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No Man's Child  by anoriath

~ Chapter 2 ~

It all comes of those newcomers and gangrels that began coming up the Greenway last year, as you may remember; but more came later. Some were just poor bodies running away from trouble; but most were bad men, full o’ thievery and mischief. 

ROTK:  Homeward Bound

~oOo~

~ TA 3007, 4th day of Gwirith: Discharges: one cloak of green tightly woven wool in good condition but for worn threads about the lower hem; one leather belt with hangers and purse in good condition; one thick blanket of dark gray, fulled wool in fair condition; one silver tinder box with flint, hardened steel, one char cloth in waxed linen pouch, and small candle of tallow; one leather water bottle soaked in pitch; one hunting knife of good steel of dwarven make; and one two handed sword of unknown make, in exchange for no less than 30 pennies of good silver, or their equivalent.  

~oOo~


The basket is heavy, but not overly so.  Its soft reeds creak against my hip where I clutch it as I walk.  My steps are slow beneath the burden of the basket and nights poorly slept.  I wind my way down the paths from one home to the next, passing house, pasture, field, and shed as I make my way to the center of life at the Angle. 

It seems all of the folk of the Dúnedain are out of doors.  The voices of men harsh upon the morning air call to oxen pulling the ploughs.  Dark is the earth they turn upon the fields.  The women spread damp sheets and clothing upon the bushes to dry and arise from the soil to straighten their backs from the planting of their gardens. Their children fetch and carry for them, and shepherd the young ones from harm, their voices high and bright amidst the tofts.  Men lounge about the farrier's just apart from the stink of metal and burning hooves.  His hammer rings out across the path. Their faces are solemn, and their eyes are dark.  They speak little but nod a courteous greeting.  I pass and the scrambling of feet, both of horse and man comes from the back of his shed. 

"Ha, there," I hear, and men cluster about a yearling at his first shoeing.  With hand and soft voices they settle him again and I hear them no more. 

I wear the black of mourning, the fine folds of the cloth shivering against my cheek in the morning breeze. I turn few heads, either as I walk or in the square when I arrive.  Was not always so, but no bright laughter rings nigh my ear nor shared song shortens the way and draws the eye of our folk bent to stalls and carts of goods.  I come upon them now and their voices rise in a muted babble that seems as a stream rushing o’er a stony bed.  The people of the Angle have arisen early, for 'tis the day of the market.  No matter the empty chairs about the hearth nor the shuttered windows and fallow gardens gone to seed, it is spring, the day is fair, and the Angle must endure. 

Come the summer, the heavy hand of the sun will press the folk to find shade where aught they may.  But, today, the air is cool and the sun a blessing.  The square is full of folk as they awaken from the winter and share of the first fruits of their labors. This early in the spring our men-folk trade beans and bundles of greens from the rough carts they had pulled themselves into the square.  Their wives trade tender shoots of cress pulled from the river to please the palate, and thin bark stripped from the willow to ease pain and fevers. 

A table has been set afore the tall mound of stone and there, with their children lagging behind them or running about their knees, the men and women of the Dúnedain of the Angle wait for their breads to emerge from the ovens.   Low and grave their voices come to me.  They speak with heads inclined and I hear words of barter, but, as oft, I hear words of fear mingled therein. 

Not only do goods cross hands at the market, but news of the Angle is traded for that of the wider lands about us.  We are a people far spread across the lands of Eriador, and the lines that connect us run thin across the Wild.  For want of firmer tidings, rumor can run through the market faster than the fabled steeds of the Horse Lords.  Today, they speak of our lord and Chief.  

Some say the Dúnadan yet lives and lies in the house of his kin.  To others, his spirit has already fled these shores and we must soon lay his body in the earth beside his lady mother, and she but newly gone to the barrows, herself.  Deeply, now, they regret his seeming indifference.  He is the last of his line.

I pass the fuller's stall where his wife is in the midst of haggling o’er a bundle of fleece raw and uncombed.  She spares me a smile in greeting o’er the shoulder of her customer. 

