Payment in Spears

[Posterboy]

  Again... I'm assuming this conversation is still happening in the council hall, not in the field.

"Minstrel, you misunderstand me. Those men out there are bound by no oath and no law. Only their personal relationships with Beorn lord of this hall make them a people. They are not to be ordered here or there by commands. The thegns of the north have only to decide that Viglund better matches their temperment or provides better securtiy and like that the Viglunds have grown. Is this a problem in Dale or Gondor?

Perhaps you can relate a tale of the number if bellies a song filled in winter? Your accusations against me are unjust, and they will be remembered."

Tate listened once more to Hathcyn, breathing deeply as he let the words of both the young lad and Grimbeorn sink in. The youth was right... he had misunderstood the lad's words. Disappointment and frustration had made him hard of hearing. Son of a... I'm becoming just like Gwen! Mirth returned to his eyes. The minstrel shook his head and nearly laughed at himself.

Tate turned and moved closer to Hathcyn, examining the young Beorning before deferring his eyes, "Your master has bade us bicker no more, and I shall submit to his wish. But let me say this clearly so all may hear and know..." Tate paused for effect. "You are correct in your judgement, Master Hathcyn... I did indeed misunderstand your words, and then proceeded to speak out of my misunderstanding and misplaced offense. I cannot take my words back, though I wish now I could. I can only ask your forgiveness... and the time to sweat and bleed alongside of you in service to your Lord. If you are willing, let us teach these northern thegns by our own lives what loyalty and love looks like."

[Telcontar]

Ooc: Sorry I thought I posted this in the OOC thread.

My underestanding of the timing was that Hathcyn made the "we have no King" comment in the hall after Esgalwen stormed out. Hathcyn's response is based soley on his feeling of outsiders not understanding the political ramifications and the position Grimbeorn is in with the Thegns. Tate's comments in that context were taken as proving his point of not understanding their cultural with an added unjustified and unearnerd personal insult in front of and in the hall of his lord. Hathcyn's response was both to show his independence after Grimbeorn said enough, but also a not so subtle reminder that the laws of hopsatility prevented any other escalation at the present time.

Hathcyn's understanding of Tate and Esgalwen is only that they were sent to apprehend a criminal and that they may possibly had been invovled somehow with the death of the werewolf.

We can clean the timing up however we want and restructure the tone and sequence.

[Telcontar]

Hathcyn looked at him a moment and paused before speaking again.

"War is a serious bussiness, and so words are taken hard first and thought about after. Let the words we spoke pass between us and if you teach us a new song and cut the hay with us we shall drink and work together and all be forgotten."

He smiled then, "come we are not war lords, but we are young and have strongbacks, let us put back to work now and sword arm later."

[Posterboy]

"Ha!" laughed Tate, his eyes sparkling once again. He grabbed Hathcyn in the embrace he had seen given by Grimbeorn's people. "You show me a kindness I shall not soon forget. Now... if I recall, you once requested a song about the women of Dorwinion. I know just the tune... should help us keep time well enough as we bend our backs."

[Telcontar]

As men from far afield began to arrive to swell the ranks of the Beorning host it became the custom of the men in the field to pause and hail them as they came. Either from where they came from or by the name of whom they followed a cry would spring up and pass down the line of workers.

Before the week was out a strange name was hailed and echoed.

"BANDIS! Bandis Halfman has come!"

Esgalwen stopped the sharpening of iron and looked up. Who?

She thought for a moment, surely not.

"Hullo Gwen."

She turned from her work to the path and saw Bandy atop a pony. The helm of the company shone brightly on his cloak and two quivers hung from the pommel.

"Bandy?" She laughed.

"They made me ride. I have brought four archers and one angry burned Inn owning Hobbit with me as apparently the Beornings have renamed me and taken me as one of their own. My farm does well and if I were home they'd call me a squire or some such. The land is a marvel, rich as any at home. The Anduin river, being much larger than the Brandywine, and older, has deposited such fertile earth and being nearer the mountains given the land over to rolling hills. Untamed as of yet, but a Hobbit knows rolling hills and rich earth. The Bracegirdles are not known for being idle, and I'll have a home built by next year I hope. The mound raising delayed us some and the threat of orcs caused lingering longer still. Where is everyone, are we too late?"

