Chapter 9. In which a murder is interrupted

Pippin shook off everyone’s attentions long enough to send half-a-dozen archers to Whittacres Farm. It would be slow going, to get past the rock-fall in the dark, and they’d likely not find ponies easy to borrow for a few miles beyond. This was sheep country more than anything, not much ploughed land and thus not many ponies to be found. The farms tended to cluster closer to towns and villages such as Tookbank, where there were good roads for taking produce to market.

While he was at it, he sent four riders at a gallop to the Great Smials, bearing a message to the Steward of Tookland. Regi would send messengers throughout the Shire in general and Tookland in particular, proclaiming a muster. It might take them until dawn to begin the grand sweeping out, but sweep the ruffians out they would.

Four more riders were galloping southwards, to bear messages from the King’s Counsellors to the North Kingdom, to the Watchers who enforced Elessar’s Edict banning Men from the Shire. It was a little like closing the stable door after the ponies had already run away, but the Rangers needed to know that Men were somehow evading their watch, so that they could evaluate and tighten the protective “hedge” they kept about the Bounds.

Flurry of orders over and done, the Thain allowed his shoulders to slump. He did not try to shake off Sam’s cloak, added over the top of his own, and he drank the steaming tea that Healer Fennel pressed upon him.

Tolly, as it turned out, did not go to Whittacres Farm to take charge of Faramir’s safety. It was not anything to do with a lack of trust on Pippin’s part, but as one of Ferdi’s oldest friends, since the latter had come to live at the Great Smials as a teen, the head of the Thain's escort took charge of the necessary details. Blankets were fetched from Hammersmiths’ farm, and Tolly saw to the shrouding of his old friend, though his were not the only hands to lift the blanketed figure, carry the burden over the broken ground to where the ponies waited, and to lift it to lay it across the saddle. But he was the one who made the burden fast, that it might not slip, and after the others had stepped back he lingered a moment, laying a hand on the blanket, his head bowed.

‘Sorry, Ferdi,’ he whispered. ‘Not the most comfortable ride, for it to be your last.’ He drew a shuddering breath and went on. ‘And Nell... Don’t you worry about your Nell, and the little ones.’ His jaw tightened, and he found distraction from his grief in a wave of anger. ‘We’ll make them pay for this day’s work...’

The Green Hill country was a huge expanse of territory, but the blood of the Tooks was up, and they’d be crawling over the hills like ants disturbed from their nest. There was no where for ruffians to hide, in the end. The Tooks and the rest of the Shire-folk had tossed them out of the Shire once before, had scoured the Shire of Men under the leadership of Merry and Pippin, and Pippin’s father, and there was no doubt that they could do it again.

And then the Thain’s hand was on Tolly’s shoulder. ‘They’ll pay, indeed,’ Pippin said, and he added, ‘His wife and children will want for nothing, Tolly.’

‘O they will want for something,’ Tolly said before he could stop himself, and then he drew a deep breath and apologised, but Pippin only patted his shoulder.

They rode slowly back to the Great Smials, for Pippin would not stop at Hammersmiths’ farm. ‘The Smials is an hour’s ride,’ he said. ‘There’s much to be done, until the scum’s been scoured from the pot, and there’ll be time to rest after.’

At least, he thought, Farry’s well out of it. He likely didn’t even notice that his escort hadn’t arrived on the designated day... likely doesn’t even know the date, though Isum and Pearl would have known...

They’d deal with Farry’s grief for his uncle later, when the mess had been cleared away.

***

As it was, Farry was not out of it as his father supposed, but in the thick of it, rather. At that moment he was cold and tired, wearied beyond anything he remembered, as a matter of fact, worn by grief and the late hour. It was past eight o’clock, more than an hour past his bedtime, nearly two hours, if he had but known it! Ten-year-old hobbits were usually put to bed after eventides, for they needed their sleep to grow. Young hobbits weren’t allowed to stay up for late supper until their tweens, as a rule, unless it was a very special occasion.

He could not shrug himself deeper into his jacket and enveloping cloak, for his hands were bound at the wrist, and the binding fastened to Dapple’s saddle. He’d thought at first, rather wildly, of kicking his legs against Dapple just as hard as he might, startling her into a gallop, taking him away from the ruffians, but they’d put a rope around his neck as well, forestalling such action on his part. He could break his neck on the instant, or he could hold on and hope.

Little enough hope, he well knew. The Green Hill country was so wide and trackless. Short of some wandering shepherd seeing them and taking word to the Thain, Farry didn’t know how his father would find him, reclaim him. Uncle Ferdi was the best tracker in Tookland, and he’d have been able to follow the ruffians’ trail, of that Farry had no doubt. But Uncle Ferdi was dead.

