Chapter 79
Return of Hope
It was an unexpected blow to lose Théoden when everyone already believed that the battle was won. I have spoken to many in the aftermath of the battle and everyone who was in the vicinity of the King swore up and down that they had not seen the orc until he rose up and drove his sword through Théoden's heart.
The orc himself was cut down where he stood by half a dozen swords and axes at least. There was not much left of him when all was said and done. But by that time it was already too late for Théoden. He was dead before the orc. Aragorn saved him the indignity of falling into the mud, but could not preserve his life.
For a moment my eyes refused to believe what they saw. I knew better than to whine about this not being in the book by that time, but even so I had not seen it coming. Had he fallen in the battle itself, I would not have questioned it, but this seemed unnecessarily cruel. To fall when the finish line was in sight was especially hard and I could see that it hit Théodred that way.
He stood beside me when it happened. Horror froze his features into a terrifying mask, but he could do nothing. Neither could I. I am not sure that he even realised it in that moment, but his father's death made him a King.
And being King can be a heavy burden…
Thoren
'The last traitors have been uncovered.'
It was a relief to say the words at last. In the large stone halls the sound of his voice carried and gave it a booming quality that made him sound as though he announced a victory. It was a victory, Thoren reminded himself, but it was hard to feel it when all he received in return for his words were a few half-hearted cheers that died away soon when they realised their fellows had no intention of joining in.
Thoren looked at them. The men of Esgaroth were altogether fewer in number than they had been when they first walked through the gates of Erebor seeking shelter. They were more beaten down too. Many of their men had fallen in the battles that had already been fought. Their number had lessened even further when the treachery had come to light. They had been shunned for that, though they had done their duty in reporting those they knew had betrayed them. It was no wonder that they felt hard done by.
And yet what choice did I have?
The continuing silence was not encouraging, but they had been restrained on his orders. It was his duty to look into their faces and hear their grievances. 'I have ordered the restrictions on your people lifted,' he carried on. 'You are granted the same rights and freedoms as the elves and the men of Dale. I invite you to stay in Erebor, but if there are those among you who would choose otherwise, they are free to leave. I would not advise you to do so. The threat of the Enemy has not abated.' It moved closer with every passing day.
'Your promises are worthless! You spoke of unity before and then you had us locked up!'
Thoren could not see who shouted, but he read the agreement in the faces all around him. They were not of a mind to listen – mobs seldom were – but for the sake of the alliance he would try it anyway: 'Some of your people had betrayed us,' he reminded a crowd who did not want to be reminded. 'Until we knew who among you was trustworthy, I had little choice. I could not risk any more deaths. And in retaliation one of you attempted to murder my brother. If I were to compare who has done the most wrong, we will be arguing still when Sauron comes to our gates. Our division benefits only him.' Could they not see that?
They were blind to reason. They boiled over with fury over the wrongs done against them. And they had been wronged. Those who stood before him now had played no part in the treason committed by their fellows, but he hadn't known that. So he ordered them restrained. Naturally they resented him for this. He could not truly blame them.
But what else could I have done? Even now he saw no other path.
Those who did not rage were numb and silent. There was no fight left in them. They had been beaten one time too many. He wondered if they still saw the difference between the dwarves and the orcs when both had treated them abysmally. He tried to see through their eyes and did not particularly like what he saw.
'Fine words!' This time it was an elderly woman who scoffed at him, her voice hard with contempt. 'You were never at risk!'
He had the still healing wound on his face to prove just how much he had been at risk, just how close he'd come to death at the hands of Ingor. 'I have fought a war while you sheltered behind the mighty walls of this kingdom!' Patience had never been his strongest point, but being effectively accused of cowardice broke his hold on it. She made it out to be that he had hidden behind the backs of better folk while the war raged. But he had taken up a sword and fought until he dropped. 'And when it comes back, as it will, I will go out and take up arms again to see this kingdom and everyone in it safe. You have never been at risk since this began. You have not fought. The traitors never threatened you and yours. You only suffered the inconvenience of being confined to quarters for a few days.' Yes, there was mistrust and justifiably so. There would be no longer if he had any say in it. The traitors were imprisoned. They could no longer do any harm.
