This is the last of the horror, and makes for unpleasant reading, as it details the ruffians' end. Be assured, they do end, if you don't care to read this chapter, and choose to skip to the next. PG-13.

Chapter 37. Midnight supper

Part of the Bounds of the Shire still run along the Brandywine River, but there was at that time another stream, emptying out of the Green Hills, that ran southwards for a long way before turning East, to join with the Brandywine. It dried up in the great three-year drought when Peregrin I was Thain, becoming a mere trickle, no more than ankle-deep, when the rains returned to the Shire, and so does not appear on maps in these modern times, but in the early days of Thain Peregrin it ran strong and cold, nearly to a pony’s belly at the ford where the ruffians’ escort meant to cross.

It was this crossing that the brawny man fixed his thoughts upon, this, his hope of escape, or if not that, a quick and relatively easy death, for drowning in a cold stream is much like falling asleep. He’d nearly died of the cold, during an untimely spring snowstorm early in his life, and had found it not unpleasant; why, he’d even begun to feel warm, as he was freezing to death, and nearly resented the attentions of the travelling conjurer who rescued him.

Yes, better to drown, or freeze to death, than to suffer the death the Halflings discussed. As for Red... well, he rather deserved all the torment they cared to mete out to him. Even the brawny man’s strong stomach had turned, when Red sought after his twisted pleasures. He’d been relieved when the fat man had assigned the youngster, instead of Red, to wrest the “tokens” from the hobbit-child, for the young ruffian would take no delight in pain and horror, and though he might hesitate at first, he’d get--had got--the unpleasant job over with as quickly as possible.

He was sick from the shaking he’d had, for the hobbits after Sam and Tolly mounted had alternated between the trot and the canter, as if determined to cross the distance to the Bounds as quickly as possible. He retched, hanging there, fearing that the journey would go on for hours yet... fearing that the journey would end at any moment. He hung suspended in misery, and his prospects were bleak. But he’d made his own luck before, and he hoped to, once again.

But his hopes were dashed when they reached the stream. The party stopped, short of the water, and stood, the torchlight flickering on the black water, breath rising in steam from the ponies and riders and living baggage, and consulted.

There was not long to wait. The brawny man, lifting his head to crane into the darkness, setting his will to slip into the frigid water when they reached the middle of the stream, saw a sudden bright flare as a lantern was unshielded on the other side of the water.

There was a muttering among the hobbits. They had not expected to be met, thus. The brawny man gathered, from their comments, that they were in the habit of sending one or two hobbits ahead, once they’d crossed the ford, to let the Rangers know they were coming. However, the lantern revealed tall men, on tall horses, and one of these started across the stream as they watched.

There was a stirring all about him, and the brawny man realised that the Tooks were fitting arrows to their bows, ready to shoot. They were suspicious, thinking that these might be more ruffians, waiting to greet their gold-bearing comrades... and how wonderful it would have been, the brawny man thought, had that only been the truth. But no. He and Red were the last of the band, and soon there’d be just Red, if only he could carry out his plan and disappear into the soft-chuckling waters.

But the Man called out in a clear voice from midstream, and Tolly returned the greeting, evidently recognising the Ranger from previous meetings. The Tooks relaxed, though they did not put away their bows.

When the Ranger reached them, he dismounted, bowing to the hobbits, offering them and their families his service, and then he said he’d had a message from the King, and were these the ruffians taken by Thain, Master and Mayor in the heart of Tookland?

Tolly allowed as they were, and the Man said that he would take the ruffians from there, and the Tooks were welcome to make camp—the Rangers would set a watch, if that would be agreeable, and if the hobbits required food or blankets or canvas to stretch above their heads...?

Tolly declined, and at his next words the hobbits regrouped, jammed several of their torches into the sandy bank, turned their ponies homeward, and with a salute to the Ranger, and without a backwards glance for the doomed ruffians, they trotted away. Tolly explained that they’d carried food with them, and they had orders to return to the Great Smials, and he, too, had his orders. The rest would ride back, and he’d stay, as the Thain’s representative, to be a witness...

‘And I’m staying with him,’ Mayor Sam spoke up.

Tolly started, tried to brush away the Mayor’s company, but Samwise would not be moved. ‘I heard the orders, as clear as you did, and I think the Thain would be right glad if I’m there to keep an eye on you, Tolly. The cruelties of Men are worse, when you first see them, than anything a hobbit can imagine.’

The Ranger did not protest, but merely bowed gravely. The King’s message, specific as it had been, had caused no little consternation to his Watchers. But the writing was Elessar’s own hand, sealed with his ring, and carried by his own bird... and what imposter would care to send such a message, bearing such horror?

‘So the King sent,’ he said. ‘Child-stealers, to bear what ever penalty the Thain might decree.’

Tolly swallowed hard, and stammered, ‘The Easterlings...’

The Ranger breathed shallowly for several breaths, and nodded. ‘I’ve often thought a quick, clean hanging too light a penalty,’ he said. ‘But we are Men of the West, and not given to torment and dark deeds.’

He turned to the ruffians then, taking ropes from his bag, forming nooses that he placed over the doomed Men’s heads, tying the ends of these to his saddle, and then undoing the bindings that held the ruffians on their ponies, letting them slide to the ground, though their legs would not hold them, and they ended sitting, their heads bowed.

Tolly had his bow out, an arrow at the ready, while the Ranger undid the hobbits’ bindings, one ruffian at a time, bringing the rogues’ hands behind their backs and binding them securely.

And then... he told the hobbits to mount their ponies, if they insisted on coming along to view the unpleasanter part of the business, and he mounted his horse and turned in the saddle. ‘Get up,’ he said to the ruffians. ‘Get yourselves up, or be dragged by your necks, if you’d like to end it now.’

