Bard was chopping wood when Grethe came and found him, her arm around the Master's niece, who stared and giggled at him before running away. He straightened and stretched and took a drink from his water skin, then offered it to Grethe.

"Bard," she said, "I know you've never entered the shooting contest before, but I think you ought to today. It's not too late to sign up, for it won't commence for another hour at least. I'm sure you could win."

"I've no desire to wedge myself in where I'm not wanted," said Bard. "That contest is for lads of your own class, not mine."

"That's not true; half the other boatmen are signed up already. Even Frain's doing it. It's open to everybody."

"I'm not everybody," said Bard, frowning. "And why should you care if I enter or not?"

"There's a cash prize, and you know we could use it."

"Aye," agreed Bard. "That we could. Is that really the reason you want me to do it?"

"Isn't it enough?" But before he could answer, she went on. "Bard, I want you to know that I'm as proud of you as I could ever think to be. And I...I want other people to see it."

Bard rolled his shoulders back, to dislodge a pool of sweat that was tickling his back. "If I entered—even if I won—it wouldn't prove anything to anyone but you."

"Perhaps not," said Grethe. "You don't have to if you don't want to. Whether you win or lose or don't enter at all won't change how proud I am of you. But I would so like to see you do it, if you're willing."

Bard had never had someone be proud of him before. And they could use the money.

"Aye, I'll do it," he said, smiling suddenly. Grethe cheered and threw her arms around him. "I'm all sweaty!" he protested, laughing and trying to dislodge her.

"What do I care?" said Grethe. "I like you sweaty." And then, standing right there in the middle of a crowd, she jumped up on her tip-toes and licked a droplet off his neck.

"And how much have you had to drink, Mistress?" he asked, willing himself not to think of her lips on his throat and shame himself in public.

"I don't need to drink to want to do that," she assured him with a sly grin that made him warm and throb down to his toes. "I'll go register you for the contest."

So it was that Bard took his place in line an hour later. He had brought his own bow and arrows as he always did when he went to the mainland, for it'd gall him to spot game and be able to do nothing about it. He advanced through the first round along with about half the contestants, and moved ten paces further from the target. Then twenty, then thirty, and forty, the group of archers dwindling each time. Finally he competed against a single archer from North Ithilien. Behind his back he knew that wagers were being laid, although he could not begin to guess whether even the chance to triumph over a foreigner was enough to make the townspeople bet on him. But he ignored the increasingly excited shouts and comments, just as he ignored the Master who sat watching sourly from his tent on one side of the shooting-ground, and Grethe who chewed her cheek on the other side. Bard's mind was as quiet and still as a forest glade in the heat of the afternoon.

When the Gondorian archer's arrow struck the line of the second ring at two hundred paces, and Bard's struck the center, a great cheer went up, and noise and thought once more intruded. The Gondorian, a ranger named Lanwyn, pumped his opponent's hand enthusiastically and invited Bard to join him and his men at supper. Grethe ran onto the field and hopped around him like a little bird, until he slung one arm around her waist and lifted her against him. When she brazenly kissed him before the eyes of all the town, he kissed her back without a thought for modesty.

"If you'll but be proud of me," he whispered in her shining hair, "I'll try hard to deserve it."

The Master handed over the little pouch of silver coins with ill-grace while his attendants scowled on. Then supper was served, and Bard and Grethe sat at a long trestle table with the company from the South; and because they did not know he was a wretch and a disgrace, they were more than happy to toast him and his pretty wife, and compliment the stag he'd shot, and joke and laugh without a single jibe hidden in the words.

And after several cups of mead had been drunk, Grethe turned to the Lanwyn and said proudly, "My husband has the finest voice in all of Laketown, and songs such as your own Steward might be glad to hear." Bard demurred but the men insisted on hearing him sing something in the local tradition, and so he sang to them of Raven who taunted Smaug until he slithered back into his hole. And as had never happened in the whole of his life, they all cheered and plied him with drink when he was done, and asked for another.

"Very well," he said, "if you'll agree to repay me in kind. I've lived in Laketown all my life, and a song I've never heard would be worth its weight in gold to me. What kind of song would you like?"

