CHAPTER 55

Mirkwood, near Dol-Guldur

June 5, 3019

“That’s a fresh print, very fresh…” Runcorn mumbled under his breath. He dropped to one knee and, without looking back, signaled Haladdin who was walking some fifteen yards behind to get off the path. Tzerlag, who brought up the rear, overtook the obediently yielding doctor, and now both sergeants were engaged in an elaborate scout ritual by a small spot of wet clay, trading quiet phrases in Common. Haladdin’s opinion did not interest the rangers at all, of course; not even the Orocuen’s thoughts counted for much in that discussion: the scouts have already worked out a pecking order. The erstwhile enemies –the Ithilien ranger and the platoon leader of the Cirith Ungol Rangers – treated each other with exaggerated respect (like, for example, a master goldsmith and a master swordsmith might), but the desert is the desert, and the forest is the forest. Both professionals knew the limits of their expertise very well. The Ithilien ranger had spent his entire life in these forests.

…Back then he still walked upright and with shoulders squared (the right one was not yet higher than the left one), while his face was yet free of a badly healed purple scar; he was handsome, brave, and lucky, with his bottle-green Royal Forester uniform fitting him like a glove – in other words, a serious threat to womankind. The local peasants disliked him, which he considered normal: villeins only like accommodating foresters, whereas Runcorn took his service with all the seriousness of youth. Being a King’s man, he could disregard the local landlords; he quickly put their courts, which used to visit the royal forests like their own larder under his predecessor, in their place. Everybody knew the story of Eggy the Chicken Hawk’s band that had wandered into their country once – Runcorn did away with those guys all by himself, not deigning to wait for the sheriff’s men to pry their behinds off the benches of the Three Pint Tavern. To sum it up, the neighbors treated the young forester with cautious respect but not much sympathy, which he did not care much for anyway. He was used to being by himself since he was a child, and socialized with the Forest way more than with his peers. The Forest was everything to him: playmate, interlocutor, mentor, eventually becoming his Home. Some people even claimed that he had in him the blood of the woodwoses – forest demons from the ominous Druadan Dell. Well, people in remote forest villages say all sorts of things during chilly fall evenings, when only the feeble light of a splinter keeps the ancient evils from getting out of the dark corners…

To top it all off, at one point Runcorn stopped showing up at village festivities (to acute disappointment of all eligible maidens in the vicinity) and instead hung out at a tumbledown shack at the edge of Druadan, where an old medicine woman from the far north (maybe as far as Angmar) had settled some time before with her granddaughter Lianica. Manwe only knows what such an eligible bachelor saw in that puny freckled girl; many supposed that witchcraft was involved – the old woman certainly knew some spells and could heal with herbs and laying of hands, which was her livelihood. Lianica was known to talk to birds and beasts in their language and could have a ferret and a mouse sit together in the palm of her hand. This rumor may have owed to the fact that she avoided people (as opposed to forest animals) so much that she was originally thought to be dumb. The local beauties, when someone would mention the forester’s strange choice, only snorted: “Whatever. Maybe they’ll make a good couple.”

It did look like they would have, but it was not to be. One day the girl ran into the young landlord, out with his company to hunt and ‘improve the serfs’ blood line a bit;’ those exploits of his have even caused some of his neighboring landlords to grumble: “Really, young sir, this propensity of yours to screw everything that moves…” It was a routine matter, nothing to get excited about, really. Who’d’ve thought that the fool girl would drown herself, as if something precious had been taken away from her? No, guys, it really is true that all northerners are nuts.

Runcorn buried Lianica alone – the old woman could not bear the loss of her granddaughter and passed away two days later without regaining consciousness. The neighbors came to the cemetery mostly to check whether the forester would put a black-feathered arrow on the grave, signifying an oath of vengeance. But no, he did not risk that. Nor was that a surprise; sure, he’s the King’s man, but the King is far, while the landlord’s company (eighteen thugs, gallows material all) is right here. Still, the guy turned out to be weaker than we first thought… So did those villagers who bet on Runcorn’s vengeance (two- or even three-to-one) grumble in the Three Pint Tavern, sourly counting out the coins they have lost onto the sticky tables.

However, the young lord was of a different opinion – he was exceedingly prudent in all matters that did not involve his passion for ‘pink meat.’ The forester did not strike him as a man who would either let such a thing pass or go to court and write petitions (which amounted to the same thing). That sprightly peasant girl upon whom he bestowed his favor in the forest despite her objections (damn, the bitten finger still hurts)… To be honest, had he known that a man such as Runcorn was courting her, he would’ve simply passed by, especially seeing as the girl turned out to be nothing much. But what’s done is done.

