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                He was lying face down in a ditch. He was covered with filth and wasn’t moving. Leyek didn’t even bother to identify all the smells that emanated from him. Her time with the elves, training and learning and growing, had both hardened and softened her. She had quickly grown tall and fair, and scarred. Her memories of her home had faded some and she wasn’t entirely sure she would recognize her father when she found him.

                But it was him. The miraculous meeting with the Halfling had been the final clue. She had journeyed for months, following rumor and intuition to find her father here. It was him. She did recognize him. She remembered those huge arms holding a horse’s hoof as he shod it – holding her as a little girl.

                “Are you Hluill, the Dunlander from the West Marches?” She knew the answer but was unsure how best to open a conversation with an unconscious man, though the image of kicking him awake had played briefly in her mind.

                The filth-covered form stirred and grunted. It made some kind of retching, spitting noise. It raised its hand in dismissal and acquiescence. “Fine enough, I’m movin’ on,” it said as it moved to a seated position. “Lemme gather my wind, neh?”

                She knelt and removed her helm, lowering herself to make eye contact. Though they were dull, red-rimmed and besotted, those were her father’s deep-blue eyes. “Pappa,” she said in a gentle whisper. Leyek realized her eyes were filling with tears. She touched his face lightly as she moved the hair from his eyes.

                His eyes met hers and there was a sudden glimmer in them. Puzzlement and disbelief flooded into them. Leyek had watched the exact opposite happen to her foes too many times as life left their bodies. She realized she was watching a rebirth.

                “Lee?” The light in his eyes wavered as he winced, cowered and shied away. “Lee, leave me be. I’ll be joinin’ ya and yer mother soon enough, neh?” He tried to crawl away, heading for the ruin of a burnt shed. “I canna last much longer, to be sure.”

                Bewildered and frustrated, Leyek grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. He was stout, but she was angry. “Pappa, I am no haunting curse, though I am of a mind to torment you!” She smiled as she spied a nearby water trough. She dragged, lifted and threw her father’s bulky form into it. Hluill’s splash and exclamation drew pause from the nearby townsfolk. But with all they had seen recently it hardly kept their attention.

                Hluill coughed and sputtered to his feet with a quickness that shocked Leyek. A knife had appeared in his hand and his stance was one of violence. But the anger faded as quickly as it had awakened. “Lee!” he exclaimed as his knife vanished and he took her up in those huge arms, lifting her off her feet into a crushing embrace. “Oh my, how ya’ve grown.” 

                This tall, grim warrior, clad in her much-mended mail and armed with a well-used greatsword, giggled like a little girl in her father’s warm embrace. She returned the embrace and nestled her face into his shoulder. Her tears moistened the side of his neck. “Pappa.” She hung there in his arms for a blissful eternity before he set her back down. His filth-covered face was streaked with tears and adorned with a huge grin. She giggled again.

                “Pappa, my Lady Numaril camps nearby. She has aided me greatly in finding you. But I think it’d be best if we got you cleaned up before any introductions are made, neh?”

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She could ignore the pain of her injuries well enough to ride, but her body could not ignore its loss of blood and, as the days passed, lack of food and water. Her thoughts and vision kept losing focus. She couldn’t remember crossing the river. She couldn’t entirely be sure in which direction she was going. She couldn’t remember stopping to drink from a stream or hunting for food. Visions raced through her mind. Some of the hallucinations were obvious to her, others confused her.

In one of them, she was sitting in a hut, listening to an old, dunlending woman. The warmth of the fire and the rich smells of the hearth comforted her. The old woman was lecturing her, pointing at her, telling her that her mother was safe now and that Leyek must look to her father. She must find her father. The matron’s words, “Your father needs you now, more than ever”, rang in Leyek’s ears and burned into what was left of her fatigued brain.

Leyek focused on Don’s whithers and now her frantic need to find her father. She wasn’t even sure that he was alive but the desire to find him drove her like a whip. It drove her into the depths of a great, black wood. 