"Nienelen!" she calls and the woman afore her turns to see to whom she calls.  I know her, too, once a childhood friend, but she turns away without greeting.  Mayhap more friend to my sister than to I.  But still, I cannot bring myself to fault her for the slight.  Her gaze had lingered upon the black of my woolen wrap and, I think, calls too keenly to mind when last she wore one such.

"Shall you finish the dye you promised ere you go?" the mistress asks.  A true worker of fiber, chapped and white from working in cold water, her fingers never leave off caressing the wool. 

"Aye," I call to her.  "You do not forget the price we set?"

Anxious am I, for she promised to pay me in coin, a rare thing.  I would not ask, but I have great need for it as ne’er afore.  The dwarves of the Blue Mountain trade in many things, but I fear have little need of aught I might else have to offer. 

"I can pay it, never fear."  She waves me on ere returning to her dickering.   

I pass, and the butcher's knife comes down upon a joint of meat with a dull whack, sending the hares and fresh-caught fish swaying upon their pole above his head where they hang.  Elder Tanaes' face is round and red as always, hale of arm and heart, though he be greatly lame of leg from a wound taken long ago in our lord's service.  He raises a bloody knife to wipe his forehead upon his sleeve.  As I pass, he gives me a slight wink and nods at the rolls of sausages upon his cart.  He knows they are my favorite, fat and freshly made, stuffed with meat, dried apple and sage, but today I shake my head.  I have other errands to run. And so, he nods and returns to his work.  

Piles of furs and tumbled forms of baskets at first hide the young girl, sitting as she is hunched in a corner behind them.  She sits on ragged mats of woven fibers and watches her aunt twine reeds about the naked ribs of a basket she crafts.  I know them not, but the brown eyes and skin, head full of curls, and the haggard look of days and nights spent in flight mark them for our folk of one of the wandering clans of the Gornwaith but newly fled here from the Downs.  They join other folk come from our southern borders.  The Barodrhim they are known by.  Herdsmen and homesteaders, they oft bear the mark of Dunland, with their light hair and blue eyes.  Here they gather with the cotters born of the Angle without land and beg for day’s work from those who have it.  

I catch their eye as I pass, but, though I nod, they say naught but stare as had they not thought to see one such as themselves here.  And yet, I am but one more stranger in a stranger's home.  Bereft they seem, and, though my heart aches for it, I can do little but walk past. 

At the last, I must walk afore the table on which are set wine skins from about the sea of Rhŭn, barrels of salt from Harlond, leatherwork from Rohan, knives and tools of dwarven make, glassworks from Dale, and other such goods which the Angle does not produce.  There is no help for it, for the path I must take passes afore it and there is no other.  ‘Tis the stall of the trader, Master Bachor, whose dark eyes have tracked my steps from when first I set foot upon the square. He is sure to have coin, and sure to offer it, were not the cost too dear to accept. He does not greet me, having long ago given up on the attempt, but neither does he hide that he marks my progress and must know full well where I am going.  But then, he must turn to his sister who works by his side and seeks his attention to speak with their customer, and I may slip past.

The square now behind me, the door I seek opens upon shaded rooms and I am soon there.  Chickens cluck their complaint in their pens in the yard and hide the sounds that come from within.  So, it is with alarm that I stop and whirl about, leaving the Elder to his company in his hall.  Ranger Halbarad is within and, in the brief glimpse I had of them, has risen to take his leave, his dark head tall above the cap of the old man whose home this is. 

I remove myself beneath the low-hanging thatch, my lip pinched between my teeth, and debate what to do.  Oft his yard is lined with petitioners, each leaning upon the old man's wall, and it is indeed odd to find myself alone here today.  I am torn.  I have no desire to overhear their discussion, yet any path away would take me again through the Angle’s square and the people in it. 

The voice of the Elder comes from the open doorway.  It is flat with the toneless quality of the near deaf.

"Aye," says he, "our roots may dig deep, but our branches fail of the skies.  Ah!  But you know this."

