A Rider Returns Volume 1

Ashenwulf pulls out an ornate pipe, packs in tobacco and lights it with a match.

"Looking back at it now I realise how misplaced my anger was. I was rash and immature.  I wish I had found out the truth earlier.  It might not have taken so long for me to return if I had; but that tale is for another time. For now I will tell you about how I came to leave my native home of the Horse Lords, Rohan...

"My  father was dead before I was born, so my mother told me.  He died valiantly fighting the Haradrim hordes in the battle of the crossings of Poros.  Not long after, my mother had married another, which fuelled rumours concerning her fidelity to my father. With his death, my father was not around to give lie to the rumours, so they spread like wildfire throughout the village. My mother, though, was blind to the stories and my stepfather did nothing; he acted as if they did not exist. As a child I did not understand these rumours and believed in my mother."

Ashenwulf takes a puff from his pipe and pauses for a moment, as if deciding whether to continue or not…

"Years passed and as I grew so, too, did my awareness of the stories about my mother.  Upon my ninth birthday I remember being told by one boy that my mother was the village whore… I didn’t give him a chance to say it again.  I was an angry boy; my rage fuelled by my feelings of loneliness, my mother's lack of concern for the stories about her and my stepfather not understanding me.  Foremost of all was the thought that the man my mother told me all those stories about as I gew up... MY father... was not my true father at all.  For a long time my only friend was a horse the stablemaster informed me was sired by my fathers steed.  I came to learn that my horse was called Erelion and he has been my companion to this very day. 

"All of this lead to many confrontations with different members of the village including my step father. During my lessons in the arts of horsemanship and war, my teachers noted on many occasions that, if I would just apply myself to the task at hand, instead of being disrespectful at every opportunity, I would make a fine rider due to my natural ability. 

"On the eve of my eighteenth year my mother gave me a leather-bound journal, that she said had belonged to my father.  I took the gift with distain, for I knew full-well the rumours about my family, and this sparked a severe confrontation between us.  We argued and I left with a flurry of words that I still regret to this day.  I was a proud, arrogant fool.  That event set everything in motion.  I was sick of the stares, the whispering behind my back, the pointing and laughing and the sheer dishonour that my mother and step father seemed just not to care about. That night, my stepfather came looking for me and an argument ensued due to the confrontation earlier with my mother.  In the heat of the moment I struck out at him.  He reacted, as a more experienced warrior would, and barely dodged the blow and I ran back to the house.  When I entered I found my mother asleep.  Quietly, I grabbed a water-skin, a food pouch and, in the heat of the moment, my father's journal and went out to the stables. I went to Erelion’s Stall and gently woke him, whispering to him to remain quiet. I grabbed a saddle and bags from the hut and rode off into the darkness..."