Leyek was from open country and innately feared forests. She heard many tales of haunted woods. They were special places, inhabited by powerful spirits.  She hoped the spirits of these woods hated orcs more than her as she passed through the dark ways between the huge trees. She kept moving, only stopping briefly, unable to rest or even relax.

She smiled when she saw the sun again. Still riding “maiden style,” she galloped Don across the open country. She galloped Don until his sweat broke clean and his stride grew fierce. She slowed him and dismounted, leading him at a quick walk. She started pacing him again. She traveled for a few more days until she found a peaceful river at the edge of a forest of tall, golden trees.

She couldn’t have said why the river was peaceful, or why she felt safe, but the river sang as it flowed. She washed and drank and found herself relaxing. She lay in the soft leaves and slept.

She dreamt of a tall, fey warrior. His hair was white gold and held back by a series of intricate braids. In his hand he held a long sword of lethal glass with a great hilt. Runes of power were etched down the length of the translucent blade. His armor gleamed like silver and his chain hauberk was made of links so tiny that it almost appeared to be cloth. He gazed at her sleeping form with sadness. He bent and kissed her.

The kiss troubled her and she awoke startled. She was surrounded by several forms, armed with long, delicate bows and garbed in a grey that blended into the night. One stooped over her. She punched him hard in the face and jumped to her feet. She felt a dozen bow strings tighten around her, but the fey faces surrounding her contained more merriment than malice.

“What have you done to Don?” She looked about her wildly. “Where is my horse?”

The one she had hit stood before her rubbing his jaw. “Your horse is fine. He grazes under our protection. I am Methelas. You are trespassing in the realm of Lady Galadriel. You need to come with us.” He spoke Westron with a soft, musical accent.

Leyek straightened, her fists clenched. She was weak with hunger and still dizzy from exhaustion. “I am Leyek, daughter of Hluill. I may be your prisoner, but touch me again and blood will spill.”

Methelas merely bowed and gestured. “This way, daughter of Hluill. Cooperate, and no harm will come to you.” 

Leyek followed several of them with Methelas close behind. They led her across the river and bade her to sit on a soft blanket, nestled in the roots of a large tree. Two of them remained nearby but positioned themselves just out of sight. Others moved off into the woods around her.

They spoke to each other in a gentle, musical tongue. It sounded prettier, but similar to the bits of the Gondorian tongue Leyek had heard. She realized that these were elder, forest spirits. They were the ancient race of the Firstborn that haunted the places her people avoided. These were the first elves Leyek had ever seen.

Her guards faded in and out of her vision, blending into the shadows and the foliage. Eventually an elf matron appeared and set a cooking fire nearby. She was stooped and hooded. The guards seemed to defer to this elf healer as she gestured them away. She reminded Leyek of the revered grandmothers of her village, so long gone now. 

The matron went about her business silently and efficiently, tending the fire, using it to heat bowls and a delicate kettle. She quickly produced a bowl of thin porridge. Leyek was sure that the broth would make her sick but she sipped at it tentatively. It warmed her as it went down smoothly, like mead made from the finest spring honey. The tension and fatigue drained from her body and she felt herself relax and recline onto the blankets.

The matron continued heating bowls of water, adding dried leaves, mosses and pieces of bark. The scent of it was refreshing and clean. She moved towards Leyek and started to bare her wounds. Leyek noted that she felt no compulsion to resist and that the matron’s hands were smooth and pale, like a young woman’s. Her ministrations were gentle but thorough. The matron worked her way down Leyek’s body, cleaning and treating each bruise, scrape and cut with attentive care. The pain of each injury disappeared as rapidly as it was treated. The matron paused and sighed as her treatments progressed to Leyek’s hips and thighs.

Leyek knew that she was naked and intimately exposed but felt no discomfort in it. She looked down and saw the matron’s face. It appeared young and old at the same time. It was filled with grief. The matron’s eyes were filling with tears. Equal emotion welled up in Leyek. The hardened ball of emotions in the pit of Leyek’s stomach shattered. Her pain and loss flooded her existence and she found herself sobbing like a little girl.

