The young man lay sprawled across an eiderdown coverlet, his hair a tumble of auburn tossed carelessly over his tanned arm. Beyond him, candles melted away, their light growing fainter and fainter in the darkness of a warm spring night. The youth's soft, untroubled breathing, and the gentle scrawling of a quill on parchment, were the only sounds for a good long while.

And then, jarringly, a bird called out and broke the comfortable darkness.

Vaguely disgusted, Edwyn sighed. He set his attempt at poetry aside, and nudged at the body beside him in Finnan's bed.

"Gareth. Gareth, get up."

A groan of protest, something like when Edwyn hadn't wanted to wake for his tutors as a boy.

"Gareth, the birds are singing," he said, leaning over to sweep the auburn curls from the youth's ear. "So get up."

Gareth smiled, eyes closed. "I think I'll stay."

"I think not. Oh, don't pout now, just get your things and leave, before the sun rises."

The youth sat up, brilliant blue eyes open and warm. "Why, m'lord? You're amazing. I want to stay with you."

"How very touching. If you stay any longer, the servants will see you."

"So what if they do? You command them! You command me, m'lord. What should a great lord care what peasants think?"

Edwyn smothered his groan. "I care because I'd rather not have to put a sword through your father, before he sets the other villagers on me for buggering his firstborn. Don't look at me like that, now. I told you what this was from the start. A diversion. A midsummer eve's amusement. And now the day is breaking, and I must manage the estate, and you've Lord Birchleigh's demense fields to tend to. So put on your clothes, and leave. There. I have commanded you."

"You're cruel, m'lord," Gareth complained.

"Undoubtably."

The youth sat in a moment's shock. Edwyn spread out his hand to hurry Gareth along. Gareth climbed from the bed, watching Edwyn as he quite deliberately put his rough homespun trousers and tunic back on. "I'll see you on your horse, m'lord," Gareth predicted, grinning. "You'll come to watch me work. I'll feel your eyes on me. You'll command me again, I think."

Edwyn smiled, knowing this was probably true. "And you may come when I command, Gareth. But be guided by me when I say, let your heart wander elsewhere. Or better yet, keep your heart entirely for yourself."

Gareth, dressed now, paused to consider Edwyn. "I could make you forget him. Whoever he is."

"You could make a man forget a great many things, Gareth. But you shouldn't have to. Go on," Edwyn said again, more gently this time. "Go back to your life, as I must go back to mine."

"Goodbye, then, m'lord. For now."

Edwyn bowed his head graciously. He remembered his own foolish tenacity, and he hoped Gareth would not set himself to the capture of man who didn't love him, or worse, one who quite possibly, could not love at all.

"Goodbye, Gareth."

Edwyn watched Gareth leave. Then he groaned, and fell back into the pillows. He rolled over to inspect his verse, and how very melodramatic it was: all talk of watching a man drown, watching a man disappear into the fathoms, and he left alone on the shore, unable even to throw the drowning man a line. Pitiful, all of it, a terribly boring business, yet still it made him ache. Edwyn set it aside; best not to think of these things. Nothing was to be done anyway.

"Oi! Ain't you a coldhearted fucker after all! Though yuh dress it all up in pretty words, m'lord…"

Edwyn felt his heart leap into his mouth. He jumped from bed, naked as the day he was born, and shouted, "Dammit! Maukurz! You spied on me?"

Maukurz, grinning that awful delicious grin, shook his head and said, "Nah, but judging by… the looks of… things… that might be an outstanding fuckin idea."

"You're wretched," Edwyn spat, but the absurdity of it all turned his temper into threatened laughter, which he struggled to suppress as he snatched a sheet up and wrapped it around his hips.

"Aye, we've all known it for a while. Anyway. Forgive me… m'lord…"

"I'll hang you from the rafters if you call me that again."

"Best of luck with that. Anyway. I gotta speak to you, and I can't piss on trees or send up a giant beacon of wizard light, so I thought I'd climb in your window and catch you fucking your serfs."

"Finnan's. He's Finnan's serf. Or maybe Halla's."

"Fuck 'em all, horse lord, I don't care," Maukurz laughed, but then the humor passed, and Maukurz remembered the reason for his mission, and his face grew serious. "We've got to talk, and here ain't the place. There's trouble in the forest, trouble for me, and maybe trouble for Rohan."

"For Rohan?" Edywn asked, deadly intent in a single moment.

Maukurz nodded.

"Meet me at the spring-fed pool at first light."

"Done," Maukurz said, and like a terribly great cat, he was gone out the window before Edwyn could blink.

Edwyn came easily down over the rocks surrounding the little falls, his steps as sure and graceful as a young stag. There was Maukurz, squatting beside the pool, watching him approach. He had a primative but well-made flint knife in his hand, which he'd used to scrawl some sort of map into the damp acidic pine-forest dirt. Edwyn remembered the name of Maukurz's brother-at-arms, Shatauz, an Uruk who passed his time making weapons for the others, out of what materials he found handy in their subsistance exile.

"So what is this business about a threat to Rohan?" Edwyn asked, coming to stand beside the squatting Uruk. Maukurz glanced up at him, rather slowly and with the patient irritation of an officer in a mood to be lenient. The Uruk indicated his map, and waited.

