Resettling the Lost Kingdom

[Meneltarmacil]

Rangers
After the hillmen were a safe distance away, Thoronmir followed out of sight. The hillmen had climbed over a steep hill, and Thoronimr's horse was having trouble getting up it, so he dismounted and left his horse at the bottom, climbing the hill on foot. As he reached the top of th hill, he looked down into a rocky, bowl-shaped valley. He had been here before, he noticed, recognizing the valley as one of the various old campsites where he and his friends had lived while he was younger.

He felt the terrible sense of depression as he thought of his friends, of their faces, before they had died in the great war. Not many of his group had been left alive on the Pelennor Fields of Gondor... He buried the memory once more, trying not to think about it.

Now the valley was again a campsite, but for a different group of people. Several shelters had been set up, and Thoronimr saw the hillmen wandering about their camp, apparently having set up there a while ago, even before the lakeside settlement had been established. But he saw few warriors in the camp. Where had they all gone, he wondered. Then it all came together. They had gone to spy on the settlement. He had to get back to the rangers' camp at once.

As he turned to go, however, Thoronmir accidentally dislodged a fairly large rock from the hillside. It rolled down the hill in plain view of the hillmen. A woman stopped watching her son attempting to fight several larger boys to look up at what had made the disturbance. Thoronmir wasted no time in getting out of there. He ran down the hill toward where he had left his horse.