Rastellion

Ceolfred watches Rastellion dashing away toward the Esteldin road. He glances at the sun: a bit past mid-afternoon; should leave time enough for his nephew to get back before full dark. Whatever Zandrianna had said to the lad – Ceolfred hadn’t listened in on what passed between them – she seemed to convince him, and he was ready to start out for Bree that same hour.

It had been a long, dusty ride from Bree after her hasty scramble to get ready, and the ranger patrol, with whom Zandrianna had fallen in on the Greenway, set a grueling pace. She kept up with them, but now she feels the ache of it as she follows the faint trail up from the main road. Periodically, she glances at her map, on which one of the rangers back at Esteldin had marked a route for her.

Rastellion pauses as he reaches the Greenway to look back at Bree. The town’s stone towers, rising over the encircling hedge-wall, flush in the light of a westering sun, as if in anger or shame.