Post by Tallaith on Jul 20, 2009 17:04:29 GMT -5
Caspia licked a raindrop from her upper lip and considered the tiny Hobbit settlement nestled on the verge of the swamp. From her perch on the hillside above Needlehole, a dry bower between two aged pines and a haven from the summer storm, she traced every movement of the simple folks as they went about the business of readying themselves for bed.
Thunder rolled and grumbled; the clouds cloaked the brilliant coloration that made a Shire sunset the most breathtaking to behold in all of Middle Earth, at least in her opinion. At least the storm broke some of the day's heat and promised for cool night ahead, perfect for walking long paths.
She found a scrap of bread in the pocket of the rags she supposed someone once called a tunic. Gnawing the crust, she tried to sort through the madness of the last fortnight, piecing the tattered truth together into a history as befuddling as it was unlikely. As each small house dozed in the twilight in turn, the Needlehole Hobbits taking the unusual measure of bolting themselves in for the night behind barred, round doors before setting their lamps alight, Caspia mulled over all of the events that left her in the strangest situation of her short life.
Madness... She knew this all began when she tried to jump from the Brandywine bridge just outside of Stock and found herself dangling upside-down from a support beam jutting from the side for most of a day. Her love of leaping from ridiculous heights was something like the love birds had for flight, she supposed. Every jump, from precipice, bough, or bridge, gave her the delicious thrill of death's closeness as she became reliant only on herself to find the elation of life's persistance after her daring. Each time she allowed her tiny boots to both leave the ground, she trusted in herself in the most essential way to survive with cleverness and a mute faith in luck.
What had motivated her on that day, a very mundane midsummer morning, to leap from the Brandywine bridge in her full armour, with all her weaponry on her person and not tucked safely on the Shire side of the shore, was an infuriating mystery to her. If she tried to explain her feelings on that day to anyone who had ever been loved they would have offered her a small, sad smile and perhaps even dare to lay a hand of comfort on her shoulder. It was obvious to all but herself; Caspia's heart had been broken at last and the mending was too painful for her to endure. She still treasured her life, but risks were more delicious and distracting than the hard work of growing up.
When the Man cut her loose from the bridge, when she lost almost all of her belongings but a stolen, secret treasure to the brown waters of the river, when she tried to rob him and nearly lost her life sincerely that day... All of these events were placed neatly in order in her mind. The events were sensible, but her motivations were not. Even, perhaps, when she stole a glimmering circlet from her own sister, this, too, was just another dare, another wish to feel something besides the numbness.
She finished off the bit of bread, wishing for a cold, sweet drink of water almost immediately. She settled for licking the rain from her lips and pulled her knees up to her chest, wincing at the tightness in her shoulder as she hugged her legs tightly. She showed very rare patience in this, her most important business: watching, waiting, being small and silent and unseen.
Almost a fornight previous, Caspia Wing was going about her work with detached, perhaps careless, efficiency. As a favor to Cay, rather than for the small bit of coin in it, she was scouting a stretch of woods just north of Brockenborings, tracking the movements of an infestation of goblins that could not be swept from their foul nest.
Caspia was not the sort of lass to do favors without very, very good cause. But she owed her foster sister for countless things, not in the least Cay's recent forgiveness. Caspia betrayed her sister's trust, using a key that was long ago given to her and forgotten to appropriate a pretty bauble from Cay's personal trunk. Caspia had no grasp of the value of the aged circlet, except a vague notion that it would fetch a good purse at auction; the true worth of it lay instead in it's heritage and what it meant to both the giver of the gift and to Ceallian. For her theft, Caspia almost lost her life when the Man who entrusted Cay with the circlet discovered her crime. She might have gone to jail at the Man's bidding or been hunted down and punished for her tresspass, but Cay, ever the diplomat, smoothed over the matter with tact.
The small stand of thorns was ample cover for the tiny huntress as she watched the goblins with glittering blue eyes. Her bow nestled on her back but she couldn't resist carressing the pommel of her sword almost hungrily as she watched the goblins do something she assumed was akin to changing watches. She could not strike these obscene creatures; her work as a scout at times forced her to let darkness fall around her when she could chase away the shadows easily. Her knowledge had to be gathered silently and secretly.
