Agarwaen

Lintedal nudged his shoulder, nearly knocking him over as he tested the saddle’s girth. She wasn’t used to such an encumbrance and the only reason he had it on was to make carrying his gear from Lothlórien to Rivendell a little easier. If they ever got to Rivendell that is. At least he could giver her her head free. Haldir stroked her feather soft nose absently as he watched dawn thread the branches with copper. A cloudless day. The snow would be gone by afternoon and any trace of the elves’ passage along with it. He sighed and turned from the sun to fasten his saber beneath his bedroll.

“Give that to me.”

“Good morning to you too,” Haldir said without turning. He felt her eyes boring into the back of his neck like an arrow tip and finally glanced over his shoulder. “Can I do something for you?” Throw you in a lake, mayhap. One well-placed push off a cliff.

“Give me your sword.”

“It’s actually a saber. I thought it might be useful for when we have murderous rogues after us.”

“It’s because of you those damned rogues are here in the first place. I can’t trust you and I don’t want you armed around my band. Give it to me,” Carlóme extended her hand, not dropping it when his eyes narrowed on her.

“And if I refuse?”

She lashed out with the javelin in her other hand. Unfortunately her aim was good. She jabbed him right over the cracked rib with the blunt end. The pain momentarily robbed him of breath as he collapsed against Lintedal’s flank, the horse shifting her weight anxiously. The dark woman scooped up the dropped saber from the ground.

“You’re lucky I don’t tie you up.”

Lintedal swung her heavy head and Carlóme leapt well away to keep the horse from nipping her.

“What are you doing?” Aragorn raced over, shrugging his overcoat on. The ranger found trouble like a fox. Though unlike the canine, he didn’t know how to stay out of it.

“I’m not having him armed around my girls,” Carlóme clutched the saber to her like a firstborn son, taking a step back as the ranger approached his friend and touched his shoulder.

“You all right?”

Haldir, one hand clamped tightly against his side, glared dangerously at the dark woman. He wasn’t looking at his saber in her hands. Instead he was examining her face with those elementally silver eyes that always made her feel uncomfortable—as though he could sort through the dross and secrets of her soul, pick and choose what he wanted to dangle painfully in front of her. “Who did you lose?”

Her face went, if possible, even harder. She tucked the blade more securely under her arm and began to march away.

A short, snappy whistle made her turn back and she barely managed to catch the knife flashing at her. The well-sharpened blade bit her fingers through the gloves.

“Might as well do it properly,” the captain said with a sharp little smile that told her quite plainly she had not won.

Feeling tiny stinging cuts stretch open in her fingers, she clenched the knife tighter as she stalked away.

“Cheerful isn’t she?” Haldir remarked, his breathing a little labored. He still hadn’t taken his weight off Lintedal though she didn’t mind.

Aragorn’s eyes flickered downwards at the elf’s hand still wrapped around his ribs. “Are you sure you’re all right? What did she—?”

Haldir pulled himself into the saddle with a grimace. “Go retrieve Maethor before he decides he wants a second breakfast, will you?”

----------

“Off?” Brenn laughed incredulously, stunned. “Right off?”

“Completely and irrevocably,” Haldir said with a slightly wicked smile. It still hurt too much to laugh outright. “It sailed about six meters afterwards too. You have to get just the right torque to your wrists so the blade—”

“Do you mind, elf?” Carlóme snarled, twisting in her saddle to give him a vicious and slightly sickened glare. “Some of us still want to be able to eat lunch when we stop for it! Brenn, don’t listen to that trash. He’s probably lying anyway.”

“She’s right. It was eight meters now that I think of it.”

Brenn hastily stuffed a fist in his mouth to gag the mirth bubbling out. He was the only one who seemed to have taken the elf’s knowledge of the murderous rogue in stride and not cared either way about it.

But most of the company rode in determined silence, their fingers white-knuckled on their horses’ reins. Every so often one of them would look up into the branches or startle at the unexpected sound of a bird piping overhead. The grove they currently traveled through was close-growing, the shadows thick so early in the morning. Carlóme had wanted to put as much distance between them and the caves as swiftly and silently as possible but she had not yet said where she was taking them. Not even Kari or Saeryn seemed to know.

