”Fornost, huh?” he asked cautiously.
Hellrien raised her head and stared at the dwarf.
”That’s right, Fornost. Have you been there?”
”Not personally, but I know an old man who lived here for a while who has spent a lot of time in that area in his youth. Once upon a time he was a treasure-hunter there, and according to him he managed to dig up a small fortune in jewels and priceless old artefacts, but then he got cheated by his partners and ended up with nothing.”
Hellrien moved her feet restlessly. ”Did he do anything about it?”
Pall shrugged. ”He tried, but there was nothing he could do. His partners had disappeared with his share of the treasure.”
”Does he live here now, Pall?”
”No, he dwells somewhere in the woods of Haudh Lin east of here, where he tries to dig up treasures from the haunted hills of Emyn Hoedh. I haven’t heard about him in over six months.”
”What’s his name?”
”Colbert. My father once saved his life, and ever since that he has visited us every time he comes to Gondamon to try and sell some of the trinkets he’s managed to dig up. Mostly worthless junk, but he’s persistent. Why, does it make any difference?”
Hellrien smiled crookedly. ”Probably not.”
But Hellrien couldn’t shake the thought out of her mind. She knew there was nothing she could do in Fornost, but here she had an opportunity to talk with someone who had seen the place with his own eyes, to tell her what it’s like. Maybe she could at least find out what had happened.
Hellrien looked at the dwarf. Pall was smiling. ”Are you leaving?”
”Yes, Pall.”
”Will I ever see you again?”
Hellrien shrugged. ”Who knows?”
”It’s a long way to Fornost”, said Pall knowingly. ”And it’s getting late. You should stay one more night to rest. Leave in the morning. I will not charge you extra.”
”Yes, Pall.”
