It is five years before. Dytha has not yet seen Rohan, the birthplace of her parents. It is time she returns. Her father takes her south from her refuge of Dale, where she's lived half her life, by the eastern bank of the Anduin. They make their way to Gondor and from there, to the Mark, but encounter trouble along the way...
The great marshes of the Brownlands were a day’s ride away. Closer on the gentle hills and plains were the fires of the folk that raided the neighbouring Wold. The cool air of the Spring night was welcome after the long hours in the saddle, something Thorvall was unused to these days. Still, such feats were still in his bones, and that could not be said for the young girl he rode with. Dytha had taken to the saddle far better than he had, but the rides with her mother hunting and scouting were far gentler than the pace the mixed band of Northmen, Gondorians and Rohir had made.
The group, thirty six in total had travelled south, escorting two merchants to Ithilien. Eastern silks, Dorwinien wine and Dwarf-forged trinkets and toys filled the two carts they escorted.
“We’ll hit them tomorrow…” The exile spoke as he gazed west toward the smudges of smoke hazing the evening air, still visible even in the fading light. “They’ll dog our every step if we don’t, and while we’ve the numbers now it won’t make a bit of difference in the marshes.” He spat at the thought of the evil the Easterlings could work there. “They’ll come out at us from the mire, like fen-stalking Rashkas” He used the name for such things he had given in the stories he had kept his children awake with in years past.
“No, we’ll lure them out with a thrown wheel and ride them down, and you’ll be with us.”
Dytha glowered at the map she’d folded to frame the section of hill-land. She measured with a fingernail where she thought they were and the distance to the marsh, looking up to count the constellation of enemy campfires across the hillside.
“Haven’t they spotted us?” It was one thing to ride with her mother and a soldier or two through disputed woods, but thirty-six was a hard number to hide. The carts they’d parked to protect their camp from wind and ambush gave her less sense of the protection than Wilderland’s forests they’d ridden through from Dale.
Thorvall grinned at her, glad she was thinking of such things straight away.
“That is why so many scouts went forward, and doubled around.” He jerked his thumb back to those making a fireless camp behind them. “They weren’t expecting folk coming this way, they constantly watch toward the towers of the Wold’s edge, and as they haven’t cleared already if they have seen us it’s only been a few riders and the carts.” He paused then, pondering his own words.
“They must know we’ve some riders or they’d have attacked already.”
He shifted, finding himself hunched and hushing his tone even though the fires were a good four miles or more from the group.
“In the morning we’ll make a racket and the lead cart there will get stuck down in that dead ground, and tempt the bastards out.” Here he nodded back once more to the horses, picketed in a stand of ash and birch behind them. “Once they commit to the fight we’ll ride them down, it should be quick work but you stick close to me, eh?” Furrowing his brow, he added. “Behind me.”
Dytha nodded, creasing the edges of her map. Ride them down. She’d heard the story of her mother’s first battle long ago, not from the woman herself but a spear-fellow. She’d been her age, maybe a year older, and in a harsher climate than the Brown Lands—one with a red sky—and she hadn’t had Thorvall.
“Are you sure you can ride?” she teased. She pinched her own tension into the parchment’s corners. “Perhaps you’d like to sit on the back of my saddle.”
Thorvall clicked his teeth as he gently cuffed her. “Go easy on an old man, make sure I don’t fall off and I’ll try not to knock you down quite so often when we spar, eh?” He offered her a wink and checked the blade in its scabbard. She was longer than Heartbreaker by nearly a foot and tapering earlier than she had to a wicket point. Of a style preferred by Gondorian nobles and some of the more heavily armoured Bardings. A different way of fighting she could be wielded with both hands, a style he was still mastering, but she also had the balance and weight to be used in one. Oathkeeper he had named her. Forged as his own blade wound its way south to his son in Rohan. Dwarven smithcraft had gone into her, but her hilt was wrapped in leather of a Rohirric auroch about oak felled in Rambroke. Even he thought himself a sentimental old fool at times.
Dytha watched as he cradled his relic. He gave it more care than the map into whose seams she’d worn holes. She forgave him the knockings, knowing he meant to teach her how to one day face such a blade as that.
“How many do you think there are?” she asked, thinking again to the swords across the hills. “Will there be riders?”
A smile crossed his face, the scars that flecked it his own map of trial and journey etching into his visage as he carved his own word-fame. “No riders.” He spoke with some confidence. “In open ground they sometimes use them, but here?” He waved a hand toward the marsh and the distant Wold. “They know they cannot handle the horses well enough for the fens, nor outride our people.”
Chewing at his lip, he considered the far-off lights of the Easterlings.