“How come you don’t need a rein?” Brenn asked in an undertone, his own clenched across his lap as he jolted along the rutted path. His small pony was a source of endless frustration with him had a bad habit of wandering towards the first green thing it spotted: grass, bushes, huntsmen’s jackets.

“Usually I do not need one,” Haldir explained. “Horses will either carry you or they will not. Breaking them does more harm than good.”

Lintedal’s ears flicked back as though she knew she was being discussed.

“And she doesn’t get away from you?”

“Most days she’s in an amiable enough mood to tolerate me.”

The horse tilted her body in that subtle movement that made her spine shift sharply up under his leg and Haldir grimaced. “Others… I want to make her into glue.”

Brenn chuckled and Aragorn looked over his shoulder, half-smiling. Carlóme too glanced back and said something to Zaren out of the side of her mouth. But he just shook his head and grinned. He’d been enjoying the elf’s stories.

Haldir stroked Lintedal’s neck absently. He had the distinct impression Carlóme wanted to keep him under her radar at all times for she never rode more than a few yards ahead of him and kept looking back as though to make sure he was still there. His saber she had wedged between her bedroll and her pack, the tip and hilt sticking out of either end respectively. He felt distinctly unbalanced without it and only took his eyes away when Brenn said his name, a bite of impatience in his tone.

“What?” he said absently.

“I asked if you had bad dreams last night. I woke up ‘cause it was cold and I saw you moving around in your sleep.”

“I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Do you not have bad dreams?” He knew he was avoiding the question but he really didn’t feel like having this discussion with Brenn when Carlóme lingered within earshot. Even without the excuse of her presence, he probably wouldn’t have answered the boy anyway. Dreams were far more personal things to Elves than Men; and they generally did not discuss them with one another unless absolutely needed or portentous. Last night’s visions were neither.

“Sometimes. Mostly dark stuff or weird.” Now it was Brenn’s turn to drop his eyes uncomfortably. Unlike the elf, he would talk about it. “I had a dream about stabbing someone once. I didn’t like it.”

“You seldom do.”

“Do all elves sleep with their eyes open?”

Haldir sighed. Now that, at least, was a question he could answer. He was glad to get away from the subject of nightmares but also reluctant to tolerate any more of the boy’s well-meaning but rather deliberate-seeming inquiries. He suspected the dark woman had had a hand in that. “Yes. We do.”

“That’s kinda creepy.”

Haldir crooked a smile, more amused by the playful digression than seriously irritated. “Yes, well, I imagine if you asked an elf he would say that watching humans sleep with their eyes closed is ‘creepy’ as well. Unnatural,” raising his voice, “If you wish to ask me something, you might as well do it directly and not through your fairer mouthpiece.”

Carlóme didn’t turn around.

Aragorn watched her stiff shoulders and glanced at the man who rode beside him. Zaren kept his face angled purposefully ahead, every once in a while squinting up into the boughs. He nearly jumped when the ranger leaned over to address him.

“Where are we going anyway?” the ranger asked, his voice stifled by the repressiveness of the others. “Haldir and I took this path coming in and we passed no settlements or anything out here—not even a stream closer than a few hours.”

The older man just shook his black hair out of his eyes. “Not here. Too many ears listening in.” He looked up pointedly though there was nothing to see.

The ranger pursed his lips and glanced back again. Having managed to stay on the dark woman’s good side, he was allowed to ride up front beside Zaren to one side of the main group. Everyone else ringed the elf on all sides with Saeryn and red-headed Miren taking up the rear for neither had horses.

For his part, Haldir kept his head up and eyes straight ahead, taking it upon himself to ride in their midst as though they were an honor guard rather than a prisoner’s.

Lintedal, however, was less willing than her master to be crowded and jostled Kari’s horse’s shoulder so hard when the other got too close that the poor beast stepped off the narrow trail with a shrill whinny of protest. The noise shattered the silence like smashing glass and everyone jolted, hands flying to weapons.

Carlóme jerked her horse to a halt, oblivious to Kari cursing as she tried to get her animal back under control. Stalking through Aragorn and Zaren and nudging Brenn’s pony aside, her hand shot out and gripped the elf’s calf, the only part she could grasp to stop the mare.

“You don’t keep silent we’re as good as dead,” the dark women hissed, her fingernails digging into soft leather. “Hard enough to do this without you making it worse—and if you do I will tie you up.”

Lintedal shifted against the clasp of her hand and swung her long head, eyeing the woman with one dark eye. Carlóme glared right back.