She shifted her weight almost motionlessly, her legs cramping from crouching in this position for most of the morning. She noted with the sharpest of memories the strange, grunting exchanges between the goblins, the crude weapons they bore, the bitter stupidity of their attempts at organization. The camp here was unchanged from when she first saw it two years ago; except for the sporadic attempts of idiotic would-be warriors to clear it out in brief skirmishes, the goblins were undisturbed in their fermentation.
The sun arced languidly overhead. Noon brought hot light down through the dappled leaves of the ancient oaks. If not for the pollution of Saruman, this place might be the serene forest of a sweet dream recalled for only a breath's span on waking. Caspia's mind wandered into paths of dreams and recollections as the heat and her hunger and sleepiness glazed over her wariness. Instinctively, she watched and made note of the goblins, her nostrils flaring and her pupils growing large enough at times to make her blue eyes nearly black as the stinking creatures patrolled only a few paces away from her hiding place.
Brockenborings was a short jog behind her; the Hobbits there had no inkling of the danger just beyond their dooryards. she licked her lips, seeing a plate of stew and a cool mug of light cider laid out on a table in the kitchen of the Plough and Stars for her by Halson, who had a fondness for her despite her tendency to break his dishes in the throes of a tantrum.
Caspia shoved the notion from her head. Rest and a soft place to sleep and plenty of good suppers would be bought with the coin Cay promised her for this work; today was the final span of her observation of this place, and she showed more patience in these matters than with any others. A bath with soap, a long sleep on a pallet made of blankets rather than pine straw, and some wholesome Hobbit cuisine was almost too tempting to keep her tiny boots rooted here.
Her thoughts wandered as her trained eyes automatically scanned the camp. Bits of memory, wishes, and and plans rolled through her head as mist rolls from the glassy surface of a calm pond at daylight. The mist began to roil and darken into storm clouds as again, always again, he came back to her.
Ceallian's travels took her to places Caspia would never be fool enough to see with her own eyes unless she was forced by a draw more powerful than self-preservation. A day before Caspia was dispatched to these woods, Ceallian returned from a foray into Carn Dum, where the minstrel sought tokens for Caspia that would purchase the trust of expert hunters who could further her training unlike any others in Middle Earth. Cay's expedition was a success and she gifted her small foster sister with these treasures, but also with tales of the Castle of the Witch-King and the surrounding wastes. Cay spoke softly, as always, her voice sweet and humble as she described what she found there; creatures called Pale-Folk by their keepers, slaves to Dark masters who degraded them to the most base of living things.
They are a bit like perian, my sister. They perhaps once were Hobbits but I do not know if they were bred into this state or if they were stolen and from the tortures of their lives became what they are now. Their eyes are so sad but there is only hate in them, hate for those who live free and may die by their works, but die in freedom. They are small creatures who have not seen the true sun in so long their very skin is like mushrooms, or the slime that covers rocks in stagnant waters. I felt such pity for them that each time I had to strike one to save myself, I knew my heart would break. Somehow, it did not, but I only wished I could have freed every one of them instead! Their Masters made them insane, and the Pale-Folk only know pain and anger, so perhaps even if I could have saved only one, a free and good life would have been only more torture to them.
Caspia had shrugged off the tale as another story meant to warn her against her wandering lifestyle, but the words came back to her in her dreams and wakeful moments alike. What if he was one of these creatures now? What if his foolish gallantry led him to capture and he was only a waste of himself, doomed to live in mindless sorrow? Was this better than if he was dead, unknown and unremembered by anyone but herself, in some high and frozen pass where only the wild creatures would know of his end?
His face was only a bad reflection in a cracked and filthy looking glass to her now. Each time she tried to recall his eyes, the line of his cheek, it was harder and harder to find him again. It was better that she let him slip into the oceans of her memory, a fragile bottle cast into the Brandywine and left at the mercy of the current to be borne inevitably to the endless seas.
A spear punched through Caspia's shoulder, rammed into her back just above the strap of her quiver. She noted the barbed tip, so sharp and wicked her blood did not stain it yet, as it appeared as silently as a phantom a few inches from her right collar bone.