Edwyn knelt down beside him, and Maukurz explained, pointing with his knife. "Here you are, Birchleigh, my woman's territory. This way to Edoras. Here, Isengard, occupied by tarks, Men of Gondor. Now, beside it, is the camp of the greatest chieftan in Dunland, calls himself Cormick. He trades up to Isengard as the chief before him did when my old Master had the place: meats, hides, ore, whatever they need. Here, just to the north, is another Dunland tribe, holding this land around the river, which is rich in fish and meats, and there's mines just to the west. Here I am, at the mountaintop."

Edwyn waited patiently. He'd not been there when the treaty was signed with Dunland's chiefs, but he thought he'd known their names, and he didn't remember any man called Cormick.

"A bit of story first," Maukurz said, and Edwyn listened, growing ever more concerned, as Maukurz explained Bregun.

"You trust this woman? Who made herself known to you and now claims herself to have some sort of Sight, claims herself kin to this chief? Why would she go to you? Why not to him? Seems a great risk just to put another baby into that cave."

"I don't trust her far as I can spit. But that's not your problem. Cormick might be your problem, listen: yesterday, I went down to have a look on Bregun's people. While I was watching, this Cormick ran his warriors in, killed everyone in the camp, women and children too. No one left alive."

"That's horrific, but I don't think the treaty binds them not to kill each other. They've raided each other as often as they raided our villages in the past..."

"It wasn't raiding, horse lord. It wasn't sport. He seized the territory. He now holds all of this," Maukurz said, his daggar circling the expanse between Isengard, "for himself. He's got no rivals of his own people. His weapons were better than theirs, Isengard forged. And that witch woman, Bregun, we questioned her on it and she said he's setting himself up to make war."

"But that's insane!" Edwyn laughed. "He's caught between Orthanc and what Eoreds run the Westmark. If he moved against either one of us, his head would be on a spike outside the Golden Hall before the day was done. He couldn't possibly consider it!"

"Aye," Maukurz said, the patience in his voice again. "He'd be mad. Or, he'd have a reason to think he'd win."

"So what do you think?"

"I think his main camp can't be more than a little half-day's run into the mountains, and we ought to have a look for ourselves. If he's hungry to attack, Birchleigh's closest, and rich now, too. My woman's land, and all those serfs yuh like fucking. We ought to know what we're protecting them against."

Slowly, Edwyn nodded. "Just a little half-day's run?" he asked, grinning at Maukurz.

"They do teach horse lords to run, don't they? Crack a little whip on yuh here an' there?"

"Very funny. I should get a horse."

"Horse'd be nothing but trouble on the forest paths I take," Maukurz said, standing up, and kicking his sandal over his map. He laughed at Edwyn. "Come on, m'lord. I'll be gentle."

"Bastard! I warned you!"

Edwyn jumped to his feet, but Maukurz had leaped ahead, and was disappearing like a swift shadow into the rich green undergrowth. Cursing softly, Edwyn sprinted off behind him.

Maukurz stopped short in a grove a birch trees. Beyond him was a high palisade of sharpened stakes, running as far as the eye could see. The scent of humanity was overpowering, and he thought there were at least a few thousand of them in there.

Edwyn came up behind him, sucking for wind, doubling over when he stopped running, hands clutching at his knees.

"Slow your breathing," Maukurz said, his voice quieter than the wind in the trees. "Slower, deeper. Don't suck the air in shallow-"

"Gonna…" Edwyn interrupted.

"—gasps," Maukurz sighed and turned his attention back to the settlement while Edwyn vomited bile.

"All right," Edwyn managed. "I can…"

Maukurz put his hand lightly on Edwyn's shoulder, slapping it in a bit of rough comfort. "Toughen up. Don't know how you pretty fuckers ever gave us such work, but you'd better toughen up now. Take a look."

Edwyn, steadying himself, kept his hands pressed to his burning thighs, but he glanced up and whispered, between breaths, "What am I seeing?"

"That's all new," Maukurz murmured, indicating the palisade. "Was a village here before, what traded up to Isengard like I said. But they had no perimeter like this. Nothing was going to attack them but us, and we was ordered not to. Now, in peace time, they put up walls. Village wasn't near as big, either, during the ol' Master's time."

"That is odd. What are they about?" Edwyn wondered.

"We won't find out here. We're going to need to… those trees over there. We'll have to get up in the trees, try to look in."

"You are serious? I can't bloody move, let alone climb!"

"Yes, I'm fuckin' serious, what's the matter with you? You think I want to climb? I was at Helm's Deep. I came home to Isengard. If I can climb trees, so can you. These bastards might be planning to attack Birchleigh, and you don't want to climb a tree?"

"I'll climb the tree," Edwyn growled.

"Good. And maybe tomorrow you meet me at the pool again, and each morning after that, and I'll drill you into something that looks like a soldier."

"Foot soldier," Edwyn grunted. "The easiest thing to mow down."

"Aye, for you. But we used to like to cut the horses out from under the lords, and see how well they did then. Most days ended better for me and mine. Now let's go find out what these bastards are up to."

