(During his visit to Lake Town)
The fist slammed into him, sending him swinging around to hit the wall. The two shadowy figures, hid in the dark alley, was sandwiched in between the two walls. Gorlen was pushed inside, approached from behind, as he was grabbed from the back. The assailant, obscured by shady alleys, could have been anyone.
Another fist doubled him over, almost knocking his wind out. “Ye thought they'd not know abou' it?” the voice croaked from above.
"About what!?” Gorlen grunted as he wrapped his arms around the man, hammering his shoulder against the his waist, sending them both against the adjacent wall, boot digging deep into the wooden planks as he pushing down. With his one arm around grappling with Gorlen's middle, the attacker hissed and kneed Gorlen in the stomach, pushing him back again
“Damn fool! Don't know when to let it be!” Gorlen cried out as he fell against the wall behind. The man's fists slammed twice against Gorlen's battered face before he could react, sending blood that flowed freely from his nose to hit the wall.
“Ya think they gonna let me be?!” the man shouted out inches from Gorlen, eye to eye, the anger rising his voice above the water. Gorlen, jarred by the impact of the wall, grunted as he spat out a tooth. He bought a kick to knock the man to the side, his knee painfully connecting against his thigh.
“Nothing to do with you!” Gorlen shouted back, blood and spittle splattering from his bleeding lips. He brought one hand from behind in brutal punch against the man's eye, sending him a step back while he advanced, one punch after the other, against his stomach.
“You bloody bastard” The man retaliates as he viced Gorlen's head between his hands and smashed it against the wall beside. “Ya think they'd not know?” he grunted out.
The fight raged on as Gorlen broke free with a vicious backhand against the man's temple that swung him against the other wall, followed swiftly with a numbing kick against the man's side. But before he could do more, the man stepped to the side, and brought them both to the ground, pounding his fist into Gorlen's ribs. The blood of them both, in a tangle of limbs, covered and smeared over each other as they rolled on the dirty wood. Gorlen on top as he damaged the man's face with his fist, bring it down hard to the side of his head. Then, the man sending him sprawling under again as the figure sends his head back to crash against the wall. The fight continued, not one man letting up.
Gorlen was tired, exhausted, crying out. “Stop this, fool! Getting us both killed!” he spat out, painfully bringing his head down in a bone-crunching blow against the bridge of the attackers nose. “For fucks sake, Deogol!”
Deogol, a man of in his early twenties, lied with the side of his face resting in a puddle of water, barely conscious. “Fuck you” he cursed, deep and angry eyes shooting daggers into Gorlen, somehow hoping to pierce him with only with a malicious stare. “I come up ta ya and you go an' bloody kill the bastard, ya do. Whatcha think they'd go an' do, uh?”
“You only told me where he lived, ya fool” Gorlen fell back on his arse, sliding down the wet surface of the warehouse, pulling his bloodied, dirty, tattered shirt back right.
“And they come an' see what I was up ta. What you say abou' that?” Deogol wanted to know. “They're itching to get yer skin of yer bone's” he scoffed out a pathetic laugh, lifting himself on a soaking elbow. His flanneled shirt, ripped from the fight, was stained the same as Gorlen's: bloody and smeared with fish guts and grime from the wooden planks.
Gorlen looked at him for a while, not meeting his eyes but flicking his gaze over his battered body, himself not a sight much better. “Yer still putting up a good fight” he laughed out. “Mate, never meant them to come at you. The bastard dogs must have been lurking in the shadows again. Ya know them water rats go an' tell them everything”
“Now what's I'm suppose to do, aye?” Deogol grunted, resting his back against the wall behind him, stretching out his legs in front. “Canna stay here no more. Ya know that”
“There's a contract I've got fer a horse. From Rohan”
Deogol looked at Gorlen for a while, already feeling the ugly effects of the muscles around his eyes starting to swell, somehow trying to figure out why precisely he's tell him this. “And?” he asked, gingerly touching the bruise.
“Well, and... Look, they expect me to leave for Gondor soon. Kind of let it drop by a lass in the Crooked Oar. Long story” he explained, waving it away. What precisely happened that night, even Gorlen himself was not completely sure of.
“Whatcha trying to tell me is that I'd have ta fetch this horse you speak of, eh?” Deogol was on the brink of hysterical laughter.
Gorlen looked at him very seriously, wiping his blood-smeared mouth on his shirt sleeve. “Well look here, there's coin to make in this if you bring this damn horse”
To be continued
