Note: Dedicated fondly to the Tim in my life: a hobbit if ever there was one!

Tailings and Tales

The Stranger: November, 2980

Strictly speaking, Barli was not allowed in the common room after seven o'clock. Mam said that drunken men were no fit company for small boys, and that if Barli hung about in the evenings he was bound to learn rough language and lewd stories and all manner of unsavoury things. Barli didn't know what lewd meant, but he was smart enough to know better than to argue with his mother when she used that tone of voice. This week, however, Mam and Meadowlark were gone to visit Nuncle Sherry up Combe way, and Barli's father was of a different mind when it came to small boys in the common room.

'One day, son, you'll own this place, and when you do you'll need to appreciate how business gets done. And most of the business in Bree sooner or later gets talked of right here in The Pony! Besides, I'm shorthanded with Nick gone, and I can use a quick pair of young feet between the kitchen and the hearth. That mother of yours never ought to have gone off while we was shorthanded, if she wanted to have her fine feelings! And to take your sister with her, too!'

So last night and this, Barli had been not merely allowed in the common room but virtually trapped there, trotting from table to taps and ferrying orders to Old Tim in the kitchen. Old Tim had been the cook at The Prancing Pony ever since Grandda Butterbur had tired of slaving over a steaming stewpot in between making cheerful rounds of the guests. Da often complained that Mam ought to take up the cooking and spare them Tim's wages, but the truth was that deep down he liked the old hobbit a bit better than he liked money. That meant they were practically dear as brothers, Mam said.

Really it wasn’t fair to pick at Mam for going. She had been planning the trip for weeks, and looking forward to it the way a child looks forward to the Midsummer Festival. Just because Nick the houseboy had walked off the job last Saturday after Da ordered him to stay late again with no promise of extra pay didn’t mean Mam should have to miss her visit to her brother’s. Of course she could have left Meadowlark, who wasn’t allowed to serve in the common room at all but could at least have taken charge of the washing up… but Barli thought his sister deserved her rest, too.

Meadowlark had been installed as the bedroom maid last winter, and that meant that she spent most of her day going from room to room making up the beds and sweeping the floors and cleaning up after guests. She was fourteen now, and old enough – so Da said – to take an apprenticeship if she’d been a boy, but she was small for her age and the work was really a bit too heavy for her. Sometimes Barli sneaked off from his lessons at Mr. Thistleby’s parlour school so that he could help her turn the straw ticks.

But without Nick or Mam or Meadowlark, they were woefully shorthanded. Last night hadn’t even been that busy, and they had still been run off their feet. Da had been up well into the small hours scouring heaps of mugs and tankards, and plates on which cold food had long since congealed. And then he had woken Barli at the crack of dawn to start in on the beds as soon as guests began moving on. Da hated to make beds, and having to do it today had put him in a foul mood.

Still he was all smiles and jollity as he bustled through the common room that evening, serving up drinks and laughing with the regulars. Da could be a bitter old crosspatch behind closed doors, but he knew how to keep up a good front for the guests. Barli thought that when he was the proprietor of The Pony, he would let himself be just a little bit sour on nights he felt it, even if the patrons did want a cheerful landlord. Folks liked a genuine person more than a sly one, that’s what Mam always said.

Despite his busy day and a couple of good tongue-lashings, Barli was in fine fettle that evening. It was thrilling to be here, in the familiar place at a forbidden time. He was a good potboy: he waited at luncheon practically every day when his morning’s lessons were done. Da was bound and determined that his son was going to grow up to be a lettered man, but he didn’t see much use in geography or history or arithmetic: Barli could learn the first two better at the inn anyhow, he claimed, and the first one was no use to anybody at all. What did it matter where distant rivers ran or what far-away cities were called, when all a man could want in the world was to be found right here in Bree-land? And even reading and writing had to wait when extra hands were needed in the inn.

‘Here, lad!’ one of the patrons called, and Barli hurried over to his table, weaving between chairs in the crowded common room. ‘Fetch me up another draught of beer, would you? There’s a good boy.’

‘Yes sir! Right away!’ Barli said crisply. It was his mother who had taught him his manners, and she had done a proper job of it.

‘Ain’t he a spry one!’ said one of the first man’s companions as Barli scurried off. ‘How old d’you think he is?’

‘Old enough to fetch me a pint, I reckon,’ the first man said, and they all chuckled.

Barli slipped behind the counter that hemmed off the brewing barrels from the rest of the room. Da brewed his own beer down in the cellar, and it was the best to be found in any of the four villages. Barli tipped the tankard he had taken from the customer and thrust it under the tap. He opened the stopcock slowly, letting the beer run down the side of the vessel so it formed a big, fluffy head. Da always insisted on that: if you pulled a pint with a tall cap of foam and got it to the table right quick, most customers wouldn’t even notice that the top inch and a half of their cup was filled with nothing but air and stardust. Two ounces here or there might not seem like much of a savings, Da said, but skimmed off of every pint it added up quick.

Barli wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It seemed to him that if a customer paid for a pint, he ought to get a pint. After all, if Da ordered ten pounds of chops from the butcher and was given nine and a half instead, he’d be livid with black rage! Still, he did as he had been taught and hurried back to the traveller and his friends. One nice thing about shorting the glasses was that it was easy to move about without sloshing anything over the rims.

There was a wail of wind as the front door came open, and the noise of boisterous talk and laughter. Four husky men came in together, hoods low over their heads and water streaming from their shoulders. From the gesture one of them made and his companion’s scarlet blush and soaked rump, Barli gathered that one of the men had taken a tumble in the street. A freezing rain had been pelting down since mid-morning, and now the streets were slick with a thick coating of ice.

He sped for the entryway where the common room opened off the front hall, and snatched up the long-handled mop that stood there. As the men went past, shaking water from their rapidly shucked cloaks, Barli swabbed up the water they left in their wake. It would never do to have a guest slip on a wet floor!

‘Evening, sirs! Welcome to The Pony!’ he said proudly as he set to work. These were local men, and they all knew him. Mr. Stitchwort chuckled and ruffled Barli’s thick, coarse brown hair. Then they all moved on to find a table. Barli nodded to himself, very satisfied. Even if they did only see him as a boy, they had gotten their welcome and liked it, too. That was an innkeeper’s first order of business.

For a while after that he was busy scooting from table to table and darting back and forth from the kitchens with the heavy trays of food. Everything smelled heavenly tonight: Tim had baked up a nice big ham, and he was roasting summer hens to a perfect golden brown. There were potatoes, mashed, roasted or boiled as the customers liked; and turnips (mashed); and stewed plums with brandy sauce. There was bread, of course, and a nice thick soup made with a beef bone Da had got cheap off the butcher, and for a sweet there was crisp apple pie and stout cheese.

Barli had had his supper already, before most of the crowd had turned up. He was glad. It would have been hard to carry all those plates of good things to eat if he had been at all hungry. But penny-pinching or not, Da took pride in his ability to keep his family well fed, and Barli was a sturdy, stocky young boy even at the tender age of nine.

It was nearly half past seven when the door swung open again. Da didn’t like to bother with guests knocking, and everyone ‘round here knew it was best just to walk in. Barli didn’t much care for that, either, but he supposed he wasn’t the innkeeper and it wasn’t for him to say. Still, his father was near the exit making merry conversation with a couple of hobbits from Staddle, and he excused himself promptly to greet the new guest. Barli ducked under the arm of a broadly gesticulating traveller and went for his mop.

To his surprise, the guest was still in the doorway when he reached the common room threshold. Looking down the front hall, Barli could see his shape against the light of the shingle-lamp. His face was shadowed in the poorly lit vestibule, for Da didn’t believe in lighting more candles than strictly necessary to keep folk from tripping in the dark. It didn’t help that the man had his hood low down over his face and was huddled in a soaking cloak. But Barli could see that he was very tall, even hunched over as he was against the wind whipping his back. He was much taller than Da, anyroad, and he was still standing right in the doorway and letting the cold air in as he came to the end of a murmured statement.

‘When hens give milk I will!’ Da exclaimed, clearly affronted. ‘I don’t go doling out supper for the asking, and as for the other that’s the strictest rule of the house! No coin, no bed, and that’s final.’

The stranger said something that Barli could not quite hear. His voice was hoarse and very low, but there was a sort of a musical note to it: measured, like the chords of an old song. Even without the words, Barli could see that the man was speaking very respectfully: much more respectfully than customers usually did.

Da stiffened a little, jerking his head back as if he had heard something surprising. ‘Would you, now?’ he said. ‘All night, ‘til we’re shut up and ready for morning?’

‘All night,’ the stranger agreed, and now he was speaking just loudly enough that Barli could hear him. He was a trifle disappointed. The way his words rolled, he had hoped he might be a traveller from some faraway land, but his accent was just like that of any other Bree-lander.

‘For the tailings and a night’s bed,’ Da clarified. ‘Off the plates, not the proper leftovers I can sell tomorrow?’

‘Yes,’ the man said, audibly but still very softly.

‘Well, all right then. I don’t suppose you Rangers know much about waiting at table, but you ought to be able to work out how to clear up. Go in and get to work at once, before I come to my senses and change my mind!’ Da stepped away from the door and swept his arm imperiously towards the common room. ‘And leave that mucky thing out here: you can’t slop around in that if you’re seeing to paying guests.’

There was a note of mocking disdain in his voice, but the tall man only nodded and tugged the door closed behind him. He seemed to lean back against it for a moment, though from the front Barli didn’t think his father could see. Then he reached for the throat of his cloak – which now it was in out of the backlit doorway Barli could plainly see was choked with mud almost to the hips, as well as dripping. There was a glitter of silver as the man undid the clasp, but whatever it was, it was hidden by his hands and vanished swiftly into his belt-pouch almost before Barli saw the man’s hands move. Most likely trying to hide a belonging of worth from Da’s calculating eyes, he thought. A silver brooch, even a poorly made one, was worth much more than one night’s board and lodging. He wondered why a man who owned such a thing might have no coin to spare for a bed. And he wondered what his father was talking about with tailings.

The man was now removing his cloak with care, doubtlessly trying not to spatter the walls, the bench and the landlord with a spray of chill, mucky water. As the garment came away his shaggy head of dark hair ruffled about his face, and his weatherstained clothes were revealed. He wasn’t dressed so specially, either: another disappointment. His clothes were drab and commonplace, though admittedly soaked through with sleet. That was worth noticing: he must have been outside for hours if the freezing rain had got right through his cloak and all that rusty green wool to his skin. He wasn't from the town.

But Barli’s eyes grew wide when he saw the long sword belted to the man’s hips. He had seen swords before, but never like this. It was much bigger than the sturdy short swords that the watch carried, and it was far more slender than the doughty blades you could sometimes see on the back of a dwarf coming to or from the Blue Mountains. The hilts were unusual, too, but in the gloom and hanging as it was on the man’s far side, Barli could not make out any details.

‘You stay away from the casks, now, and if I catch you nicking food from a fresh plate you’ll be out in the street quicker than you can say good-for-nothing,’ Da said sternly. ‘If you break anything, I’ll take it out of your hide! And don’t you dare swallow a mouthful where the guests can see you!’ Then dusting his hands he marched back through to the common room.

The stranger watched him go, an unreadable expression on his face and something smouldering in his grey eyes. Then he cast his gaze down to his sodden boots with the softest of sighs, and came through as well.

‘Welcome to The Pony, sir! Good evening!’ Barli said with forced good cheer as the tall man passed him. He paused, and eyes that a moment before had gone dull and weary sparked with sudden pleasure.

‘Why, thank you, young master,’ he said in mild surprise. ‘Are you the potboy?’

‘Yes sir!’ Barli said, puffing out his chest proudly. ‘Barliman Butterbur, at your service!’

‘The landlord's son? I rather think I am at yours, at least for tonight,’ said the man. He held out his hand to shake, pulling off a wet woollen mitt as he did so. Barli took it. The hand with its calloused palm had a good firm grip, but it was terribly cold. Close in, and with the better light of the common room to aid him, Barli could see that the man was very pale: not at all florid of face like the ruddy men of Bree. And those eyes were queer, too: far more knowing than they ought to be and somehow shimmering in their perfect greyness. They parted hands, and the man shrugged a deprecating shoulder. ‘I shall be clearing tables and scrubbing pans this evening.’

‘Oh!’ Now Barli understood why his father would break his firmest rule and let someone bed down for the night without paying. The man had offered his services in trade. ‘Well, we’ll be glad of the help, and no mistake. What’s your name?’

The tall stranger looked at him oddly and twitched his shoulder in a chagrined sort of way. ‘I suppose I ought to do something about that,’ he said nonsensically. Then his eyes searched the room like a shrewd merchant appraising the square on market-day, or that was what Barli thought. He had not the experience to recognize the abrupt, anxious but calculating assessment of a beleaguered Captain on a field of war.

‘Where should I begin?’ the man asked, effortful willingness in his voice.

Barli shrugged. ‘There’s no trick to it. They push away their plates if they’re finished, and the kitchen’s through there.’ He pointed. ‘Just be sure and ask if they’re done with their mugs. If they’re wanting more, I’ll be the one to fetch it.’

‘Yes,’ the man said with a hint of dry amusement. ‘It seems your father doesn’t trust me near his taps.’ Then all of a sudden he was off, moving for the first table that looked to have cast-of dishes and taking the smell of wet wool and chilled perspiration with him.

Someone called for another drink, and Barliman hurried off. It was easy to fall back into the pattern of the work, and he soon almost forgot the stranger now moving through the room with unusual agility.  He nearly jumped out of his skin fifteen minutes later when the tall man came up behind and touched his shoulder.

‘This is not the best use of our energies,’ he said matter-of-factly, guiding Barli over towards the counter. He stopped short of it and nodded to the two tankards the boy held. ‘You stay here and fill, and I shall fetch them to and fro.’

Barli looked up at him uncertainly, for it was not the way things were ordinarily done. But the truth was that he was beginning to tire, his short legs aching from the second night of running about. The man had much longer legs, and he was just in out of the rain: likely he could do with a bit of trotting to warm him. Decided, Barli nodded and started in with filling the cups.

By the time he was finished with his two, the man had come back with four more. He was very quick on his feet, and they began to make inroads in managing the throng. Dreary nights were always busy, and this was a mighty dreary night. Da was hurrying back and forth from the kitchen with laden plates: it seemed as if just about every male in Bree, Big and Little, wanted a bit of gossip and some of Old Tim’s cooking tonight. After a while the stranger was bringing back empty plates with the tankards, and ducking into the kitchen to leave them by the big dishpan.

It didn’t take Da very long to notice the arrangement, and to work out that he wasn’t getting the best part of it. It was twenty minutes past eight when he sidled up beside Barliman and herded him out from behind the counter. ‘You take the orders and bring out the suppers,’ he said. ‘I’ll manage this.’

‘Yes, Da,’ Barli said obediently. Fetching the plates wasn’t as easy as standing stationary behind the counter, but it wasn’t the hard, constant work of clearing dishes and carrying drinks, either. He went gladly enough into the quiet of the kitchen, where Old Tim was mashing a mountain of potatoes.

‘Busy night, Master Barli!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Who’s that Ranger been popping in and out with the dirty plates?’

‘The tall man?’ asked Barli. ‘I don’t know: he wouldn’t tell me his name. Da’s letting him work through tonight for a bed. I don’t think he’s got any coin. What’s a Ranger?’

‘He’s doing what? Your Da? Mr. Butterbur?’ Tim said incredulously. ‘Letting folks stay here when they can’t pay?

Barli shrugged helplessly. ‘We can’t manage without another pair of hands, not tonight. We’re all behind like a cow’s tail as it is.’

The kitchen door swung open and the tall man came into the room, shoulder first with both hands full and head ducked so he didn't smack it on the lintel. He had half a dozen plates stacked in one, and the other was draped with the handles of more mugs than even his long fingers should have been able to hold. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow, though his face was still very pale. Hurriedly he went to the table at the back door, where a tower of dirty dishes already stood. He lowered the cups carefully and then set down the plates. Most were empty: hard-working men rarely left much of their suppers, and hobbits never left anything at all. The one on top had a corner of a slice of ham half-buried in a clump of Tim’s smooth mashed turnips and a few loose peas. Barli watched idly, waiting for Tim to finish filling the plates needing potatoes. He expected the stranger to scrape off the leftover food into the hogs’ slop bucket.

Instead he did something that was utterly astounding to a boy who had never wanted for three hearty meals a day. He picked up one of the soiled spoons, scooped up the peas and most of the turnip, and popped it into his mouth. His eyes closed briefly as if in relish – as though that spoonful of cold yellowish glop was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. Then he went after the rest of it with the spoon.

Barli was gawping, open-mouthed, and Old Tim followed his gaze just in time to see the odd man bite down on the second mouthful.

‘Here, now: what do you think you’re doing?’ the hobbit exclaimed, sounding every bit as taken aback as Barli felt.