“They will probably break within moments of our charge, but remember as soon as your spear sinks into one of them drop it and draw your blade.” As he spoke his eyes did not leave those distant specks of light. “For all its use in riding down a broken enemy your sword is far more wieldy in a close fight, and if they make it into the marsh leave them be.”
Dytha looked down at the page’s thick ink rivers. The Limlight, the Anduin, the Mering Stream...each meant a border between the Mark and its outerlands, between where certain Men were allowed to walk and others weren’t. Some men—those huddled around the campfires that her father and her watched like wolves in the thicket—should have known better than to get this close to the Wold.
Dytha had never had to cling to a campfire for warmth. She’d known cold winters, but her childhood days in the smaller woods west of the Misties were as sheltered as the later ones in the thick, elk-rich forests around Dale. Her excursions hunting with her mother or on embassy to nearby towns with her father were short and guarded. She’d never ranged so far from a place she’d called home. How far had their foes come?
“So we don’t hunt them down,” she reaffirmed, as if it would be the same as following a wounded deer’s blood-trail through the brush. “Would we, if they were orcs?”
Thorvall looked at his daughter in something of a new light, the wry smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Here, no.” He jabbed a finger toward the marsh once more. “Mercy is a good thing, but I’d be tempted to take all of them on the flat, even if to simply march some back to the border in chains…” He shook his head then. “But if they lead you into the marshes, an Orc may not be cunning enough to turn back on you when it’s running but they will.”
The Horselord’s hand dropped to Oathkeeper’s hilt then. While he was gaining skill each day in its wielding, as a charm against evil thoughts and worry it was still unfamiliar in the place of Heartbreaker. “It’s said they are what remains of the Balchoth, and have never forgotten that bloody day when they rode against Gondor and were broken beneath the hooves of Eorl’s host.”
“Neither have we,” she said, folding the map up and slipping it into its leather-proofed pouch. She had no Oathkeeper, but the story of the horrible host’s easy defeat hundreds of years before was another piece of fortune to hold onto. It had kept her from bad dreams as a child and guarded colder nights than this.
“Have you fought them before? The Easterlings?”
“The Easterlings aren’t just one people.” He spoke softly, pausing to listen to the screech of a young owl as it sought its mate. After a moment another returned the call and Thorvall continued.
“I’ve fought against them, fought alongside them against others and traded with them, but these arselings.” He once more nodded toward the distant fires of their foe.
“They I have fought against, in Stangard many years ago, you were still young enough that I could outride you.” Nudging her with an elbow he added. “They were hard men, but I’ve fought harder, most Brigands will break if they’re not backed into a corner.”
Dytha grinned. He had nearly thirty years on her, but she had learned at a young age to outpace him at a hard sprint or a day’s long ride. This journey proved to her, though, that riding laden with armour into more dangerous lands was a skill he’d have yet to teach her.
She was nearly sixteen now—the same age as her brother was when Thorvall had sent Heartbreaker to live with him, a ward under Lord Cenaith of the West Fold. Six years since, and the boy must now be a man. How many battles had he seen? What advice would he give her, now that she was on the eve of her first?
“Hold old were you when you first…” she started, but she knew better than to complete with: killed a man. “When did you first ride into battle?”
“Fourteen.” He knew her mind enough on this matter. It was the mind of anyone faced the prospect in the immediate future. “A Dunlending, he was slow and I was lucky.” He cracked an axe-thin smile at the memory. It was a source of frightened, exhilarating pride when he had speared the scout in his youth but age and experience had taught him how close he had come to death that day.
“I first rode to a fight when I was around your age, but I didn’t fight a battle until I was in my eighteenth year.” The edges of the smile softened.
“Remember what you’ve been taught Dytha, trust the blade in your hand and the horse beneath you and you’ll be fine.” He grunted, adding. “And remember, half of this fight will be won when they see us, all being well.”
Dytha nodded. She stared, out, repainting the memory of the hillside in daylight across the black.
“Right,” she reminded herself. The paint on their shields and the sheen of their hauberks were as much weapons as armour that bore them. She untied the long hair she had braided for travel and raked her fingers through it. She picked the knots out of their ends.
“Right.” The older Rohir echoed, gently tapping her shoulder. “Now get some rest, and don’t drink anything but water or ale tonight, some folk like drinking before a fight but it for all the fear it chases away, your skill and speed will follow it.” He briefly gripped the shoulder he tapped.
“I’ll wake you before first light, and we ready ourselves in the treeline.”
With that the man unrolled a sheepskin he’d had next to him, seating himself upon it and took a whetstone from his pouch, spitting on it’s coarse surface.
“Sleep well, daughter.” The words came without looking back as he honed Oathkeeper to a killing edge.