She twisted her head, her eyes huge lamps in her gray face. A stunted goblin, so small that perhaps the only work he was suited to was scouting, grinned down at her with a ravenous joy. His teeth were scorched and throbbing fangs as he wrenched the spear in his knotted fists, turning it as he ripped it back out of her flesh.
All clarity and reason were now lost to Caspia. Fragments of the next days came to her, but she would never know, and blessed was her ignorance, what happened.
The scout screamed in victory as the female slumped to the dirt, drawing his superior to the stand of thorns in a moment. The guardsman was marginally smarter than the scout, which meant he could string more than three words together in a thought, and his speech was clotted with curses as he booted the halfling's corpse over onto her back. He backhanded the scout for making such a stir and bent low over the tiny body, inhaling deeply as he appraised his potential supper.
This Hobbit was female. He knew in the instinctive fashion of a beast scenting a mate from across an open moor; this realization sparked something in the dull caverns of his mind. A command of the most demanding sort had been placed on him. Capture a Hobbit. A female Hobbit must be brought to the Men. A female Hobbit is not for mating or for food. Bring the Men a female Hobbit. Failure means stones piled on your arms and legs until they are crushed to scraps of meat.
The guardsman barked curses to the gathering crowd of goblins,demanding that they tend to their work. He grabbed the halfling's arm and began to drag her through the camp, leaving a trail of her blood in the dirt. He nearly lost his prize to a half-dozen spear-throwers but their fear of the Men who lead them, rather than their fear of their commander, kept them from tearing the Hobbit from him. They backed away, whining like mongrels, as the guardsman slowly made his way to his reward.
The Men knew right away that the halfling could not be kept at the camp. The goblins circled the shack they kept as their command post like starving wild dogs scenting a feast for the first two nights. The Boss wanted this Hobbit, but likely not enough to merit complete loss of the tenuous control they held over the nearly-feral goblins.
The best solution was to find another place to keep her while the special convoy to collect her made it's way to this forgotten part of the world.
The Men debated. They came to blows over the matter. They overturned the table they used to dice and drink, spilling jugs of the best ale ever to pass their lips into the dirt floor. On the third day, they finally agreed to move the Hobbit.
Besides, keeping her alive was work for a healer. She was a stout creature, surprisingly so, but poison and fever from the scout's spear meant she needed care. She never woke up enough to speak or to take gruel or water. They poured a few drops in her mouth every few hours, assuming something made it down her throat, and they counted the moments between her breaths with dread. If she died before the Boss could collect her, they would likely die too.
Moving her was easier than they hoped. They bundled the tiny body into horse blankets and strapped her to the back of her own pony, which was too fine an animal to turn into stew. The little animal proved to be their only obstacle; she would not bear her mistress while being led. She screamed and kicked, but never reared or showed signs of tossing the Hobbit from her back, and bit at the Men as they tried to whip her into following their own horses through the camp. Finally one Man took the Hobbit onto his arms and held her to him, forced to carry her himself as they abandoned the pony at the camp.
Bounder Primstone, the head over the Bounders of Brockenborings, was easy to convince. Threats passed as easily as a robin passes through the gold of dawn; a few coins passed as well, but the Men seemed to grudge their flight.
The Men eyed the tiny jail with doubt, but once they left the village all responsibility for the keeping of the halfling was on the small shoulders of the Bounders. Fear was the motivator they knew best and Primstone was in terror of the Boss and what he might do to punish the Hobbits if they defied him.
Bounder Primstone bolted the door behind the Men and covered his eyes with his hands for a long while. After taking some deep, shuddering breaths, his cheeks returned to their usual color, losing the scarlet of shame and rage. He did not have the keys to open the antique cell doors of his small jail. His prisoners were the occasional moth or spider.
It did not matter. The lass lay as if already dead on sacks of corn in a shadowed corner. The Bounder had shackled her hands before her himself in front of the Men, turning over the key to them with a respectful bow that allowed him to hide his expression of terror and loathing. He had nodded, grinding his teeth so hard he could almost feel them cracking, as he produced some rags to dress the lass after the Men stripped off her armour down to her underclothes. They spoke words of warning to Primstone about the dangerous, insane, and murderous tendencies of the tiny lass, affirming over and over that she would do anything to find her freedom again.
