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Nostos
-10-
The Corsairs of Umbar
T.A. 3019
11 March
"There at Pelargir lay the main fleet of Umbar, fifty great ships of smaller vessels beyond count." (The Return of the King, The Last Debate)
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"Hope does not remain." (The Two Towers, The Riders of Rohan)
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"But the Enemy has the move, and he is about to open his full game. And the pawns are likely to see as much of it as any!" (The Return of the King, Minas Tirith)
They came in the morning, appearing out of the fog like ghosts, the black ships with their sails full of the cold, damp wind that seemed to blow with unearthly strength, and not for the first time she thought that everything- their timing, their speed- hinted at some sort of sorcery.
Galcherdir had thundered, "Mordor! It is some treachery of Mordor!" and at the time, no one had really paid him heed, but now she wondered, for just as the orcs marched on Gondor from the east, so the Corsairs sailed from the south.
Within minutes the men-at-arms standing upon the walls were ready- catapults, archers- and she heard voices rising over the curling mist, barking orders as more soldiers rushed to ring the walls, but still their numbers were far fewer than she had ever seen before, less than a third of its fighting force. She would have liked to stay there on the walls, at least for a little while, to see what was happening, but then Dánaron was there, grasping her arm with bruising force.
"Go to your room and lock the door," he ordered her and she moved to obey him. She saw Tercil standing atop the outer curtain wall shouting something to the archers and she thought she recognized Malurust not a hundred yards away, but then Dánaron turned, saw her lingering, and shouted at her again.
She went downstairs.
Lothíriel was not particularly fascinated with warfare, but she had grown up in a household of men devoted to the art of killing and knew enough of it to imagine what was happening. The ships would be passing by the island, skirting the shore, open all the while to their firepower. Perhaps the archers would shoot the sails full of fire arrows; a catapulted rock might collapse a mast or knock a whole in the side. Perhaps they would sail by, weathering the torrent, expecting the fortress to have been caught off guard, for after all, almost all of Gondor's armies had been called to defend the White City, but perhaps, recognizing how vulnerable they were, they would turn and attack the fortress, choosing to fight and draw the fire away from their precious ships.
The men on the walls were to few.
"Please," she whispered to whatever or whomever might be listened, "let them be safe."
Legolas was singing, his voice low and mournful as the wind caught it and flung it across the shadowed fields:
"Silver flow the streams from Celos to Erui
In the green fields of Lebennin!
Tall grows the grass there. In the wind from the Sea
The white lilies sway,
And the golden bells are shaken of mallos and alfirin
In the green fields of Lebennin,
In the wind from the Sea!"
Aragorn's heart was just as heavy as his friend's and he knew what Legolas saw: the trampled fields of grass and flowers, darkened to grey by the perpetual gloom as though it were still night, the lands of Gondor cast deep into shadow. It seemed a barren land, quiet and without hope.
Elladan drew near to him. The sons of Elrond had been steady, quiet companions since they set out from Dunharrow, never flinching or seeming to weary, but now he said, "Estel, my brother, we must rest."
He felt the weariness that laid heavily on all their shoulders, oppressive as the darkness that cloaked the sky, but he felt also the coming shadow and so he said, "We cannot. Time is short as it is and I fear we will not reach Pelargir in time."
"Surely the garrison at Tolfalas can hold them," said Elladan, though his face grew more troubled. The sons of Elrond had seen a world of terror and darkness, but yet the hour was open to them to emerge into the light and it was so close- so close!- but yet so far.
"I think not," he said. "The prince of Dol Amroth will have drawn all the forces that he can away from his own lands to Minas Tirith."
"It may be so," Elladan replied at last, "but I think there is more at work here that we can see. Fate will not forsake us now, not when we are so close!"
"I have little hope left," he said quietly.
And it was Elladan who spoke the words that had carved the lines into his mother's face, the words that had become the burden that he himself took up. "Ónen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim.* Keep some hope for yourself, Aragorn, for there is still some to be found, even in this darkness. We will have time."
The first stones narrowly missed the mast of his ship and flaming arrows caught the sails; the men hurried to clamber up the rope ladders to put them out. He turned his eyes to the great stone walls and felt a strange sense of dread in his stomach, fear as he had not felt since he first drew a sword to kill a man.
"They will not let us pass," he said and then turned to his second. "We will remain, and the next two as well. Send two others around the other side. Tell the rest of the fleet to retreat back along the coast. We will take the fortress."