And the brawny man lost his nerve, even with the threat of the Easterlings hovering over him, and he struggled to his feet, as Red staggered to stand, and then they were moving, the ropes around their necks tugging them along like reluctant dogs on the lead. Into the stream, the first steps not so cold, but soon it was pouring over the tops of their boots, rising up their legs nearly to their waists, and the brawny man was tempted to throw himself down, but he’d only be dragged through the water and out again, behind the Ranger’s horse, slowly strangling... and he couldn’t bring himself to it.

Up the bank, step by reluctant step, and he mustn’t stumble, he mustn’t fall, he must hold tight to every moment, every breath, every moment left to him before the torment began. They had several hours of darkness left, before the carrion birds would waken and be about their grim business...

There was a copse ahead, a darker mass of trees against the midnight sky. No stars shone above, no moon looked down in cold pity; the clouds did not even shed tears of snow or ice, they just covered the face of the sky from the horror unfolding.

The Rangers’ lanterns simply made the surrounding shadows darker, inky and frightening, as if nameless monsters crouched just beyond the reach of the light.

At last they came under the canopy of the trees, the Rangers surrounding them, Tolly and Sam riding to either side of the wretched ruffians, and they stopped under a tree with a fine, sturdy branch perhaps a dozen feet from the ground.

The ruffians were shivering in their wet clothing, but worse was to come, for a cold wind sprang up, and snowflakes began to drift down again, falling past the naked branches to the ground below.

Strip them, one of the Rangers said, and if the brawny man had thought that wet trousers were miserable, well, things were worse when he was relieved of his dry upper clothing, his skin a mass of gooseflesh in the freezing air, the sifting snowflakes landing on him in teasing tickles of ice that chilled him further as they alighted and then melted away.

They threw the hanging ropes over the high branch, and the brawny man knew a moment of desperate, if despairing, hope. Whether they hauled him into the air, to strangle slowly, or told him to step up onto a slender log, a precarious perch at best, difficult to keep one’s balance, but easy to kick away from under him, that he might drop with a neck-snapping jerk--please, he thought within himself, closing his eyes. Please.

But then he heard Red gasp, and begin to plead, to beg, to grovel... something he’d heard often, in Red’s company, from the guests the fat man allowed his younger brother to “entertain”, but never before from the red-headed ruffian himself. ‘Please, no! Mercy! Have pity! Please!’

The whining voice rose to a scream as the brawny man felt warm hands fumbling about his chest—the warmth felt good, against his chilled skin, even as he opened his eyes to see what he dreaded—they were tying a rope around him, under his arms, and in the next moment he was hauled into the air with a jerk, swinging, hanging helpless, his hands bound behind him but the rest of him free to move, his tongue free to beg, and he saw the hobbits standing in the midst of the flock of Rangers by the light of the torches surrounding the clearing, grim but determined. The ruffians hung from the ropes tied under their arms, and though the nooses remained around their necks, these hung loose and useless, mocking even, with a generous amount of slack in their ropes.

And his own protest was wrung from him. ‘No,’ he whispered, ‘no, please...’

‘It’ll be some hours until the dawning,’ he heard a Ranger say. ‘Will you take some food with us? I doubt you’ll have any stomach for it, once the sun rises and the birds begin their feasting.’

‘A good idea,’ Sam said bravely, turning away and pulling the other hobbit after him.

Most of the Watchers moved to where a fire was burning nearby, leaving a small guard to oversee the doomed men, as if there were some chance they might make an escape, hah. There was a smell of roasting meat on the air, goodly smells that the brawny man remembered from his travels, but the terror in his belly would not let him feel hunger, though he’d not eaten since the early morning.

And when early morning came again...

He could scarcely breathe for the fear that was in him. Perhaps, with any mercy, he’d freeze to death before the dawn. But though he was shivering vigorously, chilled to the bone, he felt not a whit of the warm, sleepy feeling that portended death by freezing. No, he felt quite energised.

He could hear them talking, over there by the fire. An owl hooted in the darkness, and he cringed as something large and feathered coasted slowly by him—that selfsame owl, he thought, and wondered if an owl would take the same pleasure in him as the carrion crows would.

Red was still whining, his voice growing hoarse as he continued his begging, his hopeless pleading, but the brawny man was saving his breath, for whatever reason, he didn’t know, but there was no point in begging. They’d earned this death, Red perhaps more so, but the brawny man was every bit as guilty, his hands as bloody as the other man’s, whether or not he’d done the deed. He hadn’t walked away, and he hadn’t helped anyone but himself.

And so, though horror crept ever closer, with each passing moment, he steeled himself as best he could, and turned his thoughts to brighter days and better companions.

And then a Ranger got up from the fire, and walked back to the hanging tree, and spoke to the Watchers, and one of them walked around, behind the doomed men. The brawny man tried to turn his head to mark the Watcher’s passage, but the noose impeded him.

Red’s begging stopped abruptly, replaced by a strange, gurgling, straining noise, and the brawny man turned his eyes that way and saw the other ruffian dangling at the end of the noose, several feet below him, slowly strangling, for the Watcher had released the rope that held him up, under his arms, letting the noose take his weight... though the drop had failed to break Red’s neck, and so his death would be somewhat prolonged, though not the torment of the birds’ leisurely feasting.

The brawny man knew a moment of wild hope as he felt himself begin to fall... yes! To be hanged, and with any luck, his neck would be broken, and all would be done. He’d never envisioned anything beyond his own death, besides darkness and silence and not-being, and he craved that now, more than ever, the peace he envisioned, in those last seconds, as he fell.

Only to find, reaching bottom, that he’d been wrong about the not-being. His last thought, as his body faded from his consciousness, was that he’d fallen from the frying pan, into the fire...