Guard-captain Egelferth and guardsman Alulf were standing on a meadow north of Walstow, staring at the corpse of a young woman, half-covered in the winter-brown grass. She was white as snow and her arms were sprawled like the arms of a broken doll. Her eyes and mouth were wide open. Her naked body had been drained of blood. She had been eviscerated and mutilated with cruelty that defied imagination. The frozen expression of horror and pain on her face was a macabre testimony of her tormentor’s perverse desire to make her death as slow and painful as possible.
Egelferth and Alulf had both seen much death and cruelty, but neither had ever seen anything like this before. They had both thrown up when they had first seen the body.
”It’s Mildrith”, Alulf said after a long silence. ”Hubyrt’s daughter.”
”Who could have done this?” Egelferth asked, still staring at the face of the dead girl.
Alulf shrugged. ”A jealous boyfriend? Everyone knows what Mildrith was like.”
Egelferth glared at Alulf. ”No matter what she was like, she did not deserve to die like this! No man of Walstow could have done this. No man of Rohan!”
”I didn’t mean it like that.” Alulf’s face was sullen and thin. He never looked straight at Egelferth with his blue eyes as he talked to him. Egelferth did not particularly like him.
”Who was her boyfriend?” he asked.
”It would be easier to tell who wasn’t. Mildrith slept with anyone she happened to fancy at the time.”
”What about that stranger from Gondor?”
Alulf and Egelferth exchanged glances. ”For sure”, Alulf said. ”He was just in the village not long ago. Slept in Hubyrt’s barn as always. I think Hubyrt hoped to marry Mildrith off to him. And Mildrith has been seen spending Gondorian coin and wearing Gondorian trinkets throughout the winter.”
”What do you know about him?”
”Not much. Came here late last autumn. Claimed to be a scholar or a historian of some kind, from Minas Tirith I think, come here to investigate those old ruins near the lake east of here. Been camping there all winter long. Every fortnight he comes to Walstow for supplies and spends a night or two as Hubyrt’s guest. Sleeps in his barn. Sounds real fishy if you ask me. What on earth could there be in those old ruins that someone would come all the way from Gondor and spend the whole winter there, all by his lonesome? Grave-robbers and treasure-seekers have cleared the rubble out of anything of value centuries ago.”
”Do you remember his name?”
Alulf shook his head. ”A foreigner’s name. Deli-something. Maybe Delirion. Do you think he did it?”
”Who else? No man of Rohan would do this to a woman. I have seen the stranger up close, and I didn’t like him. He has the eyes of a killer. I could smell death on him.”
Alulf thought about it for a while, then nodded. ”Makes sense. The stranger gets into a relationship with Mildrith, then finds out she’s been sleeping with other men. He gets jealous and murders her. But like this? What kind of man would butcher a woman like this?”
”Not a man at all”, Egelferth said. ”A monster. Worse than any beast, worse than the lowliest orc.”
Egelferth clenched his fists as he talked. He was built like an ox – thick neck, thick arms, thick hands. His hair and beard were blond. His face was oddly sensitive, even calm. His eyes rarely reflected any other emotion except contempt. He always seemed to be angry about something. He had been in the Guard of Walstow for twenty-one years and the Guard-captain for five of them.
Now he was smoldering with anger. His anger was directed not only at Mildrith’s killer but also at himself, as if he himself was responsible for Mildrith’s death by failing in his duty somehow. It was of course nonsense and in some level Egelferth knew it himself, but deep down he felt immense guilt and knew that he could never escape that guilt. Not even after they had caught the murderer and punished him.
”Now what?” asked Alulf.
Egelferth sighed. ”Let’s go talk to Hubyrt first.”
