[Taralphiel]

Sorn smiled as Osfrid agreed, and left his Hall. Seating himself back in his chair, he grinned. Another plan unfurling well and another way to keep the feisty Lady in line. With one eye open and the other lazily closed, he surveyed his room. Fine wood carved chairs, detail tapestries, and even a stone bust of his mother adorned the room. Truly, there were few homes so fine in this land. And from the glimpses Sorn saw of the new Mead Hall in construction, there would be few to grow to match it either.

Sorn completely closed his eyes and yawned, stretching his legs out slowly. Sorn did not afford himself more than a few small snatches of sleep a night. He had come to trust his servants little. His spirit was most at ease around the hulking Gurth. This thought made him chuckle. 'Truly, he would not scheme against his Master' he thought to himself '...though, he would me more likely to crush me with his fist purely on a drunken whim. At least his intentions are laid bare for all to see...'

A creak of the floorboards, and Sorn's eyes snapped open. His dark, clouded gaze draped over the room again, searching for shadows or lurking servants. Nothing but the cold night's winds easing against the wide, solid building. Sorn let himself slip into remembrance of his childhood within these walls. If it were possible, the Hall looked even finer then. He was dressed in a new coloured tunic almost each day. Seamstresses, teachers, gardeners, cellar-servants, and all manner of workers used to bustle about the warm halls. Watched over by his warm and caring mother. He would race about the corridors and rooms, leaving his tutors flustered. He would listen to his father's official 'business', and watch his mothers’ kind instructions to the gaggle of cooks in their kitchen. These things all seemed so harmless to him then.

His mind then skipped forward in strange sequences. He remembered his mother's pale hand being tucked under a thin white sheet, his father's weeping and his newborn sister's cries. He remembered his sister, much older, weeping in front of a man delivering news of their father's fate at Pelennor. He then remembered his sister’s face growing haggard, steely, and empty of feeling. She would wander the corridors, looking over the memories of her father, and feel her soul yearn to know her mother…

Sorn shook his head violently, waking himself from the threads of sleep weaving about him, along with the threads of the bitter past that seemed to find home in his dreams. He stood, and muttered to himself "Something to chase away the boredom..."

Sorn left his Hall, and followed the grumbling and rumbling through his house. Eventually it lead him to Gurth, the hulking servant Sorn had found one night in a drunken stupor. Sorn smiled as the great man turned his way.

"Sorn!" He gurgled loudly.

"Aye, it is I, good Gurth! A grand evening to you, and to you Grendel!" The dog let an indifferent bark Sorn’s way at the mentioning of his name. Sorn sat on a large full keg at the back door of his house. He watched Gurth try to consume the contents of a small barrel of mead, spilling a good half of its contents over his chin and filthy tunic. Sorn cast a glance about where Gurth sat, and noticed three other containers of mead emptied, and another to go! Sorn snarled inwardly. His men had been overindulging with the great Gurth yet again. He would deal with them later. Now was not the time to keep Gurth from his drink.

Picking up the last barrel, he passed it to the drunk slumped man, and he gratefully took it with another wide grin, and a chorus of "Sorn! Mead!". Sorn could not help but smile at the simple joy this man took in his drink. And the bitter realisation that he, of all his hired help, was the most loyal. Nevertheless, he would not be kept from his plans. His men would help him, or suffer the consequences.

Pushing that thought from his mind, he tilted his head at Gurth, and with a playful smile posed him a question.

"Tell me Gurth, did you enjoy guarding the Lady Linduial?"