The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [155]
The entire local population joined in the hunt for the evildoer with gusto, but they might as well have been trying to capture an echo. The former royal forester's career had only one possible direction now – a life of robbery and death at the hands of the law. Wounded in a fight with the sheriff of Harlond's men, broken on the rack, Runcorn was about to grace the local gallows when Baron Grager rode into town looking to recruit reinforcements for the decimated Ithilien regiment. "I'll take this one," said the baron in approximately the tone of a housewife picking out a cut of ham at the butcher's ("…and slice it thin!"); the sheriff could only grit his teeth.
The war beyond Osgiliath was going so-so; the Ithilien regiment fought noticeably better than any other unit and, as is customary, was the last one to be replenished. In general reinforcements were hard to come by (the folks at Minas Tirith who screamed the loudest about the 'need to free Middle Earth from the eastern darkness once and for all' have all suddenly developed pressing business on this side of the Anduin, whereas the plain folk never cared for the War of the Ring to begin with), so the special dispensation that Faramir had bargained for – 'even right off the gallows' – had to be used quite frequently. Grager himself was walking in the gallows' shadow, but the reach of the courts of Gondor was too short to grab a front-line officer in wartime.
The regiment's physician had to expend a mountain of effort to turn the bag of bones Grager had extracted from the Harlond jail into a semblance of a man, but the famous robber was worth it. Runcorn could not shoot a bow like he used to (his mangled shoulder joint had forever lost flexibility), but he remained an excellent scout, and his experience with traps and other forest warfare tricks was truly priceless. He finished the war with the rank of sergeant, then participated under his lieutenant's command in freeing and elevating Faramir to the throne of Ithilien, and was just about to start building himself a home – somewhere far from people, in the Otter Creek dell, say – when His Highness the Prince of Ithilien invited him over. Would he kindly agree to accompany two of his guests north, to Mirkwood?
"I'm no longer in service, my Captain, and charity is not my business." "That's exactly what I need – a man not in my service. Nor is this charity, they're prepared to pay well. Name your price, Sergeant." "Forty silver marks," Runcorn said out of the blue, just to get them off his back. But the wiry hook-nosed Orc (who seemed to be the leader) only nodded: "Done," and undid the money bag with Elvish embroidery. When a handful of assorted gold coins appeared on the table (Haladdin had long wondered where Eloar might have gotten the Vendotenian nyanmas or the square chengas from the Noon Islands), the ranger could no longer back out gracefully.
Runcorn took responsibility for all preparations for the trip to Dol Guldur, so Haladdin and Tzerlag enjoyed a total lack thereof. The scout tried the leather ichigas bought for them with obvious anxiety (the Orocuen did not trust any footwear without a hard sole), but he really liked the ponyagas the locals used instead of rucksacks. These rigid frames of two bird-cherry arcs conjoined at a straight angle (the wood is bent right after cutting and becomes bone-hard when it dries) allow one to carry a lumpy hundred-pound load without worrying about fitting it to one's back.
To the doctor's mild surprise the Orocuen decided to move from Emyn Arnen's guest quarters where the prince had put them to the barrack of Faramir's personal guard for the duration. "I'm a simple man, sir, I'm like a fly in honey amidst all this luxury. It's bad for the fly and bad for