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This story continues from Part II: The Girl from Gondor.
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Barely had Till made it through the gates of Ost Forod - Fingeleth still in tow, tired from the climb - than a familiar, broad frame came bounding in their direction. As the young man came into view, Till’s smile of greeting faded. Oh Powers, what’s happened now…
“Till! Thank goodness you have returned!” The young man paused mid-flow, noticing Fingeleth for the first time - and gawped at her for a couple of seconds.
“What is it, Kane?” Till’s abrupt tone startled Fingeleth. In the three days they had known each other, she had not yet heard her new friend in command mode. Kane’s eyes snapped back to Till. He hesitated, looking over Till, the horses and, waveringly, Fingeleth again. Fingeleth played with her hair and pretended not to notice. Kane was probably a year or two younger than her, but one couldn't really tell.
“You are… both unhurt? No trouble on your journey?” Kane sounded relieved.
“The road from Tinnudir is clear. Why, what has happened?” Till’s voice had softened slightly. Kane glanced around, then came closer, as though to help them with the horses, and lowered his voice to converse more privately. He sounded emotional, worried.
“One of our patrols has not reported in. They are two days late.”
“Who was it?” asked Till quietly. She thought she knew the patrol schedule by heart - but it did not hurt to confirm.
“Tanner and Reese. They were doing the Icebay road.”
“Has anyone gone after them?”
“Not yet. We’re short-handed - and it’s only just been the two days.”
“Alright. Don’t panic.” Till distractedly brushed her hair out of her face. “There’s nothing to be done right now. If they’re still not back in the morning, I’ll talk to the Arbiter.”
“Basil’s out of town too - he went down to the lakeshore with the fishing group. It’s just me and Magde here of the usual crew.”
“Fine - then we’ll make the call what to do.”
“Do you think we should go after them?”
Till’s mind was exploring many of the same possible grim outcomes as Kane, but she was careful to show none of her worry in her face or voice.
“We’ll decide in the morning. I’m sure they’re both perfectly fine. For now the best thing to do is eat, and rest… And we are excluding my guest. Fingeleth, this is Kane. He and I work together in the militia. Kane, this is Fingeleth - a scholar all the way from Gondor. She has come to study some of the ruins.”
Kane’s eyes widened. He took Fingeleth’s hand and kissed it - a gesture so marked and courtly that Till almost laughed.
“From Gondor? You must have come through many dangers. Are all the scholars of that land as fair as they are fearless?”
Till thought that was pretty smooth, off the cuff. A sideways glance told her Fingeleth seemed not to mind the attention, so she was inclined to leave them to get acquainted.
“Why don’t you show Fingeleth to my mother’s house? I’ll be with you shortly - I’ll just take care of the horses.”
Neither of the younger folk needed telling twice, and Till was glad of a moment to herself to think. The missing scouts, Tanner and Reese, were both more experienced than Kane, and highly reliable. It was not like them to be late. Kane was probably right to be worried: either they had remained behind, perhaps gone off-track to gather more information about something unexpected - or something had happened to them.
After thinking it over, and taking care of the horses, Till went to rejoin the others.
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Till’s mother, Rienne, habitually hosted a fair number for dinner - the folk of Ost Forod tended to go round to one another’s homes to eat together most nights, quite informally - and she had been expecting Till; Kane and Fingeleth were little extra trouble. Till helped Rienne prepare a hearty meal, declining offers of assistance from Kane and Fingeleth - leaving the two of them to flirt while they waited, with mixed and varying degrees of shyness and shamelessness.
The usual daily fare in those lands was some kind of stew. Although the precise ingredients varied enormously, the base was usually game, wildfowl or freshwater fish. Agriculture and animal husbandry were not practised on a large scale in the immediate environs of the town. Although there was some horticulture, most local vegetable produce was from gathering wild varieties. At need, the community could subsist in this way for some time; but Ost Forod’s lifeblood was trade. A great deal that was not grown or gathered locally - such as grain and potatoes - was traded from the fertile lands of the Oatbarton area; or Bree-land and the North Downs, via Trestlebridge or Traders' Wharf. In this way, folk mostly enjoyed a reasonably varied diet; times were generally hardest when the trade routes were threatened, or demand in the South for Ost Forod’s resources and craftwork fell.
To welcome the exotic traveller, Rienne and Till pulled out all the stops - and several neighbours chipped in ingredients too, as a round dozen were sitting down together. Into the stew went generous quantities of the most flavoursome venison cuts, along with onions, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, a couple of other local wild root vegetables Fingeleth didn’t recognise, and all manner of fragrant herbs - along with a significant quantity of imported red wine (by far the most luxurious ingredient, and very seldom used in cooking in this way in those parts). There was freshly baked bread to go with it, made that day from grain carted up from Oatbarton; and to drink, aside from springwater from the hills, there was some kind of piney local aquavit - which, to Fingeleth’s bafflement, the locals insisted was actually derived from trees.
The wine-dark stew reminded Fingeleth of Gondorian cooking, a shrewd guess on Rienne's part, or perhaps gleaned from the margins of some old book; and after weeks abroad, it seemed like one of the best things she had ever tasted. When they were sure she liked it, Till and Rienne insisted on her having second and third helpings - Rienne was a healer by trade, and her concern for Fingeleth's nutrition on her long travels was genuine and justified.
When they had feasted long, and drunk various amounts - and not before a song or two: both communal shanties of the townsfolk and, with some cajoling and peer-pressuring orchestrated by Till, a shining, transcendent Gondorian aria from Fingeleth - some of the locals gradually began to peel off. Often, when the weather was fair, many of the townsfolk slept outside, perhaps under tents; but when the skies were less clement, most moved inside the weather-beaten but sturdy buildings of the millenarian hill-fortress. A handful of these old stone structures, such as the one in which Till and Rienne lived, were still accessible - with varying numbers of collapsed rooms and scaffolded ceilings.
But it was a cold and doubtful night outside; so bedding was found for Fingeleth indoors, such as could be spared, and by the time Kane had bidden her a reluctant and lingering farewell, things were winding down.
As conversations turned to murmurs, or were replaced by the crackle of embers and gentle snoring, Till lay awake, staring up into the shadowed vaults of the ancient ceiling, and wondering what to do about the missing scouts. Gradually, she slipped into troubled dreams.
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The story continues in Part IV: The Scouts Return.
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