Part 11

Legolas beckoned the others to join him.

“There is no one inside,” he said, quietly, to Belecthor. “See if you can find which way they went.”

Eowyn, meanwhile, had gone into the building. “Lassui,” she hissed. “Come and look at this!”

Legolas hurried inside.

The interior was a large, empty space, open to the elements—lichen was growing on the walls, and grass had pushed its way through the packed-earth floor—but a well-worn track led from the door to the remains of a hay loft, which provided a sheltered storage area for a stack of wooden crates.

Eowyn had drawn her sword, and was trying to prise the lid from one of them.

“Melmenya, be careful!”

“There are blue hand prints, Lassui,” she said, “on all of the boxes.”

“Let me...” Legolas took one of his white knives and, working the thin, Elven blade in up to the hilt, he levered the lid from the box, releasing a cloud of blue dust.

Legolas and Eowyn exchanged glances, then both peered inside.

The box was lined with blue-stained oil-paper. “Whatever it is, it needs to be kept dry,” said Eowyn.

She lifted a flap of the oil-paper. Inside the lining, the crate was packed with blue sawdust, and she reached into it, and pulled out a little, blue-stained muslin bag, with a carved wooden peg sticking out of the top. “A bag of blue,” she said, frowning. “And there must be hundreds of them here, Lassui—thousands. What in Middle-earth are they for?”

“I have no idea, Melmenya.”

“My Lord...” said a diffident voice behind them; Belecthor had returned.

“What have you found?” asked Legolas.

“Cart tracks, my Lord,” replied the young man. “Two sets. One cart comes regularly from the Newhome road; it arrives empty, turns, waits in the clearing, then goes back heavily laden. The other comes from somewhere to the east; that one arrives laden and returns empty, except for the last time—”

“When it carried away Arador and his captors,” said Legolas.

“It looks like it, my Lord.”

“Then that is the trail we must follow.”

Eowyn had replaced the bag of blue, and refitted the lid and, as she was bending down to pick up a stone, intending to hammer the nails back home, she suddenly straightened up, and turned to Legolas.

“Lassui,” she said, “where is the Reeve and all of his men?”