By mid-morning The Southerner had found his way to the flat in the Stone Quarter where the Council usually met when there was a reason to avoid Bill Ferny’s house. The Southerner was on edge as he walked slowly around the block containing the flat. His darting glances scanned everywhere, but there was nothing to see. It was just another morning in Bree, a new day coming alive with it’s usual displays.
He should have never gone into Archet for that meal. It had been pure madness from his part. The Old Man would not have approved, but what was done was done.
He bumped into a beggar child who was rushing out of a narrow alley between two buildings.
”Hey, lad”, said The Southerner.
”Fug off”, said the boy, running away.
The Southerner had been hiding in the woods near Archet all this time. He had seen Delioron enter the village in the night and he had seen Delioron leave the village the next morning with the Constable from Bree. He had seen them both return to Archet a few hours later. He had seen Delioron stealthily leaving again in the night, and he had seen the hobbit and the Constable from Bree leave Archet early this morning with their cart, leaving the rest of the family behind. He had understood then that Delioron had warned the hobbits and the Constable that something was up.
It was no bother because the rest of the family was not important. The real targets were Paladin and Ferumbras, the latter still in Buckland. As long as Paladin was going to Buckland the operation was still in motion. It would be even easier now that there was no need to kill Paladin’s whole family. Bringing them all to Isengard would have been too much trouble.
The Southerner had once been a warrior from a village called Lhan Tarren in Dunland, a man of the Stag Clan, a long time ago. He had had a Dunlending name back then, but he had not used it for many years and it did not matter anymore what his name had been. His crime had been theft, the crime most despised among the Dunlending. To punish him they had taken his house and all his possessions, crushed his leg and cast him out of the village to slowly die in the wilderness. And that’s where the Old Man had found him.
The Old Man had taken The Southerner to Orthanc and tried to heal his broken leg to the best of his abilities. The treatments had been painful, but eventually The Southerner was able to walk again. He would always walk with a limp and live with constant pain to the rest of his days, but he could walk. The Old Man had taught The Southerner how to read and write and to speak Westron, and other skills that would be useful in Bree-Land. But most of all the Old Man had nourished the hatred and bitterness he had seen in The Southerner’s heart. The Old Man had further corrupted and twisted an already twisted soul.
The Old Man had told The Southerner of his plans and secrets, about things he did not share with many people. He had shown him the race of orcs he was breeding under the tunnels of Isengaard and he had told him about his plans with the upcoming war between Mordor and Gondor. He had told The Southerner stories about the Ring of Power, Gandalf the Grey and the last White Council meeting, when the Old Man had realized that Gandalf had found the Ring, or at least knew of it’s whereabouts. After that the Old Man had set spies to watch Gandalf’s movements and found out about his interest in the Shire and the hobbits.
That’s when the Old Man had come to the conclusion that Gandalf must have given the One Ring to the hobbits to hide it somewhere in the Shire.
But the Old Man did not know much about the Shire or Gandalf’s relationship with the hobbits, and he had to act very carefully. At the same time he had to keep the Free Peoples from knowing that he was now collaborating with Sauron, and the existence and whereabouts of the One Ring hidden from Sauron, for he sought to betray both sides in the end to make himself the sole ruler of the Middle-Earth.
The Old Man had plenty of time though, so The Southerner was tasked to travel into Bree-Land to sow discontent against the hobbits and build a network or informants, spies and thugs among the unprincipled men of Bree in the name of his master, who’s true identity had to remain a secret. The Southerner had initially called his master Sharkû, because that’s what the orcs under the tunnels of Orthanc called him, but the men of Bree had misheard the name as ’Sharkey’, so that’s who he had become among the lawless elements of Bree; Sharkey, the man of mystery, the man who controlled everything and pulled everyone’s strings from behind the scenes, but whom nobody had ever seen.
There had been many plans to unveil the secrets of the Shire and to find out the whereabouts of the Ring. At one point the burglars of Bree had been encouraged to make incursions in the Shire and try to burgle the houses of hobbits for valuables, especially rings, but that plan had not yielded much in return. Not one spy, not a single informant had heard one clue about who in the Shire might hold the Ring in their possession, or where it might be kept.
The Southerner had made regular trips back to Isengaard, where he would receive new instructions from his master. At one point the Old Man had started to speculate that it was very likely that if the Ring was hidden in the Shire, then at least the Thain of the Shire would know where it was. And to find it out, the Old Man only had to snatch the Thain for interrogation.
