The Abduction of Éomer, King of Rohan

Chapter 11

The first thing I noticed upon waking was that the nice warm cushion against my back had vanished. Had I only dreamt it? The second was that I could hear low voices somewhere off to the side. I rolled over and had a look around. The fire had burnt down to cold ashes and the sky to the east turned to a pale eggshell green with the coming dawn. Yet surely it was too early to get up?

The voices rose in volume and I sat up in alarm. Where was Léona? Then I spotted him down by the waterside, near Bornathron's abandoned campsite, talking to somebody. I squinted into the gloom and realized there were two new boats drawn up on the sand! Where had they come from? Even as I watched, three men got out of one of them and joined their comrade on the beach.

"I've told you," Léona's voiced carried clearly to me, "I am travelling to Minas Tirith with my wife. Now get you gone."

The other man said something, but again I only caught Léona's answer. "No, you can't have a look," he said, "she is asleep. Come back when the sun is up."

I froze. Were they searching for me? Exactly at that moment one of the men looked up and spotted me. He pointed my way and Léona glanced round. "See, now you've woken her!" he said and beckoned to me.

There was no helping it. Feeling very exposed, I rose and went to join them. Facing Léona was a fat, elderly man dressed in working clothes with a white apron wrapped over them. However, the three men standing behind him were of an altogether different kind: their leather jerkins might be worn and patched in places, but they all wore swords on their belts and one of them even had a hauberk. In the boats drawn up on the sand, two more sat, paddles in hand. Sharp eyes examined me as I walked up, making me shiver, even though I told myself that I looked nothing like a princess in my stained clothes and with tangled hair. The sand was cold under my bare feet.

Léona wrapped a warm arm around my waist. "Rhovaniel, my sweet, this good man here is looking for his wife, who has been abducted from their home." I started and he squeezed my waist in warning.

"How...how dreadful," I stammered. Was it possible they were after Maedwen and Bornathron? It took all my self-control not to look back over my shoulder. The two slept on the other side of the fire from me, and in the gloom might just be taken for heaps of blankets. I studied the fat man more closely. Could he be her abusive husband? He did not look particularly threatening, but then you never knew what drink did to a man.

"Have you seen them?" he asked. With his large hands clutching his apron, he described the young couple.

I was just about to deny any sight of them, when Léona broke in. "Now that I come to think of it," he said, "there were two young people who asked to stay here for the night."

The miller leant forward eagerly. "Where are they?"

Léona shrugged. "I told them to move on."

"Yes, that's true," I said, catching on to Léona's plan.

"Did you hear that, Corethir," the man exclaimed.

He turned to one of his companions, who seemed to be the leader of the other men, for he was the only one to wear chainmail and had some kind of device on the short tabard that went over it.

"They were in a hurry," I added, anxious to have them gone. At any moment the sleepers behind us might wake up and give themselves away. And I hoped the men did not think to ask us why we had two boats – although traders did sometimes have a second one along.

"It has to be them," the miller said.

The man addressed as Corethir regarded us suspiciously. "How convenient that you should remember this encounter all of a sudden." He had a narrow face with eyes so pale they held no emotion whatsoever. It came to me that this man had killed before and would do so again without the least hesitation. I shuddered as his glance slithered over me like the touch of a damp, chilly hand.