"A love song!" chirped Grethe.

"If it must be a love song, let it be a tragic one!" yelled Lisette from down the table.

The men at the table agreed, laughing: "We live in the forest with naught but our own imaginings to warm us at night. A tragic love song'll do admirably for our purposes."

"Then I'll tell you of Raven's forbears," he said, "for a more wretched tale I do not know." He stood, amid cheers and toasts, and began.

"I'll sing to you of the soot black birds

on Ravenhill, on Erebor!

Offspring of two whose sorry tale

is lost to all but dusty lore.

.

Their sire was not bird but man,

a hunter swift and keen of eye.

Black as the moonless night his hair,

swift as the wind his darts did fly.

.

But one bird was safe from his bow:

a nuthatch who his hill did share,

whose nest was high above his bed.

She, and she only, did he spare.

.

For he had known her from the egg

and fed her scraps from his own hand.

Her eye was bright, her feathers shone

She was for long his only friend.

.

He lived alone, alone he hunted

for years before another soul

climbed up to him beneath the moonlight

and tarried with him on his knoll.

.

She was a maid with nut-brown hair

whose glance filled him with sharp delight.

She lay with him beneath the moon,

and vanished in the morning light.

.

All day he sought her, fleet and eager

up the hill and down he ran

no maiden was there to be found

Until the moon rose high again.

.

Then swift she came to his hill laughing!

Melting in his arms she lay,

lingering with him in the starlight,

once more at sunrise gone away.

.

For full a year, they kept their tryst,

renewed at night, paused at day's breaking.

The sight of her fair form alone

did make him fall at her feet, aching.

.

And in the light of day he hunted,

till shadows drew out long and black.

Then he sat and fed his pretty nuthatch

'til his love came laughing back.

.

After a season to their joy

the lass's belly came to swell.

Now every night they loved another

whose coming did her form foretell.

.

But in that year a famine loomed

that e'en the hunter could not prevent.

He went without to feed his dear ones

until the mountain's game was spent.

.

His precious wife came now to sicken;

her belly and her cheeks grew thin.

He feared not only for the lass,

but for the babe she bore within.

.

Weeping, he climbed up to the nuthatch

who the famine'd wasted to a wreck.

She gazed on him full trustfully

till, grieving, did he wring her neck.

.

'Twas only when he lifted her

he saw what she'd hid in the nest.

Now wracked with guilt at what he'd stolen,

he warmed her egg at his own breast.

.

Salted by his tears she roasted,

mourned by the hunter, sad and grim.

He waited in the lowering dusk

for his loved one to return to him.

.

Alas, now in the smoke there rising,

he saw a figure sweet and young!

His dearest wife appeared in vision—

but stricken dead, her fair neck wrung!

.

Now the hunter knew he'd slain them both!

He screamed and raged; his clothes he rent.

He beat his brains upon the mountain

Till he fell dead, his last breath spent.

.

Before his blood had time to cool

a chirping sounded in his vest.

The nuthatch's egg began to quicken—

at last broke free upon his chest.

.

Feathered and flighted like its dam,

yet sootblack as its father's hair;

the hatchling, orphaned from the start,

and seeking comfort, found it nowhere.

.

Swift as a thought it took to wing,

and journeyed 'cross the sky alone.

It searched the cold and empty skies;

at last, despairing, it flew back home.

.

And ever since it has cawed and cried

on Ravenhill! On Erebor!

Its voice, a hoarse and grieving sound,

shall haunt th' unhappy hill ever more."

All the women who had gathered close to hear wept and dabbed their eyes, while the men clapped and whistled.

Then they sang their own songs, epics of heroes long dead and of battlegrounds long cold. By the fifth or sixth such song Grethe was yawning into her mead, and so Bard toasted the southern travelers one last time, guided his wife down the torchlit path to the boat, and rowed her home. And all the way she hummed the song of the raven-haired man and the nuthatch.

"I knew you would win," she said smugly as he lifted her out of the boat at the dock. "What are you going to do with the prize money?"

