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It was well nigh three hundred leagues from Dol Amroth to Trestlebridge as the craban flies; and for those who walk on two legs, any practicable route was much longer. Fortunately, Fingeleth was no longer a stranger to travel. Had she not already managed a very similar journey several years before? No need to dwell on how she had nearly been eaten.
The first time, she had sailed to Celondim, and thence come overland through the fair green country of the Halflings - perhaps the safest route, even though the Halflings as a rule did not love Big Folk passing through their lands. Her target had been Fornost - and she had more or less made it, too, except for that unanticipated encounter with the Orcs.
She shivered slightly - then clenched her jaw. She was tougher now - and smarter. There was no reason to be afraid.
This time she had planned much more carefully. She was better resourced, trained and equipped; and she had not travelled alone. There was no stowing away: a trading ship from Dol Amroth, protected by guardsmen (among them several veterans of the Pelennor Fields); then around the cape of Andrast and up the Gwathló, almost as far as the ruins of Tharbad. The sailors knew well that Tharbad had not been a safe port for many years (Fingeleth chirpily provided the date of its final abandonment as TA 2912, though none had asked for it) - and so the traders disembarked from the ship some way downstream, well out of sight or bowshot. From there they went north-north-west to hit the Greenway, which led them all the way to Bree without major incident - they still had their guards with them. Fingeleth had been loth to depart the region without getting more than a distant glimpse of Tharbad, but there did seem to be nothing for it: she had learned her lesson about Orc-infested ruins. Tharbad was even further from any possible aid than Fornost.
At Bree, Fingeleth left the caravan. She bade farewell to her travelling companions and branched out on her own, by familiar roads leading southeast from Bree, to find her old friends, the Black Steel, in the village of Hamglen. She was out of luck however: most of those she knew were away on some manner of grand quest in the east. That included Blodflaed, the Rohir who had freely provided some of her most valuable lessons in combat; Clay, the moody Dunlending girl, for some reason accepted by everyone; and Fiontann, their quiet but charismatic leader. Mornenion the Elf, who had led the company who saved her from the Orc-camp outside Fornost, and then physically carried her away in his arms as they ran for several leagues, was not there either.
It was true that she had not written ahead; nor had she heard from any of them for some years. That they should be off on some mysterious adventure was only to be expected: they were the Black Steel after all, and it had been on just such an expedition that she had met them herself in the first place. All the same she felt a pang to have missed them - part of her wished that she could have gone with them, and wondered what they were up to.
Her disappointment prevented her from fully enjoying even the excellent company of Cedwyn, who had remained behind - and that in turn made her feel guilty; so she did not stay for long, returning instead through Bree and then continuing on to Trestlebridge.
In Trestlebridge, Fingeleth had previously met a friendly but sensible woman, not much older than herself, by the name of Evonne. Fingeleth had hoped to see her again when she came there, but by a twist of fate, it seemed Evonne had herself joined the Black Steel, and was away in the east with the rest of them. As a result, she passed a slightly uncomfortable evening chatting to Evonne’s rather grim-countenanced and cynical father, Lowe Elmwater, who, Fingeleth belatedly began to suspect, was not in fact on the best of terms with his daughter.
A sociable creature, Fingeleth was a little put out at having missed most of her friends, but she had no intention of letting this spoil her trip. Fornost she knew better than to try for again; but she had set her heart on Annuminas, Elendil’s ancient capital in the North. Not a single soul she spoke to in Trestlebridge knew it by that name at all - although several did know a legend of a sunken city, that was drowned beneath the waters of Evendim long ago. Rumour had it that its old stones were filled with fearsome monsters... and cursed treasure. Fingeleth’s maps of the North, from the great libraries of the South, were generally hopelessly outdated - often later copies, of varying quality, of much older maps - but in this case, they still seemed to offer the best chance of finding the precise location.
Lowe, Evonne’s father, advised her strongly against onward travel - aside from the dangers, which Fingeleth accepted were genuine, it was also fairly plain that he did not believe solo travel was an appropriate pursuit for a young woman. When he realised she would not be dissuaded however, he suggested her best bet was to go overland from Trestlebridge to the Traders’ Wharf, and thence upriver towards Lake Evendim; supposedly there were places one could land, although there Lowe’s knowledge ended. But in the direction of Traders’ Wharf at least, the dangers he thought she would likely face were mainly men and beasts: these seemed a slightly lesser danger than the Orcs and even more unspeakable evils of the alternative route through the plains beneath Deadmen’s Dyke, where Men nowadays often went mad if they ventured - if they returned at all.