The matron hesitated for a moment, unsure what to do. She wrapped her arms about Leyek and held the girl’s sobbing form close to her. Leyek was sputtering in her grief. The story of the loss of her village, her mother and her father came out of her in gasping sobs.

“I want my papa,” She exclaimed with her face buried in the matron’s shoulder. “Where is my papa? I have to find him.”

The matron hugged Leyek close and then pushed her to arm’s length, studying Leyek’s face and smoothing her hair. The matron’s hood had fallen away. A small glimmer sparkled in her eyes. Her face appeared younger than Leyek had envisioned. There was a delicate braid of silvered vine holding back her pitch-black hair.

“I am known as Ciyilie Numaril,” the matron said slowly. She spoke in a softer, more formal, form of Dunlending, the language of Leyek’s father. “I will aid you, daughter of man, anyway that I can.”

Leyek slept and ate over the next few days in the shade of that golden tree by the river. Ciyilie would spend time with her, speaking first only in the Old Duneal, the only tongue of men she knew. In her conversations with Leyek, she learned Westron quite quickly, faster than Leyek could even learn a few words in Ciyilie’s tongue.

Leyek sensed the other elves more than she saw them. They seemed to patrol about the edges of the river and the eves of the forest on its far bank. One came to visit her. Leyek sat on her blanket, eating some honeyed porridge Ciyilie had made her. She watched the cloaked and hooded figure emerge from the shadows of the surrounding trees. She wore a light sword with bow and quiver strapped to her back. The figure sat opposite Leyek and watched Leyek from the concealment of her hood.

“I am Leyek, daughter of Hluill.” Leyek nodded at the figure but was answered with only silence. “I am unfamiliar with the customs of your people, but in my lands such behavior would be considered rude.” Leyek stood and held her wooden spoon as threateningly as possible.

The figure laughed with almost a girlish giggle and drew back her hood. Her bright face was framed by a wild mane of raven-black hair. “You are a strong one, child of the Edain, no doubt.” The elfess shook her head, still smiling. “I am Maergil and I am in your debt for breaking the doom of grief that has burdened my mother for these past ages.”

“Your mother?” Leyek immediately noticed the resemblance, though there was a difference in their eyes.

“Yes,” Maergil nodded, “She has been silent for as long as I can remember. And more than silent, but acted as if dead, or at least wishing to be…” Maergil stared into the flames of the small cook fire, lost in the memories. She looked back at Leyek and grinned again. “But you have brought her back to life, and for that I will forever be grateful. I will aid you as I can, here on the borders of my people’s kingdom. My mother will see to restoring your strength. I will see to honing it for the trials of your quest.”

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Leyek was tired, and out of arrows. She could see several fences between the burning stables and sheds from her barricade. Bodies of men and orcs littered the ground. She watched the enemy gather behind one of the fences and push on it. They used their bodies like a battering ram and the fence finally broke like a dam hit by a flood. The women loosed the remaining arrows. Freca called for women at the other barricades to come and help. The enemy closed the distance and it turned into a brawling press of bodies. Spears and axes and swords waved and clattered. Men and orcs tried to climb over the barricade but were driven back. Frealitha stayed back and punched her sword into gaps in the crowd to great effect. Leyek could not do the same with her axe, her swings hit only air. Once she did make contact, but it ricocheted wildly off a helmet. Leyek didn’t realize that she still brained the orc wearing it.

The barricade continued to hold, but the men and orcs, in their frustration, smashed their way through houses and flanked the defenders. Small groups of them started to fill the streets. Freca ordered the women to the great hall, but retreat is a costly thing even for a well drilled unit. The women became disorganized, individuals became outnumbered and overcome.

Frealitha was unstoppable. Her sword and dagger blurred around her. The orcs wore pieces of metal strapped haphazardly as armor. Some of the men wore stiffened leather. Frealitha found their gaps as she fought her way to the great hall. Leyek followed, swinging furiously. She rarely managed to hit anything but her fury bought them space.

