Thordralin sifts through the contents of his fathers' belongings. He seems alive even now, in all these objects left behind. It's a sad and gruelling task, but the Uzbad does not complain; the slow digestion of memories is just one part of the mourning process. Placed tactfully at the bottom of one wooden box is a carefully preserved letter. A letter from Thordralin, back in his caravan guarding days. Or rather, at the end of them...
***
Dear Father,
You are probably wondering where I am. Perhaps word has reached you, perhaps it has not. I shall tell you what really happened:
The sun climbed to the noon and then rode slowly down the sky. Light clouds came up out of the sea in the distant south and were blown away upon the breeze.
That’s what I told them, anyway. In reality, it was pissing it down.
Five days hard walking brought us up to the crest of the enormous mud-pile that passes for a mountain in Rohan. Not that I minded the walk of course; rain all you like, turn as much of that blasted plain brown but you can’t take away the beauty of country. No, it was the orcs I minded.
They came in the night. And not just on foot: no, the bastards were clever. They rode wargs (must have bred them in the mountain somewhere). They’d come three at a time: the first would taunt us, draw me and Brisi out to meet them. The other two would come around behind, attack the cart and the ponies. And without the ponies, we were really helpless.
In the morning, you could see them off in the distance. We were already dead; we knew that. We could see Mahal approaching, in the form of three warg-mounted figures in the distance. It was cruel not to take us on the first day; by the third it was becoming unbearable.
Luckily some locals were on hand to lend us ponies. The caravan master was reluctant to part with his gold for them; wouldn’t even pay a little just so we could buy some bandage in case one of us got hit. Couldn’t even spare a silver.
On the fifth day, they took Brisi. First came the grief; the lad did not deserve to die. It was his first time on the road, he barely knew the life. But then, there came a curious tinge of envy. That he had been taken, and I had not. There they still were, three wargs in the distance, mouths red with the juice of that boy. And still they waited.
All the master cared about was the gold of course. He might have died for it, and happily too. I pitied him more than hated him; he’d done well by me after all. But as the days crawled past I began to see that he was tethered to that gold in a way that I was not.
And so I left. I left him, I left the life, I bartered a horse with the gold I stole and took off West into the sunset. I shall head for the Blue Mountains; perhaps, Father, you will find me there before your years are done. Mahal knows what I shall do there.
My letter to the caravan company was bright as a fairytale. I didn’t tell them anything about Brisi, about the wargs riders, about the gold. And most of all, I told them nothing of the master; they will never find him as he struggles with the weight of that gold, while the orcs get slowly closer.
Ever at your service,
Your son, Thordralin
[Submission to the March 2023 Durin's Folk Short Story Contest]