"Buy you strings of pearls and rubies to wear," said he, sweeping her up in his arms to carry home, the rucksack full of her day's purchases on his back.

"Bard!"

"And a dress of brown silk with yellow flowers. And a trained squirrel on a lead."

"A squirrel!" Her laughter echoed around the deserted canal.

He nudged the door open with his boot, and deposited her at the foot of the ladder. She was too wobbly to climb it without his steadying hand on her waist, from sleepiness or mead or both. He left her at her door and climbed up to his loft.

"Bard, I need you!" she called before he had even had a chance to undress. He climbed back down obligingly and went to her room.

"What troubles you, milady?" In the flickering candlelight, he noticed that she'd shed her clothes down to shift and stays.

"I can't undo my laces," she said. "I'm too sleepy."

Bard's throat tightened. "Aye, that is a hardship. Did you perchance knot them too tight?"

"Yes," she said, taking him firmly by the hand and pulling him into the room.

"And why did you do a thing like that?"

"That's my own business, Bard the Bowman," she said, falling forward so that he had no choice but to catch her. "Will you help me or won't you?"

"I haven't much experience with lacings of that particular type," he said.

"It's no different from breeches," smiled Grethe. "Here, I'll show you." She reached for the fastening of his pants.

"Easy, lass!" he exclaimed, leaping backward.

"When you shot that target at two hundred paces," Grethe confided, putting her hand on his arm, "my heart nearly jumped straight out of my mouth."

"I'm glad you were pleased," said Bard.

"You looked like a king."

"A penniless king."

"A handsome one."

Bard let out a short laugh. "Are you sure you weren't looking at Lanwyn? He's likelier than I."

"That is a lie. No one is likelier than you. And I'm not the only one who thinks it."

"You've drunk a great deal, Mistress," he said.

"I've drunk but three cups of mead over the course of a whole night," said his wife. "You think it's drink makes me say these things? You're short-sighted, for an archer. Now come help me with this, for it's unhealthy to sleep in stays." She took his hands and positioned them on the knot. He knew that he should leave. He should run from the room right this very minute. If only his legs might work properly.

Instead, Bard began to fumble with the knot as she had asked, a guilty thrill going through him every time his hands grazed the flesh of her warm white bosom. The way she swayed and pressed against him made it almost impossible to keep from tossing her on the bed and to hell with the loophole in the marital contract. He suspected she was moving around deliberately, to prevent this knot from ever coming undone.

But he managed it, finally, and no thanks to her. He was ready to bolt from the room so he could perform the usual maneuver to relieve his discomfort, and go to sleep and forget all that had happened, but she took his hand before he could move.

"Will you leave your wife without even a good-night kiss?" she asked softly. "You shot well today, and should be rewarded."

"I have my reward already," he said desperately.

"And I it was who convinced you to shoot," she said. "Should I not have some reward also?" She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it; then she lowered it to her breast, her eyes not leaving his. Her defiant gaze made his head swim and his knees buckle. He knew he must not weaken, not now of all times, so close to the end of their year, but—!

Bard was not strong enough to prevent himself bending forward to kiss her. He was not strong enough to keep his hand from sliding down between shift and skin. And when she opened her mouth to whisper his name against his lips, he was not strong enough to remember why all this should be denied him. He curved his free hand around her buttocks and lifted her against him, and tasted her lips and tongue and throat and the tops of her breasts. Her panting breath bred fire in his blood, and he had no longer any thought of waiting.

It was as he was just easing her down onto the bed that Da came home, singing loudly a bawdy song about dragons. Bard froze, his hand hovering over her stays. Grethe saw the look on his face, turned her head and screamed into her pillow.

Bard climbed off his wife and stood looking down at her. She propped herself up on her elbows and glared at Bard, as if the interruption had been his fault.

"Sleep well," he croaked, and fled the room while he still could.

When through the wall he heard Grethe tossing and shifting restlessly in her bed, making stifled sounds to herself, Bard did not have to be told what she was doing. With her sly defiant smile before his eyes, he turned his face to the wall and did the same.

A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing!