A/N: Many, many thanks to Cairistiona7, who put a ridiculous amount of effort into helping me with this story as I stumbled around trying to get a grasp of style and plot and character and canon stuff. I would never have pulled this off without her. Also thank you to Linda Hoyland, who was tireless in picking out typos and helping with my glaring Americanized word choices, and to Levade, who encouraged me tremendously and never tired of me prattling on and on about the whys and wherefores of what I was trying to accomplish. All three of these gals are phenomenal writers, and you should go read their stories. Seriously.

This story takes place in the years between Aragorn's errantries in Rohan and Gondor as Thorongil, and the years when he and Gandalf began the search for Gollum. I am taking the liberty of assuming that he spent a reasonable amount of time among the Northern Dúnedain during that period. I am trying hard to be canon conscientious so if you spot errors or discrepancies, please feel free to point them out!

All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien.

I

A Knave and a Miscreant

From the North came a courier on a bay horse, and I ran after him across the barley field to hear his tale for good or for ill. He was not a Ranger, nor one of the peredhil who occasionally came bearing news, but Halvard the son of the blacksmith, my redheaded rival on his shaggy bay horse. My great-grandfather met him in the village square.

"What is your report?" called Dírhael as the rider drew near, with many of us following, and as I pulled up I could see Halvard grinning his gapped grin and felt nearly giddy with relief.

"The Rangers are coming!" he said. "They crossed the river last night and will arrive soon!"

There came a great gasping exhalation from those gathered, a breeze of joy, but with it a soft muttering and one—Brenia, her husband a Ranger—said loudly, "How many?"

"The sentries did not say," said Halvard. "They bade me come with haste that we might prepare."

I felt a brush at my elbow and knew Sive had arrived without having to turn and look.

"Did he say how many?" she murmured.

"No," I said. "Useless scout." I bumped my hip into hers, herded her around the corner of the nearest house, and when we were out of sight of the gathering I broke into a run. She pounded to keep up with me.

"Where are we going?" she demanded, breathing hard as we darted between cottages and over garden fences.

"If we make haste we can meet them at the narrows!"

Sive stopped so suddenly she left skidmarks in the mud. "No, Eluned." I turned and saw her standing with her skinny arms crossed resolutely. "We can't leave the border fields, not by ourselves. You know the rules."

"Oh, hang the rules," I said. "They've been out in the Wild for a whole season. This is an occasion for a bit of rulebreaking!"

"There are orcs," she said, and I could see from where I stood the very word sent a little tremble through her body. "They came as close as Loudwater falls last spring. And the wolves at midsummer…"

"It's the middle of the day, you ninny," I said. "If you're not coming I'll go on my own." I whirled and dashed away again and did not have to look back to know that Sive would tarry for a moment, her face twisting with indecision, and then my corrupting influence would overthrow her and she would come dashing after me, far too loyal a friend to be left behind.

"We'll be cleaning out the sheep folds with our tongues when they catch us," she muttered as she caught up, and I threw my head back laughing and my hair came loose from its leather tie and blew in a snarl behind me, and I could have run for hours because the Rangers were coming, and Sive and Eluned, daughters of the Dúnedain, would be the first to welcome them home.

-o0o-

I had tied Fain behind the chicken coop before we left, and told him to hush his whimpering, for he was many things but sneaky was not one of them. The guards would have spotted his coat like a beacon on a dark night. Even so I felt a twinge of unease the further we went from the village. I missed his white brushing weight by my hip as I ran.

It was late morning when we approached the place where the track ran between two hills cut sharp with bluffs of rock, a narrow gateway to our valley from the north. The path there was thick with trees and hedged in gorse. Twice already we had made use of this cover, melding into the grass and bushes to skirt around the watchmen, but they had been lax with sunlight and good tidings and had not seen us wriggling through the undergrowth like a pair of wool-wearing adders. We were muddy from neck to knees and our palms were as black as the soles of our bare feet and the debris of dead leaves clung to our dresses like leeches. At one point Sive caught her hair on a low branch of hawthorn and I had bellied back to untangle her. Siarl at his sentry not fifty yards away sat and chewed on a stem of clover. We had suppressed our hysterics, our ribs aching with laughter we had barely held in, and finally wisped away into the trees unseen. A snarl of Sive's dark hair on a twig we left behind as recompense.