She would not escape. She would prove the existance of miracles, if not of mercy and goodness, if she survived the fate that came for her.
A week and a half passed before Caspia knew she was alive. She knew of course in the deepest part of herself that breath still coursed in and out of her lungs, but even when she opened her eyes or spoke while she lay in the Bounder's jail, she was not truly there.
When she finally came to her wits, she was in bed. Her fever was still mangling her thoughts, but she knew she was lying in clean sheets with a fire dozing on the hearth.
She staggered out of the huge canopied bed, silent even now as she nearly bashed her forehead in on a chair trying to bend to gather up a pile of clothing from the floor. Shivering from weakness and sickness, she had to make every gesture of dressing herself a slow, conscious effort. It took her four minutes to pull a filth-caked tunic over her head and slide some rank trousers over her legs.
Her eyes were hazed with fever as she tried to name the place where she had rested. Her thoughts were not clear enough even for this. Someone slept, huddled in a chair in the corner, with his chin slumped over his chest. Should she kill him? No, she would leave him for now. She didn't have the strength to strangle him with only her hands and the only weapons she saw in the room were strapped to his person.
She did not know why she made the effort to quietly take a book from one of the shelves that lined the walls of the bedchamber and it was even more mysterious to her that she delicately tore out a page, cautious to make no sound. She watched her hands with earnest fascination as she found a blackened twig on the hearth and wrote in giant, scrawling letters on the page:
I WON'T GO BACK THERE.
She left the note on the bed and slipped out the doorway.
The sun made it's way leisurely to bed now, marking a day and a half since Caspia left the great hall where she awoke.
She contemplated Needlehole. She mulled over all of the clues and questions they bore, inable to sort out truth from illusion even now that her fever was gone.
She had nothing. No weapons, no armour, no pony, no coin. She knew something evil awaited her, and this evil was part of a discovery she made in the spring. Sharkey's hand was behind all of this. The only way she could find herself again was to make her way back to the start, just outside Brockenborings. And she would have to find the path there without notice.
Caspia narrowed her eyes as the Bounder on the evening watch strolled down the path through the center of the settlement, spinning a ring of keys carelessly on his finger and whistling before pausing to chat with the postman, who was barring the windows of his small office.
She would find the truth tonight, and if she found death on the way, so be it.
Thunder rolled and grumbled; the clouds cloaked the brilliant coloration that made a Shire sunset the most breathtaking to behold in all of Middle Earth, at least in her opinion. At least the storm broke some of the day's heat and promised for cool night ahead, perfect for walking long paths.
She found a scrap of bread in the pocket of the rags she supposed someone once called a tunic. Gnawing the crust, she tried to sort through the madness of the last fortnight, piecing the tattered truth together into a history as befuddling as it was unlikely. As each small house dozed in the twilight in turn, the Needlehole Hobbits taking the unusual measure of bolting themselves in for the night behind barred, round doors before setting their lamps alight, Caspia mulled over all of the events that left her in the strangest situation of her short life.
Madness... She knew this all began when she tried to jump from the Brandywine bridge just outside of Stock and found herself dangling upside-down from a support beam jutting from the side for most of a day. Her love of leaping from ridiculous heights was something like the love birds had for flight, she supposed. Every jump, from precipice, bough, or bridge, gave her the delicious thrill of death's closeness as she became reliant only on herself to find the elation of life's persistance after her daring. Each time she allowed her tiny boots to both leave the ground, she trusted in herself in the most essential way to survive with cleverness and a mute faith in luck.
What had motivated her on that day, a very mundane midsummer morning, to leap from the Brandywine bridge in her full armour, with all her weaponry on her person and not tucked safely on the Shire side of the shore, was an infuriating mystery to her. If she tried to explain her feelings on that day to anyone who had ever been loved they would have offered her a small, sad smile and perhaps even dare to lay a hand of comfort on her shoulder. It was obvious to all but herself; Caspia's heart had been broken at last and the mending was too painful for her to endure. She still treasured her life, but risks were more delicious and distracting than the hard work of growing up.