“Keep it in line, or I will gladly turn it into glue for you.”

The horse snorted and flickered her ears as though she didn’t think very much of that proposal or the one who gave it. She soothed only when the odd-smelling woman returned to her skinny nag and the familiar hand stroked her neck once more.

In a silence even heavier than before, the company moved on.

----------

The going was wet and slippery as the day warmed and melted the snow. Patches of brittle grey-green grass slid into view and hoof and boot alike sloshed through thick puddles of clumping mud as the trail wound and backed over itself towards the edge of the forest. The stream dwindled, miles behind them. When he looked over his shoulder, Haldir could just see it glinting in a brief slant of sunlight higher up on the ridge.

In the other direction, he could see only a little for the trees still thickly blocked his view. But he thought he caught a glimpse of glistening fields and one or two woolly shapes which vanished as they plunged back downhill and the path curved back into the woods. The pines gave way slowly to other kinds of trees, oak, mostly ash and once a line of willows further down.

A couple of hours past midday, Carlóme halted their company and dismounted. It had been a long ride and everyone was hungry, stiff and tired.

“Can we eat now?” Brenn as youngest was entitled to voice his growing body’s complaints—to the relief of those who agreed but couldn’t.

“Not yet. We’re almost there. We have to lead the horses single file from here; it gets narrow. Elf, I want you behind me and Zaren.”

The “path” was scarcely more than a deer run. The horses’ sides and the packs loaded on them scraped trunks and thick ferns on either side. The trees here were crowded and only every now and then would you catch a short hint of the sun. The horses’ hoof-falls softened by mud and dead leaves thumped on the ground, quieter than the wind which rattled the still-stubbornly clinging leaves. A peculiar heaviness hung on the air despite the bright day.

They tied the horses in a copse with enough grass to feed on a little ways off the trail and walked the last few yards.

A huge hawthorn hedge like a vast evergreen wall twisted up out of the ground before them. Its spiraling leaves soared high over their heads, so old and shaggy, they hugged young and overbold saplings to them, swallowing them up in a green embrace until they too became part of the wall like sentries interspersed among crenellations. The hooked thorns were three inches in length, unusually and viciously so.

Carlóme squeezed through a gap, carefully avoiding the long, raking spikes that tugged at her tunic and hair. “Nobody would ever find you here unless you knew about it. It used to be an old Dunlending outpost to keep watch for orc riders from the mountains or Rohirrim—you used to be able to see the Gap from here. But it was abandoned when the forest grew up and rumors of the ghost drove off the last bandits who used this place to bury their caches long ago. That’s the only service the ghost ever did me.”

One by one they all slipped into a clearing that was higher on one side than the other. They stood at the higher end with the hedge arcing in a wide half-circle off to their left like a snake’s back past a wall of red-spotted granite. Remnants of a wooded structure much rotted and dangerously leaning rested against the rock and Haldir could spot places where it had been deliberately chipped away for sleeping places or food storage.

Carlóme tossed her pack under the remains of the roof where snow had not managed to accumulate. “This thing has stood for years. True craftsmanship. You won’t have to worry about it coming down on your head at night,” she rubbed her hands together eagerly. “Supper then. Brenn, get up, help us unload the horses.”

Sulkily the boy peeled himself off the grass and began to un-tack his pony who had stuck his nose cheerfully into the hedge.

Miren and Saeryn jerked free of the foliage, joining them just as they had finished laying out their gear.

“Trail’s covered as best we could,” Miren said, tossing her sweaty, auburn hair out of her face. She looked pale and cast an uneasy look at Carlóme who nodded minutely. “No signs of anything living.”

“I do not think we were followed,” Saeryn added, looking over her shoulder at the green impenetrable-looking wall.

“Yeah, well, I’m taking no chances. We’ll do a double-watch tonight just in case. Everybody’s to stay close. No wandering by yourself. And speaking of wandering, if you want anything hot to eat, we need these water flasks refilled and fresh wood.”

Aragorn and Haldir volunteered immediately and after a bit of persuasion Brenn was allowed to accompany them alongside Zaren since Carlóme would not trust the elf out of camp with only the ranger to keep an eye on him.

“Mind if we tagalong?” the older man asked with an apologetic grin that told the ranger he had no choice. Brenn was already through the hedge and calling them impatiently.

