Hurin

In a land of armored lancers and topknotted warriors, Hurin served in a quieter way. His gift was a strange one, spoken of rarely even in Shienar. Where another man saw only an empty road, Hurin caught the lingering stench of what had been done there. Murder left a smell. So did cruelty in all its shapes, and the fouler the deed, the stronger the trail it left on the air. Trollocs and Halfmen carried their own reek, and Hurin knew them all, could sort one wrongness from another the way a hound sorts scents in a field.

The work made him no lord. He carried himself as a servant, plain and deferential, quick to give proper respect to men of higher station and just as ready to make himself useful. There was nothing grand in him, and he wanted it that way. He was a thief-taker, a man whose craft was following the worst of what people did until the doers were found and answered for it.

The grimness of the trade never soured him. Long practice had taught him to bear what his nose told him, though some smells unsettled even his hardened senses, and he did not pretend otherwise. What steadied him was loyalty, given plainly and kept without complaint. In Fal Dara he was a small man with a rare gift and an honest heart, and among Shienarans that counted for a great deal.