"Yes, Captain," said the man and they both looked at the great line of black ships behind them, ready for battle. They would remain behind him, out of reach of the catapults until the fortress had fallen.
"Then we sail for the White City," he said. The White City. His father had told him tales of its beauty and its grandeur, but he himself had never laid eyes upon the city that could have once been his. To his second he said, "We must not delay. As soon as the fortress cannot harm us, we must pass. Give the word to the others."
Something in him stirred.
I have a dream of Númenór, faded but not yet forgotten. One day it may come to pass. That day may be near.
"We take the fortress ourselves!" he cried and his men's voices mingled with his. In their faces he saw hunger, for to be a man of Umbar was to know starvation and thirst. To be a man of Umbar was to constantly scrounge for food and coin; to be a man of Umbar was to watch your children die and wither away like dry leaves.
But there was salvation yet, for the lord of Mordor had promised them land that had once been theirs.
"Men of Umbar!" he called to them. "The hour draws near! We will take back what is ours by right- never again will your children go hungry! Never again will you know want and death and despair! This land is ours!"
There was nothing left to lose, for the lives they led were shadowed, knowing only death and blood and hunger. Today they fought for the promise of something more, something beautiful and good.
The arrows were raining down on them as they turned the ship to shore, doing what no Corsair had done before: they would take the garrison of Tolfalas.
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"They are coming," whispered the man beside him, and Dánaron saw the despair in his face. Hopelessness. Terror. Fear.
"Hold steady," someone ordered: Tercil. The man had a commander's voice, low and calm, lending his men confidence. "Hold the crossbows."
But some of the men were nervous and wanted to fire, though only the longbows had the range to reach the ships. One fired, the arrow falling far short.
"Hold!"
The Drúadan was dark and shadowed and that evening he and his uncle sat together, speaking very little but both understanding the misery that lay upon the Rohirrim.
"Éomer, my son," said Théoden and then he said no more, his eyes cast down.
"There is hope left still," he answered, quietly but with great strength.
"Yes," said Théoden. "Yes, but so dark it lies! I fear for Éowyn, for she walks in shadow. Cruel it was for her, to wait upon an old man in his dotage."
"Éowyn will be well," he said. "When we return, we will chase the shadow from our lands."
"You see much," said the king and Éomer was struck by another who had spoke those same words. "But I fear there is still much you do not see."
He bowed his head. He knew his shortcomings well: he was quick-tempered and not given to stillness, and so perhaps in his need for movement he had overlooked much that only a more thoughtful man would see.
"But there," said Théoden, "you counseled me to keep hope, and so we shall! Come, the scouts are returning, though I think they bear little but ill news. Dark times are these!"
They brought out ladders and began to scale the wall; Dánaron, watching from the inner curtain wall, clenched a hand on his sword- he was no archer- and waited. Glancing around, he saw Tercil signal to him, and he withdrew to meet the commander of the garrison.
"There are too many," Tercil said. "You come from the White City, from the Steward himself. What would the lord Denethor have us do?"
But he could give no orders, no reassurance. "He said nothing," for though the princess, not he, had spoken to the Steward, she had told him a little of what had transpired and there was nothing to be gained from him. Then, hesitating, for he seldom answered unasked questions, he added, "He is sunk deep into madness."
The lines in Tercil's face deepened. "We must surrender."
"This is no ordinary raid," he said. "They must be allied to Mordor. If we let them pass, they will sail straight for Minas Tirith."
"They will kill us all," said Tercil, "all in vain. Would that I could spare my men that fate."
"This is the greatest fortress of the western coast," he answered. "Is there nothing you can do?"
Something in the other man's eyes stirred and he bowed his head. "There may yet be one last card to play. But it will be a deadly one."
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Lothíriel waited in unbearable silence, her hands clenched in between her knees to still the shaking and she thought she would rather stand amidst all that was happening than stay in her room as though in some sort of cocoon.
And who am I fooling, she thought, for when they take the fortress, I will be taken, too.
She thought of Dánaron's wife, dead by her own hand because she would not be taken by the Corsairs and Lothíriel knew that she had no such strength.
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The Corsairs of Umbar came in great waves, and though they broke on their arrows and swords and the great stone walls, there were always more to take their place, like the inexorable rush of the sea, pushing past the outer wall and then the inner, and finally Dánaron lifted his sword to draw blood.
