Of course they didn’t kill him, or he would not have been alive to sit at his desk and write a couple of weeks later. They knocked him unconscious and left him broken in body, and in spirit. That was the sort of Men they were, cared for no one but themselves and doing whatever they felt like. It wasn’t the Hobbit way, at least it never had been. He wondered a bit, with changing times and all that. He had been taught to be respectful of others, not to drink all the tea, not to eat all the roast lamb, not to take all of a shared blanket. That sharing was what a community was made of. But those brigands cared not a jot for anyone else. His spirit was broken for he believed, in that moment, they could not be stopped. They wanted what they wanted, when they wanted, and couldn’t give a fig.
He was found by those Bounders, who raised the alarm, and carefully carried him to the Bent Elbow. It wouldn’t have done to leave someone old and injured alone in his house. Others visited him in his allotted room, and fussed over him. He didn’t want the fuss. He didn’t deserve it. Hazil brought him a nice poset of milk and ale, with a little of the hard to come by spice in it. (That could only be purchased from Dwarf Merchants with connections in far off Gondor) But the poset tempted him. Hazil and Sarno sat by his bed most of the next day, cleaning his wounds, applying arnica tincture to his bruises and setting his foot in plaster. He couldn't walk for a while, they said. He needed to rest.
But he didn’t want to rest. He wanted to give those cowardly bullies a piece of his mind about manners. He wanted to stick an elf blade in each one!
Oh, how that hurt his head. More than the bruises he hated the thought of hate. In many cases one could just move on, the instigators not being worthy of wasted thought...but those Brigands. He hated them, and he hated himself for hating.
Later the next day, Henepa and Tolbold came to visit. He wanted to hide in shame under his blankets, but Henepa, ever making the best of things, had made him a strawberry jelly and ice, with whipped cream. She brought it in a tall glass with a long spoon.
“Try some o this, Uncle” she told him in a motherly fashion. “It’s good fer the bones and good fer the spirit. Yer need a bit o’ spoilin’ after what yer been through.” She plumped up his pillows and arranged his blankets so he could sit up with the tray in front of him. He appreciated the kindness, and for an instant felt a bit better.
“We chased them men through the forest,” Tolbold began, in a hushed but firm voice. “Seems there were about six o’ them, spread out a bit. Yer were lucky, Uncle. Them could have killed yer.”
Henepa nodded sagely at his words. “The one that came after me last night might of killed me, but I had me elf blade with me, and I drew it an’ waved it in his face. “Don’t think I won’t use this, I told him, because I will. I cut enough joints o’ meat ter know what ter do with a blade.”
He swallowed hard. Henepa had also been attacked?
“Him just drew a knife, a tiny little knife, not an elf blade, an’ I showed him what a real knife look like.” She sounded proud of herself.
Tolbold was watching her closely, like he was still not certain she was fine. “Yer be very brave, Miss Henepa,” he said.
She blushed, just a little. “Oh, it’s easy ter be brave when it’s just one o’ them. Harder when they all gang up. Them are cowards, an’ no mistake. I would o’ been useless with the number who attacker yer, Uncle.”
He wasn’t so sure. Henepa was brave, and wise enough not to walk about unarmed.
“She just be walkin’ over ter the farm to pick up apples fer a few apple pies, an the Man just grabbed her.” Tolbold’s voice trembled with a rage of his own.
“Him didn’t know I hid me blade in me basket. Him get a right shock.” Henepa grinned back. “Eat up uncle, I made it specially. An yer not escaping the Bent Elbow till Tolbold and me be sure yer can cope.”
Such kindness. And she didn’t know he didn’t deserve it. That it was likely his fault she had been attacked.
He took a few more days to rest and recover. In part he was held back by all the kindness shown to him. Henepa and Hazil plied him with all his meals, cooked just the way he liked them. There were copious apple pies, and as much ale as the ladies thought healthy for someone in shock. Although he was limping badly, he could stand with the support of a stick after a week. His cuts were healing and most bruises had paled to a yellow and blue blotch. They told him it would be more like a couple of months before he could walk properly again. But he was lucky. He knew it.
Lying, propped up in his bed at the Bent elbow, or sitting up with a drink and a book in the room’s armchair, he kept turning things over and over in his mind. Why had things happened? Why were Men after Elves? Usually the two races kept apart, and neither was commonly known to attack the other. (Save that bunch of brigands attacking the High Lord and the lady, and Estarfin wiping them out.) He wished he had been there to see that, even though he had joined the burial party of Tighfield Hobbits when they had found a nearby field littered with dead Men and Women. That wasn’t a pretty sight. He found his anger lessening, as he tried to give reason to the Men attacking unknown passer-by. Was being Brigand’s and rotten sorts enough? In his youth folk had done things because they had a good reason. Had matters changed so much?
It seemed Bounders from all over had been alerted to the Brigands. They were patrolling in groups. “We go out now with some of Lotho’s folk,” Tolbold told him one tea-time. We may not like each other much, but we like rough Men who treat our folk badly even less.”
And slowly he improved. Henepa seemed to take what had happened in her stride. She was a bounder’s daughter, after all, she kept reminding him and others.
Then a new Lass arrived. One Lithea Glenwood, an old friend of Sarno and his brother. She had come to Tighfield for a change of scenery she said, and also something about a dream. He wondered at that, and thought a few good meat puddings may help. But she was a nice lass, joining in with the preparation and cooking, and with cleaning the rooms and making beds. She reminded him a bit of his eldest daughter, Hollymay. Matters were looking up it seemed. He decided he would go back to his house at the end of the second week, and take a few of Henepa’s meals with him. Tolbold said he would visit every day.
And then Henepa and Gaisarix were kidnapped from their beds in the Bent Elbow in the middle of the night.
That was his second mistake. Not telling anyone he had given Henepa away as someone female the Elves knew, and not saying he suspected Tighfield had a Hobbit spy.
