ameren

"Trade licences? You'll need to speak with the Lord's steward, Tarias. He's new on the job, so I've not yet dealt with him myself, but he can't be worse than the last ones we've had."

He sat on his bed, staring at the chest he had pulled across the room. The lid lay open and he gazed down at the contents with sorrow in his eyes.

"And now you forgot all about me again," grumbled Ameren when her sword easily slipped past Havaldr's shoddy attempt of a block, letting the flat side of the blade smack down on his arm. "Back to the start."

She padded silently through the hallway, one hand on the wall to keep herself from stumbling in the darkness. A noise from up ahead caused her to halt mid-step, her heart racing. She didn't dare to breathe, her eyes opened wide to try and detect whatever it was.

Kayrin smiled at the emerging stars, although they told her, she had steered the ship too much toward the South. She turned the tiller calmly, correcting their course. An Eglan steering a ship at the open sea. How wonderfully strange, she thought. Ameren or Sugar Plume as she liked to call her, appeared to be sleeping on the deck, she glanced at her briefly, imagining what sort of a woman she was.

He couldn't remember the last time he had stumbled home like this. Soaked hair clinging to his forehead. Jacket caked in mud. Entire body reeking of a mix of whisky and body odour.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd fell into his hall and dragged his inebriated body onto the cold wooden floor. 
Couldn't remember the last time he'd grabbed onto the wall and pulled himself to his feet, legs weak and wobbling. 
'That's me home, Ame-' He stopped, and slowly shuffled around the corner, entering the bedroom. 

"Lond Daer? It was once a great and proud harbour of the Númenóreans, now it's a free port and a haven for all manner of seafaring outlaws, scoundrels, rogues, and smugglers. It's still mostly a crumbling ruin that's been abandoned to the ages, but near the docks it has been rebuilt, then that's rotted and been partly rebuilt again, and that bit is bustling with all the activity of a small town.

Gods, that smells delicious...
Ameren peered over the back of her mare toward the campfire. The hillmen had caught a young doe earlier that afternoon and, after days of no fire and cold food, the aroma of roasting venison was damn near intoxicating. She stood there and just stared at the rotating meat for so long that the mare grew impatient of having her grooming interrupted, snorting and giving Ameren a shove to voice her discontent.

She'd known that their luck would run out eventually, that it was only a matter of time until they were discovered during their little trip through the orc-infested region. That it had to happen just then, on that narrow path along the cliffs by the Greyflood with heavy rain coming down and the blasted hillmen too far ahead to help, that was more than piss-poor luck.