Many did not make it to the hall. Freca’s armor was stained and missing several scales. Her sword dripped with blood both red and black. “We have a space before their next assault. Watch the windows.” She looked around at the faces, drenched in sweat and fear. “Don’t worry, girls, we don’t have to last much longer.” She laughed and stepped into the wide doorway of the hall. She watched as her town was burnt and pillaged. “What can stand against such wanton and savage destruction?” Freca shrugged.

A rain of arrows fell upon her. Several short, black arrows appeared in her face, neck and one even managed to pierce her mail. Freca slumped and Frealitha moved quickly and caught her cousin. “Block that cursed doorway!” she screamed as she dragged her cousin back into the hall. 

Freca focused on her cousin with her remaining eye. “Tell me…” she swallowed, her voice was like a rasp on dry wood. “Tell me I’ve earned my place… my place among our honored dead.” A tear ran from that brilliant blue eye. Frealitha couldn’t stomach looking at what had happened to the other. “Tell me I’ve earned my place to serve my beloved husband in the halls of kings.”

Frealitha nodded and smoothed her cousin’s golden hair. It was streaked with grey.  Frealitha watched as her cousin’s remaining eye glazed. She closed it gently and turned to the other women, the children and the old in the hall. She sighed. “It’s time to choose. Do you want to fall like cattle or like the daughters of Kings? I offer my blade and a quick end to any who cannot fight.”

Everyone understood. Leyek was horrified by this necessity but death at the hands of friends was better than the quarter given by flesh-eating orcs and savage men. She nodded to her mother and stood, hefting her axe. Up until that point it had bitten into nothing but wood. Its first taste of blood would be that of the children of her village. She set about the business with grim efficiency.

Soon rows of bodies lay wrapped in blood-soaked blankets where Leodurth’s board had been. The tables of his board barricaded the entrance to the hall. A handful of armed women waited by the entrance and the open windows of the hall. They didn’t have long to wait.

The stacked tables began to slide and then were pushed over in an explosion of brute force. Three huge, black orcs, with a horde of dunlendings in their wake, filled the entrance way. Frealitha took the first orc, burying her sword to its hilt in its neck. Her dagger sliced at the second orc’s face but the third hit her full force in the face with its huge mace. Her head made a wet crunching noise as she was thrown aside.

Leyek swung her axe with all her strength. It drove deep through the orc’s shoulder plates, down into its chest. It stuck there. She spent too long trying to free it and dunlendings swarmed her. Sweaty men with leering faces grabbed her and beat her as she tried to struggle, to kick, to wrench free. Screams and fire surrounded her as they cut her out of her leather armor and clothes. They forced themselves upon her repeatedly in their savage madness. She was powerless in their wrenching grip and press of muscle.  It was not her body anymore, but some cheap sack of meat to be beaten and abused by malicious owners.  Leyek didn’t even notice the tearing pain or their punches and kicks. She was overwhelmed by her inability to fight, to release her fury on these laughing, brutish men. She wished the flames in her head would burn them all to a cinder. She didn’t even feel herself to be in her body. It was as if she were watching a stranger be violated amidst this horrific scene of flames and death and hatred. It seemed to last for days.

But the men were thrown aside by another, a look of horror on his face. He was dirty and sweaty like the others, but he looked oddly familiar. He studied Leyek with a sad grin. “Tell your papa, Uncle Shaughn sends his regards. Now run!”

Leyek turned and didn’t look back. The burning roof of the hall was falling all around her. She stumbled over bodies and dodged falling timbers. She focused only on her path and took no note of her surroundings until she was well clear of the town.

She wanted to collapse and weep. She wanted to run back into the town and kill them all. She screamed in her rage, holding her clenched fists at the stars. She realized that she was naked, the remains of her shirt was bunched and gathered about her neck. She did the best she could at covering up as she heard something approaching.

She crouched low, clenching and unclenching her fists, waiting to spring. She recognized him immediately, from his whicker and his smell. His head hung low as he cautiously advanced. She exhaled using the back of her throat and the edges of her lips, making a soft, cooing rasp. She opened her arms and showed him her palms. She bowed her head to his muzzle, breathing his breath and letting him breathe hers. He whickered again, nuzzling her hair.

