Slowly the nervousness which had held Storwolos in its tight grip during the debriefing he had to go through waned, and the satisfied words of the leaders he had to visit made him openly show his pride. Still, although he would not admit it - now that he had been promoted to lead a small unit of two dozen Dúnlendings –, retelling the events of the past few hours to one of his men, was quite a relief to him. Now he finally understood why all who ever met Saruman himself spoke of him only in awe and fear.
Storwolos and Swartewit now walked side by side as they left the courts of Isengard, and made their way southwards along the Isen.
“Still, I don’t get why Sharkey wanted to see you in person,” Swartewit said, again expressing his amazement, “what in Middle-Earth was so special about the scouting you did?”
“The White Hand only wanted to see me after I had told my debriefing over and over to the army leader, and then to his new favorite, it seems, that spy from Rohan, Gríma… it seems the description of a black- and a brown-haired rider surprised them more than my anger at our traitor. All Rohirrim seem the same to me, I don’t distinguish one enemy from another, but the bosses appeared interested.”
“What’s more, even the Wizard himself could barely hide his surprise when he heard Borleg wasn’t back yet. Maybe that’s why I got entrusted with the new mission, and not old Borleg. Not my problem, old man!” Storwolos laughed, he was well aware this was one big step forward in the grace of his leaders.
“So how was Sharkey?”, asked Swartewit, interrupting Storwolos’s rant. “- How often do I need to tell you not to call Him that!” Settling from his short outburst of anger at what he found a derision of his Master, Storwolos continued, “Even if he wasn’t the greatest mind ever to walk among us, even if he wasn’t more skilled in the hidden crafts as noone in our legends of old, he’d still have no problems becoming the King of all! His appearance is breath-taking, his voice and speech is utter truth and beauty. Only fools could be so blind not to look in his face or hear him speak, and not to kneel down at once and swear fealty forever to him.”
“Whatever you say ‘boss’…” Swartewit could again not hide his mistrust in the leaders’ decision to promote Storwolos, even though that earned him another grim glance. “But just what exactly did he tell you to look for in the north?”
“That, I can of course explain to you, Swartewit...”
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