Comparing his impressions with those of the company leader, the landlord knew that the absence of a black arrow meant only that Runcorn was not one for theatrical gestures and cared little for the gawkers’ opinions. A serious man who needed to be dealt with seriously… That same night the forester’s house was set afire from all four sides. The arsonists propped the door shut with a large beam; when a man’s shadow appeared in the fire-lit attic window, arrows flew from the darkness below; after that, no one tried to escape the burning hut.

A King’s forester burned alive was no stinking serf that managed to get run over by a landlord’s horse; no cover-up was possible. Although…

“Everybody here thinks it was the poachers, sir. The late forester, gods rest his soul, was real hard on them, so they struck back. A really sad story… More wine?” The young landlord addressed those words to the court’s magister from Harlond, who had stopped at his hospitable manor.

“Yes, please! A wonderful claret, haven’t had its like for a while,” the magister, a dumpy sleepy old man with a nimbus of silver hair around a pink bald spot, nodded courtly. For a long time he admired the flames in the fireplace through the wine in a thin Umbarian glass, and then raised his faded blue eyes – piercing icicles, not sleepy at all – at his host.

“By the way, that drowned girl – one of your serfs?”

“What drowned girl?”

“Why, do they drown themselves every other day here?”

“Oh, that one… No, she was from the north somewhere. Is it important?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” The magister again raised the glass to eye level and said thoughtfully:

“Your estate, young sir, is very well-kept – an example for all landlords in this area. I figure at least two and a half hundred marks in annual rents, right?”

“A hundred fifty,” the landlord lied smoothly and caught his breath: praise Eru, the conversation is turning to real business. “About a half goes to taxes, plus there’re the mortgages…”

Poachers, you say? All right, poachers it is. A suitable candidate was soon found; after some time on a rack above a censer the man made the appropriate confession and was duly impaled on a stake, as a lesson to the other serfs. The court magister departed to town, tenderly hugging to his side a money bag with a hundred eighty silver marks… All set?

Right!..

From the very beginning the landlord was troubled by the absence of any bones in the rubble of Runcorn’s house. The company leader, who had personally commanded that operation, tried to calm his boss down: the house was large, with a wooden rather than earthen floor, the fire had burned for more than an hour, so the corpse must have burned to cinders, this does happen often. However, the young lord, being (as already mentioned) prudent beyond his years in nearly all matters, ordered his men to examine the location once again. His worst suspicions came true: the forester, who had had his share of surprises, was prudent, too, with a thirty-yard tunnel leading from the basement outside. There were a few fresh blood spots on the tunnel floor – one of the arrows had found its mark that night.

“Find him!” the young lord ordered – quietly, but in a tone of voice that made his hastily assembled henchmen break out in goose bumps. “It’s us or him, no going back. So far, Oromë be praised, he’s licking his wounds somewhere in the forest. If he escapes, I’m a dead man, but you will all die before me, I promise.”

The landlord took personal charge of the hunt, declaring that he would not rest until he sees Runcorn’s corpse with his own eyes. The fugitive’s tracks led inside the forest and were clearly readable throughout the day; the man had not bothered to conceal them, apparently assuming that he was believed dead. Closer to evening the company leader found a cocked crossbow hidden in the bushes by the path; more precisely, the crossbow was found later, after its bolt had already buried itself in the leader’s gut. While the henchmen bickered around the wounded man, another arrow whistled in from somewhere, taking a man in the neck. Runcorn gave himself away thereby – his silhouette showed briefly between the trees some thirty yards away down the dale, and they all chased him down a narrow clearing between the bushes. That was the idea: to get them all to run without looking down. As a result, three men wound up in the pit, more than he expected. Eggy the Chicken Hawk’s bandits have crafted it with skill and care: eight feet deep with sharp stakes at the bottom, smeared with rotten meat to guarantee a blood poisoning at the very least.

Twilight fell, and the gloom deepened. The landlord’s men were very cautious now, moving along in pairs; when they finally spotted Runcorn in the bushes, they showered him with arrows from twenty yards away. Alas, when they approached (right in the path of a five-hundred-pound log that dropped from a nearby tree), they found only a roll of bark dressed in some rags. Only then did the landlord realize that even just getting away from Eggy’s forest stronghold where this damned wos had so expertly lured them would be very difficult: the night forest around them was chock-full of deadly traps, and their four wounded (not to mention two dead) have robbed their company of mobility. Another thing he understood now was that their overwhelming numerical superiority was of no consequence in this situation and the role of prey was theirs at least until dawn.