When the Man cut her loose from the bridge, when she lost almost all of her belongings but a stolen, secret treasure to the brown waters of the river, when she tried to rob him and nearly lost her life sincerely that day... All of these events were placed neatly in order in her mind. The events were sensible, but her motivations were not. Even, perhaps, when she stole a glimmering circlet from her own sister, this, too, was just another dare, another wish to feel something besides the numbness.
She finished off the bit of bread, wishing for a cold, sweet drink of water almost immediately. She settled for licking the rain from her lips and pulled her knees up to her chest, wincing at the tightness in her shoulder as she hugged her legs tightly. She showed very rare patience in this, her most important business: watching, waiting, being small and silent and unseen.
...
Almost a fornight previous, Caspia Wing was going about her work with detached, perhaps careless, efficiency. As a favor to Cay, rather than for the small bit of coin in it, she was scouting a stretch of woods just north of Brockenborings, tracking the movements of an infestation of goblins that could not be swept from their foul nest.
Caspia was not the sort of lass to do favors without very, very good cause. But she owed her foster sister for countless things, not in the least Cay's recent forgiveness. Caspia betrayed her sister's trust, using a key that was long ago given to her and forgotten to appropriate a pretty bauble from Cay's personal trunk. Caspia had no grasp of the value of the aged circlet, except a vague notion that it would fetch a good purse at auction; the true worth of it lay instead in it's heritage and what it meant to both the giver of the gift and to Ceallian. For her theft, Caspia almost lost her life when the Man who entrusted Cay with the circlet discovered her crime. She might have gone to jail at the Man's bidding or been hunted down and punished for her tresspass, but Cay, ever the diplomat, smoothed over the matter with tact.
The small stand of thorns was ample cover for the tiny huntress as she watched the goblins with glittering blue eyes. Her bow nestled on her back but she couldn't resist carressing the pommel of her sword almost hungrily as she watched the goblins do something she assumed was akin to changing watches. She could not strike these obscene creatures; her work as a scout at times forced her to let darkness fall around her when she could chase away the shadows easily. Her knowledge had to be gathered silently and secretly.
She shifted her weight almost motionlessly, her legs cramping from crouching in this position for most of the morning. She noted with the sharpest of memories the strange, grunting exchanges between the goblins, the crude weapons they bore, the bitter stupidity of their attempts at organization. The camp here was unchanged from when she first saw it two years ago; except for the sporadic attempts of idiotic would-be warriors to clear it out in brief skirmishes, the goblins were undisturbed in their fermentation.
The sun arced languidly overhead. Noon brought hot light down through the dappled leaves of the ancient oaks. If not for the pollution of Saruman, this place might be the serene forest of a sweet dream recalled for only a breath's span on waking. Caspia's mind wandered into paths of dreams and recollections as the heat and her hunger and sleepiness glazed over her wariness. Instinctively, she watched and made note of the goblins, her nostrils flaring and her pupils growing large enough at times to make her blue eyes nearly black as the stinking creatures patrolled only a few paces away from her hiding place.
Brockenborings was a short jog behind her; the Hobbits there had no inkling of the danger just beyond their dooryards. she licked her lips, seeing a plate of stew and a cool mug of light cider laid out on a table in the kitchen of the Plough and Stars for her by Halson, who had a fondness for her despite her tendency to break his dishes in the throes of a tantrum.
Caspia shoved the notion from her head. Rest and a soft place to sleep and plenty of good suppers would be bought with the coin Cay promised her for this work; today was the final span of her observation of this place, and she showed more patience in these matters than with any others. A bath with soap, a long sleep on a pallet made of blankets rather than pine straw, and some wholesome Hobbit cuisine was almost too tempting to keep her tiny boots rooted here.
Her thoughts wandered as her trained eyes automatically scanned the camp. Bits of memory, wishes, and and plans rolled through her head as mist rolls from the glassy surface of a calm pond at daylight. The mist began to roil and darken into storm clouds as again, always again, he came back to her.
Ceallian's travels took her to places Caspia would never be fool enough to see with her own eyes unless she was forced by a draw more powerful than self-preservation. A day before Caspia was dispatched to these woods, Ceallian returned from a foray into Carn Dum, where the minstrel sought tokens for Caspia that would purchase the trust of expert hunters who could further her training unlike any others in Middle Earth. Cay's expedition was a success and she gifted her small foster sister with these treasures, but also with tales of the Castle of the Witch-King and the surrounding wastes. Cay spoke softly, as always, her voice sweet and humble as she described what she found there; creatures called Pale-Folk by their keepers, slaves to Dark masters who degraded them to the most base of living things.
