Eorling Mead Hall

[Folwren]

Thornden stood beside Eodwine, his calm eyes studying the stranger from Dunlend. As they had entered the room and first seen the black haired man, Thornden had felt immediately Eodwine tense and become rigid. His very words were cut short and seemed barely able to come out. Thornden glanced at him as he practically demanded what the young man wanted.

The two sudden and unexpected interruptions, one from a hobbit and then the second almost immediately from Saeryn, failed to put off the ill will entirely, and still there remained the strained, tense waiting.

But as the young man knelt, Thornden softened inwardly somewhat at once. He had no personal dislike towards the Dunlendings. Every man had his rights and should get some sort of chance, and this youth didn’t appear to want trouble.

“Lord . . . I am seeking to a position here. They tell me you have soldiers, ostlers, joiners, and such. I can fight . . . or work hard?”

Thornden remained silent. It was not his place to speak. To give false hope, or say anything. The young man was awkward in the speech of the Rohirrim, and yet he still tried. Thornden slowly looked over him, studying his face and his apparel. He was not a handsome figure, nor did he posses a completely kind look, but his expression was not sour, or bitter, nor was it particularly disagreeable, and certainly not disrespectful towards Eodwine. This at least could be marked to his favor.

And still another part of his mind measured up what could not be seen. He was, after all, a Dunlending. Cunning and dishonest folk as often as not, he had heard. The look and expression that Thornden saw could easily be merely a disguise, hiding who knows what. It was impossible to tell what lay behind that single eye.

‘I will not judge him either honest or dishonest, true or false,’ Thornden said to himself, still keeping his steady gaze on him. ‘Time will tell, if Eodwine gives him time.’

[littlemanpoet]

The Dunlending youth knelt. “Lord . . . I am seeking to a position here. They tell me you have soldiers, ostlers, joiners, and such. I can fight . . . or work hard?”

Eodwine was a little surprised at the youth's sudden humility. He was a foreigner though, and a Dunlending at that, and not to be taken simply at his word. The moment lengthened as he considered the youth's words, and what he would do about it. At last he spoke.

"Have you a name?"

"Manawyth, Lord."

"Manawyth," Eodwine repeated, feeling the foreign phrase on his tongue. "Rise, Manawyth." The youth rose. "I will speak frankly, Manawyth of Dunland. Your folk razed my farm in the Gap of Rohan during the War, murdering my wife and children. I was with the Rohirrim who took vengeance against your people. That the Dunlendings have lost part of their homeland is blame you could lay at my feet. Further, you have the look of an outlaw, or at least a fugitive. Is there some crime you have committed against your own people that you flee to us here? If so, why would I take you in? For if I take you, it will not be as mere jobman, but as liegeman and I your lord. Speak for yourself and do not hold back, Manawyth of Dunland."

[Anguirel]

As he waited for the Eorl's reply, Manawyth felt more eyes drawn to his strange figure; a maid, little more than a child, who looked fondly on Eodwine as if some near kinswoman, but also seemed sympathetic, glancing solicitously at him; and another typical Rohir, with hair between yellow-tawny and grey, tall and strongly built, who clearly held some authority here.

But then Eodwine began to speak, his tone, if anything, gruffer and more uncompromising than before. After extracting Manawyth's name, he made his grievances and objections clear.

"I will speak frankly, Manawyth of Dunland. Your folk razed my farm in the Gap of Rohan during the War, murdering my wife and children. I was with the Rohirrim who took vengeance against your people. That the Dunlendings have lost part of their homeland is blame you could lay at my feet."

Then we are the same, Manawyth thought irritably. Have the Strawheads no grasp of logic? But he reproached himself as best he could, though he could not hide a spark of defiance in his dark eye as the Eorl continued.

And part of their homeland? Even the Rohirrim did not deny that they had stolen the entire Westfold in years gone by! Of course they called it "prowess and conquest..."

"Further, you have the look of an outlaw, or at least a fugitive. Is there some crime you have committed against your own people that you flee to us here? If so, why would I take you in? For if I take you, it will not be as mere jobman, but as liegeman and I your lord. Speak for yourself and do not hold back, Manawyth of Dunland."

Here Eodwine struck close to the truth; but as he had no sound reasons for doing so, Manawyth was prepared to evade his question.

"You say I look like...outlaw...Eorl. That is well. You...you look like lout, plunderer, strongarm-wielder and thug to my folk. Why? My kind left your childer dead, your kind my brothers. It has been so for longer than your tales tell. Yet we are men now."

Manawyth looked around the hall in appeal to all who stood about.

"Does the King of Rohan will that men should be his foes, because they were his grandsire's foes? Does he ask that his servants," and he glanced back at Eodwine, "think so?"

[littlemanpoet]

Eodwine's eyes narrowed on the Dunlending. The upstart had answered Eodwine's question with one of his own! Thus, he was trying to take right-of-speech away from the Eorl of the mead hall! ...rash and overweening! The Gondorians had a word for it: insolent.