The man’s eyes were momentarily questioning, and then softened with understanding. ‘My arrangement with the master of the house,’ he said apologetically. ‘For my labour I am to have shelter this night, and my pick of the leavings of the paying patrons.’

Now Barli understood what his father had said at the door: the stranger was not to have a choice of the good leftovers, the saleable leftovers that would be rearranged by Tim’s skilled hands into cottage pie and savouries and all sorts of pleasant things for tomorrow’s luncheon. He was to have the scraps.

It hardly seemed fair. As with the business with underfilling the drinks, this looked very much like one of his father’s tricks to save a penny and so get something – in this case an extra pair of really quite capable hands – for nothing. Barli wondered if the man knew what a poor bargain he had struck, and what he would do when he realized it. He looked like he could be a tough customer, what with that long sword and all.

Still, he didn’t have it in his heart to be silent. Sometimes Da's penny-pinching made him feel ashamed, and he didn't want any part in this. ‘That’s not fair,’ he said. ‘You’re doing Nick’s work, and some of Mam’s too. Nick was paid eight coppers a week, and he got his supper every night. A proper supper, too, made up just for him. Ain’t that so, Tim?’

Tim shrugged his shoulders wordlessly, his eyes on his work. He was mixing something into the soup pinch by pinch, tasting with a long spoon as he went.

‘It’s so!’ Barli said unnecessarily. ‘Even if Da don’t pay you, you ought to get supper.’

The tall man shook his head. ‘It seems like this Nick of yours is a shrewder negotiator than I,’ he said. ‘Don’t let it trouble you, young Master Butterbur: it’s your father’s affair and mine.’

Barli did not know what to say to this. Happily, Tim did. He was used to ordering a houseboy around, and whatever his strange remuneration this man was taking Nick’s job tonight. ‘You’ll need to wash that lot, and right quick,’ he said. ‘I’m down to my last couple of plates.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the man said in precisely the same tone Barli himself used when his father gave him an order. He was already rolling up his sleeves, but as he did so he looked around the kitchen. A moment later he was unbuckling his sword-belt. ‘Have you somewhere I can put my blade?’ he asked. ‘It’s proving a hindrance in the crowd.’

‘Around the corner in the larder,’ said Tim, as if this was the most reasonable and commonplace of questions. ‘It’ll be safe enough there. Master Barli won’t touch it, will you, lad?’

‘I won’t,’ Barli promised. The sword looked even longer when the man had it in his hand, even though he was gripping the scabbard and not the hilt. He closed the distance to the larder door in two long strides and reached around to lean his sword upon the inner wall. Then quick as a flash he was back at the heaps of plates, almost to the elbows in the wash-water.

‘Go on, my boy: get those out there,’ Old Tim said. ‘Tell the fellow wanting a boiled egg that I’ve got it in the water: if he wants a good firm yolk it’ll be another few minutes.’

Barli nodded and picked up the plates, balancing the first between chest and forearm and taking the other two in his hands. The door had a double-jointed hinge and he nudged it with his toe. Then he was out into the heat and the din of the crowded common room.

For a while he had no time to think about anything, for they were falling behind with the tankards again. He was soon running them back as fast as his father could fill them, and then all of a sudden the tall man – the Ranger, as Tim had called him, whatever that meant – was back in the main room, hard at work. The customers were used to his presence now, and they swiftly fell into the habit of addressing him like a member of the staff.

‘Here, you fellow: I’ll take another!’

‘Oi, longshanks! Over here!’

‘Got room for another in those arms of yours?’

The man answered all of these summons promptly and with a courteous word or two, though he never smiled or tried to make conversation as Barli’s father did. Da was running again, back and forth between the taps and the tables: it was just too busy to be managed otherwise. Racing though he was, Barli couldn’t help his curiosity. He stole surreptitious looks at the tall man whenever he could, wondering what sort of a person he was. He knew he was being cheated but he didn't seem to care enough to confront the landlord and demand his due. It wasn’t at all how Barli’s own father would behave, he knew that.

Hopelessly curious, Barli waited for a rare quiet moment while Da was wiping down the countertop and no one was calling out for more beer, and approached his father.

‘Da?’ he said, glancing over his shoulder to be sure that the stranger was in the kitchen instead. ‘Who is that man? Tim said he’s a Ranger. What is a Ranger?’

‘A no-good layabout that tramps the roads without no sense of responsibility,’ Da answered scornfully. ‘They don’t got homes, and they don’t often got money, and they sleep rough most of the time. They’re a strange lot, though they don’t seem anything to be afraid of. Lazy, mostly, I guess, and queer. Let that be a lesson to you, my son: them that’s idle day to day will regret it sooner or later. Hungry enough to eat other folks’s slops; serves him right.’

Serves him right for what? Barli wanted to ask, but he didn’t dare. Mr. Longhole was waving to him from across the crowd, standing up by his chair to do it, and the boy hurried off with a quiet; ‘Yes, Da.’

He didn’t think his Da had quite put his finger on it. The Ranger-stranger was certainly not lazy: he was working harder than either of them, now back again and weaving through the crowd. There had to be some other reason that he was down on his luck. As he crossed the room, Barli kept a lookout for those tables where guests had come to the end of their meals. So many of the plates standing by stocky elbows were empty and Barli thought the man had to be halfway starving by now, what with all the running around.

His suspicions were confirmed when he came into the kitchen with fresh orders for second helpings from one of the hobbit tables. While he was reciting these lengthy requests to Tim, the man came in with another heap of plates and a few empty soup bowls. His pale face now had a greyish cast to it, and his hair and collar were damp with clammy sweat. He set the dishes down and stood there motionless for a minute, hand gripping the edge of the washtub.

‘May I have some water?’ he asked throatily, his back still turned to the hobbit and the boy.

‘Pail on the windowsill: help yourself,’ Tim said. He was starting in on a new loaf of bread, paring off the heel with careful economy so that Da wouldn’t scold him for wasting. He hardly seemed to glance up as the man crossed the room and took the dipper with a hand that shook for a moment and then tightened its grip to rock-steadiness. He drained it swiftly and took another measure. Then he set down the dipper and drew in a deep breath through his nostrils before turning back to stride out the door.

Tim put down his knife. He took the thin, floppy piece of bread that he had just cut, and the somewhat stouter heel of the old loaf, and held them out to the Ranger.

‘Here,’ Tim said gruffly. He sounded just the way he did when Barli got himself into a spot of trouble and the cook had to cover for him. ‘Something to be going on with.’

The man’s keen eyes narrowed warily. Clearly he wanted the bread, but he was weighing the matter against his earlier words and whatever inscrutable principles lay behind them. ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘Other considerations aside, I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.’

Tim shrugged. ‘If the master asks, I’ll tell him I was feeling peckish. Go on: you’re to have the scraps, ain’t you? It’ll do you more good than it’ll do the pigs.’

‘Thank you,’ the man said. He sounded breathless, although he hadn’t been panting from his exertions before. He plucked the two slender bits of bread and bolted them down hastily, moving swiftly for the common room door even before he had finished swallowing.

Barli turned to ask Tim what he thought of the peculiar visitor, but Tim was already busy with the loaf again, humming loudly to himself. So Barli just recited his orders instead and got on with it. Back out in the common room, he found himself tracking the Ranger with his eyes more diligently than ever. So he wasn’t afraid to do things behind Da’s back. That was good. Barli guessed there wasn’t much his Da could do to the man anyway; not if he knew how to use that sword. His lean forearms were hard with muscle: it was clear whenever he lifted a heavily-laden tray of foaming tankards to one strong shoulder.

About a half-hour later, Barli went back to the kitchen to find Old Tim gone from the room and the yard door stood ajar. This was nothing unusual: the elderly hobbit had to go out several times in a night. The draft of bitter cold air coming in at the door was actually refreshing in the overwarm room. The stranger was in its path at the man-sized work table, one hip thrust against it to bear some of his weight.

As Barli came in, the Ranger was plucking up a chicken bone from the top of a pile of plates that had not even made it across the room. It looked like a bare bone to Barli: part of a leg that some customer had already picked clean. But the man lifted it to his mouth and began to gnaw on it with vigour, stripping away every last shred of meat and gristle. Then he dropped it back among the detritus of plum pits and eggshells that were all most folk left and reached for a bowl. He tipped it to his lips and drank the dregs of another man’s soup. Barli felt sick.

Only as he lowered the dish did the man spy the boy over its rim. He blinked once, ponderously, and then curled up one corner of his lip in a wry little half-smile.

‘Cook will be back shortly,’ he said. ‘If meat is wanted, I can get a start on carving it.’

‘You could have a piece yourself,’ Barli blurted out, relieving the mounting pressure in his chest. ‘Of the ham. A real piece, right from the bone and still warm. Father wouldn’t ever notice that.’

For a moment the man only looked at him, eyes soft yet somehow piercing. Barli wanted to squirm or to look away, but somehow he couldn’t manage either. Then the man blinked again, and suddenly Barli was able to look down at his shoes.

‘That would be stealing,’ the man said mildly, not at all in the scolding way Mam might have. ‘Your father and I struck a bargain, and on a night like this I was fortunate to strike one at all.  I must uphold my part of it, or it’s as good as breaking my word.’

‘You took bread from Tim,’ the child argued.

‘Could Tim have given that bread to a guest?’ asked the man. Of course the answer was no, but that seemed like such a foolish reason not to eat.

‘But… but you’re hungry,’ Barli protested feebly. He could imagine nothing worse in all the world.

‘I am, but not so hungry as I was when I came to the door,’ said the man patiently. ‘I’m steady on my feet now, and but for my cuffs I'm dry, and I am out of the weather – which is the main thing. I had forgotten how November can bite in these lands.’

‘Then you are from far away!’ Barli exclaimed eagerly. ‘I thought you must be: you look so different. But you speak just the same as we do.’

‘How else should I speak?’ the Ranger asked, perfectly ingenuous.

‘I don’t know…’ Barli began, petering out as the man stood straight again and moved the dishes to the tub. The piles were mounting again, and he set to washing with a will. Not long after that, Tim came back in with his cloak up over his head, and Barli was back to work himself.

lar

Around half past ten the rush finally died off. Some of the regulars hung about and many of the lodging guests were slow to seek their beds, but most with wives at home had to be off. Kitchen service trickled to a crawl, and the calls for beer and spirits were punctuated more often by requests for mulled wine or a hot toddy or even a warm milk with nutmeg. After a while the tall man stopped coming out to clear tables and began trying to work through the ever-present mountain of dirty dishes. The later diners tended to graze on their meals, and whenever some choice morsel was pushed aside in dismissal Barli hurried it back to the kitchen with it. Each time he was greeted with a quiet word of thanks and that queer, canted not-quite-smile that was both amused and somehow moved. Barli found he was quite excited when he found a plate with a hunk of untouched potato, or a fatty rind of meat. Once he even brought back a whole stewed plum, left sitting in its sweet sauce.

At last Da announced that he could tackle the crowd quite well himself, and sent Barli off to tell Tim to close up the kitchen. He came back to find the old hobbit already at it: covering the remains of the ham with a clean cloth and swinging the hook that held the huge soup-pot to the back of the hearth where its contents could simmer all night. This time it was the stranger who was gone from the room, but before Barli could ask where he had gone he was back. He came in through the door with one of the big water-buckets in each hand: he had been to the well. His hair and shoulders were wet, and his boots seemed to want to slip on the floor, but he did not let them.

He emptied one bucket into the dishpan, which Barli hadn’t noticed was empty. Then he poured the contents of the steaming kettle over the cold water, and refilled it from the other bucket before hanging it over the fire. He picked up one of the dirty bowls and scooped three fingers’ worth of soap into it, added some hot water, and beat the mixture with a fork like he was scrambling eggs. When he had a good froth of bubbles going, he emptied the bowl into the dishpan and stirred the water with his forearm. He seemed very good at all of this, for somebody who didn’t have any home or responsibilities. He had finished with the plates: they were neatly stacked in four pillars on the taller of the two tables. Now he started in on the mugs.

‘I can wipe,’ said Barli, coming up beside him and taking a cloth. ‘Da’s taking care of the latecomers.’

The man looked at him again, not quite quizzically and with that strange knowing gleam. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I would welcome the help.’

They worked in silence for a few minutes, but Barli found that he just could not keep his mouth shut. Mam always said he was too inquisitive, and if he didn’t watch it folks would take him for nosey. Still he couldn’t help it. He had been wondering and puzzling all night long, and he finally had a chance to ask a question or two.

‘My Da says you’re a Ranger and you don’t got a home,’ he said. ‘Is that true?’

‘I suppose it is, in a way,’ said the man. ‘I certainly don’t own a comfortable little house in a peaceable village, if that’s what he means.’

‘What else could he mean?’ asked Barli.

The man arched an eyebrow. ‘What else indeed,’ he said in a singsong way.

‘What do you do? For a living, I mean?’ Barli pressed, encouraged that he had not yet been told to hush up and work.

‘What I must,’ said the Ranger. ‘Lately that has meant wandering in the Wild.’

That did not sound like any sort of a living to Barli. He thought about the wide, wild lands beyond the comfortable town wall; away from the farms and cotholdings that surrounded Bree. There was nothing out there but trees and rocks and trouble. Everybody knew that!

‘What do you eat out in the Wild?’ Barli asked worriedly.

‘What I can carry and what I can catch,’ said the Ranger. ‘I’ve had no time for hunting, not in three weeks, and there’s a limit to what a man can carry on his back if he wants to keep limber, even if the burden grows lighter each day. Tomorrow I’ll go out in the woods and sniff out a rabbit or two. That should see me through quite nicely.’

That made a little more sense. Rabbit was very nice, when spiced and roasted and served up with parsnips and potatoes and good fresh bread. Barli found that he felt a bit better. ‘Where do you sleep?’ he asked.

‘Tonight I’ll be sleeping in one of your vacant rooms, provided your father was content with my work,’ the tall man said. Barli didn’t notice that it was not much of an answer. ‘I understand the inn is not at capacity tonight.’

‘No. We almost never are. Half-full, lots of the time. Tonight it’ll be about three-quarters, because folks from Combe and Staddle won’t want to ride home in the sleet,’ said Barli. ‘Mam says we’d do better trade if Da would let her wash the sheets after every guest, instead of just once a fortnight when it’s that room’s turn on the schedule. He says soap’s too expensive, and we’d have to take on more help, and most travelling folks wouldn’t know a clean bed if it jumped on them.’

A wistful look flicked through the man’s bright eyes, but only for an instant. Then he shrugged his shoulder and dragged the rag out of a hobbit-sized mug with a squelch. ‘I think you’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘That’s something to consider when you’re an innkeeper yourself. Sometimes it’s the travelling folk who most appreciate the little luxuries like clean sheets.’

Barli found himself wondering if this man had ever had a bed of his own, with clean sheets and a fat straw mattress with a goose-down pad on top of it, and a quilt sewn by his mother and two nice, plump pillows in a neat little room where he could shut the door when his sister was too irritating. He wondered where Rangers came from, and how they got to be Rangers. He supposed, with some surprise, that this tall stranger must have had a mother once upon a time. He wondered what she would have thought if she knew how her son was living. His own Mam would have been sad and worried and ashamed. She always said she wanted Barli to amount to something, which as far as he could see meant making a good success of The Pony and settling down with a nice wife.

'Did you ever have a bed?' he said before he could stop himself. He flushed crimson. This was almost certainly a rude question.

But the man only curled his lip again and tilted his head to one side, pouring out a tall tankard and handing it over. 'Why, yes,' he said. 'Not so very long ago I had a most comfortable bed, in a fine stone house with a walled garden on a very respectable street.'

'Why did you leave it?' asked Barli, baffled. Who would leave a house on a respectable street to sleep out in some ditch, or beg a night's shelter from a niggardly innkeeper?

'The bed was comfortable, but my situation was not,' the stranger said with a finality that was almost a command. Barli didn't stop to wonder whether he was commanding the boy, or himself. The stanger bowed his head once more over his wet work.

‘Do you know any stories?’ Barli asked, unable to think of any other way to change the subject.

The man looked up from the dishwater in some surprise and very nearly smiled. ‘One or two.’

‘Would you tell one?’ Barli said hopefully. He hadn’t expected the peculiar man to be so patient with his questions, and it didn’t hurt to ask.

‘Very well. What sort of a story would you like?’

‘Something about faraway lands,’ answered Barli promptly, scarcely believing his luck. This was his favourite kind of story. Sometimes when there were travellers from afar staying at the inn, he would creep down into the front hall and listen as they told their tales around the common room fire. He wasn’t usually allowed across the threshold after seven o’clock, but Mam seemed to tolerate him lurking on the other side of the doorway so long as he didn’t make a nuisance of himself.

