”Please”, said the young Eglain man pleadingly. ”Please forgive me! But you must come now! To retrieve your cart!”
Hellrien looked at him. He was a little over twenty years old and wearing typical woolen Eglain tunic and trousers, well-worn after numerous washings. His bright blue eyes were filled with desperation.
”I beg of you!”
The sellswords glanced at each other, feeling anxious and frustrated. And to think that the gig to Ost Guruth had gone so well until yesterday! The contract had been simple enough – to escort foreman Thorne’s lumber cart from Combe to Ost Guruth and back. The journey through the Lone-Lands was usually dangerous, but this time they had not seen so much as a shadow of a single orc or goblin along the way. They should have guessed their luck had been too good to last!
”All right.”
”Thank you! May the Valar bless you and keep you safe!”
The sellswords wouldn’t reply. Hellrien pulled the slouch of her hat over her forehead as they exited the cool, shady abode and stepped into the relentless, scorching heat outside. The tawny sand on the street sparkled in sunlight. Hellrien felt how the heat immediately penetrated through her hauberk, burning her skin.
The Eglain man jumped on his mule and slapped it’s ears with the back of his hand. Hellrien, Taala, Eroforth, Ealstan and a group of Eglain mounted up and rode after him. Hellrien was feeling tired and bored in a way. The endless, desolate hills and ruins of the Lone-Lands had caused her sleepless nights.
A handful of scrawny chicken floundered out of their way as they spurred their mounts up the stairs to the ramparts and then down another set of stairs. Soon they left behind the ancient, crumbling walls of Ost Guruth. The desert spread before them – reflecting sunlight in it’s dirty, tawny color – it’s monotonousness broken only by eroded rocks, scrubby grass and thorny thistles. It was dead calm, not a single cloud sailing through the sky.
The Eglain managed to speed up. The scrawny mule was advancing with something akin to a trot. Hellrien sat hunched upon her saddle. She looked very militaristic, almost masculine in her new hauberk, black coat adorned with gilded mail. Long employment with The Bloody Dawn had done her good, economically speaking.
The Eglain turned around on his saddle. He had said his name was Stanric.
”Look! It’s up there! Do you see it?” He pointed towards a dark silhouette on a top of a hill northwest. Grumbling pillars arose against the sky like rotting, broken tusks, all that remained of some ancient stronghold.
Taala leaned forward on her saddle and shaded her eyes to peer. ”Aye, I see it.”
”Of course I do, you idiot”, Ealstan grumbled.
Eroforth glared at Stanric. ”You dragged the cart up there, rather than carrying the bodies back down here? No wonder the bloody axle broke.”
”Reckon one used mule is worth this trouble?” Ealstan asked Ero.
”What, you’re thinking of asking for it in payment?”
”Not so much asking…”
”Do you know these ruins?” Taala asked Hellrien, who had been staring at the ruins with a mysterious, aloof expression clouding her eyes.
”Yes”, said Stanric, eager to please, ”I have been there many times!”
Taala glared at the man, annoyed. ”I was talking to Hellrien. You just get to shut up now unless I speak to you, and you'll know when I am!”
”Been here many times, he says”, said Ero. ”Why in the name of Morgoth’s shriveled bollocks didn't he just get those bodies yesterday morning? The man is up to something - either that or the mule is the smart one of the pair.”
”Wouldn’t be much of an achievement”, Ealstan mused.
Hellrien just grumbled something incomprehensible. She was thinking about yesterday. They had been sitting around a campfire in the marketplace, roasting potatoes, apples and boar on a skewer, just minding their own business when Hellrien had taken a notice of a very agitated group of Eglain nearby. They had looked confused, frightened and uncertain. Finally one of them had mustered enough courage to approach the group of sellswords. Were they in a hurry anywhere? Would they consider doing the Eglain a small favor? Something terrible had happened… something unimaginable! Could they – wise and experienced westlings, great warriors – investigate the matter and perhaps retrieve the corpses back to Ost Guruth, so that they could be given a proper burial?
