"Where are you going?" I demand, and it is all I can do to keep up with him. I feel like a child tugging at his sleeve, and it turns my agitation into annoyance. Shutter continues to stride onward.
"I am going to find her," he tells me sharply, as though I am an idiot.
"How?" I snort. "In this city… this entire city, how do you plan to do this?"
"I know her," he informs me, "I know her better than she knows herself. I will find her before she does something idiotic."
"For Eru's sake, man!" I shout, and something in my tone makes him stop so suddenly that I nearly barrel into him. He looks at me in irritation, gestures widely to show he is waiting for me to speak, and although I wish nothing more than to shove him into the wall I take the opportunity whilst I can.
"Legolas will be leaving in moments – he has probably already left. He is expecting to meet you at the base of the city, and you are meant to be watching his back."
"I am meant to be doing no such thing," he frowns. "I was to be in the hills to the west, guarding the retreat, just as he commands the archers above the gallows."
"Well I can hardly watch him from the rear of the procession!"
"She is alone, Gimli!" he says, and for a statement with such little volume to it, the force behind his words is as powerful as the tides. I do not hear a thief, a flamboyant actor, a charming snake… I do not hear any of the things that he pretends to be. I hear a friend, frightened for his friend… worried and anxious, and I know exactly how that feels.
I rake my hand across my mouth and down my beard, the bristles making a soft sound, and I groan loudly.
"Go," I tell him wearily, and he blinks in surprise. I scowl. "Hurry! Find her and return, I will find a substitute for her in the procession and you must find your way to the walls of the city as fast as you can. If Legolas is harmed because he imagined he had help where he does not, I swear…"
"You need not threaten me," he tells me honestly, with a hint of his usual glib manner dancing at the edge of his mouth. "I will be where I must."
Shutter looks at me again, looks carefully as though it is for the first time, but he does not wait for long. He spins on his heel and runs away into the dimly lit corridor, and I take only a moment to swear very loudly and very nastily in as many languages as I can remember.
Cursed. We are very literally, and quite genuinely cursed. It is probably Legolas' fault, some way or another.
I hear the first rumble of thunder, faint and distorted by the stone, and I turn and run the opposite way.
~{O}~
For a moment I consider running after the elfling, but it is only for a moment. I am not so stupid as to think I could ever catch up with him, find him in the mass of broken rubble that is the mountainside, or be of any help once I get there. Legolas is more than capable of doing this alone, this is what he is good at, but it does not stop the thrill of worry that I feel. He is going into battle with incorrect information, and I can only trust in his experience and his skill, because I am needed elsewhere.
I stop only briefly in a room that is not mine, barely a detour at all thankfully, and then I am running as fast as I can to the rooms where I found Hob and his men only to find it empty. They have gone already, and I start to curse all over again but this time far louder. I run off again into the corridors, the initial thrills of alarm settling into a dull dirge of panic that I am woefully far too used to feeling. I had missed it, oddly, because I seem to have this sense of foreboding for most of the days I have lived.
I find the procession at our meeting place, a guard-house on the fifth level – the furthest we can go through the tunnels that everyone seems to know about but me. We will leave here in our full disguises, head our way to the gates, but by the time I arrive I am wheezing and gasping. I have just run through half of the city, the wind has become a force to be reckoned with and so I have battled it the whole way. I am about ready to keel over when the doors are opened by some very curious Whitecloaks dressed like wardens.
"There you are!" Hob hisses at me, drags me inside by the front of my jerkin and slams the door shut. "Where is she?"
"A lengthy tale," I heave, cough until I think I might die, and for a moment wonder if I should give up pipe weed. The wind rattles at the shutters, and the roof – which is not particularly well shingled – sighs and creaks as the gusts find entry. The candles flicker fitfully as I scan the room, locate who I am searching for and drag her near.
"You are no longer a fake warden," I inform Lirra, shoving one of the Steward's dresses at her with a whoosh of scented fabric. "You are a fake Briar instead."