‘Faraway lands…’ the stranger said in a curious tone, and all of a sudden his eyes were far away, too. Then he came back to himself and nodded, falling back into the rhythm of his washing again. ‘Very well. There is a land called Rohan, and it is very far away. If you follow the Greenway almost to its end you will come there, and you will find a country that is very flat, with only low rolling hills instead of the great stony ones in this country, and very few forests. The people of Rohan are skilled horsemen, and the husbandry of their animals is unequalled among Men. The horses of Rohan are fair and fleet and very clever, and the best of these horses belong only to the King…’

Note: I had no intention of posting so soon, but the response to the first part was so overwhelmingly lovely. Thank you!

Part Two: A Tale: November, 2980

‘Now, the King’s particular horses were not housed in a stable or a paddock, as you would usually keep horses. They roamed in a herd in the wide plain about the city,’ said the Ranger-stranger, still methodically scrubbing at the sticky residue of beer in the bottom of the mugs. ‘They could be gathered at need, and they would respond if they wished to the call of the King’s horn, but for the most part they were left to do as they pleased, nearly as wild and free as their long-ago ancestors had been. But of course every now and then a horse would require special care or some sort of attention that made it necessary for the animal to be sheltered in the city for a time.’

Barli listened raptly. He knew next to nothing about horses, except that you didn’t ever, ever try to get past one by ducking under its belly. The idea of a whole herd of horses just running around in the open was remarkable, and so very exotic: exactly what he best liked about stories of distant lands. He belatedly remembered that he was meant to be drying the mug in his hand, and wiped it quickly.

‘One such horse was a mare called Dicea. Her dam was the King’s most prized mare, and though her sire was not known there were only three stallions in the herd fleet enough to pursue that mare.’  Here he paused for a moment, thoughtfully. Likely he was wondering whether he had said more than a young boy ought to hear, as if Barli had never seen a tomcat mount a she-cat. Then the man went on. ‘Dicea was a two-year filly when she was found by one of the King’s herdsmen limping behind the rest of the horses. She was found to have a thorn in her fetlock, as long as your forefinger there.’

Barli looked down at his hands without even thinking of it. It seemed natural to do whatever the storyteller suggested. He looked up again. ‘That’s an awful big thorn.’

‘It was,’ the man said gravely.  His voice had changed, but Barli did not notice. It seemed such a natural part f the ebb and flow of the tale. ‘The King himself had to come out to fetch her, for she was skittish and horses of her blood but seldom consent to being handled by anyone other than the King and those of his line. He brought her into the city and housed her in the high stables nearest his Golden Hall, and a farrier drew out the thorn and bound the leg.’

‘Was she all right?’ asked Barli breathlessly. He never would have thought he could be this anxious about a horse, but somehow he was.

‘She was. The wound took no infection, and it healed well. But the farrier recommended that she be kept stabled for some days, so that she could be watched.’ The Ranger took a stack of soup-bowls and put it into the dishwater.  He paused to look appraisingly at Barli. ‘Now the King’s son, Théoden, was at this time a young boy – very near to your own age, by my guess. He was a spirited boy, and he was a gifted rider, and in all other ways he possessed the qualities befitting a King’s son, but he was also a mischievous lad and not always obedient. So no one was especially surprised to find one morning that Dicea was gone from her stall, and Théoden was absent from the breakfast board. It took some time to put the two disappearances together, for it was mid-morning before anyone thought to seek the gatekeeper of the city and ask if he had seen the two ride out.

‘By a curious mischance, the gatekeeper had been taken with a case of the flux, and had been absent from his post several times through the night.’ Barli giggled at this, and the man regarded him very seriously. ‘No laughing matter, Master Butterbur, when it means the city wall can so easily by breached.’

‘I s’pose not,’ Barli said embarrassedly. He thought about what would happen if one of Bree’s gatekeepers left his post so many times in a night that someone could pass through unnoticed. It wouldn’t be such a problem if anyone went out, but if some strange, dangerous person came in…

‘So it was assumed that the King’s son and the little mare had slipped out near dawn to go riding the plains. Théoden had tried such things before, though never with one of his father’s most precious of horses, and no one was much concerned. Dicea was young to be ridden, but she was strong and the boy was small, and he was a fine rider. No one grew afraid until the hour grew late and the sunset threatened and still neither boy nor horse had returned.’

Tim had been moving to take the butter-box to the scullery, but he hesitated on the threshold, listening raptly. Whether the stranger noticed this or not, Barli could not say, but just then the man turned to him and said; ‘Half a minute, young master. Let me put up the plates so that you’ve more room for those mugs.’

As he moved to pick up the first stack of plates, Tim hurried into the scullery. The Ranger seemed particularly wary of dropping his burden, for he moved more slowly now than he had while bearing the full beer-trays. The old hobbit was back in the kitchen proper before he had put away the last pile. ‘There was no use in mounting a search in the dark,’ the tall man said promptly, returning to the dishpan and picking up the rag again. ‘Though I fear the King and Queen passed a sleepless night in fear for their boy. He was the great darling of their house, you see, for though they had three daughters he was their only boy and the heir to the throne. He was later somewhat supplanted in darlinghood when another girl-child was born, but that was a number of years after this tale of mine.’

Barli wrinkled his nose. He didn’t much care for the idea that a boy his age might get a baby sister some years later. He certainly didn’t want one. He loved Meadowlark plenty, and even liked her most of the time, but she was older. That was much better.

‘When dawn came, word went out to the King’s men that search parties were to be assembled. The Lord Mayor of the city offered his own Riders also, and a muster of more than a hundred men was gathered – as many as could be spared without harming the city’s defences,’ the Ranger said. ‘Among those chosen to search was a certain man from the Lord Mayor’s company. He had been but lately promoted to field sergeant, which meant that when drills were given to the Riders it was he who led them through their repetitions until the manoeuvers were done to the Captain’s satisfaction. It was not a popular job, but he did it well. He was a young man, and he had been in the city somewhat less than a year. He had not grown up among the horsemen, and had not spent the early years of his manhood as they had, galloping across great swaths of land at a high speed and looking down at the earth from a lofty saddle. Though he could ride as well as any other, he had been raised to go about on his own two feet. He knew the earth he walked well, and he knew how to look for subtle signs and to track both game and folk in the Wild.’

‘Was he a warrior?’ Barli asked eagerly. This was all very exciting, and the fact that it was a story of a young boy instead of merely grown people made it all the more so. Tim was listening too, though still going ponderously about his end-of-evening chores.

‘He was,’ said the Ranger. ‘The other Riders called him The Eagle, for he was swift and his eyesight was keener than that of any other man in the company. When the orders to assemble were given, he made use of both. He ran from the barracks and down to the gate while the others were preparing to mount horses. There he looked for signs of a young, unshod mare or a boy’s costly boots. Near the gate itself the tracks were muddled with all that day’s traffic, but farther out it was easy to see that no such feet had gone forth from the city walls. So the young soldier went to his captain and said that he did not believe the boy had ridden off onto the plain.’

‘And had he?’ gasped Barli.

‘The Captain thought that he had,’ the man said soberly. ‘The Lord Mayor thought he had, and the King himself was certain. So the sergeant was told to hold his tongue and fetch his steed and hurry out to join the other men at once, for they were already assembled and he now was tardy. That is a grave matter among soldiers, you know. One must never lag behind.’

Barli didn’t know anything about that, for there were no proper soldiers in Bree. There was only the Watch, and they didn’t really go anywhere all as a group. But he didn’t say this: he was too eager for the rest of the tale.

‘But the sergeant was certain that the King’s son had not passed the city walls that way, and the gate was the only way to get out of the town and onto the plain. The King’s city had no second gate, like Bree has. But it did have one very important thing in common with your own town here.’

‘What was it?’ asked Barli, still more excited. He felt that he could imagine it all: the walled town, the soldiers on their proud horses, and the young sergeant on foot, lagging behind but certain that his captain was wrong.

‘Like Bree, one side of the city rose up upon a stony slope,’ the Ranger said, gesturing with one soapy hand before falling back to work. ‘Yet where Bree sits at the foot of a hill, this city was at the foot of a great mountain. The mountain was so tall that even in high summer the snow upon its crown did not melt, and its sides were riddled with cliffs and chasms and meandering byways that could not be mapped nor penetrated by attackers of any significant number. Yet one man might find his way through them and up into the high places, if he was patient and lucky. It was this way that the sergeant believed that young Théoden had gone. This is the last of the cups, now: dry it carefully. We’ve got all this way without breaking a single one!’

There was a playful glint in his eye as he said this, but Barli didn’t think broken cups a matter for jest. Obviously the Ranger-stranger did not know what Da would do if they did drop one.

Now finished with the tableware, the man cast his eyes on the heap of dirty pots, grease-crusted skillets, and pans with the food baked on in black crusts. Old Tim was a fine cook, perhaps the finest in Bree, but he was a prodigal dish-soiler. Nick had often complained of it, and it was likely another reason he had been so eager to be gone.

Before the man could pick up the first pot, however, the kitchen door flew open and Da came in, carrying two large trays heaped high with dishes. They must have come from one of the private dining rooms, for the residue on them had long since gone cold and congealed. Da set the trays down unceremoniously on the table and sighed in long-suffering irritation.

‘Just about everyone in the house wanting hot water tonight,’ he grumbled. ‘Tim, you leave that be and get the kettles boiling: the upstairs stove's noways sufficient for this! Why folks choose the coldest night yet this year for a good wash I’ll never know! Want me to do the hauling, I s’pose. I half think we ought to start charging for water!’

He blustered out of the room, still grumbling to himself. Barli watched him go. Da often said such things, but he would never dare to try charging guests for wash-water. It would have ruined the reputation of The Pony in three weeks.

When the door swung closed again, Barli turned his gaze on the dirty dishes. The tall man was already sorting them into heaps for washing, his sharp eyes searching the remnants of the meal. There was a wax rind pared from a wedge of cheese, and he dragged that over his bottom teeth to scrape away the thin layer of eatable stuff that clung to it. He found a few more chicken bones, all of which received the same thorough treatment as the first one had. It looked like hard work for little reward. Tim had given up on trying to look busy and was staring at the hungry stranger in disbelief. When the man picked up a scrap of bread crust and began wiping the clotted gravy from one of the plates, the hobbit threw up his hands.

‘Stop it now, just stop it!’ he cried. ‘It don’t look right at all, eating like that! Sit down and I’ll fix you up a bit of something. The master don’t need to know if you get it down quick.’

The man froze, the unpleasant-looking morsel halfway to his eager mouth, and his eyes were fixed on Old Tim. There was something happening behind them, all right, but Barli didn’t know what. The grey almost looked like storm-clouds now, circling tumultuously in a darkening sky. Then the Ranger’s hand fell to his side and the crust of bread fell onto the plate where he had been piling chicken bones and other things not even a famished man could digest.

‘That’s not necessary,’ he said quietly. ‘If it pains you so, I will stop.’ Then he went to the waste bucket next to the slop pail, and tipped the contents of the plate into it. He looked at Barli with determined freshness. ‘Now where were we? Ah, yes. The mountain.’

‘I’m going to fix you something,’ Tim repeated, marching around and stretching on his toes to grab one of the clean bowls from the middle of the man-sized table. ‘It isn’t right, someone going hungry with all this good food about. It isn’t decent. All very well for Mr. Butterbur to save a penny here and there, but I can’t stand by and—’

‘I cannot eat it,’ the stranger said, more softly still. His eyes were very kind when he looked at the hobbit. ‘You are good-hearted to wish it, but I will not break my word. I agreed to work for the leavings, and now they are gone I have had that part of my recompense, meagre though it was. If it is any comfort, little master, it is the shelter from the storm that is my greatest need tonight.’

‘How would that be any comfort to anybody?’ Old Tim huffed, giving the Ranger the blackest look that Barli had ever seen on his round, honest face. ‘I think you’re a fool, do you know that?’

‘Mayhap I am,’ said the man, as if he half believed it himself. ‘But I will bide by my bargains. The mountain!’ he exclaimed forcefully, beginning to carry the dishes over to the counter that had been empty only a minute ago. ‘So the sergeant—’

‘The Eagle!’ Barli said, anxious to be back into the magic of the tale and far removed from hunger and want and (so far as he could see) blind mulishness.

‘Quite so.’ The Ranger’s lip curled in that peculiar way of is. ‘The Eagle disobeyed his captain. He did not fetch his horse and tack, and he did not ride down to the muster at the city gate. Instead he climbed up through the streets, up past the market and the houses of the merchants, up past the mansions of the great lords, up even beyond the Golden Hall itself, to where the gardens of the Queen gave upon the stony slopes.

‘It is not easy to track anything over bare rock, but there are signs the most careful of seekers may find. Still it took him until midmorning before he was sure that he followed the right trail. Once he had found them, the tracks were unmistakable. A young horse leaves a very different spoor than an older one, and it is easy to see if a hoof has never been shod. The sergeant followed these tracks through many twisting ways, and across a bubbling spring that raced down the mountain and might have obscured the tracks from any less careful hunter. Then at last, when the afternoon was waning, the sergeant came to a place where not only the track, but the trail itself ended. There was a deep chasm that broke the path and plunged down into darkness far below.’

Barli gasped, his eyes enormous. Tim was wrathfully scrubbing his own worktable now. Barli had forgotten all about the dish in his hand as he looked up at the stranger in awe. ‘Did they fall into it? Was the boy… was he killed?’

‘That was what the sergeant feared at first,’ the Ranger admitted, nodding his head. ‘But as he stood there in his dismay he heard a nicker and a high whinny, and when he looked up across the deep gorge what should he see but the King’s handsome little mare? He realized at once that she must have jumped the gap and landed safe upon the other side. But there was no sign of her rider.’

‘What did The Eagle do?’ asked Barli.

‘He steeled himself and he stepped back a few paces, and he ran to leap the gorge,’ said the man. ‘It was a little less than eight feet wide, and he made the jump cleanly – even as the mare must have done, but with only two feet to land on. Startled, Dicia reared and galloped off, but she returned a minute later when the man whistled and called her by name. She was still wearing a saddle and bridle, but the former had been put on inexpertly and the girth was too loose. It was not loose enough that the saddle could slip from her back, but when the sergeant tested it he found that it slid badly from side to side. It now seemed obvious what had happened: at some point young Théoden had slipped from the saddle and fallen from the horse.

‘The sergeant was sick with dread, for it could so easily have happened in the jumping of the chasm. But he could not give up hope entirely, and he asked the horse what had happened to her rider.’

‘He asked her?’ Barli wrinkled his nose at this. The story had been going along so well, so perfectly believable and wholly riveting, but this was silly. Everyone knew that horses couldn’t talk. ‘Horses can’t talk,’ he declared irritably.

‘True,’ the man agreed. ‘But sometimes a clever horse can understand. Not the words, perhaps, but what the speaker truly means. Either this horse understood what the sergeant was trying to ask of her, or she herself was so worried for her young lord that she was waiting only the invitation to help him. Whatever the case, she led the young Rider on, around a bend and up a twisted, stony way to a place where there was a bad jog in the rock. It was a perfect place for an inexperienced horse to stumble, and lose a rider from an insecure saddle. And there, just in the shelter of an outcropping of rock, the sergeant found Théoden, the son of the King.’

Barli longed to hear more, but the door shot open again and Da was back, carrying the two big kettles he used to haul water to the rooms. He thumped them down in the same place he had left the trays, and then heaved the still larger kettle from the fire to fill the other two. ‘You come along with me, my son,’ he said briskly. ‘I want help carrying the towels. Tim, you go on and fill this up again and see about getting a start wiping down the tables. The men staying in Number Eight are still idling over their wine, but maybe that’ll give them the hint it’s time to be off to bed. And you!’ he added much more sharply, scowling at the Ranger. ‘Haven’t you done with them dishes yet? Get on with it, or it’ll soon be Saturday!’

It would soon be Saturday whatever they did, Barli thought. He knew far better than to say it, though, just as he knew he could not protest being dragged away from the storyteller. He trotted after his father to the cupboard that Mam always kept stocked full of neat, laundered towels. For half an hour he hurried from room to room, leaving the cloths where they were wanted and listening to Da’s cheerful banter. Between each room he scowled blackly and muttered about folks who didn’t think an innkeeper needed any sleep at all.

When at last he was dismissed, Barli ran back downstairs as quick as he could go. Da would be busy for a while yet, collecting the used towels and taking any last requests from guests before they went to their beds. In the kitchen, he found the stranger sloshing brown-hued wash water around the bottom of the big frying pan while he scoured it. His back was bent right into the effort, and his face set in a grim determined mask that was a little frightening. In the chimney corner, Old Tim was working at his midnight luncheon. It was a part of his pay: all the proper hobbity meals from midday on, and one last extra mealtime right before he went off home, on account of having to work on so late. Da didn’t grudge him that any more than he truly grudged his wages. Tim was the very best, and he ran his kitchen without waste.

Barli’s own stomach grumbled and he went to the breadbox. He was allowed to help himself to a bread-and-butter sandwich whenever he wanted one, and he wanted one now. He was beginning to feel his tiredness, too, and he knew he ought to go to bed, but he did so want to hear the rest of the story. A nice sandwich would refresh him very well.

