[Envinyatar]

Gaeradan

‘They should be sitting down to dinner, just now,’ he thought to himself as he skirted a mound of dung left by one of the great draft horses that pulled the wagons bearing cargo from the ships. ‘Andrus should be there, keeping his eyes and ears open.’ He muttered a small plea to Uinen to see to the safety of Eärnil. She had seen him through many a storm at sea, and now he called on her for protection from the storms that might sweep through the palace with the arrival of the boy.

He was bound for Ropemaker’s Alley, a small cul-de-sac really, just north of Osgiliath’s docks. In a small, ill lit side street between the Ropers’ Guild Hall with its attendant merchants’ stalls and the pulley-makers’ shop with its rows of tackle suspended from the ceiling beams holding the holding different pulleys, was the place to which Gaeradan was bound. There behind a dilapidated fence, bearing a weather beaten sign, stood The Gilded Gull.

Gaeradan paused for a moment at the gate that hung crazily on two of its four rusted hinges. He remembered in earlier years when the image on it, an indeterminate figure of some bird, its wings outstretched as if in flight – or death he laughed to himself – had born some gold leafing on its bill. But time and the elements had stripped it clean, leaving only the bare bones of the outline.

One of the older crew members on his first berth had taken him under his wing when he was just a fledgling sailor – given him the heads up on what to do about the ship to get one’s tasks done without coming under the scrutiny of the First Mate or his bullies. And just as important, he had introduced the young man to the run of sailors’ delights ashore . . . given him the knowledge of where to go if one needed something . . . anything . . . that is, as long as one had the resources for it.

And now he found himself pushing open the door of the Gull and making for the back table, on the left, rear - old Draugaer’s table. Two burly seamen stood to block his way as he approached, and just as quickly dropped back to their chairs at a quiet word from the man in the shadows of the booth. Gaeradan nodded at them as he slid into the booth, their cold eyes giving back nothing, only watching him closely should he prove threatening in the least.

Draugaer poured a small glass of fiery Southron spirits for Gaeradan and pushed it across the worn, rough surface of the table between them. His own glass left a ring of liquid on the grey whorls of wood as he lifted it to his lips, and he traced it casually with his finger, his eyes watching Gaeradan’s face as he sat the glass back down.

‘Did you bring what I asked,’ he said, as Gaeradan took a drink of the lip-numbing liquid. Gaeradan nodded, setting his glass down and slowly reaching beneath his cloak for the pouch tied to his belt. The henchmen watched his every move, fingering the knives at their own belts. He sat the pouch on the table and pushed it toward Draugaer. ‘Double that, if the information proves useful to me,’ he said quietly, sitting forward and leaning across the table.

Draugaer nodded, slipping the pouch, unopened, into the waistband of his breeches. Then he, too, leaned forward. And the muffled exchange of question and answer began.

[ September 14, 2003: Message edited by: Envinyatar ]