Image created by AI
OOC – Author’s Note:
This story recounts a live RP session held as part a weekly series called "Signs Along the Road". Each week there is a new RP hook. If you would like to come along, please reach out to Naridalis (sessions held every Sunday, but not limited to that either). The series does refer to the Company of the East Road and can be used as a way to ICly introduce your character to the kinship (whether you wish to join it is entirely optional).
Additionally: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written them, and it gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own, but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI assistance.
This week's hook:
The West-gate of Bree has seen a strange figure these past few days: a hunched traveller loitering on the small stone bridge where the East Road meets the Greenway. Those passing say he stops folk with a tale of an injured companion lying just off the road, urging them to follow him at once. At least a few have gone… but none have returned to town. Still, the figure returns to the bridge each time thereafter, still seeking aid.
The morning in Bree-land began clean and bright. Sunlight slid across the stone of the western wall and laid long strips of gold over the cobbles at the West-gate. Wagons rattled, merchants argued over prices, and farmers steered their carts toward the Greenway or the Shire. Just beyond the bustle, the small stone bridge west of the gate stood in plain view. A cloaked, stooped figure haunted its span, lifting a hand to each passer-by and begging with a hoarse, uneven voice. Most hurried past and called him a beggar with a strange tale.
Naridalis watched from the edge of the gate’s crowd, cloak tugged by the light breeze, eyes returning again and again to the bridge. A young man in fresh armour approached her. He gave his name as Redgrave and wore his unease along with his mail; telling of how his armour was new and he was walking it in. She invited him to walk with her. There had been talk of the beggar’s story, and things that unsettle folk so close to Bree should not go unlooked. Nari called a pale hawk to her wrist with a whistle, and then as if whispering to it, released it again into the air. Sadar climbed into the morning sky and circled high. He would offer his sight to them both.
They crossed to the bridge together. The beggar’s tale sounded simple on its surface. A companion lay fallen in a nearby dell, just past the hill beyond the stream. Most had passed him by, but a few had gone to help and had never returned. His eyes kept flicking to the hedgerow and his story never quite came out the same way twice. He claimed two men had gone, then three. He spoke of some things in detail and others with a lack of it. It was all together suspicious to them both.
Redgrave pressed him with short, sharp questions. The man flinched under a steady hand on his shoulder and shrank like someone who expected blows. Hunger and fear clung to him. It felt like a trap, yet the fear was not feigned. Nor the hunger.
Naridalis decided to see the truth for herself. Before they left, she pressed a wrapped square of lembas into the man’s hands and told him how to use it, a bite to a day, enough to keep him for a week. Then she and Redgrave crossed the bridge and walked out over the damp grass of the plains towards the hill, Sadar circling ahead.
The fields rose slightly and dipped again into a shallow hollow half-hidden by thorn and bramble. The air cooled as they drew near it. Insects fell silent. No birds sang. The dell felt wrong, as if the ground itself held its breath within.
From the edge, they could see that a body did indeed lay in the centre of the hollow. A man on his side in rough clothing. From what they could see of his face, it was drawn and colourless, his lips dry, one hand pressed to his ribs. A lantern lay toppled nearby, its glass cracked. Sadar banked and climbed, and even the hawk’s cry sounded thin here. Naridalis taking his cries as confirmation that across the fields there were at least no men waiting, no bows hiding in the grass for them to exit. If this was a trap, it was not a brigand’s.
She moved in carefully and felt for the man’s pulse. His skin was cold as river stone. The beat under her fingers was weak but present. The cold that clung to him was wrong for a late morning. The air lay heavy over him like a hand.
They tried to carry him out. At Nari’s word, Redgrave lifted the man across his shoulders. For a few steps it seemed easy. Then a numbness crept up his arms, and the weight on his spirit fell like wet earth. Redgrave faltered. The body slipped and thudded back into the grass.
As soon as it left his grip however, the weakness fled him. He knelt and sucked air as if he had been held under water. The fallen man’s lips moved and a dry whisper scraped the air. ‘Shadows walking. Waiting in the earth’.
Naridalis went to Redgrave, and seeing him steady himself decided to search the hollow somewhat. The soil felt too soft underfoot for a dry morning. In the thick grass they found a sleeve jutting from the ground, frayed and filthy, with stiff fingers half-swallowed by soil. A few steps on, a boot pressed up from another dark patch. Others had come here, yes, and not returned because the earth had taken them. The shape of it matched the old tales. This felt like the long arm of the Barrow-Downs reaching further north than most would like to admit.