The first stroke was jarring, for it had been some months since he had seen battle, and the pain in his back stirred, but then he fell into the comfortable rhythm of long-practiced movement, parrying the man's cutting arc, reaching an attack of his own. He caught the Corsair in the shoulder; the man stumbled and he lunged in for the kill, wetting his sword through.
"For Gondor!" someone was crying and he turned just in time to catch another attack, forcing the blade away from his chest. He was rusty, for his back had made heavy practice unbearable, and he faltered, nearly catching a stab through the chest, but he flung himself to the ground and thrust his sword upwards.
Two.
He lost himself; he cut and parried and thrust until his blade was red with blood- man's blood, was this, not orc- and he felt a sudden burst of pain across his arm; a knife slid across his shoulder and he jerked backwards.
"Retreat!" came the faint cry, and then their commander took it up, louder: "Retreat! Fall back to the keep!"
One strong stroke took off his opponent's arm; he felt the faint resistance as the blade passed through bone and then a final tug and it came free. The man feel to his knees and Dánaron ran him through, and then he ran to join his fellows, pulling back to the meager safety of the keep.
Already the walls were littered with the bodies of their own dead, their blood mingling with that of the Corsairs, and yet more Corsairs came, pouring over each other to reach the doors of the keep just as they slammed them closed, barricading them with whatever they could find.
The commanders were huddled and he went to join them; even Galcherdir's fire was dimmed as he wiped sweat away.
"Surrender," he said, and then again, "by the Valar, Tercil! You have to surrender."
"I will not. If we fall, they go on to Minas Tirith."
Surprisingly, it was Malurust who came to his commander's aid. "You are a fool, Galcherdir, that you would seek to spare yourself. I will fight them to the death, my Captain."
"There is a way," said Tercil. "We cannot defeat them all, but at least we may take those here."
"Then let's do it!" said Galcherdir. "What are you waiting for?"
Tercil turned his head to look at the men who worked to barricade the doors, even as they heard muffled shouts from outside. They would be bringing the rams to break down the doors, and then there would be nothing left.
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He was streaked with the blood of lesser men, buoyed by the feral, animalistic joy that bloodbath bought, surrendering to something baser in himself. Here there were no illusive dreams but only that which was purely human, the pounding euphoria in his veins that clamored for more blood.
"The rams!" he shouted, and there they were, the men bearing the great weights of the battering rams to knock down the doors. The keep was almost theirs.
Then onto the White City.
"Break down the doors!" he called to them, raising his sword high above his head.
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She knew they were coming closer and from high above her she could hear the cries and the pounding of the battering ram as though it went through her entire body. That was when she understood with sudden, blinding terror that she was going to die and suddenly life seemed all the more precious to her, all the more sacred now that it was nearly lost and she remembered all that she held dear and that she had yet to do.
And so Lothíriel, princess of Dol Amroth, went to her knees on the cold stone of the floor, clumsily and uncomfortably, for a princess was not born to kneel, and she clasped her hands in her lap and wondered what she had done in her life that was worth anything.
When I die, she thought, what will I have left behind me?
And the answer was nothing, for she was not certain that she liked the child she had been. Reckless, which in it of itself was no crime, but worse, she had been uncaring. She was like some huge strange creature, barreling through the woods without concern for whatever it was she crushed underfoot. How simple it had been, to surround herself with what was pretty and simple and pleasant, ignoring whose dreams or hopes she wrecked along the way.
If I survive, she vowed, I will do better.
And then she heard a terrifying crash from up above her and she knew that they'd broken through the doors.
I have to get out of here, she thought, for there was no lock on the door. She dragged herself to her feet and pushed open the door.
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With one last momentous heave, the doors came down, splintering before the brute force of the battering ram, and the few men that were left lunged backwards, swords at the ready. Then came the Corsairs.
They were lost in the crush, like whirling eddies in a stream, and his world became the choreography of his blade, rising, falling, spurting blood, the slash across his back, the barely parried thrust to his chest, and then he was fighting beside Tercil, shoulder to shoulder, camaraderie as he had almost forgotten existed.
The captain's face was set in lines of uncharacteristic indecision and then, catching Dánaron's eye, he shouted, "Draw the men back to the far side of the keep! Don't let them follow!"
He saw Galcherdir fall, just out of reach, a sword thrust through his chest; the Corsair put a foot on the body to tug his blade free.
"What about you?" he shouted back.
"I need to do it!"
And Dánaron understood, saw the decision in the captain's eyes. "Let me," he said.
Tercil barely dodged a stroke of a sword that would have taken off his head. "No."
