[Bêthberry]

Settlers, Rangers, Hillmen -- The Discovery of the Bodies of Thorgil and Calem

The steady, regular drip of the rain was unnerving Calumdril. Normally a self-possessed man, he would not usually be bothered by the sudden outburst, yet the pelting of the drops seemed to worry him, as if he had left something unattended which he should have seen to himself. Doubt was nagging him. He had made the ridge, but the cloud and mist shrouded his sight and hearing, so that any opportunity for tracking the herd of deer was well nigh impossible. He shrugged off his frustration at yet another day wasted by thinking of Thorgil, the Ranger. Perhaps he would be of more use to the Ranger, helping him track the strange creature. He slipped out of the thicket and made his way down the ridge, towards the fork of the river.

The rain was heavier in the lowlands and each footstep oozed into the forest bed, matted with last year's leaves. The rain now hid the sounds of animals and seemed to amplify his own heartbeat, as if he were alive and all around him in the forest dead or beyond his reach. He removed his hood, as if that would bring him closer to sensing Thorgil's tracks. It didn't, but merely made the eerie echo of the wet forest more pronounced. He hunched over to watch the ground more closely and nearly missed the sight of the large hawk circling overhead. No, it wasn't a hawk. It was a vulture. Calumdril shaded his eyes from the rain and watched it spiral down, towards a break in the stand of trees. He followed it.

~ ~ ~

The rain had ended by the time Calumdril came upon the scene. He saw first the Ranger Thorgil, whose flesh had already turned a waxy white and whose eyes had already been pecked away. A large wound on the forehead made almost a third eye and silently spoke of the Ranger's death. Calumdril had cursed at the giant birds and driven them off, but he knew without touching the Ranger's body that the man was dead. A crack of branch in the underbush and he tensed his muscles, putting his hand to the knife hidden at his back and jumping up and away, eyes darting for any sign of attack. All he heard now were the slowly returning sounds of the forest shaking off the rainwater. He backed away from Thorgil's body, spying the trail where the Ranger had staggered towards his last stand. Circling round, Calumdril edged his way towards the crushed path. What he found stunned him.

Malformed, horrid, frightening even, yet the creature had been human, a Hillman most likely, Calumdril decided. The body was large, out of proportion, a leg withered and shorter than the other but the arms and chest oversized. Calumdril looked around, reading the story which the coagulated blood and spilt entrails told. He looked back at Thorgil's body, remembering the ugly welt in the forehead and the stink of vomit. Had they surprised each other, he wondered. He walked around the area, searching, and found a bloodied stone. He knelt and picked it up, examining it. An ordinary rock. A primitive weapon but no less deadly for that. Calumdril placed it in his pocket, covered, to show the Rangers the nature of the threat they faced and returned to examine the hillman more.

Its body already stank and the contorted face left Calumdril with visions of orcs. Even the vultures had not yet wanted to touch it. Yet this was no orc, simply a violent, deformed brute, filthy, bruised, battered, feet bare, hands cracked and callused, hardly clothed at all, likely starved from the looks of his cheek bones and ribcage.

But the marks were old, not fresh, not committed by Thorgil. Had his own people treated him thus? Calumdril shuddered at the thought of what enemies they were facing. He crouched back on his haunches, mouthing words of silent mourning for the Ranger who he had sent to his doom. And gave thanks for his life in Ithilien.

A vulture landing audaciously close brought him back to the scene. Calumdril decided he would leave the Hillman for his kind to find him, not the vultures. He cut down branches from an elder bush, saying his prayer of apology to the tree's spirit for the cutting. Holding one hand over his mouth and nose and covering his other with moss, to keep it free from the taint of the Hillman, he straightened out the body, closed the eyes, brought one arm over the other. He wondered if the man had ever received as much attention in life as he was giving him in death. No matter. He would leave his message for the Hillmen to find. He lay the branches over the body, protecting it roughly from degradation by the animals, and lightly kicked earth over it. He searched then for Thorgil's sword.

Finding it, Calumdril thought for some time. By rights it should be returned to the Rangers and buried with Thorgil. Yet he needed to complete his message. Deciding, he broke the sword near the hilt, and buried it in the ground by the Hillman's head. The blade he took away with him.

Scattering the ground to obliterate his tracks and the evidence of Thorgil's death, Calumdril returned to the Ranger's body, cleansing as best he could the bloodied wound and tying a cloth around his eyes, hiding the indignity of the vulture's feeding. Then, straining, he hefted the body over his shoulder and began the long, slow trek back to the Rangers' cabin, dragging an elder branch behind him in hopes of masking his tracks. He staggered. Thorgil had been a tall, robust man and Calumdril was but a slight man.

He had plenty of time to think; he made but slow progress. This could have been him, he realized, as he wound his way back. And then he thought of other problems, more ominous for the settlement. Would the Rangers blame him? And what of these Hillmen? Would they avenge the death of so wretched a creature? Were they all as hideous and deformed as this one had been?

The rank odour of the forest, wet with decay, mingled in his nostrils with his memory of the Hillman's body. He began to sweat with the effort of carrying Thorgil's dead weight and he worried that he might not be able to carry him back to the cabin. For one of the first times in his life, Calumdril felt hedged in by the trees, the forest, and the clammy, humid air.

A shadow, the last of the storm clouds, blotted out the trail. His energy draining, he felt his own mortality a palpable thing and he shuddered, winded by his effort.

[ October 27, 2003: Message edited by: Bêthberry ]