“As long as you don’t mind following we dangerous folk,” Aragorn said, only half-heartedly jesting as Carlóme’s stony glare was still boring into the base of his skull.

Zaren grinned roguishly and traced his scar. “Luck’s been with me so far. Maybe it’ll hold out a bit longer.”

“And how do you know it will not?” Haldir fixed the man with a probing eye from his place near the opening in the hedge. “How can you have faith in what your leader does not?”

The man met the elf’s gaze squarely and shrugged. “Strider trusts you. He’s got more sense than most so that’s good enough for me.”

Haldir glanced at the ranger who raised his eyebrows and offered. “At least someone thinks so.”

The younger man welcomed the older one and lad reluctantly. He had wanted to get Haldir alone. He seemed all right; little trace of the shadows Aragorn had seen in his eyes earlier remained. But there was more behind Haldir’s confession last night, something deeper, something more painful that the elf didn’t want to discuss in the crowded camp with Carlóme hanging on every word and looking for an excuse to restrain him permanently.

Aragorn hoped, maybe, if they had a chance to talk alone together, he could find out what was really wrong—and why the elf didn’t sleep at night.

“Why don’t we make this easier?” he suggested, dropping back to talk to Zaren once well out of hearing range of the others and walking alongside the monstrously thick hedge. “You take Brenn and see what water you can find. Haldir and I will collect some wood and meet you back at camp.”

Zaren gave the other a pained glance as if the ranger had put him in a difficult position. “Look, Strider, I’m beginning to like you but don’t push your luck. You know Dark Car would murder me in my sleep if I left you both alone.”

A few yards ahead, Haldir heard and glanced back uneasily. Aragorn had an odd steely look in his eyes which boded nothing good if the man wanted to talk alone.

Aragorn slowed his pace still further, letting Brenn and Haldir get even further ahead, and dropped his voice.

“Zaren,” he said the man’s name softly, making him look up. He wanted him to understand. “I promise, we’re not going anywhere. Nothing will happen to either of us and we will be back. Believe me. I just want to talk to Haldir for a few minutes alone. It’s easier…”

Zaren gnawed on his unshaven lip a moment or two then. But before he could reply he heard scuffling and saw that the other two had stopped. “What are you doing?”

Brenn was rifling through the leaves at the base of the hedge, half of his body almost submerged in brambles. Haldir, crouched beside him, was listening intently as the boy explained.

“I only had a second or two but I managed to grab it when she was talking to Saeryn. I hid it in the leaves under here—I think.”

“What’s going on?” Aragorn frowned as he came up but Haldir had eyes only for Brenn as the boy tugged his sandy head free with a triumphant “aha!”, a slightly leaf-moldy blanket clutched in one, scratched hand. He unwrapped it on the ground and Zaren groaned aloud.

“You stole it from her?”

“She stole it from me,” Haldir replied, lifting his saber free of the blankets with a soft relieved sigh when he saw it was undamaged.

Zaren crossed his arms as the boy plucked thorns out of his sleeves. “Brenn, what on earth were you thinking? She’s going to box your ears.”

“A swordsman’s greatest defense is his sword. How can we fight something if we don’t have the means?” the boy had made maybe too avid a listener to the elf’s aphorisms all morning and enjoyed repeating them.

Aragorn shot his friend an exasperated glare.

Not at all penitent, Haldir smiled approvingly as he strapped the worn sword belt back to its rightful place on his hip. “Spoken like a true warrior.”

Beaming, Brenn cleared his throat pointedly and stuck out his hand as the elf stood.

Haldir halted, glanced at the open hand, glanced at the boy’s set face then, ignoring Zaren and Aragorn’s alternately accusing and incredulous looks, unsheathed his small boot knife, the only one Carlóme hadn’t taken, and gave it to him.

“Yes!” Brenn whooped, admiring the knife from every angle. Elven-crafted it was naturally and beautifully made unlike the crude one Carlóme sometimes let him wear.

“You still feel safe with him?” the older man challenged, turning to Aragorn once more. As if he were doing this against his better judgement, he shoved the hand hatchet into the ranger’s hands. “Fine. Come on, Brenn! Let’s see if we can find something better than mud puddles to drink out of. And watch your swinging that knife! I don’t want to end up singing for my supper!” He threw a warning glance at the other man over his shoulder. “Be back by sunset, Strider. And not a minute after! Car’s going to chew off my fingers as it is and I’m blaming you.”