They are a bit like perian, my sister. They perhaps once were Hobbits but I do not know if they were bred into this state or if they were stolen and from the tortures of their lives became what they are now. Their eyes are so sad but there is only hate in them, hate for those who live free and may die by their works, but die in freedom. They are small creatures who have not seen the true sun in so long their very skin is like mushrooms, or the slime that covers rocks in stagnant waters. I felt such pity for them that each time I had to strike one to save myself, I knew my heart would break. Somehow, it did not, but I only wished I could have freed every one of them instead! Their Masters made them insane, and the Pale-Folk only know pain and anger, so perhaps even if I could have saved only one, a free and good life would have been only more torture to them.
Caspia had shrugged off the tale as another story meant to warn her against her wandering lifestyle, but the words came back to her in her dreams and wakeful moments alike. What if he was one of these creatures now? What if his foolish gallantry led him to capture and he was only a waste of himself, doomed to live in mindless sorrow? Was this better than if he was dead, unknown and unremembered by anyone but herself, in some high and frozen pass where only the wild creatures would know of his end?
His face was only a bad reflection in a cracked and filthy looking glass to her now. Each time she tried to recall his eyes, the line of his cheek, it was harder and harder to find him again. It was better that she let him slip into the oceans of her memory, a fragile bottle cast into the Brandywine and left at the mercy of the current to be borne inevitably to the endless seas.
A spear punched through Caspia's shoulder, rammed into her back just above the strap of her quiver. She noted the barbed tip, so sharp and wicked her blood did not stain it yet, as it appeared as silently as a phantom a few inches from her right collar bone.
She twisted her head, her eyes huge lamps in her gray face. A stunted goblin, so small that perhaps the only work he was suited to was scouting, grinned down at her with a ravenous joy. His teeth were scorched and throbbing fangs as he wrenched the spear in his knotted fists, turning it as he ripped it back out of her flesh.
All clarity and reason were now lost to Caspia. Fragments of the next days came to her, but she would never know, and blessed was her ignorance, what happened.
The scout screamed in victory as the female slumped to the dirt, drawing his superior to the stand of thorns in a moment. The guardsman was marginally smarter than the scout, which meant he could string more than three words together in a thought, and his speech was clotted with curses as he booted the halfling's corpse over onto her back. He backhanded the scout for making such a stir and bent low over the tiny body, inhaling deeply as he appraised his potential supper.
This Hobbit was female. He knew in the instinctive fashion of a beast scenting a mate from across an open moor; this realization sparked something in the dull caverns of his mind. A command of the most demanding sort had been placed on him. Capture a Hobbit. A female Hobbit must be brought to the Men. A female Hobbit is not for mating or for food. Bring the Men a female Hobbit. Failure means stones piled on your arms and legs until they are crushed to scraps of meat.
The guardsman barked curses to the gathering crowd of goblins,demanding that they tend to their work. He grabbed the halfling's arm and began to drag her through the camp, leaving a trail of her blood in the dirt. He nearly lost his prize to a half-dozen spear-throwers but their fear of the Men who lead them, rather than their fear of their commander, kept them from tearing the Hobbit from him. They backed away, whining like mongrels, as the guardsman slowly made his way to his reward.
...
The Men knew right away that the halfling could not be kept at the camp. The goblins circled the shack they kept as their command post like starving wild dogs scenting a feast for the first two nights. The Boss wanted this Hobbit, but likely not enough to merit complete loss of the tenuous control they held over the nearly-feral goblins.
The best solution was to find another place to keep her while the special convoy to collect her made it's way to this forgotten part of the world.
The Men debated. They came to blows over the matter. They overturned the table they used to dice and drink, spilling jugs of the best ale ever to pass their lips into the dirt floor. On the third day, they finally agreed to move the Hobbit.