[GandalfOfBorg]

  Meh, guess my need to finish has been OBE.

Grimbeorn could do nothing but open his mouth to continue when overriden and then shut it.  He shook his head, he'll never really understand these folk.

[Eclecticon]

As Esgalwen shares a happy reunion with Bandy, Grimbeorn catches sight of old Iwgar the Slow lingering meaningfully by the edge of the field.  Crossing over as he scratches the sweat from his beard, he grunts "what news, old one?" 

Iwgar nods, pauses, as if to gather his voice to him and then says "Have you noticed the robins that follow you and your men?  They wait by the field edges for the grains dropped and discarded, and thereafter forgotten..."

"Yes, good then.  Lots of robins about.  What of them?"  Almost instinctively, Grimbeorn looms over the smaller, much older, man.  But Iwgar remains impassive. 

"I hear from them that our friend the Fire-watcher approaches from the south, with ten men at his back.  Even now, they pass east of Stánford.  He expects that he shall meet you on the path." 


Tom, go ahead and give Bandy half a dozen AP to represent what he's been up to since we last saw him. 

How much time has passed since the call went out?  By how much have numbers swollen?

It's now been eight days since you put the call out for allies.  What with people coming and going from field work (some have had their fields cleared and are now free to fight, others have mistakenly gathered that war isn't happening any time soon and have returned home) your army has a different head-count every day, but counting the Fellowship, and the 23 Woodmen that either have already arrived or are on the way, you can count on a strength of about 250. 

[tomcat]

Bandy did not know why, but Esgalwen erupted into tears, so overwhelmed was her heart.

She walked up to the halfling, still sitting atop his pony, and threw her arms around the small scholar. Heavy were her sobs and Bandobras awkwardly hugged her back, with the occasional pat on the back. He did not know what to say, nor why his friend was so broken up, but he did not want to interrupt her in her tears.

Esgalwen sobbed.

The small Hobbit had brought back such good thoughts of friendship, love, and happiness. Always had Bandy been the positive light in the Company - with simple stories and songs of farmers stubbing their toes or mules too stubborn to move, he would take away all of the cobwebs of Shadow that filled their hearts and minds. The great heaviness of the world, and the actions they need take, could be lessened by his smile and happy words. Keen, too, was his eye and his bow and arrows had been a great boon to them when times were grim.

Esgalwen lifted her face to his, eyes swollen from tears, and smiled. Using the back of her hands she wiped away the tears, though the dusty dirt left tracks of grime upon her cheeks. Grabbing either side of his face, she lowered it to kiss him on his forehead. The Hobbit's face flushed pink and he stammered to say something, but Esgalwen laughed in interruption.

"You must think me a fool!"

"Well... I don't know..."

"Were there to appear a host of Gondorian knights, dear Bandy, I do not believe that it could make me as happy as I am now!"

"Has something happened, Gwen? Are you okay?"

She smiled that he called her by her father's given nickname - he remembered!

"I am now, Bandobras! I am now."

Again Bandobras Bracegirdle flushed, as Esgalwen, fair and beautiful, smiled at him keenly with a twinkle in her eyes. The Hobbit saw pure love and adoration in her face and again he felt embarrassed and awkward.

"Then good is our meeting and glad am I to see you," he semi-stuttered, so taken aback by her beauty.

From the field, Tate watched with a bit of concern when he saw the ranger embrace the small...child? He knew she was sobbing, but then she stood upright and her shoulders no longer seemed bent from some unseen burden. Tate did not know why, but he was happy of a sudden. The woman that he had grown feelings for seemed once more to be...herself.

[Eclecticon]

For those playing at home, I'm waiting on the word from Grimbeorn.  The army is ready to march where and when he tells it to. 

