It was a bright, warm summer morning in the Gloomglens. A light breeze blew through the trees, and the only sound to be heard was the rustling of the leaves. Below stalked four hunters, their footfalls utterly silent to even the most wary prey. Slowly and quietly they crept behind a large white buck, which, by some stroke of good fortune, had no chance of noticing the hunters before they were already upon him, as he was already dead.
"Here, Aled," spoke the eldest of the hunters, breaking the silence, "take this and saw off its antlers. Kened, take yer knife and cut off as much hide as ye can. I'll see what venison I can recover."
"What should I do, dad?" asked the youngest, a child by the looks of it, not even in his tweens.
"Keep watch. Warn us immediately if the wolves that killed this buck are still lurking around somewhere."
His orders received, the young hobbit wandered off to look for signs of wolves.
---
It was an unpleasantly bright, hot summer morning in the labyrinthian canyons of the Gloomglens. A light breeze blew through the trees, but it did not reach the four hunters on the ground, and the sound of their steps nearly drowned out any whisper of wind.
Wiping the sweat off his brow, one of the hunters stopped despondently. "There's nothing here, Heilun. I don't know what your father told you to look for, but it doesn't look like we're ever going to find it."
The other three hunters halted, and turned to their companion. The tallest, a man who carried himself with the utmost self-importance, stepped a few paces in the first hunter's direction.
"The Uch-lûth built a shrine here years ago, in the form of an ox. My father doesn't know what urged them to build it in this forsaken land, but he recently learned something else from an informant of his among the Uch-lûth, a secret they found here when they were building their shrine."
"Well, are we looking for their shrine, then? What could be so interesting about it to your father that he sent us out here?"
"No, the secret isn't at the shrine itself. While the Uch-lûth were here among the Gloomglens they met and began trading secretly with what the informant described as 'little people.'"
"Little people? Come on, that's ridiculous. Myths and legends, all of it. It's like that demon goat my sister claims she saw in the Windfells. I don't believe a word of it. There is no sign of civilized life in these hills. No farms, no homes, the only 'paths' are natural, simply dried up streams."
"Well, my father believes it, and so I must as well, at least until we give this place a good look."
The first hunter agreed reluctantly, and so they trudged noisily along the bottom of a canyon, in a long-dried riverbed which served as a path.
---
This exchange was witnessed from afar by the observant eye of a young hobbit boy, Iofan Madcorf, who immediately ran back to his father, Madoc.
"Giants!" Iofan said with hushed urgency. "There are four giants just over this hill!"
Immediately Madoc stopped carving the buck and stood up, motioning for Aled and Kened to stop as well. In the ensuing quiet, the hobbit hunters listened for confirmation of Iofan's report. A few seconds passed, and they heard it: voices and heavy footsteps.
"Aled, Kened, go back to Maur Tulhau and warn everyone to hide or take up their bows. Iofan, you and I will see if we can't drive them off."
The two tweens ran off, leaving behind the antlers and hide they had removed from the buck. Meanwhile, Madoc and Iofan crept in the direction of the voices, to the spot that Iofan had spotted them.
"These aren't giants," whispered Madoc as he crouched in hiding behind a bush at the top of a short cliff below which the men were walking. Iofan found a place right next to him.
"What are they, then?" he whispered back. "Spirits? Gwiber?"
"Do ye... know what Gwiber are?" asked Madoc, but Iofan shook his head. "No, son, these are men. Dunlendings. Of the Draig-lûth, the Dragon Clan, by the looks of them. No friends of ours."
"What are we going to do?"
"Ye see, son, men aren't accustomed to the twists and turns and forks of the canyons like we are. They get turned around easily, and that's exactly what we're going to do."
"How?"
"See that fork ahead? Left leads directly to Maur Tulhau, as ye know, and right loops around and, unless they're absolute fools and go in a circle, eventually leads out. We just need them to take the right path."
Madoc crept out from behind the bush, motioning for Iofan to stay put. He descended the cliff, no more than twice his height (and therefore an easy task), and silently slipped behind the four hunters, all too noisy and preoccupied discussing the women in their clan to notice. Just as silently he climbed the other side and hid behind another bush. He took a few stones and threw them in quick succession down the right path.
The men snapped to attention when they heard what they thought was movement to their right. Heilun, their leader, unanimously decided that they should follow the noise. Only the smartest of the hunters, who had before expressed his desire to turn back, noticed that that way would likely lead them out of the Gloomglens, but he remained silent.
As the men passed down the right path, Madoc made his way back to his son.
"See? Easy," he whispered. "Men are strong, and we could probably never have taken them in a fight, but they lack subtlety, and are easily misdirected. Look, we were able to drive them away without them even knowing we were here!"
They returned to the carcass, picked up the antlers, hide, and meat, and went by the quickest way back to Maur Tulhau.
