[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Hilderinc was standing outside, under the bright stars of the chilly evening. He breathed in and out, savouring the crisp air. Gone was the damp smell of the moors, gone was the scent of the trees from the nearby woods he had been smelling on the first days after his arrival. The winter was coming mercilessly and its sharp sting of frost had dulled all the scents. Now any of the smells hardly stayed in the air, least of all by night when the world was asleep. Yet there was still some pleasant flavour in the air, one of the things Hilderinc had begun to like about Scarburg almost at the very beginning. Now at the threshold of winter, it was the almost painful, yet pleasant sharpness of the night breeze, the soft scent of smoke and wood, so unlike the smell of smoke and grass in the wild wind of Edoras, so unlike the smell of open fires in the camps of Wold, and so much unlike the smell of smoke, fire and steel so long ago, in the times of the Great War, which the wind had carried over the Isen.

Hilderinc stopped, gazing at the stars twinkling above the dark formless silhouette of the kitchen building. Only a small sliver of light was coming through a crack – perhaps a not throroughly closed window - otherwise, it was all dark.

Why did I once again think about the War, he wondered at the last flash of memory, peering into the distance as if he could find an answer there. As if today had tried to bring it back to me now.

Yet now and here, under the bright star-strewn sky of the last days of autumn, he felt as if he had nothing to fear for the moment. Perhaps there was something Elvish in that night with myriads of small shiny dots above him, but Hilderinc would not have thought of it like that. Any thought of accidentally opening something that he would have liked to remain forgotten deep in his mind was simply gone, as if he could be sure that the keys to his worst memories were safely out of his reach now. He could just think, freely think and ponder the strange events that had led him to become so fierce on that morning, when helping Crabannan, Nydfara and the others to build the sheep-pen.

He had already got past the initial puzzlement over his reactions. Now he was just embarassed, still embarassed with himself, but not because of what he had done, but because of feeling so embarassed in the first place, and because of having to spend so much time thinking about it.

It was not such a big deal, he thought again. Everybody can explode in anger at some point. The important thing is not to act like a kid all the time. And I didn't. I told Crabannan what I had been thinking. And that I still care? Isn't it good to know that I actually still care about some things? Isn't it good that I care about what people think?

He frowned slightly, trying to make his mind up.

It might be this situation which brings back so many memories, he thought suddenly and if that strange, Elvish-evening mood still had not been resting about him, he might have became worried. The two groups of men, the division within their ranks - the uncertainity, the mistrust in the powers and the justice of the lord... just like back then. It had not been in my power to stop people following what I had believed to be misguided notion... I had not been in any position to do that... yet what is my position now?

He looked down and kicked a single small rock with the tip of his boot. It flew several feet and dully thudded into the shutter of the kitchen's window. Hilderinc straightened himself.

I serve Athanar, he told to himself. That is what I am now, and I should serve him. But is it not, after all, the very thing I have been trying to do since my first day here, even though I have not been consciously aware of it - to bring these two groups to reconciliation? Is this not the smallest thing I can do, here and now, to make all these rows between 'old' and 'new' Scarburgians stop?

Everything seemed calm and he felt he cold night air on his face. He stood outside the kitchen, in silence, thinking.

***

Scyrr clenched his fists as Léof had told him so boldly to leave, and it would have sufficed just a little and he might have struck him. But somehow, suddenly, as if some realisation came to him, he paused in thought.

"I am the only one you want to see gone?" he repeated, eyeing all the men at the table. "Really, are you?" Suddenly his face twisted into a triumphant smile. "Tell me, then, what about lord Athanar? Do you want him gone, too? Is it not that you want to see me and him gone, huh? You see," and he leaned closer to Léof, almost as if he was talking to a close friend, yet his face had an unmistakeable menacing look, "I think I've heard you wishing something like that in the morning, boy! Ha!" He roared triumphantly and stood up straight again, as much as his condition had allowed him to.

"And wanting him gone means wanting us all gone, just so that you know," he added matter-of-factly, raising his eyebrows and pointing at Quin. "So don't you go tell-tales on us, kid!"