Long ago, when Eodwine had been a youth just called up to Théodred's war host, he had been taught that when fighting, he had the choice of meeting a blow with the sword or buckler, thus losing gain of the first blow, or taking the blow manfully upon breast armor or shield and swinging his sword into the foe's body, defenseless by dint of his outthrust sword arm. In so like, in a war of words, he had learned that one does not answer the question posed in a retort, but asks his own again until answer is given.

But was this a battle of words, or a truth seeking? Eodwine had spoken the truth plainly, hoping to be rewarded with trade in the same coin. But this overweening upstart wanted a battle of words! Eodwine opened his mouth to angrily speak his question again, ignoring the churl's baiting; but years of experience in service to the king had trained him to hold his tongue until the rash word dissolved on his tongue while a new and better thought grew in its place.

So he waited a moment, not taking his searching eyes from the Dunlending, who grew more ill at ease the longer the silence held.

And a new thought came.

"Thornden, how would you speak to this man were you in my place?"

[Alcarillo]

Gárwine stood a few paces away from Eodwine and the Dunlending, listening to every word they tossed at each other. The Dunlending subtly had just called the eorl a lout and a plunderer, and still avoided the question posed to him. Gárwine made up his mind that the Dunlending was an outlaw; for what other reason would he skip over Eodwine's question, throwing out a mouthful of rash words as a poor substitute for an answer? He confirmed Gárwine's image of a Dunlending: a rude, sly, dishonest man who did not know how to treat his lords.

And Gárwine was grieved to see Eodwine spoken to by the Dunlending in such a way. Gárwine was already fond of his eorl, who had given him a job and a roof over his head, and here he was, standing before his steward, guard, and very own daughter, asked such insolent questions by one of the people who had slaughtered his family. Gárwine glanced at Gudryn, but her solemn face gave no sign of her feelings.

"Thornden, how would you speak to this man were you in my place?" said Eodwine, commanding the room's attention and turning to his steward. Gárwine gave a thin smile. Eodwine would show the Dunlending not to wield words against an eorl of the Mark.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Saeryn was uncomfortable with the way the conversation had turned. The eyes of the two men gave away what their carefully chosen words did not, and Saeryn could not ignore the barely cloaked hostility. Her pity for the Dunlending turned to blame and fear.

Why had this man come here? Saeryn had finally found a place in which hard words rarely pierced flesh. She had escaped her brother's angry moods, replacing his oppressive lordship first with Bethberry's kind and maternal caring, and now Eodwine, as close to a father as she'd had in years, as her friend and leader. She had not sworn to him... he had not asked it... she was not even certain if she would.

To be bound again to one place... to be kept and chained by duty that she would perform freely... as long as questions never lingered whether or not her choice was free.

Eodwine would make this man swear fealty. Would he make Saeryn? He had every right... it was his hall, his lands. Saeryn worked for him, but as a friend. Would she become one of his people, as this man must?

If the Dunlending stayed, would Saeryn's life be filled again with bubbling emotion, rarely displayed, but always felt?

She stroked the head of the kitten in her darkened corner and shivered at the prospect.

She had not believed Eodwine capable of bad feeling... she had only encountered him smiling, or at worst, guarding his friends against enemies. While she knew that he must have a weakness, something that could gall him beyond all else, she had assumed that it would be fleeting. She had hoped that it would be.

If this man stayed... Saeryn worried that she would not. She could not... would not... live again in a place where anger was ever present. She could not allow herself to be bound.

[Anguirel]

Manawyth held the Eorl's blue gaze with all his mind's strength. His lips trembled slightly, and his knuckles were paler than they ought to be, but he did not intend to surrender. He might be forced to come to abide among the Rohirrim, but he would not put up with insults, not if they came from the King himself. The Dunlanders also had pride, not the golden, supreme arrogance of the Horse-lords, but a dull, dark, smouldering flame of their own. It burned all the more fiercely for the threats it had faced. The Rohirrim held themselves a hardy and valiant race, because they had defended a wide land and lost it but once.

But the Dunlanders knew that they had held a land that was no land at all for hundreds of years. To live on the scrapings of rock, and still to remember to live as your ancestors did, and to so die. That was the way of the Dunlendings.

The Eorl asked his second for advise; the same veteran warrior who had sized Manawyth up before. But the Dunlending saw little reason to hope for a reprieve from that direction. He continued to stare at the lord of the Hall.

He knew that whatever humanity his bedraggled entrance had stirred was squandered now. But he believed it was right that it was so. And the Eorl and his men were now committed to pit their wheat-fattened tongues 'gainst his.

The fearful look of the pale wench who had earlier offered him tea alarmed him somewhat, however. What was he, an Orc bringing fire to the bales?

He would be refused, and he would ride back to strive and die in Dunland, in all likelihood. But he would not leave the horse-lords with a memory of a small dark ape who had submitted and fawned.