Delioron attempted to order wine, but the fat, balding bartender who had taken note of Delioron’s travel-worn clothing and foreign accent gave him a leery look and poured him a pint of ale instead.
”We don’t serve any fancy southern drinks here”, the barman grumbled. ”In Bree we drink ale, and it’s best be good enough for your kind too or you can go drink somewhere else.”
Delioron glanced at what looked like several flagons of wine on the top shelf behind the bartender, shrugged, paid for his ale and took it to a shady table near the back of the common room. He sipped the thick, bitter, foamy liquid in his pint and decided he had tasted worse. The sun was setting and the tavern was slowly filling with customers. Their pleasant, burred voices soothed Delioron’s tired mind, as did the strong, dark ale.
Two hours later Delioron was convinced Hodhion would not come. The realization had come slowly and gradually filled him with uneasy trepidation. Had it all been just a bluff then? Had Hodhion really imagined he would be paid such an exorbitant sum of money in advance? Was he now fleeing from Bree as fast as he could?
Somehow it felt like an illogical assumption. Surely Hodhion was smarter than that. That left only three other options. One. There had been some kind of accident. Hodhion had slipped on the sleety street, broken his leg, cracked his damn skull on the pavement. Improbable, but such things happened.
Two. He had set a trap for Delioron. Hodhion didn’t have anything to sell, but he wanted the money anyway, so he and his partners were waiting for him to come outside. They knew that Delioron couldn’t stay in the Prancing Pony forever, that sooner or later he would have to come outside. A poisoned arrow from an alley or a window of an abandoned building? Probably something like that.
Or three. Hodhion had been killed. Maybe he had gotten into an argument with his ’friends’, the people who were supposed to be watching his back. Perhaps they had decided that now, as the intended victim was in town and had the money, they didn’t need Hodhion any longer. Or perhaps he had been killed by someone who knew what Hodhion had to sell, and didn’t want that information to leak out?
Delioron knew well where Hodhion lived. It wasn’t far from the Prancing Pony. Parthadan’s man in Bree, Greengage, had provided that information to Parthadan, along with a map and detailed information of the town and it locations. Delioron had spent long hours studying that map before and during his journey from Minas Tirith. He knew that there were three entrances to the Prancing Pony – the main door, the backdoor for deliveries and a small hobbit door in the north wing. If there was an ambush, they would likely not expect him to be using the hobbit door, which led straight to the small backyard of the inn. Thick bushes and undergrowth provided plenty of cover, and he could easily sneak behind the houses until he came to the market square, and from there he could approach Hodhion’s apartment from the opposite direction anyone was expecting. Was it worth the risk?
”Fancy a refill, surr?” asked a tiny voice from somewhere nearby, shaking Delioron out of his frantic imaginings. He looked around the tavern, baffled at first, because he didn’t see anyone. Then he lowered his gaze a bit and saw a young halfling man standing next to his table with a polite smile on his face, offering to fill his pint from a pitcher he was carrying. Delioron knew he should have declined – he had already drank too much ale as he needed to keep a clear head tonight – but the unexpected question took him by surprise so he just nodded. The halfling filled his tankard and went about his business.
”He’s a hobbit-lover, yanno”, said a coarse voice from behind Delioron.
”I beg your pardon?” Delioron asked, once again surprised by an unexpected question and turned his head to look. A fairly young-looking man in rumpled and dirty clothing was just getting up from his seat behind Delioron and coming over to his table.
”Barliman”, he explained, nodding at the direction of the barkeeper. ”Keeps hiring them, with so many Bree-landers unemployed and all. Yup, those little buggers are taking the last bread out of honest Bree-landers’ mouths, even though they have so much of everything in their own land. They can’t settle for anything, the little vermins! My name’s Navelwort, mind if I join you?”
Navelwort didn’t wait for an answer before he planted his behind on the bench opposite to Delioron and slammed his own tankard on the table. In fact Delioron minded very much the company of the pesky loudmouth. He needed to be by himself so he could think about his present situation and his next course of action.
”You’re not a hobbit-lover, are you now?” Navelwort carried on his monologue, undeterred by Delioron’s morose silence. ”Of course not. I can hear from your accent that you’re a foreigner. A southerner, right? I bet you don’t even have hobbits where you live. Have you even seen one before? ’But they look so cute and harmless’, I can hear you thinking – right? Well, so do mice, but you wouldn’t want mice in your house, would you?”
Delioron only shrugged, hoping the man would understand he was not in the mood for his company and go away.