They had been all babbling on top of each other, but after a while the sellswords had managed to piece out the story. Two Eglain had been keeping an eye on the accursed fortress of Nan Dhelu east of Ost Guruth, where wights and worse creatures were rumored to dwell. It had been Stanric’s duty to bring them food and supplies every two days. Last night Stanric had found their corpses, dead and mutilated, and fled the scene when he thought he had heard something out there in the darkness, approaching him. Now the Eglain wanted the sellswords to ’investigate’ and retrieve the bodies.
The sellswords’ answer to their plead had been a curt ’no’. The mercenaries, suspicious by nature, had suspected a trap of some kind. Why would the Eglain, Ero had pointed out, more than capable of retrieving the corpses themselves, would ask a group of foreigners to do their work for them? Besides, what would be their stake in it? Stanric didn’t seem to have much to offer in exchange for their services, but he had tried to tempt them with some jewellery one of the victims had carried around her neck – a pendant and a piece of jewellery Stanric had claimed as ’priceless’.
Hellrien had thought differently. The fear in the eyes of the Eglain was too genuine. The reason for their bizarre behavior seemed simpler than that to her: They were scared out of their minds.
But Ero was right in one thing. The Eglain were a hardy lot, and they were used to seeing their kin die in the hands of wandering orcs and worse things. They didn’t scare easily. Which could only mean that whatever Stanric had witnessed was something completely new and unfamiliar in their experience, and that had pushed the Eglain off balance. A bit more babbling from the group, and Hellrien thought she had figured out what it was.
The walking dead. The Eglain feared only one thing: that the wights and gaunt-men from the red swamp and Nan Dhelu would somehow break free and roam free in the streets of Ost Guruth and around the Lone-Lands.
Something that Stanric had said bothered Hellrien. Mutilated. Mutilated and left there. Wandering bands of orcs were of course known to enjoy torturing and mutilating their victims, but Hellrien had never heard they would just leave them there. Orcs would take the bodies as trophies and feast on their flesh, they wouldn’t just leave them lying there, or would they? Still, anything was possible.
Then again, what if the Eglain were right? What if the evil from Angmar was spreading, what if the dead were walking all over the Lone-Lands, even now? What if they would come to Bree?
There was no turning Eroforth’s head on the matter, though, and finally Stanric had to give up. But their problems hadn’t ended there. First Jack, one of the lumberjacks, had gone missing, and while they were out looking for him, the rest of the lumberjacks – and the cart – had disappeared too. The mystery was answered this morning. Apparently Stanric had somehow – who knows what he had promised them – convinced the lumberjacks to come with him to retrieve the two corpses. And while there, the axle of the cart had broken. They had taken the horses and returned to Ost Guruth, leaving the cart there. Fearful of the mercenaries, Stanric and the lumberjacks had been hiding in some hole in Ost Guruth and only mustered enough courage to confront them and tell them what had happened in the morning.
There was no way around it now – the cart was part of the contract, and so they needed to get it back. But at least Jack had been found unharmed, sleeping in some tent with a young, liberal-minded Eglain lass. Finding the lost sheep alive and in good cheer didn’t seem to cheer Ealstan up much, and Jack got to feel his foul mood upon his hide.
Stanric spurred the reluctant mule up the gently sloping hillside. They saw no living creatures nearby. Now they could see the outlines of the cart already.
Stanric was riding more slowly now. He had pressed his head low between his shoulders – as if he was preparing himself to something awful.
Hellrien rode to his side.
”Refresh my memory… what were the names of your dead kin?”
”Cwendreda and Northrim. They were a couple. Northrim and I… we were like brothers. Brothers!”
”Ride along”, said Hellrien brusquely.
Stanric kicked his mule to it’s sides. As they approached the ruin, a flock of crebain fluttered into the wind. Hellrien looked about. She could see uneven shadows on the ground around the ruins. Maybe tracks. They should check those later on.
”Here it is”, Stanric said, trembling. The mule whisked it’s tail about lazily. Hellrien sat on a saddle for a moment, tilting her head. She heard a strange buzzing sound. The edge of the ruin arose from the ground to a chest level. The cart was parked in front of it.
Hellrien slowly dismounted. She didn’t look away from the ruin for one second. On the ground in front of it she could see tracks of many footsteps.
Lightly she brushed the hilts of her swords with both hands, listening to the buzzing sound.
”I’ll go check it out”, she said.