But he stopped with his hand on the cover of the box. He looked back over his shoulder to the man at the dishpan. It wouldn’t be a nice thing at all, to stand there still working and not even half-fed while somebody else was eating. He guessed maybe Tim hadn’t stopped to think of that, but he would. He left the bread where it was and went back to the other side of the room.

‘Will you tell me what happened?’ he said meekly.

‘Hmm? What?’ The man looked up from his work in bewilderment, like one awakening from a dream to an unexpected question. His eyes took a moment to focus on Barli, and he blinked twice in rapid succession. ‘Oh, to young Théoden and the mare,’ he said.

‘Yes!’ Barli couldn’t help sounding eager.

The Ranger turned back to the dish and fell to scrubbing with fresh vengeance. ‘The sergeant went to the boy, and saw at once that his leg had been broken in the fall. Théoden was frightened. He didn’t know the man, you see, because the sergeant was just a servant of the Lord Mayor, and not worth the notice of a King’s son at all. But he was in pain and he was in great need of help, and after a while the sergeant managed to convince him that he would do him no harm – though he made plain that he had to tend the leg and that would not be easy for the boy. At last Théoden did not shy away when the sergeant came near, and he was able to get a good look at his leg.

‘It was not such a bad break: no more than most lads see at least once in a lifetime. But they were halfway up a mountain on the wrong side of a gorge, and night was coming fast. It was autumn, and the nights could be very cold. They had neither food nor blankets, though the sergeant had his cloak and a skin of water. He bade the boy drink, and he wrapped him as warmly as he could. There was nothing with which to splint the leg, for there were no trees on that bare rocky incline. But like all of the Riders, The Eagle was accustomed to carrying his sword wherever he went. So he unbuckled his belt, and he slid the sheath from it. Then he took the sword from the sheath, and with a firm blow of the blade cleaved it in half midway up its length.’

Barli frowned in puzzlement. ‘The sheath? What good would that do?’

‘The sheaths used by the men of Rohan are not leather like those you see on knives and short swords in Bree-land,’ the man explained. ‘They are made of thin wood and beautifully ornamented with bright paints. Rent in twain, the two halves of the scabbard made a good firm splint. So the sergeant bade the boy look away and speak to comfort the horse, and while Théoden was thus occupied the man set his leg. It was sudden and it was very painful, but the King’s son was valiant. He cried out, but he did not weep. And he lay still while The Eagle bound up the splint with strips of cloth from his shirt.’

All this was rather too much for Barli. It sounded awful, and he felt a little uneasy in his grumbly stomach. But he could not help but listen on. ‘What then?’ he asked.

‘Then they had to get down the mountain.’ There was a splash and a rush of water as he took the big pan and tipped it out. All the baked-on grime was gone, and the Ranger dried it swiftly before hanging it up on its peg, down near his hip where Tim could reach it easily. ‘The boy could not walk, but with his leg splinted he was able to keep a seat on the horse. Boys in Rohan learn to ride at a very young age indeed, and as the King’s son Théoden had had the best of tutors in the art. His usual form was better than that of many folk you can see riding around Bree-land. Making sure the tack was properly tightened this time, the sergeant put the boy on Dicea’s back and they started down. He walked beside the horse instead of leading her, lest Théoden should slide from the saddle with his injured leg out of the stirrup as it was. It must have been very painful for him to ride thus, but Théoden did not complain. He was a brave child, and in time grew to be a brave young man.’

He was interrupted by the thud of the kitchen door as Da came back in. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Last one’s abed.’ He looked at Barli and wiped his hands on his apron. ‘Didn’t think we was going to get through it, three people short like that. Couldn’t have done it without you, my boy! You'll make an innkeeper, and no mistake.'

Quietly, the Ranger went to the back door and opened it. Then he took a firm hold of each handle of the heavy dishpan and heaved it from the table. Three-quarters full it weighed nearly seventy pounds, but the man lifted it as easily as Da could lift a loaded apple-box. Not even slightly bowlegged, he walked steadily for the door. Even though his father was looking at him and had been speaking to him, Barli could not help watching in awe.

‘You done good work tonight,’ Da said. ‘Do you want a piece of apple pie before bed?’

Barli did, very much, but he felt guilty even thinking about it. Old Tim was eating peaceably at his table, but outside in the freezing rain the stranger was still working on, hungry. He couldn’t have had even half a bowl’s worth of table scraps, no matter how busy the night had been. Folks in Bree just didn't leave much by way of tailings.

‘No, thank you, Da,’ he whispered.

His father frowned, puzzled, and then he shrugged. In came the Ranger again, hunched against the stinging sleet. He closed the door with his foot and set the dishpan on its side to dry. As he came Da looked at him, and as Da looked his eyes took on a sly gleam. ‘Well, you get off to bed then, son,’ he said fondly, chucking Barli under the chin but looking all the time at the tall man. ‘And you.’ Now his voice was cold and scornful again. ‘The common room floor wants scrubbing. There’s a brush in the bucket by the door: see you do a proper job. Last chore of the night and then we’ll be ready to go for the morning, as agreed.’

Barli craned his neck to look up at his father, not knowing what to do. Again, again Da was trying to get something for nothing. Scrubbing the common room floor was a daily job, all right, but it always waited until morning. That way the muck and mud that patrons tracked in all night could dry so that most of it was whisked away with the willow broom. He had heard the terms of the bargain: the stranger had promised to work until The Pony was shut up and ready for morning. That meant the night work only.

The Ranger-stranger couldn’t possibly know that, of course, and Barli wanted to speak out and tell him. But if he did, Da would box his ears for sure. Da saw a way to get out of another unpleasant chore that usually fell to Mam, and he was taking it.

Then Barli realized the stranger had not been looking at Da as he gave his orders, but at him instead. He squirmed a little under the keen gaze, but he could not help stealing his own look at the tall man’s face. For an instant, just for an instant, lips tightened and brows furrowed and eyes narrowed in anger. He had seen the truth in Barli’s face, and he knew that he was being cheated. Now he would speak out after all. Now he would go for that great long sword. Now…

Now? Now his face was blank and impassive, his eyes veiled and all at once very weary. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said crisply. ‘Warm water, or cold?’

Da frowned disgustedly. ‘How would I know that? It’s woman’s work. Woman's or beggar's. Come on, my lad: off to bed now. You done me proud tonight.’

Normally the adulation in his father’s voice would have warmed Barli to the core. Tonight it left him colder than ever. He let himself be led away numbly, as the stranger who knew such a wonderful, terrible, exciting tale stooped to pick up the scrub-brush and pail without another word. The empty common room seemed enormous, its shadowed corners vast in the glow of the embers and the three smoky lamps. The floor looked big as the village square to Barli, and every bit as muddy. Down the hall they went, and Da stopped at the door to Barli’s little bedroom.

‘Goodnight, now, Barli,’ he said. Then he did something he did not usually do, and bent to kiss the crown of the boy’s head. He grinned. ‘Been a very good night, on the whole. Customers happy, all sound abed, work done, free pair of hands to help, and the money-box is so full I’ve had to hide some of it in your mother’s sewing-basket! Shhh: don’t tell!’

‘I won’t,’ Barli said reflexively. He wanted to hug his father. He wanted to enjoy this moment when Da’s mood was good and he was feeling loving, and he wanted to be happy after a good day’s work, but he knew it hadn’t been. It had been a bad day’s work his father had done: bad as any rum trick dishonest old Will Ferny might pull on an unsuspecting farmer. He had cheated that man, and cheated him horribly. Just because he was a Ranger didn't make it right.

So when Da went off to check the casks in the cellar – a nightly ritual that he credited with the good repute of his brew – Barli slunk guiltily into his room. He took off his clothes and washed his face and neck, and he put on his nightshirt and he brushed his hair. And he couldn’t stop thinking about the Ranger. Da would be down below for at least half an hour, and after that he would go out to check the horses and put out the lamp. He might not come back to the common room for an hour or more. Barli could slip out in and be back long before then.

The floor in the front corridor was very cold beneath his bare feet, but it warmed almost at once over the threshold into the room still redolent with the smells of supper and pipeweed and mulled bear and the heat of many bodies. It was darker still now, for the fire was dying down under a thick blanket of ash. Even so he could see that all the chairs had been turned upside-down with the seats on the tables, and the benches had been stacked four high. At first he couldn’t see the stranger, for he was over on the far side of the room in the gloom, but he heard the swish-swish of the coarse-bristled brush, and he could smell the vinegar mixture that Mam always used to wash the floor. Tim must have told him how to mix it.

He was doing a proper job: he had started by the kitchen door where the floor was cleanest, and he was working out. As he came into view, on his knees with his left hand bracing him and his right working the brush, Barli felt another guilty wrenching deep in his guts. He wanted to flee back to his room before he was noticed. The man hadn’t looked up yet; hadn't seen him . His shaggy hair was falling to hide his face, and he kept his head bowed over his work. The brush raised a muddy froth as he came to an especially dirty place, and he dipped it into the bucket to rinse it. Mam always said that nothing smarted on dishpan hands like vinegar: that was why she had Nick wash the breakfast dishes. Nick, who would have rather done just about anything than scrub the common-room floor, had never complained about that.

Mind made up, Barli moved on a very quiet, bare foot to turn for the door. From the middle of the room came a quiet voice, rough with weariness.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t the heart for storytelling just now,’ the man said in low apology. ‘The end of the tale will have to wait for another day.’

Barli swallowed. He had been caught out, but he didn’t know how. He hadn’t made a sound, and the man hadn’t looked up even once. ‘I didn’t come about the tale,’ he said. Then, unable to restrain himself, he blurted out; ‘What’s wrong with you?’

The stranger raised his head at last, that dark, dark hair falling around his face. His nose was long and very straight. The bones of his face stood out eerily in the dim lamplight. His eyes seemed to have a light of their own. Then he pushed himself up with his left hand, rather stiffly, and sat back on his booted heels with the scrub-brush resting against his leg. The knees of his queer, skin-snug wool trousers were soaked from crawling across the sections of floor he had just washed.

‘Wrong with me?’ he said, nonplussed. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Why’d you let him do it? Cheat you like that? You saw: I know you did.’ Not caring about the mud and grime beneath his bare feet, Barli crossed the room and stopped just short of the fresh wetness where the Ranger had been working. ‘This is a morning job, and he’s making you do it because he doesn’t want to, and he knows he’ll have to if you don’t, and he knows you want a bed so bad you’ll even – even—’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. He had no idea what he had been about to say.

‘What should I have done?’ the stranger asked, his voice still very mild.

‘Argued with him! Told him you wouldn’t do it! Told him if he wanted you to he’d have to give you a proper supper! Anything at all!’ Barli raged.

Then the man did something that surprised him more than anything else the entire evening. He laughed. It was a sour, chortling laugh that fell cold in the big empty room, but Barli thought there was a note of genuine merriment there too: as if the man knew that he was being put through his paces out of spite and hated it, but saw that there was some incomprehensibly funny side to all of this, too.

‘What a comedown that would have been!’ he chuckled, and he heaved himself back onto hands and knees and began scrubbing again. ‘To go from matching wits with one of the keenest minds among living Men to quarrelling with a village innkeeper over scrubbing a floor. Far better to bend my back and get it done.'

Barli drew back, puzzled and a little frightened. He didn’t understand this man: didn’t understand him at all. He was hungry, and he wouldn’t eat even when he was offered good food, just because he had given his word to work for table scraps. He was tired, but he kept on working even though he had already done all the work he had given that same word to do. And now he was laughing while he scoured the mud and street-muck from a floor he had been cheated into washing. For he was still laughing, almost silently, as he moved the brush in rightward-moving spirals on the floorboards worn smooth by years of shuffling feet. His shoulders were fairly shaking with mirth.

He started to back away, but his hip bumped one of the tables and he had to turn quickly to keep one of the chairs from tumbling onto the floor. Barli caught it and settled it back, and when he looked at the stranger again he had stopped his inexplicable spasms of amusement. Now he was silent again, and serious: working with such single-minded diligence that it was as if the scrubbing of this floor was tied up in the very fate of the world.

Now that he was once more patient and determined in his mortifying lot, Barli felt the need to do something kind for the man. His father had been spiteful, and he didn’t want this Ranger-whatever-that-was to go away thinking this was the way folks were treated at The Prancing Pony – even if it apparently was. He had no idea what to do, but Tim would know. Old Tim always knew what needed to be done, whatever the situation. It was another reason Da couldn’t do without him.

Distraught and longing to turn the whole ugly problem over to an adult’s hands, Barli ran awkwardly across the wet floor to the kitchen. He didn’t even pause to think that he left muddy footprints actross the clean expanse of floor as he did so. It was such a relief to come through into the well-lit room. Mam always insisted on plenty of candles in the kitchen. It wouldn’t do to send out a plate with a hair or a beetle in it, just because Old Tim couldn’t see it.

The hobbit was at the fire, doling himself up another helping of food. He looked up as the boy came in. ‘What’s the matter, lad?’ he asked with a sigh, tapping his serving spoon hard on the plate to dislodge the heap of mashed potatoes. There were plenty of those left for tomorrow: more than enough to top the cottage pies. ‘Your da’s down checking the casks if he’s wanted.’

‘Can’t we do something?’ asked Barli. ‘It isn’t fair.’

‘Fair don’t mean much once you get to be old enough to make your own way in the world,’ said Tim sagely. He took the gravy boat from the warming shelf and poured some of the dark, steaming fluid over the potatoes and three thick slices of ham. The bowl of peas was almost empty and he scooped up the whole lot, glistening with melted butter. ‘That Man out there’s made his choices. He made whatever choice left him without nowhere to go in the world, and he made the choice that let him get hungry enough that he don’t got any pride left, and he made the choice to strike a deal with Mr. Butterbur. Made the choice to stick with it, too, even though the master’d be none the wiser. Don’t rightly know why he done that last, but he done it.’

‘But…’ Barli protested feebly. Tim went to the breadbox and took out a good thick hunk, spreading it liberally with butter. He took out a second, did the same, and held it out to the boy.

‘Go on, eat up,’ he said. ‘You can’t work on ‘til the small hours on just the one supper: that’s Big Folks’s folly. If you want to join me for a proper sit-down woth all the trimmings, you go right on ahead. You didn't make any tomfool bargains.'

Barli took the bread and bit into it, his growling stomach refusing to let him resist on principle. He munched eagerly, tasting the clean, fresh, yeast lightness of Tim’s good dough, and the salty sweetness of the butter, and for a moment he didn’t care who else was hungry or tired. He had worked hard today, and his whole body could feel it. He deserved something to eat before he went to his bed. They all did.

Old Tim had set down his plate, but he didn’t resume his chair. Instead he took his knife and cut one of the pieces of ham right up the middle. He sliced one half into thirds, and ate them one by one, leaving the other half whole. With his fork he scattered a few peas over the plate as if they had rolled there. Then he took a very noticeable spoonful of the mashed potatoes, and he ate it. The gravy pooled atop the rest of the mound began to trickle into the bare place. Tim considered, head tilted to one side. Then he broke the tip off the hunk of bread and ate that, too, positioning the rest like a painter putting the final touch on a portrait. He crossed the room to put his used cutlery next to the dishpan, and he brought a fresh knife and spoon to lay beside the untouched fork at the table. Then he nodded in satisfaction.

‘I’m off,’ he said abruptly, reaching for his cloak and wrapping it warmly around his shoulders. ‘Guess my eyes was bigger than my stomach. You get off to bed, Master Barli, and don’t you fret no more ‘bout other people’s choices. On your way out, stop and tell that fool Ranger that he ought to change his water. And he ought to wash up my dishes, too, before he goes back to it. Gravy left too long sticks like glue.’

Then he opened the heavy back door and strode out into the night. Barli watched him go, bewildered. He wanted to run after Tim and scold him for selfishness. Tim always washed his own dishes, even when Mam was in the kitchen and offered to do them for him. Why was he picking at the poor strange man who’d been working hard all evening for no better reward than the shreds off chicken bones and a few swallows of stone-cold soup? But the hobbit was gone and the door shut fast, and Barli’s toes were curling from the chilly draft that had come in through the door.

Then he looked at the plate again, with its heap of potatoes still faintly steaming, and the good thick pieces of meat, and the bread that the hobbit hadn’t even bitten into, though he’d torn a piece away, and he understood. Old Tim’s eyes weren’t bigger than his stomach: he’d taken that second helping on purpose, and left it almost untouched but unfit for tomorrow’s patrons. Tailings.

la

Barli slept deeply, untroubled by dreams or the stirrings of his conscience. He had delivered Tim’s message, and had watched the Ranger go back into the kitchen with the bucket of water to be changed. Then he had hurried off to his bed, much comforted. When he heard the first morning sounds of his father starting up the upstairs stove to heat more wash-water, he got out of bed. Da would still be in a good mood today, and Barli knew what he was going to do. He was going to ask his father, who had praised him for his hard work, for a favour. He would explain about the story if he had to, but he hoped he wouldn’t. Da wouldn’t understand that.

