I am half way down Bywater Brook, hidden among scattered rocks and tall reeds. I have a full belly, the sun is shining, and it's a bliss! I'm not in the clear yet, though. I don't know if I managed to lose the pursuers, I'm assuming they are still behind me, and I must not leave any trail - neither friend nor foe can see me now. It might work. Just.
I fell asleep last evening and woke up in the dead of night. The fog was gone, but thick clouds swallowed the moon and stars, and I could almost touch the darkness. I had to wait for some light to seep into this inkwell before I could see that the ground ahead of me was rising and reeds gave way to pines. I reached the higher ground and realised I was several miles west of Overhill, a little hamlet hidden in the woods. I headed in its direction as fast as I dared in the dim, colourless world, and reached it just before sunrise. I didn't enter the village openly though. I'm learning - slowly, but I am - that there are no safe places in Eriador anymore, so I hid as best I could and waited for an opportunity. When a hobbit rolled a small, two-wheeled cart onto the road, I didn't fail to notice a food basket on top, and when he left the cart unattended for a moment, I was on it in one fell swoop. I didn't take the whole basket, but I did go for the biggest item in it - the pie. I left some coppers and scurried away before anybody could see me. Half the pie is already gone and it's a happy feeling, but I'm struggling to keep my eyes open. I better take some stock of what needs to be done now - apart from running, of course.
First of all, is there anybody I can trust and ask for help? Yes, there is one, but I daren't commit his name to parchment. That he would help me, I have no doubt, whether he would understand my reasons, is another matter. He is a good man, tall, strong and kind, but is he trained in combat and would he defend himself if such a need arose? He doesn't boast or brag about any great victories; on the contrary, he likes to tell a story about a fight he lost when he was twelve - this makes me smile. No, I cannot ask him for help - I cannot bear the thought of putting him in danger. If anything, I should warn him and then leave him alone. I should. I will. Goodness, it'll hurt!
The Bounders are close by. No! Maybe I'm not giving them the credit they deserve, but what can the Bounders do? Write a letter of complaint to Gadruff or another slaver who might have replaced him by now? There is a reason why Mans has never been too interested in paying the halflings, except when it came to food - they are no fighters.
There are the rangers, of course, and one of them, Halros, shows up quite often in the town of Brockenborings, but… he loves me not. Calenglad and his men have always seen me as some pestilence plaguing their beloved ruins. If they learned that ancient books, scrolls and trinkets weren't the only things I sought in there, I might hang.
The Watchers of Bree-land are in Mans's pocket, I'm sure of it. Maybe not all of them, but enough. They won't do anything to inconvenience their benefactor; worse even, they'll hinder those who would try. Proof? The Vale of Andrath is overrun with cross-bred orcs and men - I know, I've seen them with my own eyes and lived to tell the tale; troops bearing a strange sign of white hand are sat in Ost Alagos, I hear; travellers report increased bandit activity along all the roads coming to Bree, with the Blackwolds daring an attack on Archet. And what have the Watchers done about it? Nothing! Is Mans connected to all of this somehow? I have no doubt. He even mentioned that powerful local merchants are his "friends". No, the Watchers cannot be trusted.
Now, the Longbeards are out of reach. I should have spoken to them when I had a chance. Despite all my suspicions and fears, I should have secured an audience with lord Dwalin - unlike Bree, Thorin's Halls have some strong, clearly defined leadership - and I should have told him the truth.
So who else is there to listen to what I have to say? Elves? They don't care. They have watch spires in Duillond - they must know what's happening on the Lhûn - yet they do nothing. Meanwhile, Mans, who must have figured out by now that I mean to escape his reach, gathers more and more allies around him and grows in strength. I'm such a little fish for him now. Why doesn't he simply let me be? Will he believe that I'm dead?
My most immediate problem is Karloff, though. Why is he back in the Shire? The place was peaceful without him. And why did Mara show him such affection? Who in their right mind would feel anything else than revulsion towards him? Maybe the face of a brute he showed to me is only one of many faces he has, who knows. Does he still blame me for the death of his cousin? To be sure. I've kept the truth hidden for so many years that he wouldn't believe me now if I told him, what had really happened.