She took a few steps towards the ruin. Somebody else dismounted too. She could hear Stanric sneaking behind her. Now she was standing right by the ruin. The buzzing sound was louder now. Hellrien pressed her palms against the floor of the ruin and pushed herself up. She had a nasty taste in her mouth.
The first thing she noticed was a creature leaning against a pillar, then another slumped down in the middle of the plane. A dense flock of flies blew up with a loud buzz, circled the air for a while and then settled again.
Hellrien climbed up. There were two corpses, one man, one female. Both were tied up and decapitated. The man – Northrim – was the one lying on the floor. Wargs and crebain had eaten some of them, but there was enough left for Hellrien to see that they had been likely tortured for hours. Their heads had been probably taken by their captors.
”I'd say someone was leaving a message”, Taala said. Hellrien hadn’t noticed that the other Dawners had joined her on the floor of the ruin. ”The yrch would eat the bodies and mount the heads.”
”Any idea how long it's going to take to get the cart back and able to move?” Ealstan wondered, crossing his arms.
”Seems like they'd know”, Ero replied absently, gesturing at the Eglain who had come along with their tools to fix the cart. Ero’s attention was on the corpses more than the cart. Rokko, one of the Eglain, not liking the smell of rotting flesh, shied away.
”Right”, Ealstan said. ”Get to it then.”
Taala jumped down to go investigate the tracks. Hellrien stepped closed to the corpses. Something twig-like was jutting from the thigh of the woman. Hellrien’s face was puckered as she grabbed it and tried to pull it out. She had to use her knife and carve it out.
It was an arrow – and she stood there, staring at it's distinctive point.
”Taala”, said Ero, ”you hunted orcs out here for a while. Did you ever see anything like this?”
”Nese”, Taala replied. ”Like I said, they eat the flesh of men, been known to mount their heads around the camps, I've even known them kidnap hapless travelers.”
”This is not an orc arrow”, Hellrien said. ”This is a Créoth arrow.”
”Créoth?” Ero asked. The Dawners knew that Hellrien had spent some time in the Lone-Lands when she had served with The Sworn Brotherhood, but she had never spoken much of her past or her time here.
”Yes, Créoth”, she said. ”It's a tribe of hill-men, living behind those hills up there yonder.” Hellrien pointed her finger towards north, at a ridge of mountains behind the fortress of Nan Dhelu. For the first time she noticed that the ruin they were standing on offered a perfect vantage point over the fortress and the swamp to the west of it. But the fortress was still too far to make out what was actually happening there, maybe five or six miles to the north.
Taala circled around the ruin and returned to the others. ”There are a good many tracks”, she said, ”and they are not yrch, they are made from a boot, but one pair is a smaller one than I'd expect on a man. They came mostly from the east, one from the north, I'd say mayhaps nine, ten, a dozen. From what I can see, most tracks head back, in the direction of those damned ruins these two have been watching. Ero, any journals on either of the bodies?”
”I’ll go check”, Hellrien said.
”Slow down!” Ero exclaimed, perhaps worrying that Hellrien might run straight down the hillside over to the fortress. It was never easy to predict what was going on in Hellrien’s mind. ”We're not equipped to handle a fight, certainly not with a dozen. Or a hundred, that that fortress could hold. We need to get this cart fixed and get back to the encampment. We'll take the bodies with us. But this is the Eglain's concern, not ours.”
”Place could be filled with wights for all we or these prats know”, Ealstan added.
Hellrien didn’t reply. She just jumped down and crouched down to investigate the tracks.
”I can show you the tracks”, Taala said, ”but there is no going up there.”
She jumped down and showed Hellrien the outline of the smaller booted track. ”I have never seen aught like that afore. You mentioned these Créoth?”
”Stanric”, said Ero, ”these are your people. See if they carry anything to tell what happened here?”
Hellrien checked the tracks like a bloodhound on a trail. ”These here are Créoth boots”, she explained to Taala, excited, ”but here, this is not a Créoth boot! It's smaller, like a woman's boot. And different, too! It's more like... yeah, something you would see in Bree!”
”Valar forthend that mayhaps these Créoth have women among them”, Ealstan commented dryly.
”Yes, but the Créoth have wider feet, they could not pull on a boot like this... not comfortably, anyway”, Hellrien explained.
