[Ransom]

While he was not exactly tall or well muscled, Sander Sindor was as tough as tough as gnarled oak. He had been born into a poor family in the port city of Pelargir. At the age of 13, he decided to follow his father’s career path and joined the crew of a Gondorian battleship that had stopped to take on supplies. Sander spent the next few years cabin boy, doubling as a running boy for the captain during combat. Eventually, he learned the art of sailing and caring for often-temperamental ships. By the time he left the navy, the former cabin boy was the ship’s third mate. He took a job with a small, flat-bottomed ship that shuttled cargo near the coast and up the Anduin River. As with most coast captains and river rats, the Swift Swallow’s owner dabbled in smuggling. The Swift Swallow’s small draft allowed it to hide in the small bays that lined the Gondorian cost while still carrying a fair amount of cargo. It was on one of these side excursions when a merchant who thought he had been cheated had killed the captain. First mate Sander seized the opportunity and, with no small amount of fast-talking, succeeded in getting a transfer of ownership for the Swift Swallow.

Captain Sindor yawned loudly before casting a baleful eye at the clearing storm. During a storm, captains could charge impatient merchants to haul their goods south. With the clearing of the storm, Sander’s early spring bonus would probably start shrinking. Still, the money that Azariah had paid him for his services was the preverbal silver lining in the dark cloud. The self-described river rat blinked and rubbed his eyes as the smoke from the braziers at the front of the ship. Bandits and pirates, having squandered their earnings over the long winter, often tried to raid merchants sailing before the shipping season started. One could never be too careful, especially when one’s nest egg was invested in a flammable boat.

Halasan’s shout rudely shook any vestiges of sleep out of Sander’s mind. The sailor noted with some detachment that the helmsmen had just spouted an arrow in the chest before ringing the large bell just to the right of the rudder. “All hands on deck. Prepare to repel borders!”

While the crew of the Swift Swallow was by no means battle-hardened veterans, they had received some training in combat after a close scrape with some pirates. Within a few minutes of the alarm, all nineteen of the remaining crew had armed themselves with a dizzying array of axes, belaying pins, clubs, daggers, and cutlasses and rushed to the deck. Several of the horses had been hit, causing no small amount of chaos as the crew tried to figure out who the attackers were. For the most part, the shower of arrows that had signaled the start of hostilities had slackened. However, some of the arrows had been wrapped with oily cloth and set on fire. Most of the men, motivated by the shouting and cursing of their officers and their captain, set about putting out the fire. Still, about half a dozen of the larger and stronger members of the crew dived overboard at the order of the captain.

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While Azariah certainly didn’t lack the courage or desire to fight, he had never been prone to the heat that often seized men in battle. Still, even the most foolhardy soldier would have thought twice at the situation the Gondorian found himself in. He certainly didn’t doubt that Haleg could take care of himself, but he couldn’t say the same thing about Tunar. The Gondorian was genuinely fond of the smith, and he certainly didn’t want him to become fertilizer on some Valar forsaken beach far from home. However, he wasn’t exactly sure about Halasan. Azariah strongly suspected his tortured mind was beginning to crack, but he wasn’t completely sure. Still, he had much more important matters to take care of at the moment.

Shortly after boarding the Swift Swallow, Azariah had stripped off the steel greaves, gauntlets, bracers, and breastplate. At the moment, it had seemed to be a good idea. After all, why walk around with such a heavy load when you were in safety? Still, he thanked the Valar he had only been wearing his chain mail hauberk and his sword when he had jumped overboard. He doubted that anyone could wade in plate mail, to say nothing of swimming. Perhaps drawing his sword before jumping had helped, but the soldier supposed that he would never know. The soldier nodded in approval as Halasan, Haleg, and Tunar had drawn up a rough skirmishing line with him on the extreme right flank. It was one thing to defend against a charge—it was quite another to countercharge. The sudden flare of light from the braziers of the Swift Swallow gave the Gondorian quite a bit of a shock as he grasped the hilt of his sword with both hands. The presence of an orc merited military investigation immediately, no matter where. Whoever commanded the nearest garrison would be getting an unpleasant visit in the near future.

Azariah’s first opponent was a small goblin, scarcely five and a half feet tall. The disgusting creature’s armor was a hopeless and rusty mish-mash of metal plates, no doubt scavenged off dead bodies. While a small bucker was strapped to its left hand, the way that the goblin swung a crude long sword in its right hand left little doubt that it wasn’t a particularly skilled swordsman. The Gondorian soldier sidestepped the goblin’s first wild slash before swinging his bastard sword in a powerful arc horizontally in front of his chest. Splinters flew as the rim of the goblin’s shield disappeared in a shower of splinters. It grunted in both surprise and pain as it brought its long sword up to parry the Gondorian’s next blow. Perhaps because of the powerful shock of metal meeting metal, the dazed goblin stumbled a few steps backwards. No one had ever complained that Azariah never showed initiative, and the Gondorian certainly didn’t want to break this streak. Instead of a horizontal blow, Azariah raised his sword above his head and brought it crashing down on a opening between the foul creature’s neck and the shoulder plates of its armor. Ignoring the screams of pain from the rapidly fading creature, the soldier roughly yanked his sword out of the creature’s body and turned to face his next assailant.

[ April 26, 2003: Message edited by: Ransom ]