ryheric

---White Mountains, Rohan. Many months earlier---

No sooner had Ryheric made a day long journey to return to Winnie's village, than he was approached by Tarsorel and Winnie's father.

Gold Click here to listen

"Smoke Noise
Flame Severe
Ember Warm
Gold Ashes
   Gone."

Saving the Farm Click here to listen

Khaki. Click here to listen
A song of peaceful, civilised beauty with a thin layer of sickness.

Of Bree-land

Click here to listen

Over the course of a few weeks, a few villagers and farmers from Combe bring to Bree a contagious and catchy jig.

A small trend is begun, as the simple piece is then played for its fifteen minutes of fame in every tavern of Bree-land. It is even heard to be hummed by those daring to break the grim atmosphere of the Forsaken Inn, and as far west as Buckland.
 

"Within Bree grow the gremlins

guilty pleasures of the feeble.

In the end, the eighth lute's demise was in its abandonment. Left discarded in a nest of leaf litter at the edge of the Ithilien woods. Someday, a far roaming wanderer might stumble upon the bleached, wooden skeleton, strings long since corroded, and wonder who might have left it there. Ryheric was again luteless, in the meantime. 

An extreme and bloody business had been finalised, the lute lost in violent circumstance, the twice-chipped curved southern blade reclaimed, then a long road. Eventually, Ryheric found himself in Breeland once more.

The warlord didn't stay snarled in the debris for long, he was back on his feet. The boat churned and threw the fighters this way and that as the storm raged. Blood, seawater and rain were under Ryheric's boots and slippery at the grip of his sword, but he didn't falter now. Perhaps he couldn't. Retreat and fear were ripped away from him, just like anything he'd ever tried to keep. Everything was red and black, now. Wrath, hunger for blood and willful abandonment of control.

---Four Months Ago---

Rope was easy to find wherever there were boats. When coils of it went missing, sailors shrugged and said "Ulmo" then blamed it on the Sea. Nature's greatest thief.