But Siarl was a boy untested, armed only with a dagger and a horn on his belt. I knew better than to be stealthy now. I knew of long bows that could be strung in an instant, and arrows nocked with flying, faultless hands. I knew how quickly a knife could spring between a man's fingers and go singing to its target like a dart. And I remembered them in their first days home from a long patrol, remembered how my father would wake violently if a mere wind creaked the window, how he sat always with a wall at his back, how he would grow restless and hunt up the others and snarl about how tired he was of their ugly faces, even as the tightness of his shoulders drained and runneled out into the ground. I remembered the rough rake of his fingers through the younger ones' hair.

No, it would not do to startle them, not with their long days in the Wild still so raw on their hearts.

There would be no chime to herald them, no jangling hardware. They all took the same precautions. I had seen my sister and mother hitch every ring and buckle of my father's saddle in soft buckskin, and the hooks where his sword hung under his stirrup. They had knotted and knotted those ribbons of hide. When my father came in and I asked him why he had kissed my mother's neck and answered, "Because stealth is our first defense."

So we sat by the path between those two prows of stone and waited for the sounds of horses to reach us. We listened for hoofbeats and picked at the grass and laughed at ridiculous nothings. After a time I should not have been surprised that instead of horses, we heard from above us a voice that said, "Ho, little wildlings. You are a long way from your burrow."

"Uncle!" Sive cried before I could look up, and when I did I saw Iarladh bounding down the rock towards us. As soon as he was on level ground Sive flung herself at him and leapt and caught him around the neck, her feet dangling, and he laughed his low laugh and lowered her to the grass.

"You've grown taller," he said, his hand on her hair, and then, "You should not be out this far on your own. What will your aunt say?"

"She is not well again," said Sive, not looking her mother's brother in the face. "I did not wish to wake her this morning."

I did not miss the fleeting crease of Iarladh's forehead, nor how carefully Sive skirted. But then he smiled and squeezed her shoulder. "I suppose I'll have to roust you both up before the Chieftain," he said, "for breaking the rules."

He did not get a chance to do any rousting, because at that moment I was seized and hefted by a strong hand and dumped belly-down across the bow of a saddle. The same hand clamped me and though I kicked and scraped and struggled I could not escape.

"What say you, my lord?" said the voice above me. "Shall we execute the scoundrels for such blatant insubordination?"

I sniggered and wriggled and dug my thumb into Morien's side between shoulder and girth, made her hide ripple and her feet skitter sideways, and he patted me compellingly and told me to be still.

"Come, Halbarad," said another voice, one mild with amusement. "There is much work to be had out of these two. Surely a flogging would suffice."

I lifted my head and saw we were surrounded by a company of Rangers, filthy and safe and here at last, and I rolled and twisted upright and straddled Morien's neck the wrong way, so I faced him over the front of his saddle. I was grinning like a lunatic.

"Hello, Ada," I said, and he grinned back and took my face in both hands and kissed me hard between the eyes.

"I suppose a flogging will do," he said ruefully. A chuckle rippled through the company, but I did not greet them yet. I was relearning the sight of him, his grey eyes bagged with weariness, his beard grown longer than he was wont to keep it in the warmer months. His sleeve was cuffed to his elbow and his forearm wrapped in linen discolored with grime and old blood. I touched it with a fingertip.

"Only a scratch," he said, brushing his knuckles under my chin. I turned and saw the Chieftain alongside us, leaning his elbow against the bow of his saddle, his cloak in tatters and his own sleeves crusted with mud. But the wrinkles around his eyes were deep and I found myself grinning at him too.

"Welcome home, my lord," I said in Sindarin, the words rolling formal and resonant over my tongue. He winked and nudged my knee.

"Hello, little cousin," he answered in the Common. "Not bothering to stay out of mischief, I see." His keen eyes fell on Sive and she shifted uncomfortably, pressing her back against Iarladh. She held our Chieftain in intermingling awe and terror and most of her protests against my antics stemmed from a fear that he would either scold her or use some Elvish magic to turn her into a salamander, though so far in her experience it seemed he had done neither.

"Sive corrupts me," I said sorrowfully. "I beg her to obey the rules but she will not listen."

In front of those men she was far too shy to defend herself against such absurdity, but I saw her brows collide in indignation. Fortunately for Sive, my father was no fool. At eleven she was nearly two years younger than I, and he knew full well which one of us led and which one followed. He tugged a lock of my hair where it had tumbled over my shoulder. "You are a knave and a miscreant and I don't know why Sive endures you."

"Neither do I," Sive ventured to say, and the Chieftain rumbled with laughter.

I looked over the company, counting heads—six, seven—and my breath caught in my throat. Ada watched me carefully and when my eyes flew to his he caught my face, smoothed my cheekbone with his thumb.