”They have their own land west of here. ’The Shire’, they call it. It’s a rich, lush and beautiful land – a real paradise. Even their pipe-weed tastes better. And all of them hobbits are rich beyond your wildest dreams, every single one of them lives like a lord up there. Not like the poor folk in Bree and the surrounding countryside. We’re all poor as church mice here. And we welcome the rich and wealthy hobbits here with their merchandise and silly antics, and boy do they take advantage of our hospitality! Whatever few jobs we have, they take them. You see them everywhere you look – in Bree, Combe, Archet… Staddle is teeming with them! You’d think they’d repay the hospitality, right, welcome the poor, starving folk from Bree to visit their pastoral paradise? Well think again! They are very closed-off to visitors, you’d have to have a really good reason for your visit to even be allowed there! Because they think they are better than us!”
Navelwort spat on the floor in disgust.
”OI!” shouted the barkeeper behind the bar. ”Watch out there or you’re cleaning the floor! You need to be spitting around, Nob will bring you a bucket, aight?”
There was a moment of silence, as Navelwort chugged his ale.
”And is this view of the hobbits widely shared among the folk in Bree?” Delioron asked, just to say something.
”Widely? No, I wouldn’t go as far as to say ’widely’, but I know a good deal of people who share it.” Navelwort winked at Delioron and tapped the side of his nose. Encouraged even further by his questioning, Navelwort leaned in closer to Delioron and lowered his voice conspiratorially: ”Let me tell you something else about the hobbits that’s only known to few. Ever heard of the folk called ’Rangers’? No? Well, they are dishonest, wandering sort of folk from the north. They mainly plague the roads around Bree-land to rob unwary travelers from their meager possessions. But not all realize that these Rangers in fact have a pact with the hobbits of the Shire. Whatever they steal from us Bree-folk, they share with the hobbits. That’s why they’re so rich and we’re so poor! I know this for a fact.”
”Oh really?” Delioron said. ”And how do you know this for a fact?”
Navelwort leaned backwards and smiled smugly at Delioron. ”I just know, is all. I have my sources.” He winked again and started to get up. ”Say, let me buy us the next round, will you?”
”Sure”, Delioron said, starting to get up himself. He had had enough with Navelwort. ”You go get them and excuse me for a minute. I need to use the facility.”
Delioron slipped into the corridor and wandered through the hallways and corridors until he found the small, round door in the northern wing that led outside. He had decided that any risk he would face outside was better than having to suffer Navelwort’s charming company for the whole evening. The door wasn’t locked, so he opened it, ducked under the frame and slipped outside into the icy darkness.
He was careful and used the cover of bushes and trees whenever he had to cross an open lane. A small road led him behind the town and up a hillside until he could have almost jumped on the roofs of the nearest buildings. But Hodhion’s apartment was on the other side of the street so he jumped down a short distance and circled around a stone fence until he arrived to the market square.
Slipping from shadow to shadow he sneaked through a gate that led to a dark alley. Hodhion lived in a dour and dark two-story building. Delioron pushed the door, but it was locked. He took out his lockpicking tools and expertly opened the lock in less than a minute. He pushed the door open slightly. It was dark inside, and dead quiet. Delioron stepped inside and shut the door behind him. And then he just stood there for a full minute, waiting for his senses to become accustomed to the darkness if the rooms.
The first thing he sensed was the all-too-familiar smell of warm blood and rotting flesh. The apartment smelled like a slaughterhouse.
Delioron groped around in the rooms until he found a candle. He scratched a match, lit the candle and raised it in front of him to light the room.
Hodhion was lying in the middle of the floor in a large pool of dried blood. There was blood everywhere. His throat had been slit from ear to ear.
Delioron crouched down to investigate the corpse. There were no signs of arguments or struggle. Whoever had killed Hodhion had been waiting him, hiding inside his house – probably inside the hanging cupboard over there – and slashed his throat open with one good incision of a knife or a dagger, not much differently Delioron would have done the job himself. He searched the corpse but found nothing on him. He knew that searching the apartment would have been pointless. If Hodhion had ever had anything hidden here, it was now gone.
It was time to leave.
Delioron blew out the candle, set it back on the table and retreated out of the apartment. He locked the door behind him and slipped into the dark streets of Bree like a shadow. He returned to the Prancing Pony the same way he had come and sneaked through the corridors to his room.
It was not until he was safely in his room before the exhaustion of his journey and the stresses of the day finally caught up with him. The strong ales he had consumed, the warmth of the room – it all wrapped around him like a soft blanket and thick black fog danced in his vision. Delioron realized he was so tired his body was about to collapse where he stood. He pulled off his cloak and placed it on the chair. He slumped down sitting on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes for a moment. Suddenly he blinked them open and looked around the room, startled. He had forgotten something. What was it?
His eyes stopped to the chair. Of course. He had forgotten to bolt the door with the chair. He would stand up to do that now. After he rested his eyes for a second, a few seconds…
Delioron slid down against the wall and was fast asleep before his head touched the pillow.