Maukurz moved towards a patch of towering pines, but he hesitated a while before deciding on one, and when he found a likely perch, he inspected the trunk hesitantly, glancing high and low.

"It's not alive," Edwyn said.

Maukurz glanced back at him, amber eyes cutting narrow.

"I mean, it's living, but it's not one of them. They're on the other side of Isengard, miles off."

"Hard to trust that. Was a damned thing. Enough to make yuh mad."

"I know. I saw it from across the field. But this is just a tree."

"Go on, then. You first."

"I think you'd better…" Edwyn began. "I'm still a little wobbly from that run."

"That's why you go first. I'll catch you if you fall, keep you from breaking your neck."

"Most reassuring."

"About as reassuring as you telling me what's magicked and what's not. But let's get it done."

Edwyn nodded, and grabbed himself a low branch. His body burned, even his arms felt weak, but he needed to see what was beyond the perimeter, and more: he wasn't about to make himself look weaker still in front of Maukurz. He tried reminding himself that Maukurz was trained by whips and blades and fangs, but that wasn't enough to erase his own feelings of insufficiency, and Edwyn knew he'd benefit from Maukurz's offer to train together. He went up, into the cold air, the fringe of pine, as high as he could climb on shaking arms and molten legs. He'd not pushed himself past pain since the War, and it felt good when he finally reached his goal, and turned to look out over the Dunlending camp.

Edwyn peered down into the camp. Its dimensions were vast, and he couldn't see the end of it over the rocky, rising horizon. All of the land within had been cleared of trees, likely to make the massive perimeter wall, which Edwyn now noted was lightly manned with sentries. That in itself was odd, but perhaps explainable, if packs of Orcs were moving up through the mountains. Edwyn frowned, looking deeper, seeking anything out of the ordinary.

The standard rounded dwellings in the camp were made of log and stone, and more Dunlendings than Edwyn had ever seen in one place went about ordinary business: women dressing meat and skins, men occupied with various trades, children running about playing. But there were also massive longhouses in a central area that reminded Edwyn of the warehouse district he'd seen along the river in Osgiliath. Men moved in and out of these deliberately, loading large wagons full of barrels and crates, what Edwyn imagined were provisions for Orthanc. His eyes travelled on, following flat ox-drawn carts piled high with rough timber. He watched them disappear out of his sight, but then, in only moments, a large cloud of smoke went up, and Edwyn saw flames leaping up towards the sky.

"Fire?"

"Nah," Maukurz murmured, from a branch just below. "No one is alarmed, and here comes another cart of lumber. They might be burning it down."

"But why? Why burn lumber?"

"Don't know. But my old Master used to order the same, to make charcoal. Charcoal's also good to burn but he'd store it all, and what he did with it, we weren't allowed to know. The poor bastards who got assigned to guard the place died quickly. Look there: we brought that in too, but no one knew what it was."

Maukurz nodded into the distance, gesturing with his chin as a series of smaller carts came down a dirt trail from the mountains, heading from the newly seized territory. Gangs of shirtless, tired looking men accompanied the small load. Maukurz saw more clearly, but soon Edwyn noted barrels of some yellow substance.

"What could it be for?"

"Don't know." Maukurz repeated. "A thousand things. My old master made many instruments, but all of them were for war and power. But maybe there's some peaceful reason. You think?"

"I don't know what to think. I don't like it."

"I suppose it could be for the tarks. The Gondor Men. They do business. Maybe they want charcoal. Maybe they want yellow rocks and powder."

"Or maybe it's for something we can't imagine."

"So we'd best come back and watch them. Don't forget, the witch said her cousin meant to make war, one way or another."

"Put her to question again," Edwyn murmured. "If you can."

"Oh, I can. And I will."

Edwyn turned to take one last look on things. He'd write down his observations, and when he had a sense of things, he'd ride for Edoras, and make whatever suspicions he developed known to the King. He told Maukurz as much, after they climbed back down.

Maukurz only grunted. "That's fine," he said, "But in the meanwhile, you'd better get those serfs ready to defend themselves. They're Halla's people, someone has to protect them. Even if all that was nothing, Halla's people should be able to defend themselves."

Edwyn nodded, but as he walked back along the trail, he thought that they were Finnan's people. Finnan, who'd run off to do murder, while shadows of war might be creeping back over his own land and people. He felt, ridiculously, that to care for Finnan's people might be as close as he'd ever get to Finnan again, and for that alone, he'd do it. But why would he even want to be around a man whose hatred of his own self poisoned all he did? Edwyn felt a flair of anger mixed with sorrow and longing, a bitter brew. But he kept himself calm, and not even Maukurz could detect the sudden painful churning of Edwyn's heart.

"I'll bring the Birchleigh tenants together tonight, and get them organized. It would be a very, very bad mistake for anyone to try to attack those people. They won't be caught unaware, and that's my promise."

"Agreed," Maukurz said. "Let's get moving a bit."

Maukurz began to run, and Edwyn pushed himself hard to keep up, letting the pain of exertion and competition with Maukurz cleanse Finnan from his mind.