Seia stoked the fire with more of the green saplings so common this far north before returning to sharpening the short arrow shafts he was making. He had never been a very good shot, only striking his target four times in every five shots, but he had need of meat and the animals there were wary of Men, at best. Better a javelin for boar, or a stiff thrust of his spears, but deer were another matter entirely.
He had claimed a bow from some fool huntsman that hadn't wanted to give up his campfire. The Haradrim had warned the old man. “Leave, or I will kill you,” he had said. He could not have said it more plain, he even told him that he could take all his belongings, but the allein'akeini had tried to convince Seia to let him stay. Let it never be said that I am a liar, Seia thought to himself now.
That was three days gone, and half a day north of Bree-town. He had passed that place entirely, following the farms and then woods on the other side of the stream nearby, barely coming within sight of that silly little hedge that 'walled' off the city.
He had wondered what sort of greeting he would come across there. Would he see her again? What about that fool boy, the one that had torn her away from him? The watchlady, the thief, the drunk? He had decided it wasn't worth the risk. Not for those that may want to kill him and a woman that never wanted to see him again. He didn't think he had any mercy left, particularly after the al'laeel on the clifftop.
Now he was heading east. Toward the Lone Lands and onwards to Gondor. He didn't expect to go further, not in Haradaic armour and coat, armed for war. If by some miracle he did pass the White Tree Flag and leave these green lands behind, he hoped to find the Broken Fang one. They had much to atone for, if they had fallen to the Shadow as Seia had feared they would.
And yet he feared that meet. Not as he had feared as a child the fires and screams of tribal raids. He feared seeing familiar faces that recognised him for nothing more than the scars on his arms, those they had given him as a boy. Strangers wearing the masques of fathers and mothers, of men he might have called brother, of women he might have loved had things gone differently.
He did not regret his forced banishment, even now. Even after all these years, the men and women he had killed, the lives he had ruined. The scars on his wrists and those matching them on his back. Umbar, Gondor, Rohan, Bree. Broken hearts and mended wounds. He regretted none of it, and he would repeat it all to have again those few short months with Priya.