He did not have the breath to explain- you must stay here, lead the retreat, they will listen only to you, I have waited for this moment- but then Tercil nodded. "Go, then!"
And he did.
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He drew back for a moment to watch them, the sparse ragged handful of defenders left, held together only by their desperation and their commander. He tracked the man with his eyes, for he did not try to be inconspicuous, shouting orders above the din, and as he watched, the commander drew close to another soldier, nearly losing his head in the process, and then the soldier drew away.
He followed, slicing a path through the mass of struggling bodies after the man who did not flee but left on his commander's orders, his shoulders set with purpose.
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The keep was a labyrinth, full of twisting spiral staircases and long hallways that all looked exactly the same, but she knew it well. She and her cousins had found out the secret a long time ago: to hide, always go down and forwards, never to the left or right, for the belly of the keep was a veritable labyrinth of halls and storerooms and dead ends, though by the time they were ten they had learned it all by heart.
Down she went, the way lit only very faintly by torches thrust into wall brackets; she kept one hand on the wall for balance, for the stairs were winding and narrow.
Footsteps.
Someone was coming.
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The keep was a labyrinth, full of twisting spiral staircases and long hallways that all looked exactly the same, and Dánaron felt as though he was descending into an underworld, so twisting and confusing were the passages.
"Go," Tercil had said and he went, pushing past the struggling soldiers and down a flight of stairs, and another. The commander had explained, briefly and vaguely, where the room laid, somewhere in the lowermost levels of the keep, but the farther down he went the more he began to realize that he was losing his way, that he had no idea where he was, and behind him he heard footsteps.
He was being followed, and he didn't know where he was.
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The keep was a labyrinth, full of twisting spiral staircases and long hallways that all looked exactly the same, and to judge by the slowing sound of footsteps ahead of him, the man did not know where he was going, either. Perhaps he had misjudged and the man was fleeing- a deserter, someone of no consequence. But his instincts were seldom wrong and he had seen the soldier's face: eyes blazing, jaw set, and he knew immediately that he was doing Something, whatever that Something might be.
He had to be stopped.
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They were coming closer. She pressed herself to the wall and drew the knife.
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He began to move again, faster, hoping to lose the Corsair who followed him, just out of sight, like a strange, lurking, nameless shadowy fear. He had sheathed his sword for speed, arms stretched out for balance, and rounding a corner, he saw something move and then he was being knocked to the ground with a clatter, sudden blinding pain in his shoulder.
He shouted her name. "Lothíriel!" and instantly he felt her move.
"Dánaron?" The princess looked very dazed, crouched on the ground, her knife red with his blood. His shoulder burned.
"I told you to stay in your room!" he snapped, furious. Could she not have listened to him? Now the Corsair could find him again-
"There isn't a lock!" Her eyes were wide and frightened.
He would get very angry with her very soon, but now there was no time, and suddenly he remembered that she knew this fortress like the back of her hand. He grabbed her shoulder. It was too much to hope that she knew, but-
"Tercil says there's blasting powder here. Where is it? Somewhere in the cellars-,"
For a moment her face was just blankly terrified. "What? I don't know- Dánaron, someone's coming!"
He slapped her. Hard. "Get me into the cellars!"
She began to run. His shoulder hurt like nothing else- his entire body ached and screamed with pain, cuts and bruises all across his face, his chest barely padded by a stiff leather jerkin.
"Faster," he ordered.
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The man had almost vanished completely- he had lost all sound of him, but then suddenly he heard a thud and then voices, one deep and the other a young woman's, higher, but panicked.
He began to run again; he had almost caught them.
.
"Fall back!" Tercil cried over the din of clashing swords and dying men, "fall back!" There were only a handful of men left- maybe two dozen- and, barely blocking a dagger thrust, he led them back, disengaging from the Corsairs and running for the west side of the fortress where one last portcullis would guard the way, at least for now.
"Back!"
They ran; Tercil was the last to follow, a blow catching him on the arm. He cried out in pain but ran the man through, pulled out his sword, and then brought up the rear. Malurust, the last of his commanders left alive, was lowering the portcullis, and he barely made it through, ducking underneath it, scraping his head along the bottom.
"Go, go!" he shouted. It would not hold them for long, but they needed to get away, for all the west side would be gone.
If Dánaron found the blasting powder. If he managed to detonate it. If he did not lose his nerve.
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Blasting powder?
"I'm sorry about your shoulder," she called to him, her voice wheeling into squeaking panic, "I thought you were-,"
"Quiet!"