When he heard his father coming down the stairs, Barli was dressed and waiting. He came out into the corridor with a sunny smile on his face, though the sun was only a faint grey suggestion somewhere beyond the town walls on another grey November morning. ‘Morning, Da!’ he said happily.

His father looked at him and grunted acknowledgment. ‘Good boy: up before I call,’ he said with his usual taciturn approval. ‘Go and make the bed in Number Three. That long-legged good-for-nothing’s off already, so we can get an early start on the chores.’

Barli frowned, not sure he had heard his father correctly. But there had been no other good-for-nothing at The Pony last night. ‘The Ranger? He’s gone?’

‘Long gone,’ said Da dismissively. ‘Waiting when I got up, he was, wanting the front door unlocked so he could be on his way. Went striding off into the gloom, proud as you please, as if he weren’t a beggar at all. Strange sort, Rangers. Never trust a vagrant.’

‘But…’ Barli was flabbergasted. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. He was supposed to talk Da into letting him bring the man a good hot bowl of porridge, which Old Tim was probably already starting in the kitchen. And then he was supposed to hear the rest of the story: how The Eagle had got Théoden safely down the mountain, and what the King had said when he got his son back, and what happened to the mare who could understand what a man was asking her even if she didn’t know the words. Now he would never know what happened.

‘I told you: they’re queer. Not right in the head,’ Da said darkly. ‘Have to be half-mad, don’t they? Living wild this time of the year. My advice to you, son? If one of ‘em ever comes begging when you’re the landlord, turn him out to freeze!’

Then he sneezed noisily into his hand and went stumping off towards the kitchen, wiping it on his seat.

Still half disbelieving, Barli ran around the corner to where the door of Number Three stood ajar. He looked in. It was one of the cheapest rooms: small and cramped, with two narrow little beds that often slept a pair of travellers who didn’t even know one another but who could each afford only half the rate. It didn’t have a proper fireplace, but only a little grate. It was cold as the grave, too, and the room wasn’t much better. Da hadn’t troubled to lay a fire: not for a guest who couldn’t pay.

The curtain was pulled back from the window, and a little light filtered in. It was enough for Barli to see that neither bed had been slept in. They were made up just as Meadowlark had left them three days ago. She had a particular way of folding the coverlet down invitingly beneath the pillow. Puzzled, he stepped into the room. On the floor between the two beds was one of the brown wool mats that his mother had been so proud to buy this summer to cosy up the smaller rooms a bit. They hadn’t been very dear at all, which is how she’d managed to talk Da into it. Meadowlark said knowingly that Mam hadn’t talked Da into anything, but Barli didn’t see what she meant by that.

The mat was meant to be flat on the floor, but this one had been rolled up into a fat sausage near the head of the beds. It was squashed down in the middle but plump on each end, as if something heavy and more or less egg-shaped had rested there. The Ranger-stranger had slept here after all, but down on the floor instead of in one of the beds. Remembering what he had said about travelling folks appreciating clean sheets, Barli had to admit that was probably wise. Odd rooms on the first floor were changed every other Tuesday, and this was the off-week. There had been at least half a dozen guests through here since the last change of bedding.

He bent down to shake out the mat, and Barli felt a hollow hurt in his chest. He had thought the tall man and he had been getting on well, despite everything else. He had expected him to want to say goodbye. To wait to say goodbye. And he had made so much last night of keeping his word even when it wasn’t easy. Wasn’t an unfinished story another kind of broken promise?

Perhaps Da was right. Perhaps you couldn’t trust a Ranger.

Note: Keen observers will have noticed that “three parts” has become “four parts”. Oops! Needed more space to fit everything in than I thought. It makes for a better narrative structure.

Part Three: That Ranger: November, 2995

Dreary days were always busy days, and it could hardly get much drearier than this. Looking out from his bedroom in The Prancing Pony Inn was Barliman Butterbur, Proprietor. It was three o’clock in the afternoon: the quietest part of the day and virtually the only time he got to himself. The noontime crowd had moved on, the kitchen and the common room were put to rights, and it would be half an hour before supper preparations would need to begin. Barliman had halfway intended to go down for a quick nap in anticipation of the evening crowds. Somehow he stood transfixed instead, watching through the latticed glass as the inn-yard slowly filled with snow. It was wet and sticky stuff, falling in fat flakes and clumping on the eaves and atop the capped rainbarrels. It covered the cobbles in a thick white carpet that would soon be trampled to dirty sludge by incoming patrons. The light was strange, too: diffuse and very grey. By that light everything looked shabby. The window-frames would need fresh paint in the spring. Barliman promised himself that he would remember, but knew that he probably wouldn’t. There were so many things to keep track of in a day, and a man’s head could only hold so many thoughts at once.

There was more to running an inn than Barliman had suspected, even though he’d been working in The Pony in one capacity or another almost as far back as he could remember. For most of that time, he’d been preoccupied with what his father was doing wrong – what he would change when he was in charge. He had never really appreciated how much Da had gotten right: keeping the larder stocked and the furniture in good repair, making sure the stable was safe and snug, keeping track of five or six batches of beer at different stages of the brewing process all at once, and managing despite his penny-pinching to remain a cheerful and much-liked member of the community. 

Half of Bree-land had turned out to the burying. Nearly half of those (the half with hair on their chests and a thirst in their gullets, Mam had said at the time) had come back to the inn to drink the funeral ale and offer their fond condolences. Barliman had given his father a proper send-off: plenty of beer, plenty of song, and good simple foods that comforted the belly if not the heart. Da might have had a reputation for being a little tight-fisted, but there had been nothing miserly about his last offices.

Barliman had been sad to see his father go, though not surprised. Da hadn’t been well for the last three years or more, not really. It had started with huffing and puffing when he had to carry the water kettles up the stairs, even though he’d been running those stairs all his life. Barliman had simply taken over bringing the guests their hot water and goodnights. Then Da’s feet had begun to be swollen at the end of every day. Mam made him up a salt-water soak every night before bed, and life went on. But soon he had trouble breathing after any real effort, even working the tables in the common room. Not long after that his belly had grown hard and swollen, and it hadn’t been long before he was coughing up pink foam when he lost his wind.

Clover Sandheaver had been brought to have a look at him, for she was the best healer in the town. She’d treat Big Folk as well as Little, so long as she didn’t need to set a leg or turn anyone over or somesuch. She’d looked at his feet and rapped at his belly so it sounded like a drum, and she’d shaken her head  and said it was the water-sickness and there was nothing much anyone could do but keep him comfortable. Da had lingered a couple weeks after that visit, and then gone quietly and mercifully in the night.

And so The Prancing Pony had come to Barliman. A brand new sign (a recent extravagance made possible by the autumn profits) proudly proclaimed it, and after six months Bree was just about used to it. Oh, there was still the old refrain of ‘That in ain’t what it was now the son’s took it over!’, but folk would be saying that right up to Barliman’s dying day. What pleased the new innkeeper was that such remarks were more often than not met with a chortling guffaw of ‘He pulls a fair pint, for one thing!’

It had been his father’s crooked cost-saving ways that Barliman had changed at once upon taking over The Pony. He hadn’t been able to get many of them by his father even in the extremity of his illness, but they had all been quick enough to implement. Putting a stop to underfilling the tankards was easy. Changing the laundering schedule had been harder, but Barliman had just tightened his belt for a couple of months and waited for word to get ‘round that you could always expect fresh sheets at The Pony.

Once custom had begun to pick up, he had promptly added a copper on to the room rate – and had found that most folk were glad to pay it and the rest generally accepted the change with little fuss. Within a few weeks he was doing well enough that he was able to take on a proper laundress three days a week, and had bought a dozen extra sets of sheets to carry them through the gap days. By the end of the fourth month, when the harvest markets were at their height, there had been nights Barliman actually had to turn away guests because the inn was full to the rafters. Things had quieted down a bit with the turning of the seasons, but he anticipated a prosperous Yuletide and a very merry new year.

Barliman Butterbur had plenty to be proud of. Here he was, just four and twenty and already the master of a very prosperous going concern. He had coin in his pocket and food in his larder, and he’d been able to make Meadowlark a right good present on the occasion of the birth of his little niece. Mam was taken care of, living cosily in the same suite of rooms the family had always occupied and keeping her hand in the business by making decisions about curtains and new dishes and whether they ought to pay a lad to fetch in flowers when they were in season. It was all a young man could want in life, excepting a wife – and Barliman was confident that he’d find one of those when he took a fancy to. He was an eligible catch: young, healthy, with all his teeth and a good living, and he was a man of letters as well! There was nothing in the world to be dissatisfied about, really.

The work at the inn suited him. It always had. Barliman couldn’t bear to sit still too long, or fix his attention on a single task for an hour at a time. He appreciated the quick pace, the daily challenges, the ever-changing landscape of his guest-book. He liked to listen to the talk of travellers who’d come from far afield – the dwarves who went back and forth between their caves in the Blue Mountains and the place where their king lived in a mountain of his own; the brawny men out of Dunland; and the occasional hobbit coming over from the Shire. He loved the songs and stories from far away, and the hush that came over the noisy common room when someone had a good one going. And he loved the sense of pride he felt every morning when he unlocked the front door of his very own inn.

The snow was growing dull, and Barliman was just about ready to turn from the window. He might lie down after all. Or he could go and look in on Mam. She’d had a cold in her chest last week, and hadn’t been up to much since then. She’d be better in a few days, said Clover Sandheaver (after the business with his father’s chest, Barliman was taking no chances with his mother’s), but in the meantime she felt gloomy.

It was natural enough to feel gloomy on a day like today, but tonight Butterbur knew he’d have no time to feel anything but hurried. It was bound to be busy and he was two hands short. Pol, who usually took care of keeping the common room fire stoked and washing the dishes – as well as any other sort of simple tasks Cook needed doing – was at home with an attack of gout. Gout was no laughing matter to a hobbit, for they took such pride in their feet and a huge unsightly red toe tended to ruin the effect of nicely combed foot-hair and neatly pared nails. Besides, so Pol said, it hurt like a hammer to the thumb, pulsing and burning and throbbing all at once. So Pol was at home in his cosy little hole, no doubt being made much of by his mother, and Barliman was just going to have to keep things running smoothly without him.

He could begin by bringing in some more wood from the cord ready-cut and neatly stacked in the yard, Barliman decided, and he turned away from the window after all. He fetched his cap and muffler and put on his gloves. These were a new purchase, too: handsome blue leather with rabbit-fur cuffs. They would be a real joy come winter, and today was just the day to test them out. His cloak was in the vestibule just off the front corridor, and he fetched it also before stepping out into the snow.

It wasn’t terribly cold, but oh, it was wet! It would be a miserable night to have to go anywhere far. Already Barliman could feel his hat growing heavy with the plump clumps of snowflakes falling gently but relentlessly from that lackluster sky. Half an hour in this, and a stout wool cloak would be wet right through. An hour, and a body would be soaked to the skin. Just see how cold the air would feel then!

Happily Barliman hadn’t far to go, and he made quick work of piling his arms high with the neatly quartered logs. He’d have to let them sit in the hall a while to dry out. Otherwise there’d be puddles on the common room floor, and that would never do. It had been one of the first things Da had ever taught him: if a guest slipped and hurt himself on your wet floor, he’d never be back.

Barliman was coming out for his fourth load when a blur of dark motion in the corner of his eye stopped him dead. The inn-yard had been perfectly still apart from the lazy, penetrating snow, but now something had moved – and something much bigger than a bird. Thinking perhaps it was one of his friends come calling (as they all loved to do now that Barliman, not his father, was in charge of the taps), Barliman turned with a friendly grin. It died to a look of sour annoyance when he saw the man who had come ‘round the corner into his little court, and was now leaning with his tailbone perched on the rim of a rain-barrel just as if he owned the place.

Dark green cloak, faded and weathered. Big tall boots, well-fitting but worn. Large hood, limp with wetness but still pulled forward to shadow the face. A rayed silver star on the left shoulder. It was one of those Rangers.

‘Afternoon,’ Barliman said briskly before continuing to the end of his tracks. He tried not to be rude to anyone, not even these queer vagabonds. It was bad for business to be known as a rude innkeeper. Occasional crossness was one thing: it was a sign of personality and a source of amused conversation. Rudeness was another entirely.

To his surprise, the Ranger answered him properly. ‘Good afternoon. How do you do?’

‘Fine as paint, I suppose,’ said Barliman, surprised into it. He started loading his arms, but kept his eyes fixed on the stranger. You just never knew with Rangers. Barliman had never heard tell of one of them actually hurting anybody… anybody respectable, anyhow. But why did they all carry those big swords, then? ‘Just what is it you want ‘round here?’

‘I’ve heard good things about the inn,’ said the stranger. He had a Bree-landish accent, or nearly, but his voice was peculiar. It had a depth to it, a certain rolling quality, a… Barliman would have called it a smoothness, but that wasn’t right, either. That’s what you said about folk who talked fair but insincere, usually to skin a penny off you. But this man’s voice was certainly unusual.

‘Hmph.’ Barliman straightened up a little and squared his shoulders. They sloped more than he liked, for serving up pints wasn’t really heavy work, however much you trotted. He was beginning to get (as the hobbits liked to say) a bit well built about the middle, too, but he didn’t expect that showed beneath the bell of his cloak. His only reached his knees. The Ranger’s cloak came nearly to his ankles, and he was holding it close around his long body. He was a tall one, even for his sort, and he was very lean. ‘Well I’m pleased to know it,’ Barliman said stoutly. ‘I’m the landlord, so it’s my reputation as well as The Pony’s.’

‘That’s very well put,’ the man said, something strangely like satisfaction in his voice. ‘You’re young to own such a… well-established business.’

‘Well, it was my father’s and now it’s mine,’ Barliman declared. He didn’t much care for being questioned in his own dooryard by some vagabond who was like as not up to no sort of good. ‘And the yard’s not meant for loitering, so either come in or move on!’

The man’s shadowed face seemed to move, but the expression was impossible to follow. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I shall come in.’

He used his heel to push off from the rain-barrel, straightening up even taller than Barliman had first thought. As he moved for the door with long, measured steps, Butterbur had to trot to beat him to it. His arms weren’t even half-full of wood, but he didn’t care. He wanted to be over the threshold before this queer customer. For he was a queer customer, and no mistake, whether or not he brought custom with him. He moved with a surety that was at once impressive and disturbing. It was as though he had been here a hundred times before, or as though he was so confident in himself that the world around him scarcely even mattered: it would mould to his will if he only walked on. That thought was like something out of a ghost-story, and it sent a shiver up Barliman’s back.

Still he reached the door before the Ranger. He hurriedly dumped his load of wood on top of the rest so neatly stacked in the entryway and moved back to stand squarely between the posts so that the man was kept standing on the threshold. Looking up, Barliman could now see the lower half of the man’s face: the tip of a long, straight nose, lean cheeks and a strong jaw, pale wind-roughened lips set into an unreadable line. His eyes glinted in the shadow of the hood, but Barliman could make out no more than that.

‘Now, we’ve rules at The Pony,’ he said. ‘No brawling, no spitting, no feet on the tables. And if you got an axe, it don’t come in the common room without a leather head to it. If I have to replace one more floorboard because some Dwarf got careless…’

‘I have no axe,’ the Ranger said, sounding almost amused. ‘I promise I shall keep my spittle in my mouth where it belongs, and my feet firmly on the floor.’

‘All right, then,’ Barliman said, trying to sound stern but knowing he came across a little doubtful. A young man running this sort of a business had to lay down the law. If he didn’t, the rowdier patrons would walk all over him like an old carpet. They’d tried it once or twice when Da had been ill, until Barliman learned how to put his foot down. ‘Scrape your boots. Who knows what you’ve stepped in?’

There was an iron doorscraper by the step, and the Ranger obediently drew first one sole and then the other over it. He left clumps of muck and snow speckled with fragments of fallen leaves. Then his right hand emerged from the front of his cloak and moved to brush the snow from his hood and then each shoulder. Butterbur was surprised to say that it was clad in a knitted mitten of precisely the same colour as the cloak. Good close work, too: Mam would have approved. Then the strange man ducked his head to avoid the lintel and stepped in as Barliman moved back a pace. As soon as he was in, Barliman reached around him, cast one sharp look around the inn-yard, and drew the door closed with a thud.

The man was pushing his hood back from his brow, revealing a head of dark hair flecked with the first few strands of grey at each temple. He was not wearing a hat, which was foolish in this weather, and the hair was stringy and lank against his skull. It was wet: that was part of it. It was also very dirty. A sour smell reached Barliman’s nostrils. It was not unlike the stink of sheets that hadn’t been changed in a fortnight, come to think of it, and that association irritated him.