It was Don, the horse her father had given her. Many of the horses must have fled during the chaos of the attacks. Don must have heard her scream. He was lost and afraid, but he had found her. She hugged his strong neck as he rubbed his muzzle and face on her back.

She had no rope or blanket and she found that she could not bear the pain of riding astride. But Don had a broad back and low withers and Leyek rode “maiden style” for the first time since her earliest riding lessons. She rode leaning forward, holding onto his mane and neck. She let him walk at first, patting his neck and scratching his ears. She experimented with trot and a short canter, but mainly she let him have his head at a walk. She meandered North, hoping to find the river to follow it East further into the lands of her people.

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Freca, the wife of Leodurth, lifted the cup high to her mounted husband. She was radiant, dressed as a queen. Tall and proud, she and the other wives of the town presented their goblets to their departing warriors.

Leodurth looked to his wife as he took the intricately engraved cup. “You need to get our people ready to move, in case this goes badly.”

She smiled, cold and grim. “If your company of horse falls, then we may as well fall here, husband. Aid and shelter are too far for us to escape this Dunlending Raid.” She rested her hand on his rein hand and her eyes sparkled with strength. “But this company of horse will not fall for they are led by the wise Leodurth and his mighty sons.”

Leodurth nodded to his wife and raised his cup high. He spoke in a loud voice so that the mounted warriors and people gathered about him could hear. “Knights of Eorl, we ride in defense of our homes and lives. Take this brief but richest of moments to remember these dearest of things. For in the times to come, in the driving of our lances and the fury of our swords, they will strengthen us.” He took his sip from the cup and handed it back to his wife. Their eyes met and though both were firm and proud, there was no denying their fear and sadness, which was left unspoken and unrealized.

Freca raised the cup for all to see and in an equally strong voice said: “We send our honored men to battle. We send them with our hearts and our lives, but, above all else, with our honor. With that, they cannot know defeat.” Freca then sipped from the cup. Other women sipped from their stirrup cups shared with their husbands around her. With the ceremony finished, the mounted warriors rode forth to their fate.

Freca turned to her cousin, Frealitha, after the last of the riders had left. “First, help me get out of this cursed dress. It never fit well after the birth of my first son and is even more intolerable now. After that, we will see to our stores of arrows and food.” Frealitha and her young daughter Leyek attended to Freca, following her up the steps into the great hall.

Of noble blood, and a wife of a noble lord of horse, Freca was no stranger to the ways of leadership and war. She let the women debate the decision to not evacuate the town. The decision to stay was inevitably reached by all as the soundest. Their time became occupied by storing food, readying arms and armor, and making bandages and arrows.

Frealitha awoke one morning before dawn and found Freca standing on the wide porch of the great hall gazing North into the distance. Freca was clad in an ancient hauberk of bright, bronze scales. An antique sword was strapped to her hip. She seemed to glow in some fey light.

“What is it to lose your husband?” she asked without turning to acknowledge Frealitha’s presence.

Frealitha didn’t sense that her husband was dead, but did not deny the possibility either. “My husband departed to fulfill his duty to his people, in honor of loyalty to his family and his lord. As long as he is loyal to himself and his duty, I will never lose him, even in death.” 

Still gazing into the distance, Freca nodded. “I was brought from my sleep by a dream. My husband was rallying his men but they were beset on all sides by dark forces. My husband and sons have fallen to a ravaging destruction. Their bodies lay hacked apart on ground soaked in blood. That doom comes to us now.”

The outer buildings of the town were mainly stables and sheds for the storage of fodder. The women of the town spent the day fencing the openings in between these. They gathered the young and old into the great hall. And they sent forth young women to ride the surrounding hills as scouts.

Several bands of orcs, Dunlendings and men of strange lands were spotted that afternoon. They approached the town from three sides as the sun dropped in a reddening sky. Leyek, armed with bow, quivers and her wood axe, joined her mother Frealitha in a position on a stable’s thatched roof. She was supposed to be with the other young women, minding the younger children. Her mother said nothing about her open rebellion. They watched as the first parties of their enemy made their approach.