The little lad shivered, and his head nodded on his neck, jerking him into full and miserable wakefulness. Cold, yes, and weary, grief-stricken, but the worst was the hunger. He didn’t know when he’d ever been so hungered. The ruffians had taken him just before noontide, making his last meal elevenses. So, he thought, counting on fingers numbed by his bindings, he’d missed noontide and tea and eventides, three meals so far.

The ruffians had eaten as they walked, but nothing had been offered the lad. With a bitter wisdom beyond his years, he knew what that portended.

He’d been taken thrice by ruffians after his father’s gold. Once he’d been rescued before the scoundrel got clean away, that was in the North-lands on a visit to the King’s Lake; and a happy accident had saved him when he’d been stolen in Minas Tirith, that had been the first time, though he’d been too young to carry the memory into the present. The other abduction had been on the part of half-hearted ruffians, who turned into friends on acquaintance, so much so that Farry’s mum Diamond had promised them safe conduct out of the Shire when all was said and done.

The ruffians-turned-friends had fed him, had taken care of him, kept him warm, talked to him and told him stories.

But these ruffians, now... They talked to each other, and they ate their food as they walked, but they didn’t look at him, not as if he were a person, a somebody, at all. And they spoke not a word to him, so long as he was quiet—and he had no choice but to be quiet, with the gag in his mouth to keep him from shouting for help.

His mouth was dry, and the gag made a poor substitute for food, and he was weary, so very weary... His head nodded again, and he dreamed, and once more he stood in the ruffian chief’s grasp, seeing the club raised and ready to fall...

‘We’ll make it quick. You won’t feel a thing, if you just stand still and take it like a man.’

A part of Farry wanted to protest that he was not a Man, and another part of him quivered like a scared rabbit as, big-eyed, he stared at the murderous club, blood and hair already showing on its rough and jagged head. Uncle Ferdi’s blood.

‘Make ‘im beg,’ the whiner said with an unpleasant sneer. ‘Beg, you little blighter. Maybe he’ll let you go, if you beg hard enough.’

The fat man smiled unpleasantly,  lowering the club slightly. ‘None of your games, now, Red,’ he said to the whiner. ‘We’ve more serious business.’

He raised the club again, towering over the hobbit child, and Farry thought in that moment of his father, facing a troll four times his size or more, and he stood straighter. If he only had a sword in his hand, he thought, and the hobbity part of him was sick at the thought, but the part that was his father’s son stiffened his spine and made him look away from the club, his gaze boring straight into the fat man’s eyes. If I had a sword...

‘Wait,’ the brawny man said suddenly. ‘There’s something about him...’

‘We’ve no time to waste,’ the fat man said, but he lowered the club again and looked to the brawny ruffian.

‘Do you know,’ the brawny man said, ‘He’s the spitting image of their leader, you know, the Shire-rat who tossed us out of the Shire in Sharkey’s day.’

The fat man grimaced. ‘Spitting image,’ he mocked. ‘He’s a child! I’ve seen that so-called Thain, once at the Prancing Pony, and this one – of a certainty, his hair’s the same shade, but –’

‘But,’ said the brawny man, ‘I can go you one better. I saw the brat before he ever was Thain – probably when he was about this one’s age, or maybe a little older – they said he was small for his age.’

‘That long ago...’ the whiner sneered.

‘I remember,’ the brawny man began, but the fat man cut him off.

‘That’s why we brought him along, little brother,’ he said, pinning the whiner with his cold gaze. ‘He remembers what he saw, all those years ago, tagging along in the conjurer’s footsteps.’

Conjurer! Farry’s heart leapt within him at the word. He knew of two who’d wandered the Shire in his father’s youth, one a true wizard and no longer in Middle-earth, and the other... But Jack had sworn, never to cross the Bounds of the Shire again. Farry had heard him so swear, and Diamond had received the man’s oath with due solemnity, before he’d left them and made his way out of the Shire for the last time.

And Jack had helped Farry, after that, when a murderous ruffian had held the son of the Thain, and a son of the Mayor into the bargain, in his clutches, far away by the King’s Lake, and nearly half of Farry’s lifetime ago...

But Jack would not be near, now, could not help, now, for he’d sworn to stay out of the Shire for ever more.

And Farry’s lifetime seemed destined to be cut short. The brawny man had bought him a little time, and so he did not lie cold and still, with Ferdi, beneath the rocks the ruffians had pried loose and sent rumbling down the great hillside.

But he was a dead hobbit, all the same, and the ruffians had made no pretence at any promised future for the lad.

He was alive only to provide a shield of sorts, if they ran into trouble while in the Shire, or while slipping past the Watchers at the Bounds when their business was done. Once they had no need of him, they’d discard him, throwing him away as easily as they’d dispatched his Uncle Ferdi, without even a decent burial. Young as he was, he could number his remaining hours. He was but a shield, for a limited time in case the ruffians ran into trouble.

Which Farry certainly hoped, they would.