"Elidir," he said quietly, and I was struck so suddenly with sorrow that for a moment I could not speak. I remembered Brenia, mere hours before, that ringing voice—how many? I wondered if she had already known, felt the cut, the departure in her own spirit. Their son was not yet six years old, and her belly bulged with their second. Her time would draw near with my mother's, before harvest ended. Elidir, our neighbor.

"Bandits?" I whispered.

Ada shook his head. "Orcs," he said, and the same tremor that had passed through Sive shimmered down my spine.

"This close?"

"Too close." His hand gripped my shoulder and shook it lightly. "You two should not be straying from home," he said.

"We wanted to meet you," I said. My voice sounded small in my ears.

His face softened. "I know you did." He hooked one arm around my middle and turned me, set me in the saddle before him. He shifted and took up the reins. Usually I rode behind him—I was starting to take up too much room. But this time I ignored my legs pinched against the saddle-bow and was glad for the warm wall of his chest against my back. Beside us Iarladh boosted Sive onto his own horse and mounted in front of her. The Chieftain gave a little nod.

"Let us end this troubled outing," he said softly. The company strung out behind him on the trail but Morien took a handful of jogging steps and drew alongside Sael the Chieftain's horse, and we rode like that in tandem all the way to the village gate. Occasionally the movement of the horses would bump Aragorn's knee against my father's, but I don't think either of them minded. They did not speak, but then they rarely did. They rarely needed to.

-o0o-

I perched on the lowest branch of the old crabapple tree by the fence, one bare foot swinging, and watched the Chieftain knock on my neighbor's door. My great-grandmother Ivorwen was beside him, and my mother with her hand pushing into her back against the burgeoning weight of her belly. There was a field and a vegetable patch between our houses and I could not hear what was said, only murmurs on the wind, but I saw the door open, saw Brenia come out onto the front step. The straightness went out of her, like someone had hit her hard behind the knees, but Aragorn was ready and he caught and lifted her, carried her into the house. The women followed and the door closed heavily behind them.

Sive was not with me. She lived with her aunt and uncle, and though Iarladh was too docile to do little more than scold her mildly for our various escapades, Sive herself had succumbed to a fit of repentance and gone along with him back to their house. Her aunt Sidonie was ailing again, Sive had told me, and she did not wish to worry her into further infirmity. The truth hung silent and uncomfortable between us: Sidonie had not bothered with Sive's whereabouts for a week at least. She lay abed nursing tinctures while her charge ran rampant at my side, more often than not taking meals and rest beneath the roof of Halbarad. It was my own mother who mended the tears in Sive's worn-out skirts and made her wash her hair and eat her cabbage. But that night, Iarladh was home, Sive's uncle who loved her in his own absentminded way, and the lure of having her own family, and not a borrowed one, had been too appealing for her to resist. But I missed her as I stared at the closed door of Elidir's house. The silence would have been easier to bear with her wry absurdity to divert me.

Fain lay at the foot of the trunk with his great head on his forepaws, and I was suddenly overcome by the desire to drop to the ground and bury my face in his huge hoary ruff. But he had found something dead and decaying to roll in the night before and smelled so horrendous I could barely be near him, and besides that, my mother would make me bathe if I came home stinking of carcass. I did not want to spend the whole evening hauling and heating water—I wanted to spend it at my father's feet listening to the tales of their long patrol.

But it was not to be. My mother was less than amused by our little frolic through the woods, and that night as soon as Celwen and Lútha and I had cleared the table and I had splashed sullenly through a heap of dirty dishes, she swooped in like an eagle and sent me up the loft ladder with a swat to the seat of my kirtle.

"To bed with you. Mighty rovers need much rest." She said this so serenely that it would have been impossible to tell that she was wroth with me, but I knew better. She had that look in her eye and I obeyed with the barest protestation.

I had my wiles, though, and after I had shimmied into my nightdress and tugged my fingers through my tangled hair, I blew out the lamp and became very still. Under the eaves lay a wide mattress stuffed with straw and goosedown and I knew from experience that I would hear nothing but mutters from there—some design of my mother's, no doubt. I had every intention of worming against the wall to the edge of the platform that looked down into the room below. Our house was larger than most, and because of that it often served as hall and meeting-place, although that night there were only my parents and Aragorn our Chieftain, and Caradoc who was not yet married and who often supped with us when the Rangers were home. The others had gone to their own families.

I had spent much time wriggling around on my belly that day and was becoming confident with my skills, but I could barely choke back a yelp when a rough board caught my nightdress and ripped it, driving splinters into my knee. I collapsed and lay still, listening for sounds of suspicion from below, but when the droning conversation continued without lull I eased forward until I could peer from the shadows over the edge of the loft.