She blinks at me, stunned, but to be fair to her and her sister, they take orders like the soldiers they are. She immediately begins to strip off her warden's uniform and I turn away, cheeks blazing, only to be almost flattened by Ren who shoves my axe wrapped in my own disguise at my chest. I stagger and pull them apart, tugging on an ill-fitting tunic and a cloak that smells of horse, as Hob jabs me in the ribs. He is trying to seem calm, but he is starting to fray at the edges.
I tell him what has happened as quickly and as quietly as I can, and now it is his turn to swear. He scratches his hand across his stubbled head angrily, and I can see the cogs whirring behind his eyes as he reassesses things.
"Prince Legolas?" he asks, realising that our friend knows nothing of this.
"Legolas will be fine," I snap, but it is worry and not anger and Hob knows this.
The first tapping of rain starts, a fitful patter that rises into a heavy drumming as the wind catches it. The faintest flicker of light, and then a ghost of rolling thunder an age later. The storm has begun – it is going to be a fine one indeed – and I smell wetness and cold upon the flickering gusts that sneak into the room. The men shift and mutter nervously, I rub dirt onto my face just as the others have done, and turn to look at our company.
Eru, we look like nothing more than armed soldiers wearing dirty clothes. There is no future in sneaking for any one of us. I begin to hope fervently that the storm worsens, if only to hide how poor we are at subterfuge.
"Go," I say to Hob.
There is nothing for it; we have started this and now we must follow through with the plan. He looks carefully at me – a soaked dwarf, barely in control of his breath – but I think there is something in my bearing that gives him confidence. Perhaps it is in the fact that I am starting to take these things in stride, because by my beard this is not even the most dangerous thing I have done in the last few months. I would reconsider my life choices if there was a single thing I could do about them.
I pause, because there is something wrong in the look he gives me, and I have a sinking thought that perhaps this is the first time Hob has seen real action since the war. I think he is an exceptionally brave man, but I also think he is broken in the same places that a lot of us are broken… some of us just never stopped running. Captain Hob has the ghost of cinders and the screams of battle in the look he gives me, and so I take a moment in the bustle and nervous shifting in the room to give him a broad grin, a laugh, and something in him loosens. He blinks, remembers where he is… shakes himself free of memories that he has done a lot to forget.
"A fine night for it lads, eh?" I ask to the wider audience, and the wind takes that moment to howl through the rafters like the nazgûl themselves. Someone laughs, someone else makes a comment and there is a ripple of laughter at that as well, and the tension is dissipated in a moment.
"Come on," Hob claps his hands, although it is a focussing of attention rather than sharp or abrupt. He recovers, just as well as any of us who lead men have learned to do; he does a fine pretence. "As pretty a picture as it is to imagine the elf getting soaked whilst we dally, we have a thing to do, and a cask of ale with our names on it once we are done."
The gathering warms further, the tension dissipates almost entirely, and when we open the doors again there are clapped shoulders and steady limbs that leave our ramshackle hideaway. They stride out into the fitful rain with confidence and I stand aside to let them pass. As they go, Hob takes a moment to say something to me, opens his mouth but nothing comes out. There is no need for it – we are both old soldiers – and I jostle him with one elbow as he grips my shoulder.
I am blinded for a moment by the driving rain, tugging my cloak back around my face and body. Eru it is going to become far worse, and there is a stuttering flicker of lightning that shows wide puddles turbulent with the deluge hammering at us. We are the only fools out in this, and perhaps it is a good thing, but I start to wonder at the sense in carrying out such a mission in weather such as this.
But it is done now, and all there is left is the doing of it, and so I take a breath and I follow our procession down through the city.
~{O}~
Like all cities with differing levels of military and non-military law enforcement, there are a number of chances for our plan to go awry as we pass through each gate.
