Found:
Sammy, one of the Bloody Dawn mercenaries, came to the hut earlier, a satchel clutched in his hands and a tale upon his tongue. I was ready to dismiss his words. They sounded a little far-fetched even by the standards of my irrational family members.
A man matching Aerlick's description, he said, had come to the Soot and Stain a few weeks back. After getting himself drunk, he set about telling anyone who would listen that he'd finally "taken care" of his problem. Questioned further, he said he'd sold an unnamed woman to the northmen for a handful of gold.
The mercenaries, not having seen me for quite some time but having seen Steel return from the wilds without me, jumped to conclusions and, knowing me to be a friend of Taala, had run the man out of town, chasing him into the mists upon Fornost.
Some amongst their number had sought permission for a rescue mission, but they had been denied. The woman could have been moved anywhere by that time, it was too dangerous to go traipsing around enemy territory for the sake of a single woman likely long gone, or long dead, and who would have paid them for their services anyway? Yes, she might have been that friend of Taala who once hung trousers from the Trestlespan like bunting, but Taala had long since returned to Bree-land.
I wasn't sure how much of it I believed. Surely not even the dimwitted hateful and vindictive boy I had known, or even the dimwitted hateful and vindictive man who had tracked me down to throw me off a cliff, would make such a journey again? But then, his father and two brothers had died, coincidentally, around the same time that I had beaten him bloody and left him in an alleyway in Snowborne. Perhaps he had jumped to conclusions and sought revenge? Perhaps it was someone else entirely; an unknown man looking to make some quick money who had simply come across a woman alone in the wilds, seen his opportunity and took it. Perhaps the tale he had told the mercenaries was the elaborate fiction of a drunkard. Perhaps it wasn't even me.
Only, in the satchel lay proof that at least one part of the tale was true; it had been me. My missing ear, badly preserved in resin and kept in a small wooden box, left me with no doubt about that at least.
Whatever else was true, whatever else was lie, the sight of my disembodied ear left me incensed. I thanked Sammy and sent him on his way before taking out my ire on the rickety furniture of the hut. It didn't make me feel any better.
I don't know how long he'd been there. I don't know when he arrived. I just know that when I returned to the hut sometime later, I found Rhaug waiting for me, the destruction I had wrought tidied into a neat pile by the door. He asked me if I wanted to talk. I told him that I just needed some company. I filled him in on the story I had been given. He asked many of the same questions I had, and more besides. But these were all blanks that I couldn't fill in. How could I know for sure, how could I give any real details, when I don't remember a damned thing?
I wasn't going to tell him about my ear. I didn't want him to know. But I had to be rid of it. I had to destroy it and I refused to bury the damned thing. It could have been dug up again after all. Besides, having so recently reclaimed my will to live, I wasn't about to let the worms have even a small piece of me! So I burned it. I clearly wasn't thinking straight when I threw the box into the fire with him still in the hut, however. The stench alone quickly alerted him to the nature of the contents. He pressed for answers. Not hard. This wasn't like old times where he would goad and dig, tearing answers from my lips whether or not I wished to give them. But I doubt he would have let it go.
He took it hard. He blamed himself! He thinks himself cursed and that his mere presence is what has caused me harm. I disagree, of course! All that has happened over this past year or so has been the product of hatreds as old as I am. Thirty-five years of scorn, derision, irrational minds and unreasonable people. It is the consequences born of decisions made by myself and a handful of others. It is the result of one woman's wounded pride, one man's inability to keep his pecker in his pants, and my choice to run away instead of facing it down all those years ago.
This isn't Rowan's influence. I have to find a way to help him see that. He says that he can't bear to see me hurt time and again, he can't bear being the cause of it. Well, I can't bear the pain it is causing to him! I can't bear seeing the light of his eyes dimming ever more. I can't bear knowing that he hurts, that he's blaming himself for the actions of spiteful people that he has never met. I can't bear watching him die by degrees. So I won't.
He wants to leave, to never again see me in the hopes that doing so will keep me safe. It won't, because he is not the cause. The pattern he thinks he sees doesn't actually exist. One way or another, I will do my best to help him realise that. One way or another, I will do my best to help him. But, of course, that means that I first have to convince him to let me. He is a hard, stubborn man. He doesn't trust me and his mind is nigh on impossible to change once made up.
This won't be easy. I know this won't be easy. However, if my efforts lighten the load he places upon himself even a little bit, then it will not be effort wasted.
He is worth it.
