Delioron had been sitting on a chair by the window, fully dressed, staring into the darkness outside while the mists from the Bree-hill came down into the town, obscuring the view beyond the window. He had been thinking about the mission, Parthadan and his lonely home in the Cape of Belfalas when he heard the pounding on the door and the voice. Her voice.
He bounced off the chair without thinking about it, took his dagger from his belt, strode to the door dragging the chair in his other hand and opened it. He saw that she was frightened and that she had been drinking. He took her by the arm without giving it another thought and pulled her inside. He turned the key on the lock and bolted the door with the chair. Elwil rushed into the room and Delioron turned to look at her.
”Drop your cloak on the floor and move away from it”, he said in his cold, flat tone.
Elwil turned to stare at him, her eyes wide with fear; a mouse that had escaped from the clutches of a cat only to find herself in a locked room with another one. She opened her mouth as if to protest, but then decided to say nothing and do as the man said. She dropped her cloak on the floor and turned her back at Delioron as he searched through her body for concealed weapons. It did not feel like she was being groped at; the search was quick, thorough, methodical and impersonal, like everything about Delioron.
”Now go sit on the bed.”
Elwil did as the man told her to do. He stood in the middle of the floor in front of her, still holding a dagger in his hand, staring down at her with his wintry, expressionless face. He didn’t say anything, he just waited.
”Somebody came to the Pony to kill me”, she said. ”Dark hair, pale blue eyes. Brown cloak, green tunic and trousers. Young, maybe in his thirties. Gondorian, I am sure of it. He had a dagger and he followed me from the common room and tried to attack me in the corridor on the second floor. I pushed him, he fell and I ran. I ran here. I… I didn’t know where else to go.”
Delioron kept standing and staring at her, his expression unaltered.
”Del, I don’t want to die”, Elwil pleaded. ”Please.”
Delioron put the dagger away. Was she lying? Trying to set a trap? Did it even matter?
He sat on the bed next to her. She looked so frightened, he thought, and also brave at the same time. She started trembling and Delioron wrapped his arm around her. Elwil leaned into him, grateful for the comfort he was now offering, and buried her face into his chest. Delioron wrapped both his hands around her and held her tightly, and she did the same.
Indeed, what did it matter in the end? All the sides, all the secrets, deceptions, betrayals – and here they were, two strangers in a strange land, wanderers adrift and lost in the storm. All they had left was each other and the loneliness they shared.