Captain Hob has made the decision to allow few individuals the knowledge of what we do here tonight. He leads our column because he is well known and invites little scrutiny – which is well because he has all of our weapons in a cart, supposedly for carrying our bodies back to the city. Ren pats the nose of our drenched and miserable cart pony, because he is known as well, and so to the city guard, these are nothing more than prisoners bound for the gallows. It is a sign indeed of the quality of these men that they are solemn and serious; they check our papers and the shackles that hold those playing prisoners, but they do not mock or pass comment or treat us roughly.
They stand in the pouring rain even though they do not all need to be there, a silent witness to the passing of our column. Respectful, despite that these are men responsible for treason in their eyes. All could go quite badly should they realise they are inspecting the chains of their friends, but they do not. No matter how respectful, there are few that can look into the eyes of a condemned man.
We pass the final checkpoint and then we are out of the city, and although it should be a moment of relief it is not. This is the true test, this is when we discover whether our ruse has been successful.
The city walls rise to our right, pocked with the damage of war and so tall I cannot see the uppermost parts of it. We slog through mud, no longer protected by the city, the wind howling around us and the rain hammering in sheets. Thunder rolls hugely across a furious sky, I am utterly soaked, but there comes a moment in times such as this when it ceases to be horrible and is simply something to be endured.
I walk toward the rear of the procession, tripping on tussocks of slippery grass where I have been used to cobbles and flagstone, and although it was not my first choice, I am disguised as a prisoner. I am clearly shorter and stouter than any Whitecloak or city guard, and Hob thought perhaps we were pushing our credibility dressing me as a warden. Now that we are clear I fumble at my belt where the key to my shackles is hidden, because my fingers are so frozen and waterlogged I shall have a fine time trying to unlock them. I feel the first stirrings of nervousness.
As we pass the walls and approach the end of the city escarpments, I see Mindolluin rise like a black wall against the flicker of lightning. There were buildings here once, before the war – the first attempt at a settlement outside of the city walls, but it fell long before Osgiliath and there is barely anything of it any longer. We walk through the ghosts of buildings, merely walls and crumbled archways, a fallen well, something that might have been a forge. All of it passes by, phantoms of lives that once resided here – something that might have been a sign of hope, long ago. Families lived here, settlers made foundations of stone after long pilgrimages to reach this city, and all of it is in ruins. Strangled in ivy and briar, fallen into the mud.
The city walls become staggered here and ill repaired, many times patched. The broken stone crumbles down like a river where the city meets the mountain, itself heavily damaged: scarred by the attacks from war machines, huge boulders lying where they fell – where they should not be. The going becomes treacherous, dangerous, because I can barely see a damned thing and the ground is little but rubble and mud now.
I splash through rivers that pour down from the mountain, ankle deep, and there is a blinding flash of lightning that has my eyes searing and watering. The thunder that follows is almost instant, deafening. It cracks, pauses, booms so that the stone shakes… rolls outward with the weight of a glacier, and as it fades all I can hear is Ren trying to calm the pony, the strengthening of the rain. Eru, I did not think that it could get any heavier!
I start to wonder whether this is entirely safe.
I glance back at Hob but I can see nothing of him. I realise that I could not hear him right now even if he were to shout in my ear, and the thrill of fear that I feel now is not the anxiety that precedes battle – it is not nerves or adrenaline, but rather experience.
I have said before how I can often tell where Legolas is. Most of the time it is because I watch him so carefully – because he is so prone to doing dangerous things of late – or because he is so worried about something happening to me that he is all but treading upon my heels. But it is not simply that.
Our link is fading. I can no longer feel anything but the strongest of his emotions, not unless I put real effort into it, and his thoughts are his own now. I can catch ragged snatches of his heart, the majority of my knowledge of the elfling is because I know him so well to begin with, but some parts of it are lingering… slower to pass.
Legolas is like a ghost upon my consciousness, and I barely even notice it any longer. I know when he is there and when he is not, and if I wish to then I can garner a sense of direction if he is close enough. It is a comfort to me, and not simply because we are a co-dependent mess these days but because I can concentrate far better when I know he is safe, and when I know that he is keeping watch over me.