‘Common room’s through there,’ he said, wafting his arm. ‘The fire’s good and hot and you’ll have your pick of seats. I’ll be by in a minute if you want something to drink.’

‘Thank you,’ the man said again, in the same courteous but somehow knowing tone as before. He turned for the door. As he went, Barliman could see by the slow swing of the hem that his cloak was positively sodden. He’d been right about the snow, then: it would soak a man to the bone in no time at all.

Hastily Butterbur straightened the logs he had dropped with so little ceremony. He shucked his outer layer and straightened his shoulder-seams. He rolled up his sleeves, too, because he thought that it made him look more like a proper innkeeper. The white fustian apron did, too, but it was back in the kitchen. Setting his jaw determinedly, he came bustling into the room as though on most important business.

To his surprise, the man was nowhere to be seen. The seats nearest the fire were vacant, as were the comfortable low-backed chairs with the carven arms that always filled up so quickly of an evening. Puzzled, Barliman took a couple more steps into the room, less sure of himself now. He wasn’t down by the counter, or near the kitchen door. He certainly wasn’t at the hobbit tables: they would have served him as stepstools, maybe, but nothing more than that.

Then Barliman felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle and he spun around, hand flying up to smooth it. There the man was, blight him: sitting calmly in the dark corner made by the little jog of wall that brought the entrance to the room past the first window by the front door. He still had his cloak around him, soggy though it was, and he had stretched his long legs out under that small corner table as if he had been waiting twenty minutes instead of two.

‘You!’ Barliman blustered. He was trying to tamp down his surprise, but his heart was pounding in his chest. His hand found the crown of his head, where his hair was already thinning. Mam said her father had been bald as an acorn by the time he was thirty-two, and her Barli was likely headed that same way. But he didn’t ought to be thinking about his hair just now: he had a Ranger to deal with, and apart from his Mam and Cook (who was most likely fast asleep in the chimney-corner), he was all alone in the inn. Oh, there were some guests staying over from yesterday, but they were all out seeing about business or visiting relations or doing any one of the hundred things folks came to Bree to do. No one travelled just so that they could sit around in a rented room and—

But his mind was wandering again. It always seemed to do that. He’d been flighty as a boy, ever since about the age of twelve when he found he hadn’t the patience for his lessons anymore. By then he knew how to read and write: he could pick up a book he’d never seen before, and fall to reading it just like that! What did it matter if he had to say the words aloud (or at least mouth them while he read them in his head)? There were plenty of folks couldn’t even do that.

The Ranger was watching him with some interest. His eyes were pale and very sharp. Barliman almost thought that the man knew what he was thinking, or rather what a jumble of unimportant thoughts was now crowding his brain. He frowned, as though scrunching up the muscles of his face would keep his mind in better order.

‘What do you want to drink?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a fine beer, brewed right on the premises, or there’s brandy from Buckland or a good stout port they make out in Staddle. I’ve wine, too, but it’s not very good unless it’s mulled: got a bit of a sour taste before you warm it. Or I could brew you up a toddy: nice on a cold day. Or if you fancy—’

‘A beer would be very pleasant, Mr. Butterbur, thank you,’ the man said almost drolly. ‘Only a half-pint, as it’s still the middle of the afternoon.’

Barliman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Here now!’ he said. ‘How’d you know my name?’

The man’s lip curled in a way that made Barliman’s stomach turn over. It seemed so familiar somehow, but for the life of him he didn’t know why. This wasn’t one of the Rangers that came through The Pony regular. There was the grey-haired one that folks called Thumbs, on account of he only had one; and the one that had helped push Mr. Foxglove’s wagon up out of the mud when it got stuck on the green last spring (not a bad sort, for a Ranger, the townsfolk had agreed). There was the one with the long Elvish-sounding name, who’d sing a fine song if there were any blackberries going but could never be persuaded to touch a thing stronger than cordial. And there was the one with the big dog, and the one who…

And this one was watching him with those steady, knowing eyes and the tiniest ghost of amusement hovering at the left corner of his mouth. ‘You cannot spend many minutes in a town without learning the name of the local innkeeper,’ he said. ‘Besides which, it’s painted on the sign.’

‘Oh! You can read?’ Barliman was surprised. He hadn’t ever expected to have anything in common with a Ranger.

‘A little.’ There was a lyrical tilt to his voice when he said it that made Butterbur feel like he was on the outside of a private joke. Barliman didn’t have time to think about that, though, because his mind was nagging at him, trying to get him to remember something. There was something about this man that was familiar, and it was all muddled up with the scent of roasted apples and bonfires and newly fallen leaves and stewed plums in a brandy sauce, only that wasn’t right, and yet somehow it was, and…

And he remembered the village green almost two months ago, at the end of the harvest celebrations. It was that day in autumn when night and day were exactly the same length – what was it called again? He thought he’d known, once upon a time, but it must have been something he’d learned when he was small. Perhaps in Mr. Thisleby’s parlour school? But anyhow, he’d been out on the green talking with some of his father’s old friends when a man had cut out from the tree-line and gone off across the open space at a great pace. He hadn’t been running, but taking such long, swift steps that he almost seemed to float. He had moved with smooth precision, as if the running children and the milling townsfolk were not even there. And they, remarkably, had all seemed to wander out of his way just before he reached the place they had been standing. And Barliman had asked who that tall man was, and Mr. Stitchwort had said…

‘You’re that Ranger!’ Barliman cried, snapping his fingers in triumph. ‘That one that’s been in and out of the villages all summer. Walker or Stalker or Prowler…’

‘Folk have taken to calling me Strider,’ he said, almost drolly. But when Barliman looked up irately, expecting a smirk, the man’s face was perfectly impassive. ‘I am pleased to be properly introduced.’

‘Strider,’ repeated Barliman, trying it on for size. He supposed it fit, with those great long legs that had carried him off the green so swiftly that it hardly seemed he had been there at all. But then, Prowler wasn’t unsuitable either, the way he’d sneaked into the corner just to surprise his host! ‘Well, I’m Barliman Butterbur – though you already knew that.’

The man straightened up in the chair and leaned forward to shake hands. He had taken off the mitten, Butterbur noticed. Then he saw it lying on the table with its mate, both clearly wet. The smell of damp sheep was everywhere about this man: all his clothes were of wool, and they were likely all soaked through. Still Barliman shook hands: his stout-fingered, warm one clutching the stranger’s long, bony and very cold hand. Barliman drew back as quick as was polite, and restrained the urge to wipe his hand on his sleeve. That sensation had reminded him of something, too, but he couldn’t say just what.

‘I’ll go fetch your beer,’ he said, and he hurried off to the casks. Those sharp eyes followed him all the way. When he came back with the half-pint, filled carefully to just a bodkin’s breadth from the rim, the man had a misshapen leather money-pouch in his hand. ‘Copper ha’penny,’ Barliman said as he set down the drink with a confident sweep of his forearm. He had started filling the glasses right up, he had, but the price stayed the same. It would have to for some years, he knew, or folk would say he’d traded one type of skinning for another.

The man held the bottom pouch against his palm with his last three fingers, and used forefinger and thumb to wedge open the drawstring. He fished out a tarnished coin and let the little piece of much-abused leather slide down to the tabletop. It fell with a woeful little clatter that told Barliman he was not a man of means, even by Ranger standards. He took the coin crisply and put it in his pocket. Mam always made sure he had strong, reliable pockets: an innkeeper needed them.

‘Anything else you’re wanting?’ he asked. ‘Too early for supper, but I could scare up something cold if you want it.’

‘How much for a small private room?’ the-man-folks-called-Strider asked. Barliman told him, and his eyes grew momentarily thoughtful – not quite calculating. ‘I’m told to expect clean sheets and plentiful hot water.’

‘I should say so!’ Barliman said, puffing out his chest a little. He was proud of his system for switching out the bed linens, and he made it a point never to be stingy about the water, hard work though the hauling was. ‘Only the best at The Pony.’

‘Then I shall take the room,’ said the man. ‘I do not mind where you put me, so long as it looks in on the courtyard instead of the street.’

Courtyard was a high-and-mighty name for a square of paving stones with a few crates and rain-barrels strewn in the corner, but Barliman was not about to disabuse that-Ranger-Strider of the notion. He supposed The Pony must look like a palace to a man who carried all he had in the world in a dilapidated old pack. It was sitting on the floor next to his chair, bent in the middle and flopping over itself in a way that made it embarrassingly obvious that it was almost empty.

‘I’ll see what I have free,’ he said, and he hurried from the room.

He kept his guest ledger in the taproom across the front hall, but he did not really need to consult it. He had half a dozen small single rooms with a view of the courtyard, all of them unoccupied. What he needed to do was get away from that Ranger for a minute or two so that he could think. There was something about that man that reminded him of something. But he didn’t know what it was, and the harder he tried to remember the deeper it would burrow down into the warren of his mind. He wasn’t a stupid man. He was cleverer than many people in Bree. But sometimes his memory just didn’t work like it should. Something he heard one minute would be gone from his head the next. Some days he’d remember every single supper order he’d taken, but not the date of Meadowlark’s birthday. It didn’t seem to follow any sort of a pattern, and sometimes it frustrated him. But he did seem to do better with faces than with names, and there was something about this man’s pale, weathered face…

He shook his head. He’d never remember it. He might as well go back in and tell the man he could have Number Fourteen and be done with it. Then he could go into the kitchen and see whether Cook had any idea how they were going to get everything done tonight. The first of the evening crowd usually turned up around dusk when the days were so short. So short already: it’d be winter in no time. Looked like winter out there today, that was certain.

His mind was wandering again, and Barliman strode back into the common room. He stopped short when he was once more in an eye-line with the man called Strider, because the guest – and Butterbur supposed he was a guest, if he meant to take a room – was doing something he would not have expected. Instead of tasting his beer like an ordinary person, he had that shabby old pack in his lap and he was digging in it. If he noticed the innkeeper’s presence he gave no sign, but he took something flat and indifferently coloured from the very bottom of the pack and set it on the table with a clack. He drew the string of the pack snug again and lowered it to the floor. Then he picked up the thin brownish-grey slab and dipped it into the mug of Barliman’s best beer!

‘What you got there?’ he asked, unable to restrain his curiosity. The light from the lamps left this corner almost in complete shadow, and it was hard to make out anything until he moved close. When he saw what the man had in his hand, his nose wrinkled in distaste.

It was some sort of waybread, made with dark, cheap flour and pierced all down its length with a fork. From the noise it had made on the table, it was as hard as a hunk of wood, and it looked dusty with it. But Strider only looked up at Barliman with slightly arched brows and an impassive mouth as he held the corner of the bread beneath the modest froth at the top of the mug. Then he lifted it to his lips and bit off the moistened part with a single quiet crunch. His jaw worked very hard to chew it, and he swallowed with resolve. He said nothing.

Barliman huffed in annoyance and pulled out the chair opposite the man. ‘See here,’ he said. ‘You come in in the middle of the afternoon like this, I think you owe me a bit of conversation. I’ve always wondered about your sort. Where do you come from?’

‘I’ve been near Chetwood,’ said Strider, and he began to soak another section of his hunk of hardtack. It looked like it would taste like sawdust. ‘What do you mean by “my sort”?’

‘Rangers!’ said Barliman. ‘What else? I met a Ranger once, back when I was a boy…’

And suddenly there it all was again, clear as life. He remembered the stormy night and his father at the door, talking to a low-voiced stranger. He remembered the man with his dark hair and his long sword, darting between tables as nimbly as a tumbler. And he remembered that that was the first night that he had known, once and for all, that his father was not a perfectly honest man.

That smarted even now, and Barliman did not want to think about it. It was easier to think of the Ranger – Old Tim, rest his soul, had been the first one to call him a Ranger. He had been so strange; so determined that he keep to his bargain, and so unaffected by the mortifying position he was in. Unaffected, at least, until Barli’s eyes had betrayed his father’s dishonest dodge. Then the Ranger had been furious, but only for a moment. And the blank, empty look in his eyes when the rage left him had been much, much worse.

‘He looked a bit like you, come to think of it,’ Barliman said. ‘About your age, he was, too. Must be… oh, nearly fifty by now! Couldn’t be your father, could it?’

There was a spark of amusement in Strider’s eyes, but before Barliman could bristle with offence he shook his head and explained simply; ‘My father died when I was a small child. You were not even born yet.’

‘I’m twenty-four,’ Barliman said peevishly, bristling a little after all.

‘I am not,’ said the man.

‘Well, he must have been a relation,’ insisted Barliman. ‘An uncle or something. Or a cousin? A brother?’

‘I do have two elder brothers,’ Strider murmured, eyes focused on his mug as he drew out the awful-looking bread and bit into it again. This time the sound of his teeth wearing it down to be swallowed was like the grating of sand in an iron skillet.

‘There you are, then!’ Barliman said triumphantly. ‘And one of them’s a Ranger too, ain’t he?’

‘Near enough.’ He picked up the mug and took a judicious swallow – probably to rinse away the grit in his mouth.

‘He was a strange one, and no mistake – begging your pardon, of course, if you are relations,’ Barliman reflected, settling back with a shake of his head. Despite the wet-wool smell rising off the Ranger he wasn’t anxious to move on. It was his time to do as he pleased, and if he wanted to spend it talking to this strange man, he would do it! Besides, his thoughts were flying now and it was all his tongue could do to keep pace. ‘Came in on a miserable night, would have been about this time of year, too. Freezing rain all day, turned to sleet come evening, and a wind that’d cut through to the bone. My da was the innkeeper in those days. Might be you’ve heard tell of him?’

Strider blinked ponderously, but said naught in answer. He had soaked another section of his odd bread and he bit it forcefully. If it tasted half as unpleasant as it looked, it was nothing Barliman would have cared to stomach, but it seemed the Ranger had no difficulty.

‘Well, Da and this Ranger, they struck up a bargain,’ Barliman went on, a little too briskly. The man’s silence was a bit unnerving, and filling it seemed the best fix. ‘Then there he was, working along side us, serving up drinks and clearing tables and the like. I wasn’t ordinarily allowed in the common room of an evening, but we were six hands short and Da needed all the help he could get. Never would have taken up with a Ranger otherwise, but the opportunity just sort of presented itself, if you know what I mean…’

He wasn’t sure why he was saying all this to a perfect stranger – and another Ranger at that, who might so easily take offence. Perhaps it was because the troubling encounter had picked so often at his mind through the years, if not during these past busy months. Barliman had never spoken of it, either: not even with Tim. He never would have told his mother, for she would have been so ashamed. Barli had been ashamed himself, and so startled to be thinking such ill of his own father. And now here was this dark man, listening so calmly as he unburdened himself.

‘I don’t know why he made such a bad bargain for himself,’ Barliman said, shaking his head. ‘It wasn’t like we had anyone else to put in that bed, and the scraps cost us nothing, but he had to put in a whole long night’s work for them. Why would a man agree to something like that?’

‘Perhaps it was the only way he could convince the landlord to agree,’ Strider suggested, turning the bread thoughtfully in his hand before dunking another corner into his beer. It was a waste of a good brew, soaking that stuff in it!

Barliman was taken by a memory of Tim crying out: ‘It don’t look right at all, eating like that!”. He tried to push that thought out of his mind, and with it the image of the man sorting through a tray of dishes looking for any edible morsel.

‘He could have said he’d do it for a real meal, anyroad,’ Barliman muttered.

‘Perhaps he tried,’ said the Ranger mildly. ‘Sometimes it is easier to convince a reluctant man when he sees it will cost him nothing at all. Even the smallest expense can seem like a worthwhile excuse to walk away.’

Barliman snorted. ‘Have you ever tried something so foolish?’ he asked pointedly.

‘And if I have?’ queried Strider. ‘Tell me, Barliman Butterbur of Bree: have you ever spent a night out in the sleet?’

‘Well, no,’ Barliman admitted uncomfortably. ‘But if you don’t like being out in all weathers all you have to do is settle down and start living a nice, respectable life: simple as that!’

‘Simple as that,’ Strider echoed. He tilted his head to one side and studied Barliman pensively. ‘What a thing, to have such a choice,’ he murmured. He lifted the mug to his lips. He was not drinking in healthy gulps as a man ought to, but nursing it: savouring every drop of the brew as if he had not had good beer in years and knew not when he would see his next.

‘Well, this fellow could have done it,’ he grumbled. ‘He was a good hand in the common room: quick on his feet, never got turned around or brought the wrong drink to the wrong person. Polite, too, for all he didn’t smile. He washed the dishes good and quick, too: that’s important at an inn. Mam always used to say she could wash the same plate a half-dozen times in an evening, and it still wouldn’t be enough!’

A spark of appreciative amusement passed through Strider’s keen eyes, and he put his bread back into the beer to soften. He likely couldn’t chew it otherwise: the stuff looked hard enough to sole a boot. ‘And did your father keep his promise to this gentleman?’