They spoke of leaving and seeking a lore-keeper, anyone who might have more knowledge of such dark influences… for what good would they do, if they do joined those who had come before…
As they backed away, with intent to leave the dell, the prone figure twitched and then jerked upright with an ugly strength. The colour of his skin changed to a flat, grey cast. His lips peeled from teeth that clicked like bone. His gaze fixed on them with a sickly light. The smell of rot rose from his clothes. A wight of the Barrow-Downs after all!
Redgrave’s steps faltered as the creature stirred. Naridalis saw Red’s knuckles whiten around the hilt of his blades, his jaw tight with a fear he was trying, and failing, to disguise. For a heartbeat she thought he might turn and flee, and she would not have judged him if he had. Few mortals faced a wight without their courage failing.
But then his eyes flicked to hers. He saw no panic there, only steadiness. She gave a single nod, silent as steel, and something in him shifted. His fear was not gone, but it bent itself into a sharp edge rather than a chain.
With a cry that shook the dell, Redgrave hurled himself forward… and so Naridalis drew and shifted to her bow. She whistled Sadar down into a raking pass and loosed an arrow as the hawk broke clear of its attack on the wight. The arrow struck deep but the creature kept coming for them.
The creature clawed at Redgrave’s breastplate and scored the new steel. Redg shouted his courage into the dell anew and drove both blades hard into the creature’s sides. Filth spilled as he tore the swords free. The body collapsed and smeared him with old blood and black decay.
The wight shrieked, a sound that was not of lungs but of ancient, spiteful malice. It buckled under their assault. The stench was choking, and the young man staggered back, his face a mask of both horror and resolve.
The creature collapsed in a heap of foul remains, yet even in death it had one last cruelty. A grey shadow tore itself from the husk and rose into the air, wailing in a hollow tongue that promised ‘ruin to all who trespassed the Downs’. Then it scattered on the wind, leaving only silence behind.
As the echo faded, the dell seemed to breathe again. The ground firmed underfoot, sunlight spilled more warmly through the trees overhead, and the sound of crickets returned hesitantly to the air. A sparrow sang from a hedge. The ordinary sounds of Bree-land returned.
Redgrave stood panting, his blades dripping with rot, his face pale but his eyes alive. In that moment, he had faced something he had every right to fear and, against his own belief, he had endured where others would have not.
Naridalis praised him for steady hands and a sure strike; a rather detached comfort to give in the moment, as it would turn out, but her thoughts were more to the poor soul whose body had once been taken as a wight by this apparition… they could not save him… but they could at least give him final rest by releasing him. There was not much left to bury, but she did what she could.
The hold on the hollow was broken, but Redgrave’s breath still came in sharp pulls, the echo of that dreadful shriek clinging to him. His blades dripped black filth, his armour stank of the grave, and he trembled as if the creature’s claws still pressed against his chest.
They climbed the slope together. At the crest he stopped, dropping to his knees on the grass. The strength that had carried him through the charge seemed to have burned itself out the instant the wight fell. His hands shook as he tried to wipe the grime from his blades, and from his face.
He spoke haltingly, confessing what Naridalis had already seen in his eyes before the fight began: that fear had gripped him, hollowing his limbs, that the armour he wore was less a badge of duty than a shield for his own trembling heart. He called it selfish, a heavy mask of steel to hide his weakness.
Naridalis lowered herself beside him without hesitation, letting the silence sit between them for a time. She did not press him to meet her gaze; shame already bent his shoulders. Instead her words came even and steady, carrying no judgment. “Fear was no shame”, she told him. The armour he wore may have been meant only for himself, yet it had turned the wight’s claws aside all the same. Steel borne for self-preservation had still served another in the moment of need. For she too could rejoice in having escaped its clutches, and that this was in no small part thanks to Redgrave’s courage.
Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder. He had not fled. He had not let the horror of the Downs master him. When the choice came, he stood, and he struck true. That was what mattered.
Redgrave swallowed hard, eyes stinging with tears, but the tremor in his limbs eased. He had faced a shadow that most men would never look upon, and though he still shook, he was breathing… alive, present…. and he had endured.
