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.

metta