Initially, Lowe had actually suspected Fingeleth to be some kind of tomb robber - he knew that in recent years a number of disreputable young folk had been drawn towards Evendim, following doubtful rumours of buried treasure; the alternative explanation must be that she was incurably foolish. His mind gradually gravitated towards the latter, and overnight he had all but made up his mind to prevent her from leaving – a belated and misguided attempt to make up for what he thought he should have done when Evonne ran off to join the Black Steel, especially given that he had now learned from Fingeleth that she had left Bree-land altogether. But Fingeleth had risen early and left the inn with the sunrise; and all he found was a polite thank you note.
Fingeleth now travelled alone, as she knew she should not, through the Wildwood; but fortune again seemed to smile upon her: the Wildwood League was enjoying a spell of peace and prosperity, and she came upon nothing more dangerous than wolves, and those not up close, before coming to Traders’ Wharf. There, from folk who knew the waterways well, she learned of the encampment of the Rangers upon the Island of Tinnudir on the lake. She had greatly hoped to meet Dúnedain of the North on her voyage: Gondorian scholars had long recognised them as distant kin, and since the arrival of King Elessar their existence had become more or less common knowledge. Fingeleth took no more time to decide her course after that, and was on board the next boat up the Baranduin to Tinnudir.
♦
The Rangers of Tinnudir were welcoming, within their means (they had never been numerous, and years of skirmishing with the Angmarim, as well the departure of the Grey Company some years earlier, had thinned their numbers further) - particularly when they realised from whence Fingeleth had set out. But when they learned where she was trying to get to, they seemed to view her as not much less of a fool than Lowe Elmwater had: shaking their heads, they said that the ruins were unsafe, that there remained significant pockets of Angmarim occupation, and that they had not the numbers to achieve total victory there - it might not happen until the King was able to send aid, they added, eyeing her thoughtfully, and turning the conversation towards news from Gondor.
Fingeleth was happy to oblige; but she was determined that her quest to see Annuminas should not fail as sadly as that of Fornost, and gradually sought to steer the conversation back around. Her evident enthusiasm and respect for the lore of the Northern Dúnedain did help to endear her to them; but this only made them more rigid in their refusal to bring her closer - “just to see it” for herself, as she pleaded.
“Look then to the south,” they said. “Well you may gaze upon the ancient spires of Elendil’s city from here, still keeping their silent vigil over the hills of the North; but that is as close as you should come to them, if you know what’s good for you!”
Eventually chastened, Fingeleth tried to content herself with drawing the ruins from a distance, updating her maps and gleaning what lore she could from the Rangers at Tinnudir. She even sparred with them a little, as part of her efforts to persuade them to let her go - showing that she could defend herself, perhaps even help them somehow against the Angmarim: she couldn’t imagine anything more poetic than being involved in a battle against Angmar in the half-drowned streets of Annuminas. But it was all to no avail.
Despite this disappointment, Fingeleth still found herself treasuring her time with the Rangers; and so she stayed with them until she felt she risked outstaying her welcome. Then she had to try to work out what to do next. Had she really come all this way north again, only to be foiled in her main goal for a second time?
♦
One morning while Fingeleth was staying at Tinnudir, she rose to find she was not the only guest. A second visitor had come from Ost Forod, an old half-ruined hill-town to the northeast. The visitor was a woman of around Fingeleth’s own age, and the Rangers seemed keen for Fingeleth to meet her.
Lowe and Evonne Elmwater had each told her something of Ost Forod. Although it was by no means a bustling hub of activity, in Trestlebridge the folk who lived there were generally viewed as kin - albeit perhaps slightly embarrassing, rather uncouth distant relatives. The two communities had often been more closely connected, when the road through the Fields of Fornost was safer.
For their part, the Rangers, it was plain, also somewhat looked down on the Men of Ost Forod (which Fingeleth found quietly amusing, given how poorly the Rangers themselves were viewed in Breeland). Opinions were divided as to their character: a few maintained that they were all evil tomb-robbers, but most argued that there were many honest folk among them too. Their current leader, at any rate, by the name of Basil, met with at least grudging approval from all: he seemed to have been involved in some joint effort to drive the brigands from the islands of the Lake.
The visitor’s name was Till, and she was known already to the Rangers. She had visited Tinnudir before, and they had had exchanges of goods and of skills. Her mother, Rienne, a healer, was particularly well-regarded among the Rangers: it seemed that Rienne may have had some distant Dúnadan ancestry. The Northern Dúnedain seemed extremely keen on ancestry - which made sense: the new King Elessar's rule of Gondor depended partly on their genealogies - and as such, this tenuous blood-connection still won Till a little favour. Who Till’s father was, no one seemed to know for sure, or overly wish to discuss - speculation was not considered terribly polite; and Fingeleth took the hint.
♦
The story continues in Part II: The Girl from Gondor.
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