He never spoke, this Dernhelm, standing chill-eyed and taciturn. He never smiled, and Merry found it hard to believe that he was even capable of laughter.
Although their fellow riders turned blind eye and deaf ear to Merry, they sometimes spoke to Dernhelm, though lucky they would be if he answered them with more than a curt nod or cold blink or show of teeth. Indeed, he only spoke to Elfhelm, their marshal, and then only taut, clipped words escaped his bloodless lips.
Often, when they were not riding, he stood still as if paralyzed, staring yet seeing nothing, hand wound tight into his charger's mane. Often, as he stared into the distance to the West and to the South and East, his breathing grew harsh and rattling, and anger flared on his wax-pale cheeks. And just as often, he would gaze listless, off toward the king's pavilion, or where he road at the head of the company, and then his eyes were as close to tears as maybe they had ever been, glassy and cold and full of regret. And ever behind his eyes and boiling just below his skin, there was a seething, roiling fire of icy cold despair and doubt; a lingering sadness like a fathomless lake of black water; and his pain was as a permafrost to his face and nature, making him unwavering and wary, rigorous and chill.
But, Merry observed, he was kind, even in his silent ways and hard, hidden eyes. In the small hours of the morning, Merry would half-wake as the lad tucked his bedroll more tightly about him, or even give up his own and lie still and unshivering, wrapped in nothing but his cloak upon the stony ground. Merry wondered if Dernhelm even slept.
Or if the ride became too long for his small legs, unused to the chaffing of horsefelsh beneath them, Dernhelm would make more room for him in the saddle so as to ease the sides of his legs against polished and padded leather.
Dernhelm crouched on his heels beside his small camp-fire, smoking like a wet rushlight, but giving little glow, prodding the embers below a small iron cookingpot he had bartered off someone or had been storing who-knew-where among his things in the saddle bags. His long, pale fingers as ever were bared under the gauntlet, though rarely did he remove his chestplate and neigh-never his helm, and slept with hood cast low over his face.
As always, supper would be but a meager affair, water boiled and seasoned with beefsalt or a wild parsnip dug out of a grassy bank along the way, though the young rider cast the last of his jerked meat into the stewpot where it boiled along with the sweet grass and early yellow potatoes, while he knew the lad had naught else, save for a bit of hardtack that Merry would not touch for fear of cracking his teeth. And all left for his meal the next night to be rockhard biscuits sopped in weak beer.
And Merry felt glad that he had such a caring one as this to ride alongside and fight to the death alongside, how ever a mute and voiceless companion he proved to be. In words, he was no comfort, for to no one did he speak, but his movements were gentle, and his thoughts of the little one he bore soft, even if never to be put into words for him to hear.
And when the night before the battle grew cheerless and seemingly intolerable to Merry, Dernhelm let him lie against him as they rode, setting him upon his feet when they rested, so that they would not fail for the motion they were now accustomed to, when they dismounted for battle, with a soft pressure on his shoulder that was reassuring as a mother's caress. And now and again, Dernhelm would speak to him in passing, as though it were as un-noticeable as his tacit tone through the rest of the days. A simple, "On your feet," or "sleep in peace, for I will watch," only did he say, and even as Merry was comforted by the sound of a human voice coming from the hollows of the lad's milky face, his very marrow was chilled by the toneless fever of hopelessness and fear and remorse that laced over Dernhelm's words, however he kept his voice gentle and soft.
A taciturn companion, was Dernhelm, and yet Merry would have had none other bare him into the fray of bloody battle, save maybe Aragorn or Gandalf; for he knew that as long as he kept his seat upon Windfola's mighty withers, he would be safe, at least while the rider behind him had master over his horse, and his sword.