At first, I thought the dark-cloaked man was gathering firewood too. There's not much other reason to be this far up in the hills overlooking the Isen. The land is too rocky for crops or even forage, and there's not much game up here. If you wanted to hunt, you'd be farther east, in the foothills near our farm, or farther north of that, in the woods near the road towards Gapholt. That's why I came here to gather firewood, in fact. It was a lot farther to go, and I couldn't have carried back much without the help of Hathgar, the family's draught-horse. But no one else ever came up here, so there was always plenty of loose firewood, and no one else to mind if you sang as loud as you liked while you chopped it.
I remember one time I was up here, singing as if to wake the trees themselves, with Hathgar following me dragging the canvas I'd piled high with wedges of soft pine and pale beech. At a pause in the song, there was the sound of someone clearing his throat from a tree above me. I nearly dropped the axe on my foot, I was so startled. But it was only my brother Leoffweard. I said that no one else came up here, but of course the scouts of the Westfold patrolled regularly, and Leoffweard was one of the keenest-eyed of the scouts, and the most silent on his feet. He'd gotten to meet the Thane personally the previous year after spotting a tribe of orcs coming down from the hills near here, early enough that an éored could be sent to stop them before they reached the crofts below. Today, he was sitting up in a tree, watching me; he'd been listening to my unintended performance for some time, and at this moment, he applauded with a mocking grin. He teased me for days after that, and the rest of the family joined in. I didn't sing for the next month, even when I was alone.
I hadn't been singing this time either, but only because I was out of breath from the climb up to this plateau. If I had, the dark-cloaked man might have heard me. That's also why I didn't call out to the man; he was on the far side of the plateau, almost high enough to see the spire of Orthanc over the hills. But before I caught my breath, I saw something horrible approaching him. I think it must have been one of those Uruk-Hai that Leoffweard tells tales of. Some people say they are another kind of orc, but others say they must be something different. This one was much taller than the man, even if he weren't hunched over, and seemed to be snarling. A wicked blade, jagged and curved, hung at its side.
I thought for sure the man was about to meet a grisly and swift end. For a moment I wondered what I could do. Even if I had some means to fight the monster, I couldn't possibly arrive in time. But the creature didn't attack the man. I stood and stared, gape-mouthed, as they met and talked, peacefully, as if they shared some secret business. The conversation didn't last long. When it did, the creature lingered, while the man started for a path east. While I was still trying to decide whether to say or do anything, the man was out of my sight, and the creature went back up into the hills to the northwest.
I didn't sing much the rest of that day, even as I guided Hathgar back down the slope and on to the croft. For a while, I wondered who the man was, and why the creature didn't menace him, but a pleasant summer sun, light breezes, a meal of ma's meat-pies by a brook, and a glimpse of a few of the fair-haired girls from one of the nearby crofts washing clothes downstream in that same brook -- I was just of an age to find girls endlessly interesting, but not nearly of an age to do anything about it -- drove the thoughts from my head. By the time I returned home with the setting sun, the memory of the strange encounter was all but lost from my thoughts.