”Well”, said Ero, ”we'll make sure to report it all to the leaders of the Eglain... Ealstan, how are they coming on that cart?”
”They could be close to finishing or close to breaking all of them again, take your pick”, Ealstan shrugged.
Hellrien rubbed her chin. ”Yeah... let's go back. I wonder...”
”And these tracks are of concern to us why...?” Ealstan interrupted her musings.
”They are only of concern to us if they come back”, said Taala.
”The Créoth never come this far from their stamping grounds from Garth Agarwen”, Hellrien carried on stubbornly.
”The undead may not walk during the day, but the bloody hillmen do”, said Taala.
”Strange…”
”All that I know of them is they are reclusive and little else”, said Taala. ”Yet it appears they came and mutilated these hapless folk and took their heads to the ruins, to what ends I do not know.”
”Well”, Hellrien shrugged, apparently giving up. ”Let's get back to Ost Guruth. There is something more I want to ask of these Eglain.”
”And not a mystery we need to solve today”, Ero said. ”We've already lost a day thanks to Stanric's little 'borrowing' of the cart. Good thing there's not a penalty for a late return on this contract. Whatever trouble this bodes, it's not our concern... Well, unless they want to hire us to come back, once our job for Combe is done!”
”Sooner we get this cart back”, Ealstan agreed, ”sooner we can be off home. You want to come back here once we're done with this contract, no skin off my back. But not before.”
Taala looked at Hellrien. ”You seem curious, lass, is there something we need to know?”
”Let’s go talk to Stanric”, Hellrien said.
”Ealstan, please go and kick some arse to get that cart functional. Stanric can deal with the bodies.” As an aside she asked Ero: ”Any jewellery on the corpses?”
”Believe me”, said Ealstan, ”if he wants to even pretend to own a mule after this, he'll fix that cart.”
”No”, said Ero, shaking his head. ”Whatever that pendant was, it's gone along with her head.”
”She always had ’em with her”, Stanric stammered, ”the pendant and the jewel - ask anyone!”
”Was the pendant the reason to take her head?” Taala asked. ”What do you know of it?” Stanric only shook his head in response.
”Has there been any strangers in Ost Guruth lately, Stanric?” Hellrien asked. The man’s eyes grew wide after a moment of thinking.
”Oh! Oh yes! There was a curious person a while back! A westling woman! A westling like you!”
”What was curious about her?” Taala wondered. ”You must see travellers often.”
”Well, she was very curious about Cwedreda's pendant and jewel! She asked everyone about them. And... she wore a mask, like a black veil... I could only see her eyes!”
”Well”, said Taala, looking around to see how the cart was progressing. ”I cannot see what need the undead would have for a pendant. These Créoth I know little about, however, I do know from our travels by the gate of Evendim that there are pendants that may ward off the dead. But why take the heads and not just the pendant is beyond me. It seems ritualistic.”
”Did Cwendreda ever tell you where that jewel and pendant were from?” Hellrien asked.
”Never! I have never seen anything like them myself. But I know she had always had them. As long as I know.”
”Well she doesn't have them now, and without a neck she's no use for ’em either”, Taala shrugged dismissively. ”That bloody cart fixed yet? Ealstan, boot to arse, have them hurry.”
Hellrien looked at the others. They didn’t seem too intrigued by the mystery. Ealstan and Ero for sure didn’t, it was hard to say what Taala was thinking. But how could they not be? That jewel… it had to be worth a fortune, whatever it was, if it had spurred this tragedy.
The masked woman… who was she? A thief? A brigand? A treasure-hunter?
But what kind of a thief or treasure-hunter would venture into Agamaur and Garth Agarwen, muster ten Créoth warriors to follow her miles away from the Créoth territory, only to torture and mutilate two hapless Eglain, take their heads along with the jewellery and then head north, in the direction of Nan Dhelu? It was too bizarre.
But sure, they had a contract to fulfill. But once it was fulfilled, Hellrien was sure Captain Ebold wouldn’t mind granting her a vacation for two weeks, since Hellrien had never asked for a vacation before.
Hellrien knew there were Eglain on the other side of the red swamp, a small garrison of the most dedicated and fearless Eglain warriors guarding the entrance to Agamaur and Garth Agarwen. She had been there before. If anyone could shed more light on the mystery, it was them…