I strain through the mud and sluice water that runs ankle deep in places. I feel the wind tugging and heaving at me, the rain hammering upon my head and shoulders, and I nearly break my leg about a thousand times as I trip and stumble over rockslides, but as I come closer to the place where the mountain meets the Pelennor my sense of Legolas grows. My panic subsides and my heart grows calm. Thunder cracks and shatters the sky above me, it is wild and frightening, but there is a silver and green breath of summer in the heights above. There, just as he is always there.
I have only a moment to appreciate it before all goes ill.
~{O}~
We have reached the shadow of the gallows, strangely in-tact considering how everything else around us is in such ruin, and I am starting to worry… what are we meant to do once we get there? We can hardly hang one of our number simply to keep up appearances, although if Shutter were here I might reconsider such a thing. The decision is taken from me though.
I had expected it, mainly because I had hoped for it, but I had doubts… Eru I had doubts about whether this would work at all.
Captain Hob must have been a mass of tension this entire time, because when the attack comes he is ready for it. There is a whistle – soft, barely audible over the thunder of rain – but I have spent a lot of time with elves and I know the whistle of an arrow shot from a high tensile bow when I hear it. It clatters harmlessly into the rock but it is very close to Lirra – our pretend Lady Briar – and Hob is fast to action. It has barely registered on my senses before he calls the order – sharp and loud, for all of us to hear – and everything changes.
I fall into the ruins of what seems to be a family home, dragging the figures to both my fore and aft with me by the collar. As we fall unceremoniously into a heap, splash into mud and water, I see flashes of their faces in the lightning – Céorl and Mouse. Céorl skitters backward, his heels making poor purchase in the slurry, and the two of them fumble for a moment with the shackles at each other's wrists. I need no assistance – mine are already discarded – but I peer around the crumbled doorway to where Captain Hob still stands exposed. He is throwing the tarp back from the cart, dragging weapons free, throwing them to where his men lay hidden and I shout to him to take cover. He is insane!
He hears me and turns, lightning cutting his face as clear as day, and I see fear there – real fear for his men. They are hidden but unarmed, and I see arrow after arrow clatter around him. He flinches, ducks, moves with the rigidity of someone expecting harm at any moment, but he does not stop. I swear venomously and I run out into the rain to help him.
"Gimli advance," he shoves me as I reach him, fury upon his face, but I shove him right back and snarl in his face.
"These are your men," I spit through the rain running freely down my face. "Lead them, I will equip them."
And he pauses only for a moment before he accepts. Hob is a fine captain, and as he disappears into the storm I continue throwing weaponry to every culvert and bolt-hole I can see. I feel a shiver at the back of my neck that I have felt a thousand times before – the knowledge that someone has a bow trained upon my back – but I must trust… I must trust that my friend is there. Every arrow that comes my way clatters shy, thuds into the solidity of the cart, frightens the pony or hisses past. I know that there are a hundred more that I will never know of, because I have the finest archer in the land watching over me. I reach forward, all but breaking my ribs on the edge of the cart, and I drag my axe free of the tarpaulin. We are all armed now.
Lightning cuts sharply, jaggedly, and I turn in time to see a man in black sprinting through the rain and mud toward me. He does not scream or shout, makes no sound at all, but I duck beneath his attack although he is far too fast to let me take advantage of it. He twists quickly, elven-like reflexes, his heel skimming water into a sheet as he turns and ducks beneath my guard, but by Eru, I have trained with the best.
I am the best warrior my people can offer, and I am not fool enough to refuse training from laegrim or from Dúnedain or Rohirrim. Any time that I have not spent in some peril or danger I have spent in training: honing my skills, learning my disadvantages and how best to counter them.
I falter, pause in my advance, and it is enough to send him in a wide open sweep that I can easily duck beneath. I sink my fist into his ribs with the power of the very mountain, and as he gasps and flinches to one side, I pull the skinning knife in my boot free and cut his throat. He chokes and gurgles and gasps, and I shove him away from me with barely a thought.