What Karloff saw was pretty straightforward: his relative had a throat shredded to pieces and I had blood in my mouth. His fist caught me just above the eye-brow and everything went dark before I even had a chance to utter a word. That's my last clear memory, before a series of smoky, blurred, and detached images start: someone urgently talking about a mother, plenty of "please-my-lord's" thrown in, my head splitting in half from all the yammer … veins in dusty wood and a rocking motion that was making me sick … some source of fire so close to my face that my eyes were hurting from all the light and heat even though they were shut … feel of cold water in my mouth and trickling down the front of my neck … nausea … nausea … nausea…
The first memory that makes any sense is of a dark and musty interior, with two women in thin, whitish nightdresses taking off my clothes. There was a man in the room, giving instructions, and I just didn't care. All I cared about was water. I was so thirsty that my tongue felt like a piece of wood in my mouth. There WAS water somewhere nearby, because I hard it sloshing around, but no one was giving me any. Instead, they were they were washing me. I didn't want to be washed, I wanted a drink, and I tried to say so, but the sounds that came out of my mouth belonged to a Kegrim with a sore throat, not to me. It was a torture. When the women washed and dressed me, they left me lying there, and for some reason I concentrated on a single torch burning on the wall. Then that man came over, picked me up, carried me to a room with a strange door, lay me on a bedroll on the floor, and gave me some water. It wasn't until the next morning, that I realised it wasn't a room. It was a cage!
Apart from me, there were seven other women in this building, all locked up in cells along the walls, and the man who put me in my cage was distributing bowls of food among them, when I woke up. Three of them refused to eat, so he put their bowls on the floor inside their cage, and came to me. He introduced himself as Jorr, and immediately left " t'get som' grub fer ya, me love". Then, he came back with a bowl of porridge and another man, Gadruff, and they told me I would be sold into slavery.
And so I came to know Gadruff, and Jorr, and others who were party to this disgusting business. Today I know that I shouldn't have waited for anything. As soon as I learned I was going to be sold for money, I should have paid Gadruff for my freedom and carry my skin away - at that time I had enough gold to make an attractive offer. I would have got rid of him, greedy though he was, and I could have even sold his secrets to the Longbeards. Instead, the rumour of my apparent viciousness earned me a grim reputation and I was lulled into a false sense of security. It was with best intentions that I decided to wait and see what I could learn of these people. I thought that the opportunity to dangle my golden carrot in front of Gadruff was going to be there always, or at least long enough. I was a complete nitwit, a fool, an idiot.
I felt the first twinge of panic when grey, stone buildings of Kheledûl, slightly blurred by falling snow, loomed ahead. They looked big and ominous, and I knew it had been a very bad idea to come here. I wanted to speak to Gadruff, but he wasn't avaiable. We were travelling on a few big, flat rafts, and Gadruff was in a small boat, away from me, coordinating the whole crossing. The river looked dangerous and the water was murky, and we came close to overturning a few times, but Gadruff, I'll give him his due, remained calm and unmoved. His instructions saved all of us.
During my dealings with the Longbeards I had heard belittling stories about the Dourhands, so I wasn't expecting much from Kheledûl. When we landed, however, I understood the whole horror of my situation. This wasn't a small, amateurish, seedy market of a few village yokels. This was a fully fledged, busy port, with three, big, flat-bottomed barges, as well as many smaller vessels, currently alongside, men and dwarves milling about on the decks loading and securing cargo of various crates and boxes, the quays patrolled by big, stern and dark-skinned fighters, and… lines of half-naked bodies in cages or fetters. I hadn't believed Jorr's words about just how lucky we, the girls, had been, but when I looked at the beaten, bruised, shivering men and women waiting to be freighted like cattle, I understood what he meant. In comparison, we were clean, fed, dressed and well looked after. My teeth chattered, but it wasn't only from the cold now. I was in hell and I knew it.
