[piosenniel]

Ealasaid’s post

Old Bill Cummerbund was poking around in the cattails near the Sarn Ford looking for crawdads or river snails or whatever he could find. He was in a foul mood because the sun was hot, his back hurt, and he wasn't finding anything. Angrily, he took a swat at the cattails with his walking stick.

"What kind of river is this!" he grumbled, rolling his short clay pipe between his molars. "Nothing but mud and weeds. Mud and weeds!"

Still grumbling, he clambered back up the riverbank, his bright blue eyes already squinting toward the road. No travellers were visible in either direction.

"Bah!" Old Bill spat in disgust and stumped over to the shady spot where he had left his knapsack and his prized possession: Thunderill, the Blade of Cummerbund, he called it. At one time, it had probably been a decent enough sword, but by the time he had found it and dredged it out of the river, it had deteriorated to a sorry state. The blade was notched on one side and florets of rust and corrosion bloomed from tip to hilt. The scabbard was a water-logged mess. Lovingly, he picked it up and moved it to one side so that he could sit.

Altogether, it had been a pretty crummy day. He had awakened just after dawn with a vicious crick in his neck and then didn't even make it through breakfast before his wife got into one of her moods and tossed him out of the house. All it had taken was one little remark. One crummy little remark about the fat on the bacon and there he was out on his ear. Well, at least she had packed him a lunch. He took the cold pipe out of his mouth and laid it on the grass beside his sword.

Usually when he was at loose ends, Old Bill liked to hang around at the Sarn Ford. It wasn't too far from the farm, which his sons worked now that he had retired, and it was usually a pretty busy place. If one wanted to cross the Brandywine, then one had to cross at the ford. If one wanted to cross at the ford, then there was a good chance one would have to spend a little time with Bill Cummerbund.

Bill made sure of that. His favorites to pass through were the Rangers. They could be a curt and surly bunch, but when they had a mind to be civilized,lo, they could tell a grand tale. His least favorites were families with children or hobbits with their endless chatter about food and their own relations. He would bristle his eyebrows at children until they cried. With hobbits, he simply fingered the hilt of his sword and tried to look forbidding. If they smirked at his patched overalls of the curling leather of Thunderill's scabbard, he was just as likely to brandish the sword and charge as not. But he had not done a whole lot of that lately as his last couple of war cries had ended with him bent double in the throes of what he thought was surely a life-threatening coughing fit. Lately, he had taken the subtler tack of politely sending the smirking lot of them west if they desired to go east or vice versa. It was much easier on his lungs.