In the Wild

The trees were thinning out.  A few ragged firs struggled in the windswept mountain grass that clung to the slope.  Farther up the grass yielded to rock and scree. 

Aranuir paused, turned west for a last look at the southern reaches of the Ettendales and far beyond, the wild lands east of the Weather Hills.  These were empty lands.  The men west of the Misty Mountains would be found near Bree.  He was headed east.

East to observe as he would cross an unnamed pass in the Misty mountains well above the Carrock and well below the expanding realm of the Eotheod along the Langwell.

He did not blend in.  The appearance of an old man, white haired, a weathered face creased with the suns of scores of summers.  His back was straight in the saddle, his build still fit and strong.  One would think an old warrior of some sort, though there had been no wars since the Watchful Peace began.

Strangers, unless they bring trade or vital news, were viewed with suspicion in settled areas.  They could be roughly escorted off the lands, or disappear entirely. 

But much of the land above of the Carrrock was wild on the west side of the Anduin.  It would be many hard leagues north before the first outlying farms of the Eothoed emerged from the forest. His concerns for the next several days would be finding game, wolves, trolls and orcs.

Aranuir’s grandfather, Aranarth, had tales to tell of wolves and trolls.  The first chieftan had been a young man of 20 in driving the forces of Angmar to near extinction.  The last trolls had fled to the stony ramparts of the upper Misty Mountains, living in icy caves, making occasional forays into the moor lands to capture unwary game or settle for wolf carrion.  

He’d found little sign of them in the Ettendales.  He was hoping for the same on the east side of the Misty Mountains, but he took nothing for granted.  Though it was the time of the Watchful Peace for the Wise, he would travel the land to assure it was still the case.

He spurred his horse, Naron, upwards through the scree to the first patches of snow.  It was half a league to the pass, a narrow saddle between two hulking peaks.  The snow became continuous and deeper as the slope steepened.  It was not pristine.  Aranuir made out the footprints of snow hares and rock voles.  And further up, the trail of something larger.

A young adult wolf had headed east over the pass at an easy lope.  It had been at least two days ago judging by the softening of the edges of the great paw prints.  Naron stopped, bent his head to the snow.  He snorted, turned his head to glare at Aranuir. 

‘Let them come’ his big black eyes shouted. 

No idle boast, Aranuir would say if asked.  Naron was a dark chestnut the height of a man at the shoulder, powerfully muscled and smart as a fox.  His flying hooves had crushed the skull of more than one wolf.  He seemed to enjoy it.

In less than an hour they were at the pass.  The snow was thigh deep to a man, getting wet and heavy as spring crept up from the distant valleys. 

To the east the ramparts and flanks of the Misty Mountains reached out in ridges and valleys towards the Anduin, a fine silvery thread near the eastern horizon.  Aranuir followed its course south, towards the realm of Gondor.  To his left the river rushed from its sources to the far north, the Langwell and the Greylin.  There he would find the Eotheod.

Turning in the saddle he scanned the lonely rough lands of the Ettendales to the west whence he came.  To the southwest he spied the line of the East-West Road, wending west towards Bree. 

All that within the bounds of the ancient lost kingdom of Arnor.  It had been the task of his grandfather Aranarth to patrol it, a task then appointed to Arahael and in turn to him.  And now his son Aravir took the mantle and in time his grandson Aragorn I would follow.

The land of the Eotheod, far up the Anduin valley to the remote Langwell and Greylin rivers had never been part of the kingdom of Arnor.  Arguably he had no business there, but Aranuir made it is business to keep an eye on what went on just outside the borders of the old kingdom.  In time the Watchful Peace might end in war and it would be prudent to know if one had friends or foes.

They were friends when last he visited, over a hundred forty years past with his father Arahael. The old chieftan, Hagar, welcomed them, setting a feast to celebrate old times he’d shared with Arahael in their journey to Dol Guldur.

Such tales were no doubt the stuff of legend and myth if they survived at all.  None at that banquet now lived who would remember a young Dunedain, scarcely 20 summers, new to the wandering life.