Wood scrapes against the floor and I lean against the Elder's home, eyelids weighted by the sun. It seems the interview is soon to close, and they speak naught of consequence. I have heard this very cant from the Elder afore, many a time.  It comes at the end of his litany of worries.  I have but to wait.  I close my eyes and rest against the wall and, in a moment, his voice and the cackling of the hens are far removed from the half-formed thoughts that swirl in my head.

I know Halbarad but little, for all my father called him friend.  Their companionship was told in the silence of men who tread too far upon dark paths.  Only once did my father invite Halbarad to our home.  Many years it seems now since the tall, quiet man stooped his head to enter our door.  

Even in the heaviness that is my drowse I smile.   Much care had we put to the meal and lingered over our pots, my sister and I.  She, dark-eyed and laughing, whispered of the ensnaring potency of oil of clove as she stirred drops of it into the sweetened pottage and then, giggling, dotted some upon my breast above the line of my shift.  ‘To give your brown skin its proper sweetness,’ she had said.  She spoke, too, of matches made upon the shared brother-blood of Rangers as she shook out braids laved with oil, lavender, and aloe water, smoothing black curls into ringlets about my shoulders with its heady scent.  

Mayhap that had been my father's intent, but it had come to naught.  He partook of the food we offered, spoke of the small things of the Angle with my father, and answered questions of the beauties of the Wild o’er which he had ranged.  How his eyes glowed with pleasure at the telling!  And yet, he might ever after greet me with sober courtesy when e’er we met, for all the pleasure of his visit Halbarad came ne'er again.  

"But they are all from good families, descended from the Kings, and will do at a pinch," comes the Elder's voice, faint as though from a great distance.  I hear it not.

"They will do, they will all do, will they not, my boy?"

Halbarad's reply is too deeply voiced for me to hear, but their feet scuff against the floor. 

"What was that?  Hmm, well, aye, true, only one is needed.  And would that we had been heeded long ago.  It is long overdue, my good Halbarad.  Choose well." 

"I thank thee, Master Maurus," comes Halbarad's clear farewell.   

At the sound, I open my eyes and clutch at the basket ere it falls from my softening grip.  When I lift myself from the wall, the dark shadow of the Ranger's cloak is afore me.  I know not why he must then start and stare at me as he turns to take his leave. 

"Bid you good morrow, sir," I say as I nod.

"Nienelen."  Halbarad bows, his eyes wondering.  Now that he is close, and I may look fully upon him, I see he bears a bruise about his neck and a long scrape above his eye.  They pull at my gaze and I find I wonder at how he came to bear these small wounds. No doubt was my father here, he could tell me. 

"Ah, Nienelen," the Elder says, gaining the Ranger's attention as well as my own.  He lingers in the door behind Halbarad, his hand clutching its frame in want of other prop.  "I thought you might come."  

"On the morrow?  Yes?" he asks Halbarad as he lays his light clasp upon my elbow.  His eyes, watery with age, peer across my shoulder at the Ranger. 

"Come, child," Elder Maurus says and pulls me forward. 

"Aye, yes, on the morrow," says Halbarad, mumbling in his distraction.  Only then seeming to come to himself, he turns to face the Elder.  "Aye, until then.  Bid you good day," he says loudly, bows, and is gone. 

"Come inside, my child," the Elder says.  He leans heavily upon my arm as he hobbles his way to the table.

"What think you, Nienelen, eh?"  His voice is overloud for being just beneath my ear, but there is little I can do about it that would not give him offense.  "Such a fine day is it not, though the breeze is chill to these old bones.  They've not left off aching since the winter, knees, hips, and fingers, the lot of them.  My end is coming soon, though Pelara tells me I have yet too much mischief to stir up in the Angle ere my time is through." 

He waves a hand to the seat Halbarad had so recently vacated and flashes a bright grin as he looks about for his stool.  I smile in return.  He takes much delight in his reputation, our Elder.

I set the basket and its contents upon the floor when I sit.  It thumps heavily to it as it settles.

"Ah, well, you did not come to hear of my ills," he says, undisturbed by the noise.  "It is a fault of the very old, my child, to believe that youth has an ear for what will come with the years." He presses swollen knuckles onto the table as he eases his body to his seat.  "There, now," he says and sighs, having settled himself down.  "Will you have some tea, child?" He lifts the lid of the pot and peers inside.