‘I didn’t say he was a gentleman,’ Barliman quantified. ‘But he could have got himself work waiting at table, if he’d just troubled to clean himself up a bit. He did get a room out of it, if that’s what you’re asking. Then again…’

He stopped, not sure he wanted to admit to it. It had been the worst part of that whole night: even worse than watching the poor man eat so voraciously of things scarcely good enough for the pigs. It was the reason that young Barli Butterbur had tried so hard not to think about it, and the reason he couldn’t stop thinking about it. His father had cheated that Ranger: cheated him out of spite and laziness, and because he knew he could.

‘It wasn’t fair,’ he muttered, sounding like a young boy again. He glared at Strider as though he were to blame. ‘He was a fool to agree to it all in the first place, but my da took advantage. Next morning when I woke up, the Ranger was gone from his room. Never came back again, either. I used to keep a lookout.’

‘Is that any wonder, after the way things unfolded?’ Strider asked in a very low voice that was impossible to read. ‘Would you have come back?’

Never, Barliman thought. After that, he would never have let himself be seen in the town again, much less go back to the inn where he’d been so ill-used. And he certainly would never have brought money here, supposing he ever came into a little. All those winters of his boyhood he had hoped the tall, lean storyteller might return and finish his tale, but now he understood why he never had. Likely he’d never even set foot in Bree again after that.

‘I wanted to do right by him,’ he said apologetically. ‘And if he is your brother, would you tell him that?’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Butterbur, but I fear he is not my brother,’ said Strider. He curled his lip oddly. ‘Not all Rangers are related to one another, you know, any more than all blacksmiths.’

‘That’s not the same thing! Smithing is a trade!’ Barliman scoffed. Then he realized how that had sounded. ‘Dear me, that was rude,’ he said hastily. ‘I’m forgetting that I’m talking to a guest. I feel as if… I don’t know. I’ll leave you to your drink and your, er, luncheon.’ He cast another dubious look at the gnawed bit of stale waybread.

‘I’m through,’ said Strider. He drained his mug in one long draught and dabbed his lips with the back of his hand. Then he reached down to the floor and hooked his long fingers through one strap of his pack. He got to his feet and retrieved his piece of bread, all the while keeping his left side wholly hidden by the long cloak. Uncomfortably, it occurred to Barliman that he might not have an arm under there at all. He thought about Thumbs and the misshapen hand with its four long fingers made even longer by the small, scarred stump. He shivered.

‘Would you show me to the room?’ the Ranger was asking. ‘I would be glad of a chance to dry out a little. It is no sleet storm, but the snow is rather wet and it melts as soon as it touches a warm body.’

‘This way,’ Barliman said briskly, shuffling around the doorway and up the corridor. The room opened on the courtyard, as requested. These rooms were darker than the ones that overlooked the street, but they were quieter, too. That was one reason that the landlord’s suite looked in. The other was that from his window Barliman could see the arch that led into the courtyard as well as his front door.

Strider followed him almost noiselessly, and when Barliman opened the door he was surprised by how near the Ranger was standing. He had to duck his head for the doorway, of course, and then he was looking around the little room. It was simply but functionally furnished: bed, washstand, stool and chair. The smaller rooms didn’t have a table: no private dining in here unless you wanted to picnic on the mat. But this room did have a proper, full-sized fireplace, and it was laid to be lit. Barliman took a match from his pocket and struck it, bending to ignite the shavings at the bottom of the scaffold of fuel.

‘No boots on the bed, please, and mind you don’t make too much of a racket after ten o’clock,’ he said, reciting his usual little speech. ‘If you’re needing anything, give a shout. Supper starts around six o’clock. It’s coming up on a quarter to four right now.’

‘Thank you,’ the Ranger said. He had found the bootjack under the washstand and was nudging it near the chair with the side of his toe. His eyes were still taking in the room, and Barliman could not tell whether he liked what he saw.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he huffed, not sure what else to say. He retreated to the door and put his hand on the knob. ‘I hope you know I didn’t mean offence, talking like that about one of your… some one who… another sort of wandering… er…’

‘One of my sort,’ Strider supplied wryly. ‘No offence taken, good master: I promise you. I have had good reports of this place since you took charge, and I’ve been meaning to stop in for quite some time. Tonight seemed a… prudent time to do it.’

There was a strange note in his voice when he said that, too. He was all vague assent and arch meanings, and Barliman didn’t know if he was frustrated or intrigued. Mostly frustrated, he supposed. Folk would put on airs in an inn, but he’d never known one to put on irony.

‘If you need anything…’ he said again, indistinctly. Then a thought occurred to him and he added with more conviction; ‘You’re best to ask sooner rather than later. I’m one daydreaming hobbit short tonight, and as soon as the crowds start turning up I’ll be run off my feet. Why we always need to be understaffed on the ugliest nights of the year…’

‘I’ll see to myself, thank you,’ Strider said. The words might have been rude if he had not said them in such a quiet, almost fond and somehow regretful way. There was something on his mind – not that there hadn’t been right from the very start – but Barliman couldn’t fathom it.

‘Fine, then. That’s fine,’ he said briskly, and he stepped out into the corridor and drew the door shut. He stood in the hallway undecided for a moment, until there came a sound from the other side of the wall. It was a sharp hiss and a strained noise that was not quite a cry, and Barliman stiffened, whirling to look at the door.

It was none of his business, he told himself. What guests did behind closed doors was none of his business, provided they didn’t disturb the other patrons or damage any of the inn’s property. He took six purposeful steps away, stopped and then turned back. Frowning, he drew near the door. Now there was low rustling and the shrill shriek of a length of linen being torn in twain. Barliman raised his hand to knock, but it hesitated. It hovered there, undecided. There was another whistle of ripping cloth. Barliman bit his lip. His arm fell to his side.

He couldn’t knock, he decided. He couldn’t go blustering in just to see what was going on in one of his nice little rooms. He couldn’t disturb a guest who’d just as good as told him he could get a move on and go back to his usual business. He couldn’t do any of those things. Not without a pretext, anyway.

Hot water, he decided. Hot water and a towel: expected by respectable guests, even if most Rangers didn’t look like they knew what to do with a bowl of hot water. It was the perfect excuse to go knocking, though: then he could see what this man Strider was really about! He didn't trust that Ranger, not as far as he could throw him. That was the reason he felt the need to check in on him, wasn't it? To be sure it was!

Purposefully Barliman marched off in search of his big kettle.

Part Four: An Ending: November, 2995

Barliman approached the door of Number Fourteen with some unease. He had his big copper kettle in one hand and a couple of towels in the crook of his arm. They weren’t his best towels – not for a Ranger who didn’t look like he’d bothered to have a good wash since high summer – but they were whole and they were clean. On his way to fetch these amenities, Barliman had looked in on Mam, who was napping, and had had a couple of words with Cook. His name was in fact Bertie, but he had a rather grand opinion of his position and insisted upon being addressed by his office instead. It was all the same to Barliman. It took a hobbit to cook for hobbits, as the old adage went, and Cook knew his business. He was well into the supper preparations already.

Screwing up his nerve, Barliman knocked at the door. ‘Hot water,’ he said.

At the knock there was a hitch of breath and a wet whoosh of hastily moved cloth, but then a voice said promptly, ‘Thank you. You may come in.’

It was encouraging that there had been no lengthy delay, Barliman decided. He wasn’t sure what he expected the Ranger to be up to, exactly, but there wasn’t much a body could hide in a few seconds.

Except, apparently, a state of half-dress. Barliman opened the door to find Strider with his soggy cloak flung hastily over his left shoulder and clutched high on his chest. His right shoulder was bare and starkly pale against the dark cloth. From his gaunt look, Barliman would have expected a sharp socket with a matchstick-thin limb dangling from it. Instead, both arm and shoulder were hard with lean ropes of muscle. Strider looked very strong indeed, though no one ever would have guessed it to see him out in the innyard.

‘I brought hot water,’ Barliman said, marching over the threshold and shoving the door shut with his foot. He was accustomed to coming in on guests either dressing or disrobing, but he hadn’t pegged this grim and feral-looking character as prudish about matters of modesty. He still had his trousers on anyhow: clumsy-looking brown slops that Barliman would have been ashamed to wear in the streets. Under them he wore long seamed socks that fitted his legs as if they had been painted on. At least Barliman thought they were socks. They covered his feet, and they were wool. His boots were by the fire, warming.

‘That’s most hospitable,’ Strider said. His voice was tighter now than it had been: almost clipped. He was trying one-handed to tug the cloak across to cover his right flank, but Barliman saw he did have a left arm after all. It was keeping the garment high up on his chest.

‘No need to be shy,’ Barliman said, moving for the washstand. ‘You don’t got anything I haven’t seen before.’

Strider let out a thick, breathy noise that was neither quite a sign nor a chuckle. Barliman only half heard it. The basin on the washstand was distracting him. It was one of the older ones he hadn’t quite got around to replacing yet: fired of pale clay with a glazed inside and a rough outside. Against the faintly grey pottery, the murky water showed its colour plainly. It was not the usual muddy hue Barliman was accustomed to seeing when folk scrubbed off the dust of the Road. It was a rusty brick-brown instead.

Frowning, Barliman traded his kettle for the basin and went to the window. He deposited the towels on the bed so that his hand was free to raise the sash. Then with a practiced motion he flung the contents of the bowl out into the yard. It melted a large puddle of snow, and splattered far afield. Those droplets looked redder than ever, even in the indifferent November light.

‘What are you up to?’ Barliman asked, more suspiciously than he had meant to. ‘I mean, what have you been doing in here?’

‘Trying to make myself comfortable,’ Strider said. The strain in his voice and the obvious effort he was exerting to keep his face obedient were unnerving. Barliman shut the window and edged back to the washstand.

‘Well, see you don’t make too much of a mess while you do it…’ he began. His eyes were drawn to the fire-screen, which had been moved off the hearthstones so that it stood near but not against the flames. Over it was spread the Ranger’s weather-beaten tunic with its carefully patched elbows and fraying cuffs. Faint whiffs of steam were rising from it as it began to dry, but Barliman didn’t think the garment was really worth salvaging. There was a great dark stain all down the left side, and a long gash in the cloth there, too. A good seamstress might be able to mend it, but it would never be the same.

Guiltily he realized that Strider likely didn’t have anything else to wear: it was that ratty old thing or go barebacked. Barliman averted his eyes from it and found the corner behind the door instead. There stood something he had most certainly not put into the room to add a bit of charm. It was a great long, slender sword in a shabby leather sheath. He’d never seen a Ranger without a sword, and it was both unsettling and curiously comforting that this one had his, too. From the state of his clothes and his shrivelled moneybag, Barliman would have expected him to have sold everything of value long ago. Then again, some folk would sooner starve than go unarmed. Particularly if they were up to no sort of good.

‘You have my word that I mean you no harm,’ said Strider. He was watching Barliman with comprehension, while under the tent of his cloak his hands were occupied with something. His mouth was still drawn and he looked deeply weary. ‘I would not bring trouble under your roof.’

‘The word of a Ranger! What’s that worth?’ Barliman snorted reflexively. It was another thing that folk commonly said, for how could you trust anyone who came inexplicably out of the wild, left just as inexplicably, and wandered back at unpredictable intervals for no reason at all?

‘Has one ever played you false?’ asked Strider. Though the question came easily enough from his lips there was a steely look in his eyes now, as if this was a very serious matter indeed.

‘Well, no, not exactly,’ Barliman admitted. ‘That is… not in so many words. What I mean to say is that he didn’t exactly give his word, but I would have thought…’

‘Tell me,’ said Strider. All at once there was such a note of reasoned persuasion in his voice that Barliman felt it impossible not to answer.

‘The one I met when I was just a lad,’ he said. ‘He was telling me a story – you know, when we were seeing to the dishes after the crowds had gone. Only he got interrupted, and he never did finish it.’ Barliman shrugged uncomfortably, shuffling his feet. Strider was done with whatever he had been doing under the cloak, and he leaned back against the chair as though the effort had exhausted him utterly. ‘I know it sounds foolish, but it was a very interesting story.’

It did sound foolish, and that last only made it worse. Barliman flushed and flapped his hand. ‘Never mind!’ he said. ‘It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have said it: I’m sorry. You’re a guest after all, even if – what I mean to say is…’

‘An unfinished story is a terrible thing,’ said Strider mildly, no mockery whatsoever in his voice. ‘What story did he tell you? Perhaps I have heard it.’

Barliman’s eyes jerked up from his shoes. ‘What, now?’ he said.

‘The story. Perhaps I have heard it. I travel a great deal, and I have heard my share of strange tales.’ There was a glitter in Strider’s eyes now despite their tired fog: playfulness? Eagerness?

Barliman crossed his arms and knit his brows together. ‘You mean so you can tell me how it ended? How would you possibly know the…’

Then he stopped, feeling like an addlepated twit. If the man he’d met all those years ago – glory, it had been fifteen years! – was really some relation of this Strider, of course they’d know the same stories. Barliman knew all of his mother’s stories, and all of her mother’s, and all of old Nuncle Sherry’s, and when he had children of his own they would know all of his… his mind was wandering again.

‘It was about a boy,’ he said cautiously. Then that, too, was all flooding back along with the memory of lying awake many a late night, watching the moonlight on the ceiling of his little room and trying to invent an end to the story of the King’s son and the little mare, and the soldier who had disobeyed his captain and gone off to check the mountain instead of the plain. ‘A boy, and a horse, and a soldier. The horse was called… I don’t remember, quite, but the boy was named… oh, bother, it’s gone! But the soldier was called The Hawk, I remember that well enough, and he’d only just found the boy – he was a prince or somesuch, and he lived in a Golden Tower. But then Da came in and sent the man to go and…’

But he didn’t want to talk about that part, especially if there was any chance that Ranger was really kin to this one. He had thought he’d forgotten all about that night, but now his cheeks burned with shame to remember his father cheating a man who’d worked all night for table scraps into scrubbing the common room floor. Barliman had had his turn at that chore in the years since, and it was mighty hard work: hard on the knees, hard on the back, hard on the hands, and hardest of all on the pride.

‘The Hawk…’ Strider said pensively, casting his eyes towards the ceiling and tilting his head back. The faintest of smiles played on his pale lips. Then he lifted his head swiftly and narrowed his eyes in a way that struck the young landlord as very theatrical. ‘Not The Eagle?’

‘Why, yes!’ Barliman exclaimed. ‘Yes, that’s it! The soldier was called The Eagle – not a proper name, but I suppose it was a sort of a nickname, wasn’t it, that the other soldiers called him? – and he had to jump the chasm because the horse had, and the boy had broken his leg, but he used the sheath of his sword to splint it because swords in that country – I mean sheaths in that country – are made of wood instead of leather, and they…’

‘Slow down, slow down, Master Butterbur!’ Strider cried, not quite laughing. If he had laughed, Barliman likely would have ordered him off the premises and gone to hide in the larder to nurse his wounded pride over a pint of his best beer. ‘I know the story of which you speak. The mare was a two-year foal, and the King’s son nine or ten…’

‘Nine,’ Barliman said, feeling absurdly like a child again but scarcely caring in his eagerness. If this man knew the story, and was willing after all his years of fruitless wondering to finish it, then Barliman intended to listen! ‘I was nine, and the man said…’

‘That he was just your age: of course.’ Strider looked around the room, and pointed to the foot of the bed with his exposed right arm. ‘Forgive me, Mr. Butterbur, but would you be kind enough to pass me my shirt?’

Barliman obliged, picking up the sweat-stained linen garment between finger and thumb. That proved unnecessary, for as soon as he touched it he saw that it was clean: stained and wrinkled, no doubt from its journey at the bottom of that sorry-looking pack, but clean. It seemed this Ranger had more than one shirt to his back after all, though where the other had gone he could not guess. He handed it to him and Strider nodded his thanks.

‘Now, had they got themselves back across the gorge yet?’ the Ranger asked as he bunched up the shirt one-handed. His left was still occupied in keeping the wet cloak in place. He put his head through the collar and got his right arm into its sleeve. Then he tugged the garment down as far as he could.

‘No, no I don’t think they had,’ said Barliman, more eagerly than he would have thought possible. The old ache of an unfinished tale was in his breast now, and nothing would have dissuaded him from listening. He had completely forgotten that he was talking to a Ranger, and that there was no one else around, and that in another hour and a half the place would be thronging with hungry men wanting hearty suppers and leaving him with too few dishes to serve them. All at once he was nine years old again, breathlessly hanging on every word. He sat down on the corner of the bed, leaning forward with a hand on each knee and watching the stranger raptly.

‘Then that’s where we ought to begin,’ said Strider. He pulled his cloak from beneath the shirt and let it fall to the floor. The heavy wool slithered off of him as he put his left arm stiffly, almost gingerly, into its sleeve as well.