Leyek let fly and her first arrow went short. Her mother told her to be patient, “Relax, take a breath as you draw, point the tip of the arrow, and then release, daughter.” Her next arrow bounced wildly off a man’s chest. One of the men was screaming and dancing, trying to pull Frealitha’s first arrow from his neck. “Aim for their faces, daughter. Aim for their skin, where their armor isn’t.” Another man collapsed when he received Frealitha’s second arrow. Leyek was amazed by her mother’s coolness, her casual attitude in such a dire place. Her third arrow found its mark in a man at twenty-five paces.

The initial approaches of the dunlendings were repulsed, but their committed attack brought fire. The thatched roofs of the outer buildings burned and the women gathered behind barricades of carts and furniture further up the lanes, inside the town. It was dark but for the light of the fires.

Under a rain of the women’s arrows, the enemy climbed the outer fences and started to come up the streets. Few made it much past their climb. Some didn’t make it that far.

Freca was everywhere. She circled from barricade to barricade, bringing quivers of arrows and talking with the women. Her strength and bravery were infectious and the barricades held for several more attacks.

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The scrub gave way to fields of grass and copses of trees. They stayed to the outskirts of settlements, the fringes of roads and farms, because that is where the brigands were. They became very skilled at finding their hideouts and warrens and camps. Most bandits died before they even knew they were under attack. Hluill and little Riomond liked it that way.

It took them almost a month to get to the small town of Staddle. They spent some time there, selling their pelts and some of the odd treasures they had looted off of the brigands. Riomond also needed provisions to “restock the larder and pantry”. Hluill wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but he knew that he was ready to give up on living off the land and eating only tough strips of dried meat and roots.

They stayed with relations of Riomond’s in a half-underground house in Staddle. Bending low to move around inside was nothing new to Hluill. Only the grandest halls of the Horse Lords had high ceilings. But Hluill was unused to all the rooms. Even the grandest house of the Horse Lords had only a few partitions, and most of those were tapestries or hides. The Daen Linitis shared their house with their livestock even. But these little people had a different room for everything. Books, hearth, wine, beer, eating, bread, meat, host, babes and guests all had their own rooms.

 It was also here that Hluill learned “what real coffee is” and the pleasures of a hot bath. His people, both Daen Linitis and Horse Lords, thought that hot water was harmful to the mind and skin. But after soaking in a hot tub for a while, Hluill began to doubt even his mother’s opinion of the matter. He paid for that thought when he tried to stand. His body was so relaxed and he became so dizzy that he almost lost his footing stepping out of the tub.

Provisioned, bathed and well fed, they traveled North, over hills, through ruins and another small town before they finally made it to the town of Archet. And this is where the trouble began. This town had been in battle. There were houses burned and bodies still being collected for burial. It troubled Riomond as well but not as deeply as Hluill.

The smell of it pierced Hluill’s mind like a flaming bolt. It was not some overpowering stench of rot, but just a hint of this smell was strong enough to awaken memories. Hluill could feel it pass up through his nose into his head and stir up dark clouds guilt and shame.

Hluill ignored it at first. He continued to help Riomond do more brigand hunting. They certainly put a dent in the local population of ruffians and thieves through most of the winter and into spring. They even gained some notoriety. People in the town knew them by name. Hluill was even rewarded a big, silly hat for killing some monstrous spiders in a basement. Hluill might have been content, but his guilt and shame began to form voices and then faces. Sleeping became an issue, strong ales became an alternative and Riomond started to get concerned. It came to a head when Riomond mentioned traveling home for spring plantings and festivals.

“Bill, dear Bill, you’ve got that troubled look on your mind again. You surely do. What thoughts weigh so heavily on you, Bill? Surely, if there is some weight I could bear for you, to ease your burden I would. You know all that though, yes?”

Hluill studied Riomond at length. Hluill reminded himself that this little man was at least twice his age. Hluill suddenly realized that Riomond had saved his life many times and had become a close friend and dear companion. This thought troubled Hluill. This little man was so generous and good spirited and asked for and received nothing in return.