Ada sat nearest the hearth with his chair pushed back from the table. Lossiel had climbed into his lap to sit with her head butted up under his chin and her thumb in her mouth. It had taken her an hour or two before she warmed to him again, a thing I knew he hated—when he was gone so long she forgot his face and the sound of his voice. But he had lured her with darting looks and spidery fingers towards her belly and now she had reclaimed him and would not be prised away. She had still been two when he had left. She was a summer baby.

Across from him sat Caradoc, and beside Caradoc, Aragorn, sprawling and smoking and stretching his legs as if he hadn't felt a real chair beneath him in months. He likely hadn't, come to think of it. He had bathed and changed out of his tattered shirt before coming to my mother's house, had likely forced Caradoc to do the same. Both looked a little raw around the ears from scrubbing. Iolanthe passed the young Ranger and let her hip skim his shoulder as she refilled his flagon, and I snorted and wondered whom Ada was more likely to skin: Iolanthe for swaying so shamelessly, or Caradoc for watching with his jaw hanging wide. I barely contained a snort of laughter when the Chieftain reached without looking and bumped the younger man's mouth shut with the back of his hand.

Lútha, ever dutiful, sat in the corner with her basket of darning. She was right below me and with just a little leaning I could probably have spit down the back of her dress, but then I would be found out and all hope of eavesdropping would be lost. She was sixteen that autumn, demure as a dove, and could sew as well as our mother. Her weaving was tight and even, her patterns inventive. She wore her hair braided tight to her head and was never dirty. I persistently disgusted her.

Beneath me in age was Celwen, seven and spoiled, for between us had been two who departed before they had fully rounded our mother's belly. As I watched that night from the loft, Celwen sat in a chair at the head of the table, feet dangling, barely tall enough to rest her chin on the edge. She swung her feet and sulked because our mother had told her to sit still or she would have to go to bed. I knew the latter would eventually be inevitable.

Nana bustled. It seemed the bigger the babe inside her grew the less she could stand to be still, and especially with Rangers to feed and cosset. But when she passed behind Ada he cupped her bottom and reined her in to him. The men were talking harvest and supplies and winter coming—anything but war—and he did not turn from the conversation but pulled her close and splayed his hand over her swollen middle. This perhaps was not polite in the company of the men, but even when she flushed and tugged away half-heartedly, murmuring his name, he did not release her. He set his lips against her bulge and I heard Aragorn laugh lowly. My father was hardly being subtle.

"We shall take our leave," said Aragorn, rising. He nudged Caradoc in the ankle with the toe of his boot. "Our tales can wait to be told."

My mother escaped long enough to see the two men to the door, and before he departed Aragorn laid his hand on her belly, said something I could not hear that made her throw her head back laughing. It was a clear clean sound and I had not heard it for many weeks. The Chieftain took up his sword where he had stood it inside the door and raised the hilt in farewell.

"Halbarad," he said, and Ada returned the salute with his tankard of ale.

"Sire."

I didn't have to see his face to know that he was grinning.

The door closed heavily and Ada murmured to Lossiel, slid her off his lap. He nuzzled her dark hair for a moment and then patted her towards the loft.

"Girls," he said to my remaining sisters. Lútha put away her darning and rose and took Lossiel by the hand. Celwen scooted off her chair and went to our father and planted her hands on his knees.

"I'm glad you are home," she said, looking up at him. "And I don't want to go to bed because sometimes when I wake up you've gone."

"I'm glad too, sweetling," he said, gently tugging her earlobe. "I'll still be here in the morning."

"Promise?"

He laid his fist over his heart. "Promise." He said it in Elvish and she nodded once, accepting his vow as a being solemn one, and then turned and climbed the ladder without further argument. Even Iolanthe, who deemed herself too old to be sent to bed, did not protest. She laid the washing rags out to dry and untied her apron and kissed his cheek and departed to her tiny nook behind the kitchen where she slept and we weren't allowed to enter. When she had vanished, my father looked straight up to where I lay in the dark beneath the rafters.

"Eluned," he rumbled.

My belly lurched. I poked my head over the edge and said in a small voice, "Yes, ada?"

"Go to bed."

"Yes, sir." And I did. I lay next to Lútha and felt Celwen snuggle into my side. As I drifted off I heard my mother again, a purr of laughter from below us, and then I let sleep take me and was too warm and too happy to care that the Rangers had told no tales for me to overhear.

Peredhil—half-Elven (plural)