As he pulled the shirt down about his hips, Barliman caught sight of the strips of linen bound around his body from the waist to the middle of his ribs. It looked like the sort of thing rheumatic old men wore to ease their backs, only instead of seamed flannel it was made of grubby linen rags wrapped around and tied together. There was a thick pad under it across his left flank: he could see its outline because the cloths were so tight. Then the shirt came down and hid it. Barliman felt sharp eyes upon him and knew he had been caught staring. He flushed.

‘Done your back an injury?’ he asked awkwardly.

‘My ribs,’ Strider said, enunciating coolly. He pressed his lips together in something like amusement, as though again this was some sort of private joke. ‘Fear not: I shall not be dying on your doorstep tonight.’

Still, instead of reaching down to collect the cloak as a man would ordinarily do, he got up from the chair and squatted low beside it so that he could reach the garment. He rose, not quite stiffly but certainly with caution, and went to hang the hood of his cloak off the bedpost, spreading the folds of the body wide across the floor between footboard and fireplace. He nudged one corner out of a fold with his toe, and padded back to the chair. He took a firm hold of the right armrest so that he could lower himself smoothly, but all the same his face took on a dreadful drawn look for a moment as he settled. He closed his eyes and drew in a slow breath through his nostrils, pressing his left elbow close in against his side and gripping the arm of the chair with white knuckles. Then he looked at Barliman again.

‘Have you time to listen?’ he asked, not quite out of breath but sounding dangerously near. ‘If you wish, I can finish that tale for you – perhaps not with the flair and feeling of the one who began it, but at least with reasonable clarity.

‘I’ve time,’ said Barliman earnestly. After all, it was his afternoon in his inn, and if he wanted to spend it in the room of a raggedy vagabond, that was his own affair. ‘I’ve been waiting fifteen years to hear it! It’d best be good.’

‘I cannot speak to that,’ said the Ranger. ‘But I can tell you with certainty that the chasm posed a significant barrier to the young sergeant.’

Barliman felt a little jolt of excitement and hope: if this man had given the soldier the same rank as the other, maybe he did know the tale properly! Such details were the signs of a gifted storyteller.

Strider went on; ‘Plainly the King’s son was too small to jump it, even had his limbs been sound, and with one leg splinted it seemed impossible for him to keep ahorse while the mare did so. Trying to carry the boy while he leapt himself would have been the greatest of follies, and so the soldier was left with little choice. The mare would have to bear them both, and jump all three.’

‘Seems simple enough,’ said Barliman with a shrug.

‘So it does,’ allowed the Ranger. ‘But in the version of the tale that I know, this mare was a part of the King’s own herd. That race of horses does not consent to bearing common folk, but only the King and his family. It is forbidden for anyone not of that bloodline to attempt to mount such a horse. Furthermore, the sergeant was not a small man and the mare was only two. Together man and boy were a great burden for her. Nor had she been properly trained in jumping with a rider: it was a wonder that she and the boy had not plunged to their deaths on the first crossing.’

Suddenly Barliman repented of the many times in his youth that he had wished he might have heard even just five minutes more of the wondrous story. He repented of them now. If he had been interrupted here, instead of earlier, he might never have had a minute of restful sleep again!

‘But what could he do?’ he breathed.

Strider’s lip curled in a peculiar way that seemed so perfectly to suit the narrative. ‘What indeed?’ he asked. ‘He could not leave the boy to go for help, for dusk was falling and the child had already spent one bitter night in the open and without food. There was nothing for it but to try. So he took hold of the horse’s bridle, though she tried to shy away. He stroked her nose, though she tossed her head. He leaned near her ear, though she bared her teeth. And he whispered; “You must carry me, wild daughter of the plains. I must hold him, lest he should fall and leave your beloved lord bereft. Bear me only a little while, and I shall ask no more.” ‘

These fine words seemed so strange coming from the lips of this patched and faded vagrant, but in that moment the strangeness was wholly superseded by the wonder of the tale. Later Barliman might question if he had really heard all this from Strider’s lips, but now he cared only for the next words to come.

‘Then lo! the mare ceased her tossing and her stamping that had jarred the boy already more than was good. And she allowed the man to let out the stirrups for his own feet. Then explaining to the child what he intended to do but showing none of his own doubt and terror at the prospect, the soldier helped the boy to shift forward onto the horse’s withers.’

‘Thayolen,’ said Barliman, another scrap of memory came to him. ‘The boy’s name was Thayolen.’

‘Close,’ said Strider, furrowing his brows in a pantomime of deepest thought. ‘I think it was a somewhat stronger sound. Den?’

‘Yes, that’s it! That’s it! Oh, you have heard this story. Yes, it was Thayoden!’ Butterbur snapped his fingers triumphantly. ‘Do go on: I’ve waited a lifetime to hear how this ends!’

The Ranger gave him a look that seemed to say have you, indeed? He said nothing in jest, however, but shifted his stocking-clad feet and licked his lower lip before continuing. ‘The Eagle shifted Théoden as far forward as the boy could bear. He could not be placed right against the mare’s neck, for then the top joint of her foreleg would have been flexing against his splinted shinbone. But when he was as well-positioned as it was possible for him to be, the soldier put his boot in the near stirrup and swung up onto the back of the horse.

‘She balked beneath his weight and like as not the strangeness in his blood, but she had her master’s son and heir upon her back and she understood with the wisdom that is in the best of all things on the earth that this must be done. The soldier put one arm firmly about the boy and settled close against him – precarious on the rim of the saddle but certain in his seat. He bade the child hold fast to that arm, and grip him with all the force of the pain. He bade him scream to the heavens if he would, and weep if he must, and curse the wild winds themselves if it came to that, but not, not to let go. And Théoden swore he would not.’

Barliman would not have budged from that seat if the room had suddenly burst into flames. He was not blinking. He was scarcely breathing. He felt as if he was the one on that magnificent young horse, with the hurt boy before him and the deep gorge below.

‘The mare took six steps back, letting the sergeant guide her with his knees as he watched. The way was uneven and it was too steep to be galloped in ordinary circumstances, but their need was great. Injured as he was and unfed, the King’s son might well have perished of exposure if left on the mountainside for the long hours it would take to fetch aid to that desolate place. It had taken the soldier himself much of the day to climb so far.’

Strider paused for a moment, as though collecting his thoughts and choosing his words. But his breath was coming more shallowly than it had, as though he too felt mounted upon that horse before that perilous jump. ‘Then he cried to her in the language of her King and his people: “Away, bright heart! Away!” The mare sprang at once into motion. Down the slope she flew, her green and unshod hooves hounding. With the hand that did not hold the boy, the soldier gripped a fistful of mane at the base of her neck, that he might brace them both. And he had just time to speak in Théoden’s ear; “Hold fast!” when the mare sprang with her strong haunches, and they rose into the air, all three made one.

‘For a moment they hung there as if strung from a wire, and beneath them the gorge yawned wide. Then there was a jolt and a jouncing and the boy cried aloud in agony, but the mare had made her landing and now cantered down to a trot and stopped.’ Strider let out a long breath. ‘The soldier slipped at once from her back, conscious of his promise. And swiftly he had to catch young Théoden, for in his pain he had swooned. But all three were alive, and none the worse for the jump, and that was more than might have been hoped for any of them.’

‘So the horse brought the boy down the mountain while the soldier walked beside?’ asked Barliman, exhilarated to know at last what had happened, but dreading to be told the tale was at an end.

‘No,’ said Strider. ‘Triumphant returns are never so simple as the tales make them appear. By that time it was growing dark, and the path was difficult to see. The King’s son had not yet woken from his faint, and the sergeant’s own knees were weak with the fear and fire of the flight and the relief of the sound landing. They could go no farther that night. The Eagle removed saddle and bridle from the mare, for she had done mighty work that day. Then he scouted ahead some little ways until he found a sheltered place that would guard them from the mountain winds. He bore Théoden to it, still wrapped in his own coarse cloak, and he laid the child beside him with his golden head upon the soldier’s breast. He held him close to give what warmth he could, and he prayed that the mare would not flee them in the dark.

‘But the horses of that far land are wise, and cleverer perhaps than many Men. Back came the little mare, and she laid herself down upon the hard rock with her flank near the boy. So with the horse on one side and the soldier on the other, Théoden slept while The Eagle kept the watch.’ Strider seemed to slump in his chair, and his left hand slid a little on the armrest. His face grew drawn for a moment, but he pressed his elbow close in against his side, and the tension eased. The spell of faraway glory and adventure was gone from his voice when he said; ‘And when morning came and all three were wet with dew, they rose. Onto the mare’s back the King’s son was placed, and he drank the last of the water, and the soldier led the horse slowly down the mountain to the city.’

He fell silent.

‘But that can’t be the end!’ Barliman protested. ‘What about the boy’s leg? What did the king say? Did the soldier get himself into trouble for running off to find him?’

Strider chuckled ruefully, the sound dry and clattering in his throat. ‘Oh, yes!’ he sang, looking up at the ceiling again and not quite smiling. ‘Yes, the soldier got himself into trouble, all right. By this time the royal household was frantic, and of course the search parties had found no sign upon the plains, and when the soldier came down through the Queen’s gardens leading the errant horse that bore the wounded heir, there was an enormous commotion. Théoden’s mother was there to hold him in the soft garden grass. His sisters wept, and his father fell to his knees beside the Queen that he might touch the head of his son. And the King’s guard were in an uproar, and a leech was sent for, and the horse surrounded by grooms and farriers all fearing for her health, and in the midst of all this the sergeant stood silent until the Captain of the Lord Mayor’s company worked his way to the head of the throng and spied him.’

He looked down again, meeting Barliman’s eyes. His own seemed to be laughing still, though his face was once again grim and tired. ‘The Captain cried for him to be seized at once and clapped in irons, for to desert one’s company in a time of need is a grave crime in any army. And the sergeant was hauled away to the cells beneath the King’s storehouses. His belt and his boots they took from him, but his sword he had abandoned on the mountain and its sheath held the leg of the King’s son. Then he was left there, that the Lord Mayor his master might decide his doom. For in the hour of Théoden's return no one could spare a thought for the fate of his rescuer.’

‘But that’s not—’ Barliman began, before a voice out of his childhood halted him. Fair don’t mean much once you get to be old enough to make your own way in the world, Old Tim had said on that strange night long ago. Dear Old Tim, who always had a patient ear but never a word of agreement, who never let a boy go to bed without a nibble of something to tide him over ‘til breakfast, who had fixed a whole plate of hot, good food into hot, good tailings so that a famished but stubborn man could eat. Barliman shook his head. ‘That’s not right,’ he amended.

‘Hmm.’ Strider shrugged noncommittally and tilted his head to one side. ‘In the meantime the leeches—’

‘Ugh!’ cried Barliman in spite of himself. He’d had his own experiences with leeches, mostly while trying to wade in the shallows of the creek that ran just south of the town.

The Ranger shook his head. ‘It is what the people of that land called their healers. The healers attended to Théoden. They found him hungry, and they found him bruised from his fall, but he had no other grave hurts besides the leg, and that they found had been set with all due skill. They had only to replace the halves of the soldier’s sheath with a less rustic splint, and the King’s son had no further need of their ministrations. The horse was examined by the farriers and the King’s own Horsemaster and she too was found to be hale, though her tail was much tangled. And when morning came again the King asked to speak to the soldier who had brought back his son.

‘The sergeant was brought to him, sock-footed and in irons. He was begrimed with dust and sweat from the trail, and none the better for his restless night in the cells. There was straw stuck in his hair, though he knew it not at the time.’ Barliman chuckled and Strider gave a little bow of acknowledgement. ‘Nonetheless he knew he made a less than glorious picture as he stood before his liege-lord, to whom he had never before been presented. The tall throne rose above him, with his red-faced master to one side and his wrathful Captain to the other. There were hot words from both, and the King listened. Then he turned to the lee—healer, and asked of the child. And he turned to his Horsemaster and asked of the mare. And at last he looked at the sergeant, and he asked him; “Why did you not speak, if you believed my son had gone into the mountain?” ’

‘But he did!’ Barliman remembered this, too. That was perhaps the most extraordinary thing about all this: how clearly and perfectly he could remember such small details. ‘He told his Captain, and was ordered to be silent!’

‘He did, but he could not say that to the King,’ said Strider. ‘A soldier may never raise his voice against his commander, however unjustly he is accused. So the sergeant said naught in answer. More harshly the King repeated his question. The sergeant made no reply. And the King looked upon him with growing wrath. ‘If you do not answer, you shall be returned to your cell to await my pleasure,” he warned. “And all that you have earned will be stripped from you.” And still the sergeant was silent.

‘Then a voice rose in the chamber, and it was the Captain of the Lord Mayor’s company. “Thengel King, it was I,” he proclaimed, stepping forward. “He told me of his suspicion, and I bade him be silent. My lord, had he heeded me your son might lie there still.” And he fell to his knees before his King, ashamed.’

Again Strider took a heavy breath; heavier than the exertions of storytelling should warrant. His eyes were distant as he said; ‘Then the King commanded that the irons be stricken off the sergeant’s wrists, and he laid a hand upon each of the man’s shoulders and he thanked him. And to the Captain he said; “Your truthfulness has spared you. Go now and be about your business, but you shall be this man’s Captain no more.” The Captain was dismayed, fearing that he had been stripped of his rank for his folly. But the King smiled; “For he shall be henceforth a lieutenant in the company of my own household. Let him prove his mettle on the battlefield as he has proved it on the stony heights!” And all were glad.’

Strider sighed and looked down into his lap. He spread the fingers of his right hand and examined them with care, as though seeing for the first time the ragged nails in their begrimed beds, the callouses and thin scratches and one dark bruise near the base of the thumb. ‘So the Captain was returned to his duties, and the Lord Mayor was spared any shame. Young Théoden was running again in six weeks’ time, and the mare was sent back to her dam on the broad plain. As for the sergeant, he was indeed made a lieutenant in the King’s own company. A comfortable house was given over to his use. And he rose in rank and in the esteem of his lord, until he had both the rank and the income to outfit a company of his own. He did many deeds worthy of praise upon the field of battle, but none ever raised him so high in the regard of his lord as that first service on the high shoulders of the mountain.’

Then he fell silent. At first Barliman did not know if he had finished. Then Strider’s eyes found his face and fixed upon it. ‘Well?’ he said levelly. ‘Was it worth fifteen years’ waiting?’

‘Oh, yes!’ Barliman exclaimed. ‘Yes, thank you: it really did drive me half mad, not knowing what happened. Such a tale! Tell me, do you suppose it truly happened?’

‘That is something asked at the end of all the best tales,’ said Strider. ‘But it is for the listener to decide himself. For my part I do not think the answer as important as the pondering.’

Barliman frowned in puzzlement. What did that mean? ‘Do all you Rangers speak in riddles?’ he asked.

Strider shrugged his right shoulder. ‘Perhaps we are unaccustomed to such conversations as these.’

‘Hmmph.’ With a little grunt of determination, Barliman got up from the bed. ‘I’d best be off,’ he said. ‘There’ll be guests turning up steady from now ‘til it comes time to lock the gate. I’m bound to be run off my feet, too! My potboy’s out with the gout, and I can’t ask my mother to…’ He had almost reached the door when an idea came to him. It was worth a try, anyhow, and it might give him a chance to do better than his father had done.

‘See here,’ he said, turning to look at the Ranger again and planting his hands on his hips. ‘I’m short of help tonight. If the room’s too dear for your purse, I’d be happy to let you clear tables and wash the dishes. I can’t stretch to paying you, but there’ll be a hot supper tonight and breakfast first thing besides the bed. No scraps, either: proper fresh food.’

The piercing grey eyes fixed upon him, and Barliman felt unable to move or speak or turn away. Then Strider shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can pay for my night’s lodging. I’m in no state to be weaving through a crowd with a heavy tray. Although,’ he added, and there was a note of wry amusement in his voice; ‘for the promise of a hot meal at the end of it I’d willingly bend my back over a dishpan for a few hours.’

Barliman was taken all at once with an image of the other Ranger all those years ago, gnawing as hungrily as a stray hound at the bone of a chicken leg some other fellow had already eaten as he tried to strip off any scraps of meat that might remain. He thought of him rising before the dawn and hurrying off with his story unfinished and his breakfast uneaten. And all because Barli’s old skinflint of a da wouldn’t stretch to offering a proper supper in exchange for what had proved to be a hard night’s work.

‘You can eat straight away,’ he said decisively. ‘Just go down and tell Cook what you fancy, and take a seat by the fire in the common room while he’s fixing it. Once you’ve got something decent in your stomach, we’ll see about putting you to work. That bread of yours don’t look fit for the pigs.’

The grim man’s lips twitched upwards in a ghost of a smile he looked too weary to truly feel. ‘Thank you, Barliman Butterbur,’ he said, quiet but earnest. ‘I can see you’re a fair man.’

Even if it was only from a Ranger, that was all that Barliman had really wanted to hear. Apart from the end of the story, of course.

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