"Aye, Father," I say, "were it not too much trouble."

"Trouble?  What trouble be there?" he asks, squinting eagerly at me from across the table.

I shake my head and then say, "Tea! Father!"  I nod broadly and raise my voice.  "Yes!  Thank you!" 

"Oh!  Ah, I see," he says, blinks as were it in disappointment, and lets the iron lid clatter to the pot.  "No, no, no trouble at all." 

He turns about upon his seat and bellows, "Pelara!  Company! Tea!" 

"And how goes your plans?" he asks in voice that is not much quieter.  For the Elder had come visiting yestermorn, knocking at my gate with his cane and making his slow way through my father’s garden.  There, as the holder of my father’s pledge, the Elder had obligation to see to the needs of his oathman’s daughter, and we had spoken some and he had invited me hither.

"They go well!"

"Well?" he asks, and I nod.  "Ah, good. A pity your father’s aunt never chose to remarry.  A fine woman she was."

His voice rings in the room just as, no doubt, does mine.  I sigh, for I cannot see how I shall conduct my business without all the Angle outside his door being privy to our discussion. 

"I would have married her after my Therinil died.  Did you know that?" he asks but then goes on without a glance my way.  "Oh yes!  But she would have none of it.  A shame, really.  Then you could quit your house and come live with us here.  You and my daughter could fight o’er who will provide us with the better care, eh?"  His light eyes twinkle merrily.  

I am thankfully spared the necessity of answering his question by the appearance of his daughter.  Mistress Pelara bustles in, wiping dirt from her hands upon her apron and rubbing at a smear of it dark upon the thin white skin of her brow.  I think it most like she has been called from the garden.  I smile what I hope is an apology for the disruption in her day when she nods her greeting.

"Good day, Nienelen," she says but turns immediately to the Elder.  "Yes, Father," she says and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, so she may see him unhindered. The silver threads in her hair catch the sunlight as she leans in to the old man.  A mother of grown sons and daughters, yet she is as a child to his wintered years. 

"Ah!  There you are, Daughter!" he says.  "Tea for our guest, Nienelen.  She comes to beg what charity the Angle may give her, kinless woman that she is now."

Were he not an elder of our people, I would have forgotten promises made to my father and unleashed my displeasure upon him.  As it is, my back stiffens, my surprise thickening my tongue, so I cannot speak. 

"Och, now, Father!" his daughter exclaims and, patting her reddened hands about its surface first to check for its heat, picks up the teapot. "You have not heard a single word Nienelen has said, I warrant, as deaf as you are." 

"Bah! My ears are as keen as yours, girl!" he says to her back, for she has gone and I can hear water pouring in the other room. 

"Humph!" comes her voice through the doorway.  "Did not, just this morning, I tell you to take the porridge off the hearth?  Did I not?" 

"Impudence!" he calls after her.

"I said, 'Father, should it please you, would you swing the pot away from the fire when the porridge gets to galloping?  Our little ones would like some breakfast.'"  I hear a loud thud in the other room.  "Those very words I used, as clear as the sunrise o’er an open field." 

"Do not tempt me, girl!  You are not yet too old for me to take you across my knee," the old man warns. 

"And there it sits, a mess crusted upon the bottom of the pot as hard as –"  

"Should you say aught of consequence –" the Elder goes on, raising his voice and pounding his cane against the floor for her attention. 

"— the iron to which it is burnt."  Mistress Pelara bustles back in through the door.  She thumps the pot upon the brazier at her father's feet and stoops to stir the coals in its belly. 

"— I might be troubled to listen," he protests o’er her head.

"You have the ears of worm," she says and gives the coals a final poke. 

"Ah, now, Nienelen," she says and, ignoring her father's sour look, rises.  "There we are.  What did you come for then, child?"

I look from one set of light grey eyes to the other, uncertain who to address.  The one who will hear what I say?  Or the one who pulls the strings of the family’s purse? 

"I have given thought to where I must go –" I say, my glance straying from one to the other.