As he hits the mud I pause for a moment to find my bearings, glance upward although I can see nothing of Legolas or his archers. I can see evidence of them though; many men fallen and laid low by the arrows from the heights, but although I see much to concern me, I have little time to do anything about it.
I am attacked again, another silent shadow, and I think they are watching us quite carefully because this man is wary of me. He does not rush me, he approaches upon the balls of his feet, limber and agile. He is armed with a short blade in each hand, a poor match for me. A man who favours short blades will fight closely and far beneath the reach of my axe, so I drop it to the ground. He rushes forward and I turn my shoulder beneath the thrust, feel the blade glance against the leather across my back, and I grab his wrist and arm as Legolas has taught me. I pull and twist and send him sailing over my shoulder into the sodden ground with a splash just as the lightning blinds me.
The man twists as he falls and rolls, comes back to his feet, but I am ready and kick like a horse – crunch my foot backward into his knee, sending it entirely the wrong way. He screams – the first sound he has made – collapsing into the mire, and I have time enough to scoop my axe from the mud and crack his head in two with the blade, silencing his screams forever.
I stop again, and I feel the faintest push of something against my mind. Legolas can see me. He is watching over me even now, when it must be agony to him to remain in the heights and not join the fray. He is solid and strong, he cuts through the wildness, and although it is oddness itself that this half-mad elf is the buttress against which I strengthen myself, Legolas is far more than anyone else realises – far more than they see upon the surface. I breathe easier as the madness recedes into clarity and I can see.
Our attackers. They are not simply soldiers, they are not normal men. Just as they were capable enough to capture Legolas, just as they were all but unbreakable upon their capture, just as their captain all but defeated the warrior Prince of Mirkwood… these men are exceptional. They are quick and silent, ghosts in the night. They do not fight the way that soldiers are trained to fight: part of a crowd, one of many, in formations and groups. Instead they work alone, fast and nimble, and Eru they know exactly what we are doing here!
We thought that we would have the element of surprise. We thought that we might lure them into a trap, but they do not act anything like men who have been taken unawares. They know exactly who we are and why we are here; we have been taken for fools, because they have allowed us to move from the safety of the city, and this is a rout… butchery. Hob's best men drawn out for the slaughter.
This whole thing has been orchestrated by the Lady Briar's brother, and she is suspiciously absent.
I look around for Captain Hob but I cannot tell one mud soaked adan from the other. I see Lirra – who has torn her lovely dress to shreds so that she can fight – side by side with Liana, and the man fighting beside them is Larke. Ren is never too far from his friend, but other than that? I have no idea who is who… it is too dark, too chaotic, and I have stood here for far too long although it has likely only been moments.
I send a shrill whistle into the storm, I find my feet again and advance. I see Mouse – identifiable only by his small stature – and I cut the hamstrings of the man who has him nearly overwhelmed, moving onward. I send the whistle again, and I am staggered by the sight of a ghost sprinting toward me from the dark, only to have his skull pierced from behind by a green fletched arrow. He collapses, legs twitching in the mud, and finally I hear the whistle back.
Questioning, curious. I repeat the call to retreat, scour my brain and try to recall what 'treachery' might sound like, but I am not completely fluent in the laegrim hunting language. It is designed specifically to communicate over long distances in poor weather, but Mahal's beard it is impossible to remember the sound and lift and nuance of an entire language spoken in whistles!
In the end I fall back upon something a bit more dwarven, and I send the call for what can only be translated as 'just do as I tell you'. After a beat I hear his acknowledgement, which is useful only for the archers above us, who can go nowhere whilst they cover us.
I take a deep breath, let it out in what is most definitely not a sigh, and I plunge ahead into the battle. Battered by rain, deafened by it, but not so that I cannot hear the shouts and screams of frightened or injured men. I slog through the mud and help where I am needed, but I am looking for someone… searching for him as best I can, although every figure in the blackness looks the same to me. As I advance, I help those I come across, and I end up with a following of my own. Every one of Hob's men that I assist or pass in any way follow me, and they begin to draw their ranks together again.