“Mister Rio, I am unworthy of yer friendship, neh?”

Riomond began to laugh but stopped when he looked into Hluill’s eyes. Hluill walked to the steps of a ruined house, sat and hid his face. Tears rolled down his face and hands. Riomond went to him and hugged him like a father would a child.

“Bill, dearest Bill.” Riomond held him and smoothed Hluill’s hair. “Your friendship is a priceless treasure, in and of itself, yes, it is. You are a most worthy man and a boon companion, you are indeed.”

“No, I’m not, Mister Rio. I am a coward an’ a deserter, a runaway an’ a brute.” Hluill dug out these truths with each spoken word. It hurt so much that it felt like he was using an actual shovel to do it. “I left my wife, an’ my laird, an’ my precious daughter in smokin’ ruin, their bodies to be food fer crows.”

“Bill… Bill, you did what you had to do, yes? Indeed you did! Should you have stayed and died yourself building kingly barrows for them? Should you have stayed and died yourself?”

“But Rio,” Hluill was blubbering with tears now. “I am a dead man. My life ended there in the smokin’ ruin of that town. An’ now,” Hluill waved his arms, “an’ now they come fer me, Fray-a an’ my precious Lee. They come to me in dreams an’ visions even when I’m awake. They come to me an’remind me of how I failed them…” Hluill sputtered and sank.

Riomond nodded but was at a loss for words. “Oh Bill, these things will pass, oh yes, indeed. But you have to keep doing as you have, yes, yes indeed. Live as you have so well, hunting and traveling and doing good works and eating! Come with me to my homeland. Come stay with me in my home there. It’s a place of happiness and comfort. I promise it will heal this grief in the long and fill that belly in the short.”

Hluill looked up at Riomond and almost grinned, but he shook his head.  “No, mister Rio. Yer my friend alright, an’ ya’ve given me much to think on.  But I got a blackness in my heart an’ dark spirits in my head. I’d bring only a dark curse upon you and yours. No, go on, see to yer home an’ fields an’ give me time…” to die, Hluill finished the statement only in his head. Riomond had given him hope, but it was only a spark in a cold, dark wind.

Riomond stood up and nodded. “I will do as you ask. But know this Bill, and know this well. We may part ways for now for I know there’s no use in trying to ride a dead pony, yes I do. But I will be looking for you, here and there. And I will make a room up just for you in my house, even get a big bed and mattress for you, yes I will. And I won’t be happy until you come and visit, and stay for as long or often as you like.” Riomond paused, swallowed and placed his hand on Hluill’s shoulder. There were tears in his eyes. “Then I’ll know that you have slain these ghosts that haunt you like you have so many ruffians, yes I will. Indeed I will.”

With that, Riomond nodded, then bowed, then slung his little bow and was off through the gate. Hluill watched him disappear into the distance. He almost grinned but then Frealitha filled his vision like a painful fog. He could see her, standing before him, with her arms crossed, her head tilted and a look of anger on her face.

Hluill cowered before the image in shame and began to wonder if he could find anything stronger than ale. He wondered if he would be forgiven by his wife and daughter when his life ended in some flash of blood and blade.  For Hluill knew his only succor from their torment were murderous moments of metal and meat, and the numbing sickness of strong drink.

And thus Hluill lived out his days, drinking until he passed out and stalking the bandits that continually plagued the little towns. From time to time, he would receive brief visits from Riomond. They would hunt together for a few days. And Hluill would have a few good days, but the bad days had become even worse and were growing in number.  Riomond couldn’t stomach them for long.

Poor Riomond was conflicted with the feelings of helplessness and the need to help, but the ways of his people contained no healing lore for injuries like Hluill’s. For normal ailments of the heart, their cure was time and food. Riomond’s cooking had positive effect, to be sure, but it couldn’t bring life to the dead. 

And Hluill was dead, dead to hope and beauty, dead to all but the basest elements of his existence.  He had cursed himself into a realm of dark doom, from which he knew no means to escape. He may as well have stayed fastened to those stakes so much time ago. 

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