Chapter 9. The Ties that Bind

Not all healers are to be found in the Houses of Healing; there are a number of them scattered about the New City as well. Tulerion was one of these. He'd come with the first of the construction crews, drawn by the promise of a new city rising in the North-lands, a new hope, a new life far from the Black Lands, far from the Black Gate where his soul had nearly shrivelled in horror at the sights he had seen. He came to treat crushing injuries from honest rock and timber, illnesses common among Men, slices from axes used to hew trees and not soldiers. He came to bring babies into the world, sons and daughters of woodsmen and stone-masons, and later farmers and shopkeepers.

Living near the Quarry Gate he seldom saw soldiers of the King, except those that escorted condemned prisoners to the gallows outside the gate, and these soldiers looked remarkably healthy and whole, unlike those that still haunted Tulerion's dreams on occasion, even this long after he'd left the Southlands. As for those wretches they escorted, well, these were beyond Tulerion's aid in any event. He'd never seen the gallows, in truth, for he had no cause to leave the city through the Quarry Gate, now that the quarry was no longer a quarry but rather a dumping place for refuse. The closest he'd come to that place of death was the stockyards, to bind up the broken leg of a butcher who'd been too slow in moving out of the way of a skittish steer.

Now a guardsman stood before his door, his breathing indicating that he'd come at a run.

'An emergency?' Tulerion said sharply.

'The gallows,' the soldier said. 'The Ernil i Pheriannath sent me...'

'What's one of the Little Folk doing at the gallows?' Tulerion said. He'd never met any, at least not on speaking acquaintance, but he'd rather formed the impression that the Halflings were sheltered from some of the more unpleasant realities found in the lands of Men, by order of the King.

'In the name of the Steward of the City, you are to come,' Gumlin said crisply. Well, it was close to the truth. Haleth and his men were under the Steward's orders to arrest Jack, Will and Robin and bring them to the gallows, anyhow. This was merely an extension of that, so to speak.

'Why don't you go to the Houses of Healing, in that event?' Tulerion grumbled, but he picked up his bag of supplies and, shouting over his shoulder that he was called away, slammed the door behind himself.

The gallows would not be his first choice of destinations, not on a beautiful spring day like this one, growing nearly as warm as summer as the sun passed her zenith, he thought to himself as they left the stone-built cottages behind and trotted through the kitchen gardens, and then he began to wonder. Had a guardsman injured his back, wrestling a prisoner into position? Had one of the Little Folk fainted at the awful spectacle of a hanging and hit his head in falling? And what were the tough-but-tender-hearted folk doing in such a place?

***

'It is the wrong track,' Bergil said, pulling up his mount.

'The second wrong track,' Balanurthon emphasised. 'Bergil, if this is some sort of ill-considered joke you may well find yourself at the end of my rope on the morrow.'

'I thought you told me they didn't hang guardsmen, but put them to the sword, rather,' Hilly put in.

'Hanging is an inglorious death, reserved for common criminals,' Bergil said.

'I'm sure the Steward would be happy to make an exception in your case,' Balanurthon said. 'Especially with the King away...'

'Then we had better find the King, hadn't we?' Bergil returned. He turned his horse's head and applied his heels where they would do the most good. They rode in silence back to the main road, and then Bergil stopped to consider the landscape, and how much change had been wrought since last he had ridden this way. Balanurthon was not much help, unfortunately, for he seldom rode this far out of the city. When he wasn't busy about the King's justice, he had a large and lively family at home to deal with, and his life was full, indeed.

***

'Let me understand you,' the healer growled, incredulous, taking in the situation at a glance. He looked from the earnest faces of not one, but three Halflings to the sergeant and then at the elderly prisoner who, though he sat on the edge of the platform, leaned heavily against a guardsman. 'You want me to gain him enough strength to stand on his feet, that he might be hanged, is that it?'

'Yes,' said one of the gallows guard, but Haleth was shaking his head and the hobbits were vehement in their disagreement. The other prisoner, a young man, stood pale and silent between two guardsmen.

'He has seemed unwell since the arrest,' one of the hobbits said, the one who seemed to be in charge of the situation at the moment. The Prince of the Halflings, perhaps?

'I should imagine so,' Tulerion said, one corner of his mouth twisting.

'We would like to save him, if at all possible,' another hobbit said.

Save him in order to hang him, the healer thought sourly, but he shrugged his shoulders to release some of the tension that bound him and forced briskness into his tone. 'Well, then,' he said aloud. 'It would help if I knew something of his history.'

'That would interest me as well,' the first hobbit said. 'I know something of him, but...' He turned to the other prisoner. 'What can you tell us, Will?'

The young man looked warily at his guards, and Haleth said, divining the problem, 'Speak.'

'You heard the sergeant,' one of Will's guards said, giving his arm a warning shake.

I grow weary of this, Will thought to himself. How long must we endure, thus? Hanging might be an improvement over the unwavering grip of this bulldog of a guard. He swallowed, for the single cup of water had not completely taken away the dryness of his mouth in the growing heat of the day, and spoke. 'He was injured in a fall, some years back, and very ill for a long time after.'

Pippin looked up sharply at this. 'A fall?' he said, thinking of a man who'd plunged into the roiling, rock-strewn waters at the base of the great falls near the city, when his rope failed him.

The healer spoke at the same time. 'Unbind him.'

'Unbind him!' the two gallows guards protested together, and then Falathar said, 'I'm afraid we cannot do that, sir. Only he who executes the King's justice may unbind him, Balanurthon or his assistant.'

'Or the Steward, or the King himself, I'd imagine,' Pippin said. 'The King ought to be coming at any time, but I do not think we should keep Jack waiting.'

'He'll be unbound just as soon as the noose has done its work, I'm sure,' Tulerion said. 'But you must loose his hands now, that I may lay him down in order to examine him properly, and then if it must be, tie him up again when the time is right.'

'May the time never be right,' Merry whispered to Sam, and the Mayor nodded.

'Duinhir!' Haleth cracked, and that guardsman moved to unbind the old man's hands.