But to orchestrate such a bold move the Old Man had to work very artfully indeed if he wanted to avoid drawing the attention of Sauron and the Free Peoples into the Shire. So he began to craft his master plan, ingenious and air-tight, like all things the Old Man did.
The first thing that needed to be done was to plan out where the kidnapping would take place. It was known that Thain Ferumbras made annual visits to Buckland every year in late autumn, where it would be safest and easiest for mannish thugs to snatch the hobbit. But it also had to be made to look like an act of common criminals, and if anything went wrong, no lead could ever point back to the Old Man.
The ruffians of Bree were easily persuaded to go along with the plan, but it would be harder for them to transport the Thain all the way through the dangerous lands between Bree and Orthanc. Neither the Old Man nor The Southerner trusted the competence of the thugs to be able to pull it off. After all, these were city-dwelling people with fairly low intelligence, people who had never been outside of Bree in their lives.
At this point the Old Man had started to make regular visits to Henneth Annûn to have conversations with Túrher, the Captain of the Rangers of Ithilien. During these visits the Old Man had told Túrher about the legend of Isildur’s Bane, the Ring of Power that could turn the tide, stop the coming war and allow Gondor to enslave Sauron and to defeat the shadow of Mordor once and for all. Túrher had believed him. They would have to do some hard-hearted things to obtain the Ring, but in wars sacrifices had to be made. Sacrificing of the few was necessary to save the rest of the world.
It had been Túrher’s idea to try and pin the blame on Parthadan, the Warden of the Green, whom Túrher had despised for as long as he had known him. For the operation Túrher collected a handful of Rangers known for their ruthless nature and unquestioning loyalty for their Captain. He had started the operation in Minas Tirith, recruited an actor who looked like Parthadan who had in turn recruited the woman Elwil, who shared a history with Delioron, one of Parthadan’s most competent agents that he often used for missions in distant lands. Greengage, Parthadan’s pigeon-handler in Bree, was easily swayed to their side and from him they learned about Hodhion, the Ranger of the North who had been Parthadan’s informant for many years, impressed to service by Delioron through blackmail. One of The Southerner’s informants in Bree had deliberately leaked bits and pieces of information about the kidnapping plan and some details about Túrher’s meddling and the Ring to Hodhion to arouse Parthadan’s interest.
All the pawns were now at play and the game in motion. The fact that Paladin Took, one of the most influential hobbits of the Shire and Ferumbras’ successor, was planning a trip around Bree-Land this year at the same time when Ferumbras was doing his annual visit in Buckland had been a fluke, so it was decided that both hobbits would be taken at the same time and brought to the Old Man of Isengaard. Paladin’s family would have to be sacrificed, of course – it was too many hobbits to carry around the country and it was unlikely that Paladin’s wife or chidren would know anything about the Ring anyway.
Hodhion contacted Parthadan through Greengage and his pigeons, and Parthadan sent Delioron to Bree, as anticipated. Two teams from Gondor arrived in Bree a few weeks before Delioron; the assault team of Túrher’s trusted Rangers and Elwil and Bragol – the team who’s mission was to muddy the trail and frame Delioron as the culprit for the disappearances and murders of the hobbits. The Southerner had personally told Bragol that Hodhion knew a little bit too much about the mission and that it would be the safest course of action if the old Ranger died before he could relate his information to Delioron.
It was a very complicated operation and some details had gone wrong. Bragol had decided that the safest course of action would be to kill Delioron as well, but he had obviously failed, as Bragol had disappeared but Delioron was still around. Then there was that idiot of a thug, one of Bill Ferny’s henchmen, who had gotten in his thick head the idea of trying to attack and rob the hobbit Paladin in Staddle by himself.
The Southerner did not trust Ferny’s fumbling fools anymore, so he had tailed the hobbits in Archet himself. He had made a mistake too by deciding to go in Archet to have one warm meal in the Mad Badger Inn, where the watchman from Bree had spotted him. The Southerner had left, but not too far. He had been nearby, watching. And waiting.
The next day, late in the evening, Delioron had arrived in Archet. The next morning both Delioron and the watchman from Bree had left Archet for a few hours before returning, enough to make a visit in Combe to ask questions, was The Southerner’s guess. He was not worried over it; he was sure nobody had spotted him in Combe. Late that night Delioron had left Archet alone. And early in the next morning, this morning, the cart of the hobbits clattered out of the village. Paladin Took was on that cart, escorted by the watchman from Bree and a couple of guards from Archet. The Southerner deduced then that Paladin had been warned by Delioron and decided to leave his family behind in Archet.
