The city of Trestlebridge was alive with activity as everyone scurried to get their early morning chores done. Women scurried to the bakers to get the freshest and best loaves of bread, children either played with each other or chores that their mother charged them and the men started on their own duties. It was chaotic but exactly what Rannie needed to slip out of town unnoticed. She now dressed in her typical clothing as the Gondorian merchant would attract too much attention.
Now that she was out of Bree land her attention to traveling unseen was now to avoid any detection by any of the enemies of the Order that might be out there. She would have to avoid detection at all costs, she wasn’t a warrior like the others and knew her chances at survival being captured wouldn’t be very high, especially if one took in account she happened to have a smart mouth.
She forced herself to eat a piece of dried meat as she traveled her way north. According to what the merchant had told her yesterday, during his instruction of where she could find possible trade, there would be a path that would veer off to the left that would lead to the lands of Evendim. She put away the half eaten meat and placed her attention onto the road, if one could call it a road. The cobblestone path was half way overgrown with grass. She found if she wasn’t careful it was all too easy to drift from her way.
Rannie huffed with slight irritation as this made her travels go so much slower. Suddenly she pulled her cloak around her tighter as a chilly wind blew. She looked up and noticed the land had exaggeratedly changed. The sunlight seemed to have vanished behind a sheet of steel grey clouds while fog blurred her vision and the trees around her seemed to have been stripped of life. This must have been the fields of Fornost that the merchant had warned her against.
He had argued that the Fields were cursed and haunted with shades of those who had died in those fields long ago. He tried hard to convince her that she should go back and travel through the halfling’s lands and reach Evendim that way. Rannie had thought of this already but seeing a human woman traveling through their lands was surely going to bring too much attention. So instead here she was in the accursed fields.
Unfortunately her pace was forced to go even slower due to the cobble stone path was even harder to follow now. Just as she started to doubt if she was going the right way she found a old sign post and a path leading off to the left and a path continuing straight. She looked at the sign post and tried to read it but it was well worn and too difficult for her to read. She took out the rabbit’s foot and played with it, twirling it between her fingers.
“Luck don’t leave me now,” she says as put away the rabbit’s foot and turned the horse to follow the path leading to the left. Soon she started to feel as if she was being watched and swore she heard whispers on the chilling wind. Rannie pulled her cloak tighter and felt fear starting to fill her but after a moment she scoffed at herself. “I don’t fear shades of the past! My heart is dead and my soul scarred, there is nothing they can do to me” she demanded, lifting her chin with determination.
She gave the horse a pat on the neck. “Let’s go Boy, they won’t harm us” she told him. The feeling of being watched nor the whispers disappeared as they crawled along the cobblestone path that seemed to get harder and harder to see. Every so often she’d see something out of the corner of her eye and she’d whip her head in the direction she saw it but there was always nothing. “You don’t scare me” she demanded and continued on but she didn’t very far before the cobblestones ended completely.
Rannie started to dismount when she thought better of it, instead she looked around her. It was difficult to tell, especially with such bad lighting but it seemed as if the path went to her right while the land in front of her and to her left seemed to rise in intimidating hillside. Once again she asked her luck to keep her company as she continued down what she hoped was the right path. She smirked as she went and seeing that her luck had guided her correctly.
She was definitely on a path and even better she saw the ruins that were once the Gates of Evendim. Giving her horse a swift kick, Rannie rode at a gallop to leave the fields behind her as soon as possible.
