Errisil shoved her greying braid over her shoulder, and pushed her sleeves back up her arms. Her hands were rough and chapped from scrubbing things clean – clothes, floors, bandages, blood-stained tables, men's wounds. The worst of the aftermath was over. It usually peaked in the night after a battle – that's when the ones who were really bad lost the struggle. The ones who made it to the morning had a fifty-fifty chance. It got better with time. For the lucky ones, at any rate.

Errisil looked around her. The half light of dusk filtered through the windows. Soon she would need the little oil lamp that she used as she made my night rounds. In the shadows, the low beds lined the walls of the dormitory. Men shifted uncomfortably in them, coughed up the smoke of battle, groaned as snatches of pain caught them. Sometimes they would murmur in that low, guttural language of theirs. Sometimes some of the ones who were not too badly injured managed to whisper brief conversations to one another.

The bed nearest to her held a man with hair the colour of corn, tied back with a leather thong. As Errisil moved towards the door, his eyes suddenly opened and fixed on hers. But they were glazed and didn't really see.

"Dernhelm, Dernhelm," he croaked.

Errisil moved to his side and took his hand.

"You're safe here."

In response, he gripped it, but there was no sign of comprehension in his face. He was stuck somewhere on the battlefield of his mind. But some part of him seemed to have taken in the fact that she was speaking Westron, for he started to babble in the same language. "Dernhelm's fallen. The lad's a lady and he's fallen. She's killed the witch."

Errisil reached for the bowl beside his bed, and wrung out the sponge. She swiped it across his brow, making shushing noises.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rider in the next bed lever himself onto one elbow, looking anxiously at his comrade.

"He's fevered," Errisil explained. "Not in his right mind. That's why he's babbling about lads and ladies.

"Nay, Mistress Healer," the other rider said, in his growling accent. "He's asking after the lady. He made friends with the lad he thought was Dernhelm."

Errisil's confusion must have shown on her face, for the man continued.

"It turned out she was the Lady Éowyn, the king's niece."

"Oh!" Comprehension dawned. She sponged the sick man's forehead once more, then said soothingly, "The lady lives. Your Dernhelm will be well. Her fever has broken, her wounds are clean and healing."

She didn't know if the man heard her, or if he understood, but at least he seemed to settle back on the pillow. His eyes shut once more and his breathing steadied.

The other man looked at Errisil. "I suppose you must think it strange, a woman riding to war. I suppose you know nothing of shieldmaidens."

Errisil smiled at him. From the past, memories of a hot summer drifted into her mind. A summer filled with adventure and strangeness and wonder. And with fear and foreboding and a brooding violence. Her smile faded, but her voice was gentle. "Oh, you'd be surprised. But it was a long time ago now. More than two score years."

"Your face tells me there's a tale to be told," the rider responded. "If you're not too busy, mistress, perhaps you'd tell it to us. Nothing like a good tale to ease the soul and take a man's mind off his hurts."

Errisil looked round and realised that she now had the attention of the handful of men who had enough Westron to be following the conversation.

"Well, it happened many years ago, when I was a lass. In my home town back in Anorien, just south of your country. I'll tell the tale as I remember it, with some extra bits that I pieced together later, afterwards, when I was old enough to understand what had happened. Anorien back then was a wild, lawless place. The Steward – Ecthelion it was back then – was too worried with the shadow in the East. And then there what was happening out to sea with the Corsars and down to the south. He didn't have the time to pay much attention to Anorien. But, like I say, it was a wild place back then."

With that, Errisil settled herself down on a chair, arranged her skirts comfortably, and began her tale.