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Old 04-08-2010, 12:27 PM   #203
Dimturiel
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
 
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: the road less travelled by
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Things had been going from bad to worse since....But Bain could no longer remember a time when things were going right. Everything was hectic and confusing. One minute he was fighting, then he was helping to carry the wounded in the first hall and then the bell sounded for assembly and then the unexpected orders that they were suppose to move out – but were they really unexpected? Bain supposed that if had possessed the inclination to analyse what would happen, perhaps he would have seen it coming. Not that it mattered, since it would not have made the blow less hard to bear anyway.

Since Bain was a fairly experienced fighter, but without having been trained as a warrior, he was to be among those reporting to commander Brambor at the armoury. He supposed he would be one of those protecting the people in their new location. He was glad he was not a trained warrior, for one thing. Guarding the gates with nothing but dreary emptiness behind them, sundered for no one knew how long from the rest of the colony – it would be a hard life. A hard way to spend your last days. The thought came suddenly into his mind and he tried to shrug it off. No use thinking thoughts of ill-omen with the situation being as it was.

Before reporting to commander Brambor, Bain went to the kitchen for his ration, and then to his forge to gather his possessions and to have one last look at all the treasures he had crafted It nearly broke his heart to leave his beloved creations there, the works of both his mind and his hands. Each told a story to him, of some golden or dark day in the past. There was the shield he had set to work on as soon as they had reached Moria, the first thing he made in Khazad-dum. There was a small mail-shirt he had made for the son of a friend of his. He had never got round to giving it, somehow. And there were so many other beautiful things, all of them begging him not to abandon them. But he would not be allowed to carry all of them. The only thing that he took was his last work, the helm he had made for Lord Balin.

“I have made it with him in my mind,” he told himself. “Now I will wear it with him in my mind also, and may his memory make me fight the fiercer, should the need arise”

Then, without another look at what he was leaving behind – perhaps not forever, he was telling himself, perhaps he could return, although at that moment he could not picture himself ever entering that forge again – he turned his back to his forge and strode purposefully towards the armoury.
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