"Oh, no, child!" bursts from the Elder, who has been peering closely at my face as I speak.  "Valar save us!  You are not traveling in the Wild, are you?  All alone, besides?" 

His daughter clucks her tongue.  "Surely, she is not going without escort, Father!" 

"Where could she be headed that she will find any to travel with her, hmm? Our folk flee to the Angle, not away from it."

"Never you mind him, Nienelen," she says, glaring at her father.

"Humph," the old man grunts and rocks on his seat as were he attempting to find the sweetest spot for his old bones.  "Where did you say you were planning to go, child?" he asks, leaning in to me for a moment.  

I am hesitant to answer, for it seems he is more interested in gathering fuel for the fire raging between them than listening to my answer.  

"West, father, near the Blue Mountains!" I say.

"Ah, the Blue Mountains?  Why did you not say so afore, child?"   He raises his voice though his daughter stands within arm's reach of me.  "She intends to travel west, to Amon Mîth," he says as were he the bearer of the news.  

Mistress Pelara catches my eye and shakes her head as were only we two able to comprehend her father's folly.  Steam rises from the pot and she turns to lift it from the brazier. 

"Ah well, now, that makes more of sense." her father says as she sets it upon the pad of wool between us. 

The Mistress says naught and rummages loudly through the drawer of a side table.  She lifts the lid of the pot to drop a tightly drawn bag therein, her movements quick for the heat of the iron.  

“You’d not have close kin there, surely, what with your mother gone all these years, aye?” she asks, and I shake my head as she slips two small bowls afore her father.

"Aye, a sorry business, it is," he sighs, and giving me a glance, pushes a bowl to me with a hand that tremors with his age.  "No kin to keep you here, nor obligation to any house other than that of your father’s."  

He has now fallen silent, his lips pursed as he taps at the crockery afore him with a fingernail to make it chime softly. 

His daughter gives me a thoughtful look ere turning her gaze upon her father, but when he gives her but a slight shake of his head, she turns back to me.  "You hope to travel with the dwarves that are due to pass through on the East-West road, do you not?"

"Aye, Mistress."

"Need you any aid?" 

I shake my head.  "I think not, though I shall leave much behind." 

"Aye, and we can see it given where greatest the need, and there be great need," the Elder says, nodding. 

His daughter takes up the pot and pours the tea into our bowls in silence.  To these words of her father's, she does not give protest.  Her face is full of sober thought as she pours.

"But these –" I say, leaning down to grasp the basket at my feet.  "I must pay for my passage.  My father had no sons to pass them on to and I think he would not –" and here my voice falters. 

The basket sits in my lap, where it creaks as I breathe.  I stare at the tea, unable, a moment, to either move or speak.  The steam that rises from our bowls smells of rose hips and chamomile, a tart, pink scent.  I hear the soft sound of a tongue clicking at my side and I know it comes from the woman of this house, but I dare not look at her for I know what I shall see.   

I clear my throat and, from the depths of the basket pull my father's winter cloak and blanket, knife, belt, tinder box, and other such things as a Ranger might need when traveling. 

"His sword, I have at home, and that, too…" I say as I lay them upon the table.  There is no need to mention why I would not wish to carry it through the village, they know.  A spectacle it would have been.

The Elder's face is solemn.  He seems, for once, at a loss for words, and looks to his daughter. 

"Ah, Nienelen," she says, her brows knit with concern.  "Your eldest may carry his father's gear in time, but would you not save these for a younger son?" 

I shake my head.  I do not state what is obvious.  The chance I shall bear the elder, much less a younger, weighs not near as heavy as the chances of an empty belly and frozen hearth should I not find a place among my kin that gives me shelter and occupation.    

"Pelara," I hear and find it is the Elder's voice that speaks so gently. 

The look he gives her is full of meaning, though I know not what private thing they share.  I take the chance to sip my tea and let them decide what they will.  The brew is warm and sweeter than I thought. 

"Aye," the Mistress sighs. 

