Abduction in Edoras RPG

[Firefoot]

After parting with Osfrid, Scyld did not immediately return to his task of guarding Linduial. Gurth would be fine for a little while longer. Instead, Scyld made his way into the room adjacent to Sorn’s study, curious about Sorn’s plan for Osfrid. There was a particular spot in this room, about two-thirds of the way down the wall between the rooms… there. By some fluke in the architecture, Scyld could hear everything in the other room almost perfectly if he listened closely. He had discovered this years ago and found it extremely useful.

"…I want you to take yourself to the Mead Hall of Eodwine. I shall give you a day or two to prepare, if you wish. There, you and your Lady will try to blend as you can, and find out more about the Lady Linduial. What might we gain from this? Is that what you are thinking?" At this point, Scyld heard Sorn get to his feet, and tensed, ready to break from the room. He had no business in here, and now was not the time to be caught. “Apart from her pride and vanity, this little Lady of Dol Amroth must have a weakness! I wish to find a person she holds dear. Do not fret, good man, we shall not steal another person! Simply find out someone she would be sore to see hurt..." Scyld nodded to himself. Of course; this made perfect sense and was not wholly surprising. Having found all he wanted to know, he slipped out of the room.

Before going to relieve Gurth, he found a half-full bottle of mead – not nearly enough to make Gurth drunk, or even to make him tipsy. He knew that there was plenty of the stuff down in the cellar and could have saved himself some effort by just getting it from there, but he felt no inclination to let Gurth know where all the beer came from. Scyld had seen Gurth drunk a few times before and did not care to repeat the experience. The idiot was exasperating enough when you could communicate with him; when he was drunk he became downright dangerous. Scyld also found a light this time to take down into the cellar; he did not care to spend all his time guarding Linduial in the dark. He left the bottle at the top of the stairs as incentive to get Gurth out of the cellar and descended once more into darkness.

Both Linduial and Gurth looked up at his descent, but it was Gurth who spoke first. “Mead?”

“Yes, Gurth, it’s upstairs,” said Scyld, as always feeling as if he were talking to a particularly dull child. His lip curled in disgust as he pointed. “Up – stairs.” After a bit more prompting, Gurth figured it out and off he went in search of his mead. His monstrous dog, if dog it could be called, thankfully followed him. While not precisely afraid of dogs, Scyld certainly did not like them, least of all this one of Gurth’s.

He noticed Linduial watching this exchange with a faint smirk on her face. Scyld met her look with a blank stare and commented, “Enjoyed your time with the good master Gurth, did you? Perhaps if you are very good I shall let him get drunk next time. A right little party you two could have down here.”

[littlemanpoet]

The plans Haleth and Eodwine made left much to be desired. Search parties number at least three each would be dispatched throughout the Emnet. Eodwine had insisted that they should comb the Middle Emnet first; Haleth had wanted to send search parties farther afield on the grounds that there was no knowing where a criminal might take a hostage. Whereas Eodwine allowed this, he held that it was a poor use of their limited manpower to send parties so far afield while there was so much area to cover closer to home. Haleth allowed that as well, but cut through Eodwine's argument with a pointed statement.

"Save men all you like, Eorl, but if she's not in the Emnet, searching the whole of it has done you no good."

"Aye, that is so. But I doubt me she is far away. Who that lives afar would have known that Linduial was in Edoras?"

"That, Eodwine, is a good question that would help us narrow our search afield."

"Then I will leave the answer to be found to you. I being Eorl of the Middle Emnet will keep my searching in it."

Haleth rose. "I will think it out. I will pinpoint the folk or places far afield where those who live might know the goings on in Edoras. Then I will go to the queen and king and ask for men."

"So be it." Eodwine rose and opened the door, and allowed Haleth out.

Standing ill at ease in the hallway was a guard from Meduseld. Eodwine recognized his face, but had to think a moment before the name came back. Deren.

"I greet you, Deren." The young man looked expectant and hesitant both at once. "What may I do for you?"

[JennyHallu]

“Enjoyed your time with the good master Gurth, did you? Perhaps if you are very good I shall let him get drunk next time. A right little party you two could have down here.”
Lin's worried gray eyes followed the pair of beasts nervously as Gurth and his dog ascended the stairs, but the look she threw in Scyld's direction was scornful.

"Your master is more a fool than I thought, to use such a creature. No tool is Gurth, but a liability to any task that needs doing." An acknowledging spark in her jailer's eyes told her he saw the truth of her assessment. Lin was feeling curiously--detached. Yelling and screaming and fighting did not work; her pathetic appeals to right feeling could not work: not with that brute, nor with this amoral, logical man standing before her cell, appraising her coolly. If she met someone else...then perhaps.

"You surely know that this cannot go well for your master, in the end?" Lin did not look at the man, but instead used the scant light to examine the wounds on her body, wondering if a request for a healer would be granted by her captors. "It can only end three ways: I am ransomed, I am rescued, or I am killed: and from none of those will you escape the consequences. You are a mere lackey in Sorn's eyes; do you think he will have loyalty to you?"

Scyld smirked at her. "You'll be ransomed, or, more likely, killed. And they'll never know it was us."

Lin fought off the sudden chill that threatened her at his words. You cannot be afraid! If you are afraid you cannot act! "Are you sure? I made a lot of noise today. Are you sure no shepherd or travellor heard, and remembered? And the men Sorn surrounds himself with are not the type that cannot be bought..." And you not least, she didn't say.

~<*>~

Torim Ploughman felt only relief when he topped the last rise and saw the lights of Edoras twinkling in the dark of a perfect spring night. It had not been an eventful trip, but a long one afoot, and it was good to see his goal ahead.

Only one really untoward thing had happened: crossing over-field to make shorter work of his sojourn in Lord Sorn's land, he'd looked down into the road to see a curious site. Sorn and a group of his roughest men were gathered around a loaded hay-waggon, black looks on nearly every face. The expressions were fairly usual for that crowd, but the hay-waggon confused him. Sorn had never shown any interest in the farmers of his land before: in point of fact the man was notoriously neglectful. Why would he be escorting a hay-waggon? And wasn't he supposedly in Edoras for the Fair? Had Torim known the man was in his own lands, he'd have chosen a different route.

Suddenly his mind registered muffled thumps and soprano shouts coming from the waggon and he froze, running over all the blacker rumors he had heard of Sorn. Better he stay out of this one. His own small farm was too close to Sorn's lands for comfort, should it ever come to the Lord's ears he'd spoken of what he'd seen here. He backed slowly down the hill, confident at least that he hadn't been seen by any of the men in the road, and continued on his way.