Aragorn saluted with the hatchet handle and joined Haldir who had stopped a little ways ahead.

“You don’t think that was maybe a little manipulative?” the ranger queried with a disapprovingly raised eyebrow as the elf fingered his saber hilt.

“Not in the least. That was hugely manipulative.”

They walked side by side for awhile with Haldir casting sidelong looks at his companion as he stooped to pick up a length of dead wood. There weren’t many as the ground was still very damp. But luck was with them. At the bottom of a small dip they found a huge rowan tree heeled over on its side, blown down by some wild storm. The behemoth was huge, its roots alone easily thicker than Aragorn’s forearm and quite dead. They set to work in silence.

Snow piled against its roots like so many unspoken words. Aragorn brushed it aside absently, looking for a decent place to start cutting. Why now that he had his chance could he think of nothing to say? He glanced around and decided the branches were drier and would be easier to carry.

He nearly cut off his hand at the unexpected sound of the elf’s voice. The hand hatchet thunked into the wood about a quarter of an inch from his wrist and he shot a look over at his friend. “What did you say?”

Haldir balanced precariously on the rotted trunk was sawing at a whippy branch with his knife. “I said in my limited experience it’s unlike you to be quiet for so long.”

The man gave a one-shouldered shrug and squinted, searching for a weak point in the wood where it would be easiest to cut. “I just… have a lot to think about.”

“Actually I find it refreshing.”

Aragorn snorted humorlessly, grasping a particularly sturdy specimen and wrenched it back and forth to loosen it.

Above him, Haldir freed his piece and tossed it down to the foot of the trunk. He leaned on his saber with a small smile of amusement playing around his lips as he watched the man struggle. “You look as though you’re having some trouble.”

“I can get it.”

“I can help.”

“No, I’m fine. I almost have it.” The branch groaned as Aragorn tugged at it again ineffectually.

The elf uttered a long-suffering sigh and absently swished his swordblade through the air until it hummed. “And you complain that I take too much time. We’re going to be out here all night at the pace you’re going. Upon reflection, mayhap that would be just as well if I can evade the lecture for taking back what was mine to begin with.”

Sweat trickled into Aragorn’s eyes. “If I didn’t know any better, as much as you complain about Carlóme, I would say you admired her.”

Crack!

Aragorn toppled backwards as the last splinters parted, severed by the elf’s saber. He fell with the weight of the branch landing squarely on his chest, winding him. When the sawdust settled, he coughed and dusted splinters off his front, mud squelching against his back as he rolled the branch to one side.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Certainly.”

He hauled himself to his feet, feeling his tunic cling grossly to his back as he set his finally vanquished enemy atop the pile. “I almost had it.”

“Well, I severed it though this really isn’t meant to be used as an axe.” Satisfied that his blade had suffered no ill-harm, the elf sheathed it, only just meeting the man’s eyes glimmering in the dark below his.

Aragorn mopped his brow with a sleeve, leaving a muddy streak along his temple, and climbed up to sit on the log beside his friend’s boots, his heels drumming a rhythm on the wood which echoed back hollowly. A furrow appeared between his brows as he scanned the darkness, the birch skins shining around them like stripped bones.

“He was your friend then… the—the…Fedorian?”

The hard-won lightheartedness between them vanished as though a flame had winked out.

Haldir’s fingers tightened on his saber, the only sign of disconcertion he showed at the abrupt subject change; he’d been wondering when this was going to come up. It was a sensible question to ask, really and hadn’t Zaren said Aragorn was sensible? Too sensible.

“I trained under him, yes.”

“That’s not really an answer to my question,” Aragorn was hesitant to push the elf soldier too hard, knowing that if he said one word wrong or made one seemingly harmless remark he would shut down completely.

“Then, yes, he was a friend of sorts—to answer your question.” Still too mechanical.

Aragorn lost his nerve to ask more. Maybe it wasn’t his place to if Haldir didn’t want to talk about it. He clenched his hands on his knees, unable to get those frightening eyes out of his mind. A soldier of Lothlórien… He looked again at Haldir who was pacing the length of the trunk again checking for any easily-loosened pieces they might have missed.