No longer scattered or overwhelmed, they form a knot far more confident and deadly than they were when I came across them, and the ghosts fall back. They melt into the darkness, eyes that watch and assess, ready to take advantage of any weakness. Together we advance across the skidding mud, closer to the mountain, where the water by now is a waterfall. It tugs at my legs, and has started to shift rock and debris.
I find Captain Hob in combat with a tall man dressed in black – just as they are all dressed in black – and I would allow him his moment of victory but I have no time for it. I pick up a fair sized stone, heft it once or twice in my hand, then throw it so that it crunches right into the forehead of Hob's opponent. The captain turns in umbrage as his foe crumples to the ground, and I grab him by the cloak. Drag him closer.
"They know, Hob. They knew from the start."
I have to shout to be heard, but Hob deflates for a second beneath my words. He sluices water from his face but it is pointless, it runs from his brow and nose constantly, and he looks around at the shadowy forms of those he has already lost, silent and still upon the ground. At the cluster that remain, back to back and watching the shifting darkness. To where lightning flickers upon eyes and blades, milling out there where we cannot see.
"I know," he tells me, and I can barely hear him. "Get them out of here. Shutter has not arrived to guard the retreat, and I brought you into this."
"You did no such thing, you fool," I snap at him, because I have no time for the martyrdom of men. "They are your men, that is my elf, and I have spent more hours fighting at his side than I have known the lot of you combined. We shall both remain where we belong."
Hob is torn, I can tell, but then a small voice speaks at my side.
"I shall remain with Lord Gimli," it says, and I turn to see Mouse – dear Mouse – bright eyed and resolute. He is a fine soldier, this one: clever and quick and loyal.
"As will I," speaks Larke, and then Lirra steps forward although I am not surprised. She glances at Larke with a look that I have seen before… she will not leave his side, and their eyes lock for a long time. There is a lot there, a lot spoken between them, hot and fast and important.
Her sister grabs at her arm, ready to argue, but the taller of the two – her hair loose and plastered about her face – turns to her and hisses:
"You must find our Lady," she says, and I think it is the first time I have heard either of them speak before. "You must find her – there must be an explanation for this… there must."
"I will go with the Captain and the men," Ren promises, taking Liana by the arm, but it is gentle. He is leaving his partner – his closest friend, his brother – and she leaves her sister. She falls back, her eyes torn and worried, and I think she might have hit him had he been more forceful about it. Ren looks sickened to be leaving, but one of them has to be the catalyst, one of them has to get Hob moving, and the men are all looking to him.
There is a moment then, when we all come to accept what happens, although there are not many of us that are happy. I tuck my axe at my back, someone throws both Larke and Mouse a bow and a diminished quiver of arrows just as a whistle comes through the storm, twisted by the wind.
A question. What occurs?
Retreat, I reply, and there is silence for a while… long enough to have me agitated, because the men are all staring at me – no idea what we are saying to one another – and I have no idea what Legolas is doing.
When he calls next, he has moved. He is higher, tucked into a fold of the mountain where the water is running the fastest. It is the best vantage, but it is also the most dangerous path… of course it is the most dangerous path.
Keep pace, fivemark, he instructs. Rear cover on fifth beat, decreasing, and I know this. This is another laegrim construct, one that I can only liken to the use of drums. Legolas will sound every five paces, and we must keep in line. We will retreat together and the rear guard will follow at a distance, but advance on the fifth call; reducing the gap between us with each repetition. I relay his instruction and get nothing but crossed eyes, so I try again and this time they look dubious. When Legolas' first whistle shrills into the night I shove them forward and they obey, the rest of us hold back, and I start to count for twenty five paces.
An eternity. An absolute eternity.