Besides, keeping her alive was work for a healer. She was a stout creature, surprisingly so, but poison and fever from the scout's spear meant she needed care. She never woke up enough to speak or to take gruel or water. They poured a few drops in her mouth every few hours, assuming something made it down her throat, and they counted the moments between her breaths with dread. If she died before the Boss could collect her, they would likely die too.
Moving her was easier than they hoped. They bundled the tiny body into horse blankets and strapped her to the back of her own pony, which was too fine an animal to turn into stew. The little animal proved to be their only obstacle; she would not bear her mistress while being led. She screamed and kicked, but never reared or showed signs of tossing the Hobbit from her back, and bit at the Men as they tried to whip her into following their own horses through the camp. Finally one Man took the Hobbit onto his arms and held her to him, forced to carry her himself as they abandoned the pony at the camp.
Bounder Primstone, the head over the Bounders of Brockenborings, was easy to convince. Threats passed as easily as a robin passes through the gold of dawn; a few coins passed as well, but the Men seemed to grudge their flight.
The Men eyed the tiny jail with doubt, but once they left the village all responsibility for the keeping of the halfling was on the small shoulders of the Bounders. Fear was the motivator they knew best and Primstone was in terror of the Boss and what he might do to punish the Hobbits if they defied him.
Bounder Primstone bolted the door behind the Men and covered his eyes with his hands for a long while. After taking some deep, shuddering breaths, his cheeks returned to their usual color, losing the scarlet of shame and rage. He did not have the keys to open the antique cell doors of his small jail. His prisoners were the occasional moth or spider.
It did not matter. The lass lay as if already dead on sacks of corn in a shadowed corner. The Bounder had shackled her hands before her himself in front of the Men, turning over the key to them with a respectful bow that allowed him to hide his expression of terror and loathing. He had nodded, grinding his teeth so hard he could almost feel them cracking, as he produced some rags to dress the lass after the Men stripped off her armour down to her underclothes. They spoke words of warning to Primstone about the dangerous, insane, and murderous tendencies of the tiny lass, affirming over and over that she would do anything to find her freedom again.
She would not escape. She would prove the existance of miracles, if not of mercy and goodness, if she survived the fate that came for her.
...
A week and a half passed before Caspia knew she was alive. She knew of course in the deepest part of herself that breath still coursed in and out of her lungs, but even when she opened her eyes or spoke while she lay in the Bounder's jail, she was not truly there.
When she finally came to her wits, she was in bed. Her fever was still mangling her thoughts, but she knew she was lying in clean sheets with a fire dozing on the hearth.
She staggered out of the huge canopied bed, silent even now as she nearly bashed her forehead in on a chair trying to bend to gather up a pile of clothing from the floor. Shivering from weakness and sickness, she had to make every gesture of dressing herself a slow, conscious effort. It took her four minutes to pull a filth-caked tunic over her head and slide some rank trousers over her legs.
Her eyes were hazed with fever as she tried to name the place where she had rested. Her thoughts were not clear enough even for this. Someone slept, huddled in a chair in the corner, with his chin slumped over his chest. Should she kill him? No, she would leave him for now. She didn't have the strength to strangle him with only her hands and the only weapons she saw in the room were strapped to his person.
She did not know why she made the effort to quietly take a book from one of the shelves that lined the walls of the bedchamber and it was even more mysterious to her that she delicately tore out a page, cautious to make no sound. She watched her hands with earnest fascination as she found a blackened twig on the hearth and wrote in giant, scrawling letters on the page:
I WON'T GO BACK THERE.
She left the note on the bed and slipped out the doorway.
...
The sun made it's way leisurely to bed now, marking a day and a half since Caspia left the great hall where she awoke.
She contemplated Needlehole. She mulled over all of the clues and questions they bore, inable to sort out truth from illusion even now that her fever was gone.
She had nothing. No weapons, no armour, no pony, no coin. She knew something evil awaited her, and this evil was part of a discovery she made in the spring. Sharkey's hand was behind all of this. The only way she could find herself again was to make her way back to the start, just outside Brockenborings. And she would have to find the path there without notice.
Caspia narrowed her eyes as the Bounder on the evening watch strolled down the path through the center of the settlement, spinning a ring of keys carelessly on his finger and whistling before pausing to chat with the postman, who was barring the windows of his small office.
She would find the truth tonight, and if she found death on the way, so be it.