His shoulders were thrown back ever so slightly, his movements graceful and natural, always seeming on the verge of a crouch or a pounce. The saber swayed rhythmically at his hip. In his mind, Aragorn saw the rogue leaping across the meadow with the same, measured steps, the same catlike fluidity. Their eyes glittered with the same steeled sense of purpose. There was pain too. In both of their gazes. The insight surprised him and he shook the images from his mind and the thoughts with them.

Haldir was nothing like that murderer.

The revelation in the clearing had startled him certainly but Aragorn didn’t know how to approach the subject with his friend and, to be honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to try for fear Haldir would shut him out entirely. They weren’t close enough for Aragorn to consider himself on equal footing with the elf, at least not close enough for him to delve into Haldir’s personal life without painful repercussions. But there were a few things niggling at the back of his mind that would not let go their tenacious little claws.

“Go on. Ask what you must before you burst.” Haldir was watching him with an odd, closed expression on his face, obviously aware of the ranger’s scrutiny.

The young man folded his legs up and draped his arms around them in an attempt to stave off the chill that was beginning to seep its insidious way through his clothes, still silent. He might not have another chance to talk about this with Carlóme and her group so close and privacy so scarce. “I had thought my debts were already paid.”

Haldir paused beside him, clearly confused. “What are you talking about?”

The ranger shrugged, keeping his voice light despite the doubt that crushed his chest. Haldir’s words last night still reverberated in his mind and shook his faith as much as he tried not to let them. “I’m just a boy who owes you a gratitude aren’t I? I wish to know the debt so I might repay it in kind.”

“Ah,” the marchwarden inwardly cringed. So, the ranger had heard more than was good for him.

“I know…I don’t know everything that happened to you,” Aragorn fiddled with his sleeve cuff, wishing he hadn’t brought this up. “But I had hoped we were friends— and yet these last few days…”

Haldir sat down slowly, waiting for him to finish.

“…these last few days I can’t help but feel you’ve been pushing me away. I mean I know you always keep things close but now it’s like you’re keeping… secrets and I don’t…” he couldn’t finish and shot the merest gauging glance up, trying to guess what the other was thinking.

But the elf captain’s face was inscrutable as ever though directed away from the ranger’s gaze. He was silent for a minute or two in which the quiet stretched agonizingly for Aragorn who heard every creak in the branches and every scuffle of a squirrel in the leaves.

“What I choose to tell you or not tell you has no bearing on yourself, Estel,” Haldir said at last, his gaze trained on the white trunks. He used the human’s elven name to show him how seriously he had taken his concern. “It is… If I seem harsh or distant in some of my dealings with you, then for that I am sorry and it is something I cannot help. I told you once that some things in my life are not worth knowing. It’s for your own good.”

Aragorn couldn’t see how something so obviously troubling to his friend could in any be for his, Aragorn’s, own good.

“Fedorian knows your face now, Estel,” Haldir said, tucking one of his legs under the other as he adjusted his position on the log, his head turning so he finally made eye contact with his questioner. “If he thought—even for a moment—that you were more to me than just a happenstance on the road, he would go after you first. That’s all I meant by those words.”

“I’m not hurt,” Aragorn reassured him though a ripple ran down his spine at the word first. “Just… confused, I guess. I tire very easily of elven riddles that have no answer—or not one they’re willing to share.”

“Some things I cannot tell you,” Haldir reiterated, brushing his hair back from where it had fallen over his shoulders. “Some things, in all honesty, I would rather you not know. Not everything I have done in my life is worthy of praise.”

One desperate part of him wanted to tell Estel everything, the entire truth right then, to reveal the darkness he held entrapped in his own heart along with the vile memories he barely had the strength to restrain these days. To be able to share that burden with another would take a little of the weight off his own shoulders and leave him free to breathe.

But the other, stronger, more selfish part of him valued the human’s friendship too much to do that. Despite the short amount of time they had known each other, he liked Estel: his eagerness and ready humor, his pesky but strangely endearing human curiosity. It had begun to grow on him. He didn’t want to lose that so soon. As he knew he would.

He slipped lightly off the trunk, fearing he’d already said too much. “It’s getting dark. I’m half-starved and I’d rather not risk another lecture from the harpy tonight if you don’t mind.” He shot a partly teasing, partly mocking look in the ranger’s direction. “Think you can manage that troll club you call a log? Or do you need me to slice it again?”