She almost didn't recognize him, this strange blood-stained man, his face twisted in ferocity. Her feet were loud on the stone floors, echoing the thump-thump-thump of her heart, and her hands were dripping with sweat, so much so that she could barely hold the knife. It was dripping with blood. Dánaron's blood.
A closet there, where Galador had jumped out to scare her. She had been so frightened that she tripped and nearly broke her nose.
Down these stairs, where she and Amrothos had lurked, hoping to catch the chance to grab their cousins' ankles as they came running down.
Around a sharp, twisting corner, down another flight of stairs into the bowels of the castle, where the air was cold and still and vaguely musty. Once Amrothos had taken her cousin Saelorn and Lothíriel here and told them a ghost story, then locked them in a storeroom full of half-emptied barrels of ale.
Her breath tore at her throat and she could hear something- someone?- behind them.
Another flight of stairs, and then she said, "This is the lowest level, but there's nothing here!" Nothing, that is, besides barrels of mead and flour and piles of half-rotten turnips.
"The east side," he ordered, and she frowned. The east side? That would be the side that faced the mainland… "Hurry!"
She caught a glimpse of the someone rounding the corner and she began to run again, pushing open a heavy wooden door. The east side. Over here, then, past one of the now-emptied armories and then-
You are never to go down there.
Boromir's hand on her shoulder, face set in lines of anger and maybe even a little fear.
You could have gotten yourself killed!
"Here," she said, words tumbling over each other in sudden haste, "I remember!" She turned suddenly down a hallway, a dead end, seizing a torch from its bracket with a terrible clattering- "Quiet!" he hissed- and shoved it into his chest. He grabbed it and she knelt, pushing away the braided rug that she only vaguely remembered, and then she dug her fingers into the faint cracks in the stone floor.
He was coming closer; she heard the pounding of his feet and soon his breath in steady, rhythmic bursts that echoed along the corridors. Her hands were shaking too hard; she dropped the trapdoor onto her fingers.
"Ouch!"
"Hurry!"
She tried again, this time flinging the door open. It fell with a thud against the stone and she peered into the blackness.
Dánaron thrust the torch at her; she held it while he set a foot on the first rung and then he took it from her, his hands hurried and rough.
"Go," he ordered, "as fast as you can, to the west side!"
She did not hesitate, pushing herself to her feet, ignoring smarting fingers and aching lungs.
"Lothíriel," he said, "run!"
She turned back only to glance at him very briefly and he caught her eye for a moment, and then was gone, disappearing into the blackness with only the flickering light of the torch.
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Voices; a clatter. He hesitated at a split and then went to the left. The voices grew louder. He unsheathed his sword.
Someone was rounding the corner with hurried footsteps and gasping breaths.
He would have caught that someone by surprise, except so stunned was he to see a girl there that for a moment he could not move. Then he regained himself, lunging in for the kill, but she fell backwards, out of reach of his sword.
He followed her, jabbing his blade downward, but it caught the stones just a bare inch from her exposed neck. For a moment he felt pity: she was young, perhaps nineteen or twenty, with huge frightened eyes, and he could see the bones in her face, the tendons in her neck.
I have a dream of Númenór, he thought, and then he thought of the soldier who was not a deserter, the soldier who ran for something, not from something, the soldier who had a plan. This girl was in his way. This girl would take away his dreams, his city, his life.
But that moment of hesitation had been enough for her; white hot pain in his wrist, and he saw his own blood, bright red blood. She had cut him, the knife biting down deep through muscle and into bone. He roared in feral pain and the sword fell from his hand, beyond reach of his left hand. He began to move to reach for it, but then she stirred to fling herself aside, to rise and run.
He stopped and reached for her throat with her left hand, straddling her, his knees and weight lending his weaker hand power.
.
The doors would not hold; it was merely an iron gate and a set of wooden double doors, and once the Corsairs brought up the battering ram, they would do no good.
"Faster!" he ordered. The keep was split into two parts, the east and the west side, and if they could get to the west, they would be out of reach of the blast.
But if Corsairs broke through the doors-
It would have to be now.
Dánaron had to set off the blasts now or it would be lost.
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He nearly dropped the torch as he lowered himself with more haste than caution down the ladder, raising it to reveal the shelves of glass jars, all containing a strange, fine black powder.
Blasting-powder, the captain had told them, huddled in the corner behind the barricaded keep doors. It will bring the east side down. We must hope the west side will be safe.
