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.