Is there not a place in this Middle Earth that is not tainted by my memories? I felt it in the Forsaken Inn. As I sat there in the gloom night after night and sunk enough mead to numb my senses to the world last summer. Unbeknown to me that my lover would soon get her dues for the trouble she brought upon herself. I knew it would happen eventually. I knew she wasn't good for me. I knew how that story ended. Yet I carried on with the charade anyway. She should have died by my hand the moment she read of my secrets. They were mine and mine to share alone. She wrested that control away from me. I was a fool. It would have been easier, it would have saved the grief that followed. The grief I still feel, if lessened. Though I do not wish to admit it. My flower. How a tempest of mixed feeling still rages within at the mere mention of your name.
I executed a man in front of the company on the road to that last bastion of civilisation in the West. If you can call it that. I killed him in cold blood. I saw their faces. It is within me, the urge to sate. I keep it caged. But that day I gave them a glimpse. If only a flicker of who I really am. No quarter, means no quarter. When the stout ginger haired man who kept me his hostage all those years attacked innocent travellers with his band. There was no mercy given. So why should the likes of him, men of the same ilk be spared in kind, it was his biggest mistake. Letting me live. Grooming me to be so obedient. Or so he thought. Yet I am ashamed. I am ashamed of the things he made me do. To innocents. The only time we ever spared a man on a raid where they refused to surrender their cargo. Was to leave one alive, carry news back to the town. To spread fear. Yet a man cannot claim vengeance if he is dead. And nor will that man on the road. Nor will that ginger haired monster who was so fool as to not kill me straight-away. He thought I was impressionable. Mouldable. I was, on the surface. Yet he ended up choking one day upon his own blood when I came back for him following my escape. I will never make that mistake.
No quarter, means no quarter.
Ost Forod, this frontier town also has its memories. Some. I am well acquainted with its vices. You can live free here, if you so choose. Not bound by excessive law. The last time I was here, the mead flowed freely, men gambled. They drank, they fought. Whores wandered freely from tent to tent, offering their services. And there was I, a man for the first time without any responsibility. A man lacking in the burdens of nobility foisted upon him. I'd like to tell you it was a good summer that year. I lived as others did. With abandon. My escapades were I to utter them here might make the reader with more delicate sensibilities blush.
But it was not a good summer. Deep down. How I missed that shield-maiden, how I longed for her still for a time. Who she was before, not whom she showed herself to be in the end. Could it have been different. Would I have been wed eventually had I stayed though she delayed the moment far beyond reason? Would I still see my daughter every day.
It is better that I do not, I know that. But I still can't help but wonder.
I may have a predicament here, one that will need to be addressed sooner rather than later. My heart has been fickle of late. Grasping to replace that which has been lost. Firefly, the Variag.
And now my childhood friend. Now the one that sleeps beside me this cold evening in my tent. The problem being that I think I care for the former more so in that way than she cares for me. She still longs for her lost love, feels the guilt. Who can blame her. The latter, the other way around. Though she is a good lass and I enjoy her company very much. She puzzles me, tells me in one breath she knows and accepts our arrangement but the mere suggestion of my exploits angers her. She did not like it when I said she needed a thicker skin. But it is true. Still, I do not like to see her upset.
I shouldn't go there, in either case. But when do I ever listen to my own advice. Perhaps it's about time?
Is it foolish of me to try and belong? To make the time aside from my regular business interests to travel with these men and women. Lone wolves do not oft settle back into the pack.
Is there ever an end to these incessant questionings? I was almost recognised by one of the whores today at a time most inconvenient. My mind is far from on the job we set out here to do.
Ost Forod, things have changed since I was here last. But otherwise, its much the same scumridden shithole I remember. Yet filled with opportunity to make quick silver. Part of its charm, I think.
I will not waste ink on the perjurer and back-stabber that rides with us, nor any words to her person. Lucky for her that the Spy-master aided me so fervently as he did in the past months.
