My Lord,
I do not believe I have ever been so fortunate as to be granted an audience with your Lordship, but he might recall that I did some slight service for our Lord Anglachelm - may his spirit find peace! - and I would be remiss if I did not fulfill my duties to the House, one of which is my reporting of news to the Lords and Ladies of Bar-en-Vanimar. By this writing, I hope to put it all out in the open, so that your wisdom may deem what is true, and what is untrue. I rest confident in my Lord’s judgment of the contents of this letter, and beg him to address it, for there are certain ill-willed folk that might be gratified to learn of our House’s latest actions, and it is very troubling to hear.
Wild gossip is running rampant, my Lord, in the Hall. Some wonder at the absence of your Lordship, and ask me if he is well, or if he has taken to his bed, because of our House’s many afflictions! I have tried to brush these questions aside, and I reply that my Lord is sore busy, with never so much to do as the present, but he will surely clarify these matters in the fullness of time, when he is ready. My Lord must be very busy, not to make any appearance in the Hall or elsewhere, it would seem, for these many weeks. But there are many bad reports flowing into the Valley, that I should not have dared to reveal them to your Lordship, so many that my heart misgives me, but I wish for these to be proven false. Just as we can trace a river back to a spring on the mountainside, so we can trace these tales back to their source, and, my Lord, I fear that there is some truth to them, for the heavy stamp of the Hammer lies upon each. It is these rumors that I wish to bring before your Lordship to consider and address forthwith, as his wisdom deems best. I would gladly answer for my Lord if I could, but the matter is yet unclear to me, and it would be presumptuous for me to know your Lordship’s mind and speak for him, if that is not his desire.
It is said by many tongues that our warriors have speedily wrought their devastation upon the Men. Travelers tell of mutilated bodies strewn along the roads leading to the villages, and after our troops have passed through an area, some Men creep out of the ditches or the woods where they lay hidden, and return to these scenes of desolation. There, they tell any that will listen of their woe, and the desolation we have wrought. There are stories that unarmed Men were hacked down and their women and children were herded into the main hall, which our soldiers barricaded and set on fire. One particularly flourishing village and its outlying houses was burnt, and made a heap of ruins. The village appeared to be perfectly peaceful, yet our soldiers torched it, and left lying on the ground many dead bodies to be burned to ash and scattered by the wind. At another village, the inhabitants rushed out of their burning hovels into the open plain to be slaughtered like sheep, and in another place, about sixty men were flushed from a nest of caves and summarily dismembered and killed. It seems that we were not satisfied with that, but killed their wives and children as well. There are many more tales such as these, that tell of entire villages razed to the ground, but no one is left alive; what took place there will never be known, not until our officers and soldiers stand before our great Lord and give their account.
This ruthless use of severities upon the weak and defenseless may succeed in scattering the wretched Men, and make them less willing to fight, but it was not warfare we sought! Are our soldiers making sport as they search for Lord Anglachelm? We will have no peace, now that we have begun to regard them as opponents who are worthy of the most heinous abuses, even if Men are, by nature, selfish and vengeful creatures. We are diminished by these cruel, unaccountable acts: if these tales are true, a myriad of these outrages are irremediable! Most concerned I become when I think of my brethren. I fear that they are living beneath their quality, and doing that which they would not do themselves, but they are compelled to do it, out of loyalty to the Lord Veryacano, and from their devotion to the memory of our departed Lord Anglachelm.
My Lord, these tales are too great for me to interpret, or control, but your Lordship shall, no doubt, put an end to them, and this I am most faithfully assured of, well knowing that my Lord would not wish the great and ancient House of Vanimar to falter, and fall into ignobility and disgrace,
Your most humble and obedient servant,
Parnard Teludarion
Ambassador of House Vanimar.
