azrudaur

Cuwath crept forward, prowling through the low foliage like mountain lion stalking its prey, using the shadows and the night to their fullest. Melding in with the surroundings, he edged to the nearest tree, from which he had a clear view of the northerner who was examining the old campsite Cuwath´s men used just a couple of days ago.

Fire.
She was surrounded by flickering firelight, blinding her eyes. Behind it, she could see only darkness. There were shadows moving in front of the light, in front of her, shadows with glowing eyes and dirtied skin.
She screamed, but the sounds wouldn't form. Her mouth was dry as bone. One of the shadows reached out to her, restraining her arms.

The geese are departing from the north. From my single window I see the skeins in ragged formation arrow across the evening sky. Behind them the moon is newly risen - this season, this moon ... impossibly far away from this dark place, and what happens in this place, a great house is flooded with light and music.

Under the richly decorated ceilings,within the tree arbors festooned with lanterns, the brightest host is dancing. Maidens in gossamer dresses tip their faces up to radiant lords - shy, coy, merry, proud. The flower of elvendom gathered to celebrate autumn.

The farmer, Ted, hands me a bag of food. There is a note of regret in his eyes as he turns away. He knows he has got the work of two men from me in payment for his straw-scented hospitality, aware that he is unlikely to see such a tireless farmhand again.

Hard, physical work. Take up the wood, bring down the axe hard. Split the timber. Repeat. I let myself go into the repetitive work. Fill my senses with the actions and the scent of the wood. Hold my attention on the feel of my muscles, so swiftly refreshed after the un-natural ravages of the stone.

The man brings out tea and thick cut cheese and bread. I eat. Taste the cream that lies in the butter. Wipe sweat from my eyes. I work.

Ted's missus puts her mug down on the table with a decisive thump.

'He has to be gone by tomorrow, Ted!'

Ted looks at his wife in surprise at her outburst. Outside the thump of her tea is echoed by the steady chop, chop, chop of wood being cut for the winter. Ted's misses glares at her husband, preparing herself for an argument. Ted, as predictable as February rain, supplies it.

Ted Hall ... Dandy-head to his friends ...straightens up slowly, running his fingers down his sweat-dampened back, easing each vertebra into place as he comes upright.

The sunlight beyond my closed eyelids paints the inside of my eyes red. Which day now?  ... is it hours or days ... my horse finds his own meandering way, I cannot help him or guide him. The loose stones click against his hooves. We are climbing, swaying in the saddle, weaker than a newborn, slumped over my belly. Where the crow and the girl and the dunlander are I have no knowledge. Mayhap he can follow my trail ... I am too enfeebled to care.

I am a ship in a sea of fools. She is an insidious worm chewing at the flesh of the apple. My patience runs thin, yet I watch her wriggling with amusement.  I keep my anger banked, a well-tended fire for the future.

The Dunlander is certain he has located the second stone. Nestled like a ravenous cookoo in the soft bounty of the halflings' Shire. By report a pretty, placid land of nothing and no-one, populated by childlike bumbling farmers intent on buccolic pleasures. Insular, isolated and adrift in a fantasy where the sun always shines and the butter is as fat and yellow as their own creamy cows. For folk such as these, not even lesser Men, but for these bovine- bellied gardeners, the last blood of the North spends itself.