[Telcontar]

After the haying had been done it soon was a habit to pile up the loose ends and dry sod into large bonfires. The men hot from the dry work slacked their thirst and told stories long into the night and the pattern would repeat itself into the next day. Hathcyn often took Tate with him, and Harhold was almost a shadow to the louder engaging Longspear. As the food was finished and the tools were prepared for the next day the evening often started with, "Come with me song singer and you may hear something new."
On one night, before the week was out the three sat beside the glowing coals of a dying fire, the stars cast across the sky. Men still drank and snatches of songs would erupt and fade away with the smoke into the night. Hathcyn, eyes bright and mug never dry turned to the man from Dale.

"Do you swim with the fish?" He asked.

The bard looked at him a little quizzically, but saw too that he was in earnest.

"Yes, I have gone into the water of the Long Lake."

"NO, do you swim with the fish?"

"I do not catch your meaning Hathcyn."

The Longspear looked at him and cast his head back looking askew at his new friend.

"You do not understand my question? I am a fox," he pointed at one of the other men around the fire.
"He is a boar, Harhold here," and he kicked him with his heel eliciting a grunt from the man, "is a smelly goat." He laughed.

"The woodmen told me a tale. They say that the rivers of the wood have maidens. Sometimes they come from the water and lay with a man and leave him be, and sometimes he slips into the water and is gone forever. But they do not swim with the fish, they have forgotten their ancestors I think, and the maids of the water try to remind them. I thought perhaps with a water as wide and deep as that in your homeland you would swim with the fishes, and so remember your kin."

Tate saw that the jovial Hathcyn was not in jest, in fact he seemed almost sad when he spoke of the woodmen forgetting there past. Tate prodded him to continue so that he might better understand.

"I AM a fox!" he said. "Yet I see that you too do not understand."

"Long ago this land was covered in a great shadow. This shadow came for men and beasts, so together they took league with one another. The Southrons, the kin of your Lady, had the elves as friends. More educated they think themselves and refined, but we had not friends like them. To the east at are the Wood Elves, and they have alas been dangerous and aloof to us. And so it was only that the men of the vale had the beasts as allies else we all would have suffered alone. We men endured with our beast friends, and it is in Beorn that the great kinship of old is the most prominent. This is way so many followed him so quickly when long years each clan and their beast companions toiled alone."

"We have not had the friendship of kind and generous elves, nor have we needed their charity. They sing under the stars and it is pleasing, but they give nothing of the plight of men. Your folk maybe know more, you would agree that the dwarves are different. For who else but Man and dwarf have slew a dragon! Have you ever heard of an elf that slew a dragon? I have not. The great scourge of all men and beast, but we only have bested them. The small Masters work in the earth and have the metals and jewels as their allies, and we above it have the beasts. It is sad that you have lost your companions, perhaps you will find them again, and the friendship rekindled in your heart and you will hear the song of your ancestors again."

Hathcyn flung the last of his drink in the fire and looked to the stars lost in deep thought.   

[GandalfOfBorg]

"It is time then.  This is good tidings indeed."

Grimbeorn gathered those near him and put the word out: prepare to march, Stanford awaits it's liberation.

As he issues orders, his friends gather and Esgalwen presents him with a surprise unlooked for but most welcome, the return of Bandy.  A feast, though spartan as the situation demanded, was made to honor those whom arrived from the call, but also gave them all a chance to catch up and plan.  He also had his own surprise with the word of Arbogast moving from the south in aid -- their fellowship would be reunited once more.

The day waned and the night came.  The bustling of preparations for battle continued and those leaving said their good byes and sought what respite they could before the early morn.  Of the great numbers that had come most would travel to the town, but Grimbeorn also left a small detachment of some of his most trusted to remain as guard for their land in the event some unknown befell them while away. "This charge, though seeming to lack glory, is grave still for you are the last bullwark of our people and my heart dwells here like all those marching today."