[Ealasaide]

Kaldir

Kaldir was riding out of the inn’s stable yard on his own horse, leading the two he had obtained from Cobhan Tupper the night before by the reins, when he glanced back over his shoulder and saw the group of Rangers beginning to gather at the entrance to the stable. They seemed to be examining the ground and speaking together in low tones. One of them pointed toward the woods, where Kaldir had sensed the presence of Naiore Dannan the day before. The stable master had mentioned something to him in passing about how a horse had gone missing in the night. Subtly, Kaldir had glanced at the track on the dirt floor and noticed the small, feminine outline of an elf lady’s boot. Surely, the missing horse was the work of Naiore. Vanwe, the stable master’s assistant, left an entirely different print. Kaldir smiled grimly. The stable master had no idea how lucky he had been not to awake at the wrong moment.

“Naiore’s getting ready to make her move,” Kaldir muttered to himself. He dug his heels into his horse’s flank and the great animal leapt forward, the two new ones close behind. The Rangers, his own former brethren, would not be idle for long. To pick up Naiore’s trail ahead of them, he would have to move quickly. He would have to collect Benia from where he had left her in the deserted cellar some blocks away, then circle around and enter the trees from the far side. That way, Benia would not be seen by anyone at the inn, who might interfere or ask too many troublesome questions. Also, he had a feeling Naiore’s focus would still be centered around the inn, at least, so long as Vanwe was there. By flanking Naiore, he might fare better against her in a confrontation. It was by far a better strategy than walking straight toward her across the inn yard, anyway.

But, he had no illusions about the confrontation, if it happened, either. Naiore would be about as easy to capture as a wily, old dragon. Maybe she couldn’t fly or breathe fire and brimstone, but what she could do, given the tiniest of opportunities, was equally bad. Cobhan Tupper had been painfully easy to subdue. Naiore would be nothing of the kind.

He rode toward the abandoned blacksmith’s shop and Benia’s makeshift prison at an easy gallop. He should just let the poor woman go, he thought to himself as the gray shape of the empty building appeared at the end of the street ahead of him. In the pursuit of Naiore, he needed to be fast and, more than anything else, completely focused on the task at hand or it could mean his life. Benia’s presence would just complicate things. Slow him down. But he still found himself completely unwilling to turn her loose. A wise decision or not, she was coming with him. His instincts told him that she had something, somehow, to do with the situation and how it would all end, that she had some, as yet unknown, role to play in it all. She had to be brought along.

He would just have to adjust.

Kaldir dismounted outside the leaning, gray wood walls of his temporary lodging and tied the two horses and pack pony to the rusty hitching posts outside. Already, before even entering the building, he had a vague notion that something was amiss. A spike of anger shot through him as he caught sight of the open trapdoor that led to the cellar. Then, he began to laugh.

“It seems my little bird has flown the coop,” he said aloud. Careful not to disturb any of the tracks left in the dusty floor, he walked to the mouth of the trapdoor and looked down. Cut bits of rope lay in a forlorn pile in the dirt at the foot of the stairs. A single set of slender bare footprints were visible in the dust on the side of the stairs closest to the banister. His own foot prints, coming and going, marked the centers of the stair treads. On the floor, just outside the trapdoor, was the single small footprint of a hobbit.

“Well, well, well,” murmured Kaldir. “Mrs. Banks.” Moving slowly, he followed the trail of the women's footprints to the door on the eastern side of the building, noticing that Benia's prints were now made by booted feet. He could tell by their spacing that she still limped, but that she was walking without assistance. They couldn't have gone far.