Larke, Lirra, Mouse and I wait patiently. We watch the column advance without us and they are swiftly lost in the deluge – a grey haze of hammering rain – but I can hear Legolas whistling. A beat, every five paces, short and sharp. It is such a short time, a moment in reality, but it feels like forever and I feel cold and exposed and frightened. It feels as though it is just the four of us surrounded by nothingness, blind and surrounded by men with blades and poor intent, and we are so poorly equipped for this. How has it gone so badly?!
Where is Shutter?
I clear my throat, shake the water from my head, realise that I am the most experienced and that the others are looking to me for guidance. When did this happen? When did I become old or wise enough to be the dwarf in charge or anything at all?! I certainly would not leave Gimli Gloinson in charge of anything more important than supper, but such has my life become.
I shove all of my worry and fear down into my gut. It is still there – I can feel it – but I feel anger and determination all the stronger. Mouse is a clever and skilled lad, smart and quick. Larke is a captain in the making, if only someone might bring him out of the silence in his head. Lirra is approximately three times taller than I am and built like an Ent, but only if that Ent was a willow. I see something there between her and Larke, and by Eru I would be there when they are wed – if she consents to be wed, or perhaps if Larke does – and I am struck, not by the oddness of us being surrounded by silent assassins in the thundering rain, but that I am thinking of such things.
I laugh, and Larke looks at me oddly. I clap him upon the shoulder, sending up a splash of water. His back steams in the cold.
We are in the heart of a spectacular storm, our company is all but decimated, and every single one of us is starting to think that perhaps we have been betrayed. Our survivors continue into the furious night, and the four of us that remain stand exposed to a thousand hidden blades – or at least that is how it feels.
"Say, lads," I speak, and I feel each of them turn to me although my own gaze does not leave the darkness. "Can any of you carry a song?"
There is a long time where there is nothing but the drumming hiss of rain, the rolling grumble of the skies, the retreating sound of Legolas' whistles, but then Mouse speaks up.
"I am told I am fair enough, sir," he offers, and I grip his shoulder tightly.
"Then sing, my friend. I have marched in silence in the rain before, but I prefer that there be a tune."
And with that it is our turn to advance, and I push him gently forward as I move and I know that they all follow. It takes no time at all before I hear the lad begin to sing, and he is quite right – the lad can carry a tune indeed – but I am not sure I had expected anything as bawdy as that which comes from his mouth. It is a tavern song, lively and cheerful, and I am quite certain that – had I been the one singing it – the spirit of my dead mother would have appeared instantly and knocked me flat. I cannot help but laugh, and it is exactly what we need.
Mouse sings his drinking songs, I laugh at the worst of them, and we walk through the sodden night with hidden blades at our backs. We walk as though we are fearless.
TBC
So this has been a long time coming.
In all honesty, I have not made huge headway with the block I've been experiencing, but I'm certainly starting to see the cracks and I'm very aware of how long it's been since I last posted. I've had a wonderful time, my life has been one enjoyable experience after the other, so although I haven't had a huge amount of time for writing, my time has not been wasted.
Back to some sort of routine now though. I am only just writing the chapter after this one (although it's mostly written) so I can't imagine any more gaps in my posting quite as long as this one. I do find myself with about three half written oneshots though, and I was hoping to celebrate the anniversary of Steward with one of them but alas, it has not come to pass. If I finish any of them though, I will make sure I post them here in this fic's honour. Considering it was only meant to be about four chapters long, I think it's done fairly well! I'm really not capable of writing short fics, I should just accept this.
This chapter isn't actually quite where I wanted it to be, but I've found it quite clunky in places and difficult to remedy. I can't keep playing with it because that tends to make things worse, or steals the fluidity out of the writing, so I'm just going to let it go. I hope it meets your standards, but let me know if it doesn't.
Anyway, lovely to see you all, and I really hope to hear from you in the reviews. Who knows, if you're quick enough you might even get a reply tonight!
Have a wonderful weekend :)
MyselfOnly