She runs an appreciative hand o’er the cloth of my father's cloak and squeezes the blanket beneath, her skin white and freckled with age against its dark folds.  Her father lifts his bowl with hands made clumsy by the years and sips from it with great care.  It seems he, too, finds comfort in the excuse to remain silent.  The mistress was wife to a husband, who, many years ago, had not returned home, and had left them with naught to mourn over but their remembrances.  

"We have no coin, Nienelen," Mistress Pelara says, catching the tinderbox and knife ere they can slide from atop the pile of wool, "but doubt not, between my father and I, we could satisfy the price of passage and make up the lack in trade with those who do.  Master Dwalin yet owes you the favor he pledged, Father, does he not?

The Elder smacks his lips and speaks into his bowl.  “That he does, Daughter.”

With this, I feel as were I only now able to take my first breath of clean air in many days.  Mayhap, then, mayhap all will end not so poorly as I had feared.   

"’Tis for Gelir?" I ask, and she nods.  He is her youngest and but newly sworn to our lord’s service.  It is hard to believe.  I recall him as a small boy who set crickets down his playmate's dresses one evening when, as a girl, I had the charge of them. His mother's face softens when she sees me smiling.

"Aye, I know," she says, shaking her head.  "He takes most after his mother's father, though it be my eldest who now mans the ovens for our folk."  She spares a glance for the grandsire in question, but he is much involved in the tea, slurping loudly, and merely scowls at her above the rim of his bowl.  He knows not what she said, but, it seems, recognizes the look she gives him.  "But he loves our lord and will serve him with all his heart, following his father in all things." 

"Aye then, should it will serve him well.  I think I would like that, Mistress. My thanks to thee," I say and touch my brow with fingers warmed from the tea. 

With a pat to my shoulder, Mistress Pelara then takes up the knife and belt, for they threaten to slide to the floor yet again.  "Well then, that is settled, yes?" she says and goes to a chest behind her father to put them away.   

So, then it is done.  I sip my tea and forget that the basket remains in my lap. 

"Shall you not keep this, in memory of him?"

Startled, I look up to find the Mistress' gaze upon me and I know my eyes have lingered on the small metal box of tinder.  Vines chase across the silver.  It is of dwarven make, though I know not how old.  My father told me, when young, that it came from across Lake Town from the hoard of the King under the Mountain.  I doubt the tale is true.  The story was told by a doting father to brighten the eyes of his daughters and send them to sleep accompanied by dreams of far off places and fanciful tales. 

I shake my head, setting down the now empty bowl. 

She takes up the metal box. "Truly, Nienelen, I would not begrudge it.  Indeed, it is too fine for the boy and he has his own."

The Elder watches, his eyes sharp o’er the rim of his bowl and steam lighting upon his brow. 

At last I nod, unable to speak and the Mistress presses it into my hands where it feels both heavy and cold.  She is silent while I slip it into the basket and I know not what to do next.

The Elder sets his bowl down with a sharp clatter, smacking his lips and frowning. 

"When is supper?" he demands loudly, breaking the silence.

"Father," Mistress Pelara says, her voice sharp, "in a good while.  There is no need to rush our guest off.  She's barely finished her tea."

I stand and stammer, "No, mistress, I have overstayed my time."

She clucks her tongue looking from me to her father and then cocks her head at the old man, who peers up at her with his watery eyes.   

"Mayhap, Father, you would see fit to give our guest a proper farewell," she says loudly. 

"Bid you good day, Nienelen," he croaks, looking my way briefly ere his gaze returns to his daughter and he shrugs.

"Very well," she says, throwing up her hands.  "My thanks to thee, Nienelen," she says. “Should you have need of aught else ere you are to go, I am sure we can see it done.”

"Thank you, Mistress.  Bid you good day," I say, touching my fingers to my brow.

As I go, the Elder strokes the wool of my father's cloak and I know he must think of it warming his own bones, cold for their want of marrow, but his daughter plucks it from under his hand, giving him only the cluck of her tongue in exchange.  But then, once the wool is put away, his daughter plucks the cap from her father's head, only to smooth his thin white hair and drop a kiss onto the top of his head ere replacing it.  He beams up at her ere returning to sipping his tea.

~oOo~






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