Let me do it, he had said to him later, amidst the press of the fear and the men, the Corsairs crashing upon the doors outside. Tercil has hesitated then, for it was his duty as a commander to do what he could not ask of any other, but in Dánaron's eyes he must have seen some measure of his life, for he had relented.
Raising the torch, he said aloud, "I am coming home," and it was an exhale, the words like soothing balm on a wound. Amidst the turmoil of the world, this had been his consolation: he had something waiting for him when it came to the end.
He knocked the jars off the shelves, glass shattering on the ground. The jars lay in splinters across stone, the black powder in heaps. He raised the torch.
.
She could not breathe.
.
There was something seductive about strangulation- something strangely artistic and gracelessly beautiful. The first time he had been revolted but he had known then he must do it, for if he were to find his land of Númenór he would need to be strong. He could not flinch.
Beautiful and thrilling, the way a body thrashed beneath him, at first fiercely and then more faintly, the dying struggle, the pulsing beneath his hand.
His wrist was screaming in pain; the girl had dealt him a good, hard blow, and had she been stronger she might have parted his hand from his arm. But now she lay underneath him, her arms and legs falling more weakly, hands fluttering at his face, at his grip on her throat, weakening, flailing. Her legs were thrashing, beating on the floor, her back arching up to him as her face reddened, her pulse and his heart singing a strange sensually erotic rhythm, and he was thrilled by the power he felt, the power that obliterated the screeching pain in his wrist, wiping away all else but the death he wielded.
Dying.
.
Out of the panic in her mind she managed one, single, rational thought and let her arms and legs relax, as though she were dead. Her head was swimming, her face hot; she could not breathe, could not breathe could not breathe his hands were hard, his knees pressing into her, could not breathe I need to breathe and then she flung her hand out for the knife she had dropped and plunged it upwards with her last bit of strength, forcing it into his chest as hard as she could, hilt pressed into her palm as Dánaron had taught her.
Dánaron.
The Corsair's grip on her relaxed and she arched her back towards him, thrusting the knife deeper into his body. Then she flung him away with some deep resevoir of power, coughing, retching, screaming, gasping in pain.
He stirred on the floor, not yet dead, reaching for her ankle, and she tripped, her knees slamming into the stone floor painfully. Her head spun. She wanted to faint.
The blasting-powder. She needed to get away. She wrenched her ankle out of his grip and ran for all she was worth, ignoring her spinning, whirling head and the pain in her ankle. She had to run.
.
He hesitated for just a moment, the torch poised in his hand.
Lothíriel, the strange princess-child he had not liked at first (spoiled, selfish) and then the vulnerable little girl he had come to know and finally the dawning promise of a clever, beautiful young woman- he would give her just a moment so she could get away.
Run, he thought. Run.
A breath, a heartbeat of a moment.
And then he thought of his wife, his children.
I am coming home to you, beloved. My children, your father is coming to you at last.
He dropped the torch.
And then he saw nothing more.
.
He could not breathe; each breath brought a fiery white pain in his chest where the demon-child had thrust the knife.
Not a demon, he thought, a child of Númenor.
How many have I slaughtered for my own dream, he wondered, a dream I will never see. He closed his eyes and thought of the white sand, the white city, the rolling green fields and golden stalks of grain, a land that should have been his.
It was dead to him now.
.
They were breaking in; Tercil could hear the battering ram and he thought, Dánaron, where are you?
To the men who were left, he said, "Ready yourselves to fight." Not a one of them was left unscathed. He did not turn his head to look at his arm but knew that something was very wrong with it, but he raised his sword, clenched in his right hand, and said, "We will die for Gondor!"
Another thud.
They were coming.
.
She ran, hobbling, coughing, but she did not cry; her eyes were dry and tearless. She thought of nothing but running, as fast as she could, flinging herself at the great doors that marked the eastern keep.
For a moment they did not move and once she would have sank to her knees and wept, but she flung herself at them again and they gave, creaking as if the hinges were rusty, and then she slammed them shut and ran up another flight of stairs until her breath tore at her bruised and aching throat, running as fast as she could, up and to the west.
Boom.
It knocked her off her feet; stones clattered and rained down from the ceiling above her, the explosion shaking the entire keep, and she flung herself down upon the ground with barely enough time to raise her arms to cover her head.
Pain, and she saw no more.
*"I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept no hope for myself." Originally said by Gilraen, Aragorn's mother, at their last parting. Aragorn's name, "Estel," of course means "hope."
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