Nari reached into the fold of her cloak and drew out a silk handkerchief, fine and pale, its stitching of subtle elven craft catching the light. She pressed it into Redgrave’s hand without a word. The young man blinked at it, unused to such finery, then slowly raised it to his face. The fabric caught his tears and the grime alike, leaving faint traces of dusted silver thread against his skin. It was a small kindness, but one that steadied him more than any counsel could.
After a time, they returned to the bridge. The beggar saw them and almost could not believe they had come back. Naridalis told him the truth. A harsh truth, but one meant to give comfort ultimately and dispel doubt.
Naridalis spoke plainly, her voice even but not unkind. She told the beggar that the companion he had clung to in hope had been taken by a shadow from the Barrow-downs, perhaps many days ago, perhaps longer. Whatever he had been in life, he had not been himself for some time. His body now lay at rest, freed from its torment, though there was nothing left to return to.
The beggar swayed at her words as though struck. Redgrave drew a steadying breath, his voice gentler as he looked at the man. “What is your name, friend?” he asked.
The beggar’s eyes flickered with uncertainty, as though he had not been called to speak it in many years. At last he swallowed and said, “My name… is Harl. Harl, son of… no one, for I have no kin left. Only him… and now even he is lost.” The words seemed to pain him. The admission broke something in him; his shoulders sagged, and grief spilled raw in his voice. The ragged cloak that hung from his shoulders made him look like a scarecrow in the sunlight.
Redgrave stepped forward, his face still streaked slightly where his tears had run earlier. He unsheathed one of his blades with deliberate care. Its polished surface, untouched by the filth, gleamed in the morning light. He turned it in his hands and placed it crosswise against Harl’s chest, hilt downward. Then he guided the man’s trembling hand to close upon it, his own holding it fast.
“You need not be son of someone to stand for those you love,” Redgrave told him, his voice ragged with emotion. The words were heavy, dragged up from a place of old pain. He spoke of a mistake buried thirteen years in his past, of how he had let shame master him, and how living under its shadow served neither the living nor the dead. The words cost him dearly. Tears welled in his eyes again and slipped unheeded down his face, streaking the grime and sweat.
Harl’s shoulders shook, but he did not look away. For the first time, something lit in his expression that was not fear or hunger but a fragile spark of hope. He nodded once, a small, sharp motion, as though the sword’s weight steadied him.
Naridalis watched the exchange in silence, recognising the moment for what it was: two men finding a bond not through blood but through shared pain. When she spoke, her voice was clear.
“The Company of the East Road”, she said, “was no narrow fellowship. It was not built on names or noble lines, but on the work of keeping the road safe and answering the needs of those who travelled it. Traders walked among them for profit, sellswords for hire, wanderers for their own purposes, and others simply because it was the right thing to do. All of them had their place so long as the watch was kept.”
Redgrave lifted his eyes to her then, still wet with tears. “Would the Company truly take in two who call themselves kinless?” he asked, doubt pressing hard on his voice.
“Yes,” Naridalis replied without hesitation. “If you would walk with us, then you will not be kinless. You will be counted among those who stand for the Free Folk.”
Harl answered first. His voice cracked, but it carried a trace of the man he had once been. He said he would walk with them. He had been a baker long ago, before he had lost everything, and his hands still remembered the work of kneading and shaping dough. Bread, Nari said, had a way of binding folk together around a table, of reminding them they were not alone. That could serve the Company as surely as steel.
For a long while they stood together in the brightening light. Bree’s bustle carried from the gate behind them; wheels on cobble, hawkers calling out deals, the simple thrum of everyday life that seemed suddenly more precious.
Harl gathered his torn cloak around his shoulders, but stood straighter now, his back no longer bowed by despair. Redgrave wiped his face with the fine handkerchief Narid had pressed into his palm and managed a tired, honest smile.
Above them, Sadar wheeled in the clear morning air, his shadow sliding across the stones of the bridge. The echo of the hollow felt far away now, more memory than threat. A broken man no longer waited alone by the stream, and two who had once deemed themselves lost… had begun, at last, to look like companions walking the same road. Together they all turned toward the gate and the day ahead, the first steps of a fellowship newly forged.
You can find more tales along the road here: "Signs Along the Road"