It did not matter, because the family was not important. The family would have been exterminated anyway as useless for the operation. The most important detail was that Paladin was still determined to go to Buckland as planned.
The Southerner had rushed to Bree ahead of the cart as fast as he could limp. Bill Ferny’s house had been deserted, so he had sent a word for the Council to meet him at once in the other location at the Stone Quarter.
The Southerner limped around the street corner. Everything looked safe enough. A piece of a parchment blew up the street and wrapped itself around his leg. He kicked it away.
The Southerner nodded to Constable Parsnip as he entered the bare little flat. Bill Ferny was already there, sitting on the wooden bench. He looked like he had been sleeping on it, and maybe more than one night. Parsnip was wearing his guard livery. Both men looked bewildered and frightened, which annoyed The Southerner.
”We have to call it off”, Bill Ferny said as soon as The Southerner had closed the door behind him. ”Call off the whole thing. They killed Coddle. They killed my damn dog! I can’t go home anymore!”
”Who killed Coddle?” The Southerner asked calmly.
”A foreigner”, Ferny said. ”There was this burglar I knew called Navelwort, a lousy drunk and a total loser. One evening in the Pony a messenger arrives with some news of business to Navelwort. He goes outside but never returns. That same night a stranger goes to Coddle’s house, pours boiling water on him and guts him like a fish! I happen to be nearby on some other business and hear the story from the lads. We start looking for Navelwort. One guy tells me that he saw Navelwort going into his home and that he has not come out yet. So we set a trap for Navelwort on all gates, pay off the guards and wait. Some time later Navelwort comes to the West Gate, where I seize him and interrogate him before I kill him. Now, Navelwort tells me he’s been working as an informant for one of those Rangers of the North, and they had dealings with some foreigner who came from the south. Apparently this stranger killed the Ranger and forced Navelwort to tell him what he knew about Sharkey and the kidnapping plan, which was not much. But that’s not all! Navelwort also told me about two other foreigners from the south who all came to ask him the same questions. So there’s three foreigners, all up to our plan and at least one of them a cold-blooded killer! I don’t know what it means, but I don’t like it one bit, so we have to call off the damn thing! You don’t happen to know anything you’ve not told us about, eh?” Ferny leered at The Southerner suspiciously.
The Southerner kept his face blank. The two other foreigners were probably Bragol and Ruthraon. Ferny and Parsnip were not supposed to know about them or the Rangers of Ithilien, but it did not matter anymore.
”We’re not calling anything off”, he said coldly. ”The hobbit and a watchman from Bree should be arriving at Bree-town Hall by midday. They have been warned that something’s going on, but the hobbit is still going to Buckland. The watchman will likely send the guards from Archet back home and ask for more guards from Bree for protection. Parsnip, you have your men on shift today?”
Parsnip nodded nervously.
”Good. I want you to go to Bree-town Jail immediately and see to it that your men are attached to guard the hobbit. I want you to go with them too. You think you can do this, Parsnip?”
Parsnip nodded. ”Sure. Calamint and I are old friends. He trusts me.”
”Very good. Escort the hobbit into Buckland, and when he and the Thain are about to leave, kill Calamint by the Bucklebury Ferry, seize the hobbits and take them to the rendezvous as planned.”
”And what about the foreigners?” Bill Ferny cut in.
”Don’t you worry about them. I will deal with the foreigners”, said The Southerner.
It did not matter. When Parsnip and his men approached the rendezvous they would all be killed with a volley of arrows. The Rangers of Ithilien would take the hobbits then and transport them with The Southerner into Isengaard. The Old Man had a very compelling voice, so if either of the hobbits knew anything about the Ring, he would dig it out of them. If it turned out that they knew nothing about it, it did not matter either.
Neither the hobbits nor the Rangers of Ithilien would ever leave Orthanc alive. When the Bree Watch and the Bounders of Buckland came to investigate the disappearance of the hobbits, all they would find was the corpses of a few watchmen of Bree. Trying to frame Delioron and Parthadan as the culprits behind the plot had failed, but that too was of no consequence. If Delioron came to Buckland and tried to meddle with the seizing of the hobbits, the Rangers of Ithilien would kill him too. If he decided to return to Minas Tirith and report to Parthadan, all leads would point only to Túrher.
And what about Túrher, the only person in Gondor who knew the true identity of Sharkey?
The Old Man had a very compelling voice, and during their many conversations he had put a powerful spell on the Ranger Captain. Túrher would rather kill himself than talk. Even under severe torture, Túrher would never name Saruman the White.
