02 - The crafter
Kor was broke and hungry. His only possession was now a small axe and a whittling knife. The bartering was unfair, but it was the only way how to get something useful for the remaining bits of rohan armor. The trader from Falcon clan knew it, so he threw in also solid tunic and trousers.
At this time, he was already a dead man for the rohirrim army. He knew that no one will miss him too much, his father Teanred already died three years ago.
So once again Kor came to his mother’s cartrev. To return to the starting point, to scavenge what could be useful. It was not much and he could only carry limited weight.
Kor decided to spend a last night at his former home before venturing somewhere else. Last cosy fire in the fireplace, last sitting on the front perch watching the night coming.
He didn’t know why just that memory appeared in his mind. Maybe because it had happened also in late evening at the fireplace, long ago.
“Do you want to know your whole name?” said mother at that moment.
Kor looked at her, answering with his eyes. Cranna continued.
“You are Kortheod. The second half was given to you by your father.”
She had turned silent for a while, so her son might have digested it.
Kor was surprised, more gratefully than unpleasantly.
“It means ‘man’ in the horse-peoples’ tongue,” added mother.
“I like it,” concluded Kortheod, still full of new feeling.
“I liked it always,” whispered Cranna and smiled.
He is a man of Rohan, no doubt. One half of him. He was proud of it. But now it was useless.
His thoughts were rushing in his head, but he made that decision already before. There will be no more army, no more war. He felt it deep inside him.
But he couldn’t stay in the vicinity of his blood clan. Moving was necessary. He knew that his woodworking skill would be the thing that would keep him from starving. Crafting spears for rohan soldiers has taught him. Now it was time to hone the skill as a journeyman.
*
He had been roaming mostly within Dunland, Enedwaith and western borders of Rohan. It had been only very seldom that he hadn’t found any work as woodworker or carpenter. The money had not been much, but he had never been hungry.
Of course he was avoiding Draig-luth villages. The situation with them was a sword with two edges.
During his nomadic lifestyle, he discovered regions, where rohirrim were not enemies of dunlendings, rather just neighbours. It was pleasant change.
After a time, he had built a small house, rather a cottage, in an isolated part of country. Loneliness had been also not a problem, since he had tamed a rook fledgeling and also an orphan baby bear. He was not lucky finding a woman of his desire, but learned to live with it.
*
Years have passed.
Life was simple. Hard, common, but simple.
Only the times had become… strange. Tense.
The people were more anxious, and at the same time more fiery – even for dunnish standards. The whole land was slowly turning in a hardly describable way.
Kor felt it, but he didn’t want to admit it to himself. Only until that day.
The day, when he was travelling as usual with some crafted stuff to sell, and he glimpsed a fume behind the hill ridge.
The smoke was rising from a rohan village…
