The Inn of the Last Home in Ithilien

Those wheels were creaking like mad. I thought and kind of hoped this prison van would collapse in any minute. But it didn’t, not even in that ambush later changed the fates of all of us.

Why was I in a prison van?

My name is Reimund Ølsen, though people always called me ‘Red’ because of my hair. I was a bartender at Ølsen’s, the best in Tilonas.

It was at the end of summer in 1047 A.T.* A simple bar brawl turned out to be a murder. And one thing led to another, before I realized me and my musician friend Farmor were in this prison van heading to Angos.

Angos, the newly founded frontier of Forenor, had been under construction for about ten years, seemingly never had enough workers and never been lack of them. Thousands of innocent citizens had been arrested for crimes they were involved or not, and then sent to Angos. The situation became even worse after King Etessa was crowned.

Etessa was the second son of Belgor. People were all looking forward to see the young prince Calodil, the elder brother, to be crowned. But one day, in everyone’s awe, Calodil was outcasted to the north. Soon after that, Etessa was crowned even before King Belgor died.

After that, the city and even the whole kingdom seemed to fell into chaos and lawlessness. And it was no surprise people like me would end up in a van full of innocent prisoners. Well, maybe not all innocent. I knew Rik sometimes picked here and there things didn’t really belong to him, but he paid his drinks every time, so I didn’t really care.

Besides me, Farmor and Rik, there was another prisoner in this van. He was a beastlike man called Ted. I didn’t think he was guilty for the murder happened in my bar. He seemed to be a traveler with no intensions to harm anyone. But a man like him surely drew the attention of those guards. He was silver-headed yet young, inked with full-body tattoos no less than my Xiromen musician yet a human, covered with here and there bearlike furs, and had claw-like hands. He seemed unstable.

I couldn’t imagine what the life would be in Angos as a prisoner, but so far it was just fine. You chose the right guard with right amount of coins, you got your ale. In fact there was one guard called Melns who turned out quite friendly and often shared his drinks with me.

We passed Tiemetta. I paid Melns and he got me drinks from there. It was no good compared to Tilonas’ ale, but hey, you didn’t complain much while in a prison van. And then we passed Tiem in a quiet morning. The next day at noon those guards decided to take a break.

Melns drank and looked at me who greedily longed ale, “Yer done with yers?” he asked and before I could answer, threw his bottle to me. I got the bottle and took a big mouthful. With thanks I threw the bottle back.

But Melns never caught that one. The bottle hit the ground and broke. Melns watched in awe the sharp point of an arrow, stained in his own blood, came out from his chest.

“What the…” before he could utter the sentence, a second arrow penetrated his body and ended his life.

Melns fell. The whole squad of guards and three prison vans turned into chaos. More arrows rained and spell-like murmuring uttered. An arrow even hit the bar of our van, nearly hit Ted. Guards held a line but attackers were still out of our sight. Before they figured out what was going on, grasses and roots twined their feet and hands, hundreds of thousands of bugs and insects appeared from nowhere and circled those guards. The clouds of bugs were expanding towards the vans, and would reach in any second. That was disgusting.

“Come, let’s get out of here!” Rik said opening the door of the van and jumped out. Rik had opened that lock earlier but we waited the right chance to escape. Now with guards dealing with the ambush and other prisoners lying down on the bottom board of the cages to avoid raining arrows, this was the right time we’d been waiting.

I jumped out of the van but got immediately twined by those crazy growing grasses. The others ran out of those grasses and hid into the bush behind the van. I tried to free myself from the mess but didn’t succeed.

“Damn it! Do something!” I yelled back to them. I then heard the rhythm of pipe, but there was something wrong with the music and nothing happened. I was struggling to get free but in vain, the rhythm appeared again but didn’t work me out of the grasses. Now the cloud of flying insects had reached me. I gave up struggling and covered my head from the bites of those bugs. How I hated bugs! It really hurt!

All of a sudden those bugs and crazy grasses disappeared. I ran into the bush where the other three hid, and held my breath watching the outside. Guards done, appeared from the bushes on the other side of the road a group of elves. There were nine of them. They finished other prisoners and got onto those guards’ horses. One of them seemingly sensed our presence, he rode a few steps towards our bush, then remembering something turned away and followed others heading to the direction of Tiem.