"So, my understanding of the tally so far is this," said Éothain. "Two bad deeds, one good deed, and one typically Éowyn deed."
Elfhelm gave a vague harrumph.
"Though in fairness, the typically Éowyn deed also counts as a good deed."
The horses battled on through the fresh layer of snow on the road from the previous night. Their way wound up the hill in a series of zig-zags. Finally they crested the ridge and started down towards another small holding. This one was much poorer than the previous two they had visited. Instead of two storeys, it was a long-house, the sort where the animals lived in one end and the family in the other.
Again, a man and his wife appeared at the door, which hung slightly out-of-kilter on its hinges. Their clothes were patched and shabby.
"Hail riders, our hearth is your hearth," said the man. He followed the usual form of the words offering refuge to travellers in his house, as was customary in this sparsely populated and harsh country, but Elfhelm picked up on an undercurrent of worry and sadness in his voice.
"It is as yet early in the day, good sir, so we have no need to trespass on your hospitality. In any case, we have our own provisions, and a jug of mead we can bring to your table, if you would care to share our lunch, and you can tell us whether you have seen one of our kinsmen of late."
The man relaxed visibly. It seemed that Elfhelm had correctly guessed. A poor man, but a proud man, with not enough food to share with a large group of visitors.
"Aye, I have indeed seen a young rider of Rohan. He spent a night here. Come in, come in, sirs, and I'll tell you the tale inside."
Before long, the horsemen were seated on rough-hewn stools round a small table, their own bread and sausages and the promised jug of mead laid out before themselves and the small family. Éothain tried not to wrinkle his nose at the strong smell of piss and worse emanating from the animals' end of the long-house. Though the livestock consisted solely of six geese. He guessed the cows or sheep must have been sold or eaten long since in this harsh winter.
Elfhelm slowly and patiently drew the tale out of them. The man's telling of the tale took a long time, and was conducted in a roundabout way, for he did not want to confess to being barely able to feed his family. In fact, Elfhelm gleaned most of his information from odd snippets the teenage boy let slip.
"So mam was fretting about killing a goose because they're layers (not so much in the winter mind) and never mind killing the goose that laid the golden egg, with the snow this deep on the ground, any egg's worth its weight in gold…"
Then a little later: "So the rider got a crossbow out of his pack and said 'How about we see if we can get some wild geese for the table?' so out we went into the snow."
There followed a bit more conversation about the harvest having been hard, and it being tricky to raise enough vegetables for the root shed on a small holding this size, and how the lord of the manor (for the farmer was a tenant) didn't pay well for the day and a half of labour the man and his son were indentured to put in on the lord's land. Then the son chipped in with a bit more information about the hunt.
"We got a brace of them, then as we came back to the house for me mam to pluck and gut them, the Rider says 'That's a big snowdrift you've got there – how about we go out and get a deer to put in it?' And I said 'But we can't do that, if we're caught poaching on the lord's land that's a week in the stocks, which you'd scarce survive this time of year, then a year of hard labour in the lord's stone quarry.' And your rider just said 'We'll have to make sure we aren't caught, then. And if we are, run like Béma's hunt are on your heels and I'll stand the punishment.'"
"Oh no!" said Éothain. "That's typical of Éo… fric. Headstrong and stubborn, and truth be known, bloody stupid."
"Éofric?" asked Elfhelm. He hoped that the name was not as false-sounding to the ear of a Gondorian as it was to the ear of a man of the Mark.
"Yeah," said Éothain, in his own tongue. "Rhymes with prick. Which is what she'd be if she were a bloke and pulled this stunt."
"Mind your manners, boy," Elfhelm replied in the same language. "It's not so many years since I was minded to box your ears. And I'll do it now if you don't behave." He continued in Westron, "Sorry, there's a bit of bad blood between my rider here and our runaway."
"Anyway he didn't get caught, and we have a fine hind gralloched and in the snowdrift out yonder. Well, he didn't get caught the first time…"
"What!"
"Lord Carandol's gamekeepers caught him second time round. He's been taken to the lord's castle."
"Béma's cock and balls and arsehole!" said Elfhelm (fortunately in the tongue of the Mark).