IC Story Thread: Ch.1, Ad.3 - Black Hand

Eothain finds the spearman lifeless, but he knows if it wasn't the Southron man lying there it likely would have been him.

The swordsman swipes at Duinhir's blade with his empty hand, cutting his knuckles open in the process, and falls to his knees gripping the pant leg of his traveling companion. Pressing his face down upon the fallen warriors foot, he rambles words in the Southron tongue, heedless of Duinhir's demand or the threat of his blade.

The swordsman continues to be unresponsive to words or physical threat. Any attempt to get a response or information from him would appear to require a more extreme means to produce results...

However, both of their packs sit to the side of the path, discarded before the fight to free up their bodies for the violent movements they had known were to come.

Most of the contents are pretty standard travel and survival gear.

Some components in that regard are puzzling. Clearly stuff made for different environs than you're currently in. But little of it is remarkable, except...

One of the packs contains a book, and a scroll case with two documents in it.

Upon inspection one of the documents in the scrollcase is a detailed map, with directions to a location that appears to be... not all that far off from your current location. Perhaps a bit less than a day's hike.

The other document in the scroll case, you've all seen before. Or at least one very much like it. You can't read it though as it's written in the script of Black Speech. You can recall it's look though from the boarded up carriage house in Dol Amroth.

The book appears to be written in the language of the Haradrim, or perhaps some other Southron tongue. And it's subject matter isn't immediately apparent.

The swordsman still doesn't move, even as you tell him he is free to go. It isn't until Eothain sings the song for the death of the spearman - a man who was your enemy, but his ally - that he reacts.

Still kneeling on the ground, his gaze passes over the three of you as he turns his body and faces the sun sinking toward the horizon, his eyes still wet. He turns his palms upward in a motion that looks like some manner of genuflection, and he is silent and motionless for the duration of the song.

Afterwards he hangs his head as his body sags with the weight of sadness and he says quietly, " Have you a tool? Anything that you can leave me with? So that I might bury Hashim. The earth is turning to ice. Do not make me leave him, here, so far from our home... for the buzzards and dogs..."

The ground is already compact and riddled with broken mountain stone, and the top few inches at least are already icy with the cold of the coming fall.

The swordsman silently takes up the implement and begins chipping away at the ground, next to his ally, dislodging maybe a spoonful's-worth of soil at a time.