He stood outside the door of the Scholar's Archives for a good while after the girl had closed it behind her, leaning against the stone wall across from it. When he'd decided that no one had followed them back from the beggar's alley, he slung his rucksack over his shoulder and wandered back to the market square – and to his brooding.
The evening had come ordinarily enough. He'd been wandering under the waning light of day's end in Bree, staying clear of crowds but near enough to hear snippets of conversations as he passed. As usual, he carried no coin to purchase food or drink and simply ignored his body's protesting. He'd chosen the shadowed side of a large building to rest between some shrubs, next to the market square. Having laid his rucksack beside him, he withdrew the remnants of a pipe-weed pouch and the last of some rolling papers to savor before leaning back and napping against the hard stone wall behind him.
Abruptly, the slender shadow of a girl – just barely a woman – appeared before him in his leafy alcove. And she asked him for rice.
He couldn't immediately decide if she were being egged on by fellow pranksters, or if such naivety yet existed in this pocket of the wide world.
She repeated her request and not hearing any nearby giggling, he attempted to point her to a guardsman nearby. She didn't seem interested in the aid of authority however, and apparently thought the skinny, dirty man sitting in the bushes smoking moldy pipe-weed was the surer bet.
Resigned to handling the situation, he found that what the girl really wanted was a way to salvage her bag of books that had become waterlogged in the recent rain. Some fool had told her that rice would dry them out, but the girl, like he, had no money and no means.
Not having much else to attend to, and the girl being the insistent sort, the traveler led her to the shabby section of Bree where he knew that campfires were freely shared in the open night air amongst those of vagabond ilk. They sat at the first well-tended fire they saw, which already had a few occupants nearby. He nodded to those already seated there before gesturing to the girl to spread her belongings out.
It had been a mistake to bring the girl there, he knew too late. She was utterly unaware that a drifter sitting across from them had been staring at her with a predatory look on his face from the moment she appeared, and the traveler knew that it was not simple theft that played out in the man's mind as he hungrily leered.
Long forgotten possessive instincts surfaced then, and the traveler's marred hand hovered over the blade at his side, intentionally issuing a silent threat to the vagrant. He did not pause to consider that his strength had long been sapped from careless abuse of his body, or that his blade had most likely dulled from ill use as well. He had brought a lamb before wolves foolishly, and what honour still left to him bid him to right the mistake if it came to it.
The girl prattled on for a time by his side, oblivious to the wordless posturing between the two men. Later, he only recalled snippets of what she spoke of: she was a student of sorts, no family of note, alone in the town, and possibly courting the scholar who lent her the now-soggy books. He never looked her fully in the face, but he believed that she had red hair and doubtless was youthfully attractive.
Perhaps that's what stirred the reaction to protect her from the harm he brought her into. No matter how far and long he journeyed the vast lands, his dreams were ever haunted by a woman with red hair.
The night must have lent him a more menacing frame than he possessed, for the thug chose not to act. Silently grateful, the traveler helped the girl collect her things and escorted her back to where she was staying after warning her never to return to that part of Bree. He mulled how such an innocent was going to withstand the darker elements that would eventually find her in this world.
Was she truly alone? What happened to her family? Who set this girl out on the road with little more than a backpack?
Perhaps he'd keep an eye on this one, if she did not protest.