They did enough damage to this alliance in spite of that. The men of Dale would not leave. Brand was committed to this alliance and he was a king his people trusted implicitly. The same was true for the elves. But these people were scattered and leaderless. The last leader they'd known had made common cause with the Enemy.
His words were greeted with sullen silence. The anger simmered underneath.
'Think on it,' he counselled them. 'And I will abide why whatever you decide amongst yourselves. For my part I should like nothing better than to resume the alliance and friendship there was between us before this plot came to light, but I shall not force you.'
With that he left, all too aware that the room erupted in noise the moment the door swung shut behind him.
'You did what you could, lad,' Lufur said. He clapped a hand on Thoren's shoulder. 'I don't rightly see what else they could have expected of you.'
Neither did he and therein lay the problem. He knew the men had expected more of him, but he did not know what and it was too late now anyway to try and set it right.
'Ungrateful wretches.' Glóin's judgement was both predictable and true. 'They ought to be thanking you for taking them in. You were under no obligation to do so.'
'No duty, perhaps,' Thoren allowed. 'But a moral obligation most definitely.'
Elvaethor often said that it was every sentient being's duty to battle the threat of orcs, but that threat could be battled in more ways than one. It included a duty to safeguard as many people as possible against that very threat. It was no good winning if there was nobody left by the end of the war.
He was not sure the men of the Lake saw it that way. They did not even seem inclined to hear him out. We no longer stand united. And his own words about unity must surely sound empty now after he had locked them away.
'They have the same obligation, then,' Glóin pointed out.
'And they have fulfilled it many times over.' He had not forgotten the role they played in the war and then again when they knowingly gave up those who would see them destroyed, though the offenders were their loved ones. 'They blame us because we did not stand by them,' he realised.
It was in moments like this that he missed his mother's intuition the most. She'd dealt more with the men than his father, because his father could not stand them and his mother was better equipped to both understand and handle them in a way that did not start a war. He had learnt much from her, but that instinctive understanding was not something she had ever been able to teach him. Thoren's mind was too dwarvish for that.
I ought to bring Cathy to meetings like these. At least her mind was suited to this sort of task.
'I recall many times the men did not stand by us,' Glóin grumbled, who remembered exile and the extreme reluctance of the men to enter into an alliance nearly eighty years previous. 'And yet we still opened our gates and let them in. They've repaid us poorly for that. What right have they to accuse us of poor conduct when it is theirs that has been found wanting?'
Thoren could not deny the truth of that either.
'You have performed your duty to the best of your ability,' Tauriel said, the last of his three companions to offer her thoughts. She had been quiet thus far. 'I can see no other path that you could have taken that would lead to a better outcome.'
Glóin and Lufur both considered these words and then nodded. 'Well spoken,' Glóin allowed, not fond of elves on a good day, though he was prepared to make allowances for Elvaethor's sister. 'Sense from an elf. Never thought I'd live to see the day.'
'And I'd never thought I'd live to see the day a dwarf would admit to such, Master Glóin,' Tauriel retorted. She was getting rather good at this. She ought to be; Nori had given her plenty of opportunity to practice.
Lufur laughed and Glóin muttered in a manner that betrayed that he was only put out because she'd given him as good as she got. She was still as elvish as she had always been, but she had adapted well. He wondered what Thranduil made of that.
He put them back on track. 'What can we do with the traitors?' They had reached his study and so he held open the door to admit them entrance.
It was a loaded question. Everyone and their mother had an opinion about it and he'd listened to most, but these three he'd yet to hear. He valued their counsel. Lufur had stood by him for long years. He had always been there; friend, honorary uncle and guard at the same time. Glóin's advice he valued because he had a good head on his shoulders and he knew what his people expected him to do. And to Tauriel he listened because she was his friend, who had lived for far longer than he would ever live. She knew what she was about.
The playfulness left the air as he closed the door behind him.
'The men have a death sentence for the worst of crimes,' Lufur said.
Thoren knew this. 'We do not.' It had never been needed among dwarves. When a crime was so bad that a dwarf could not be trusted to be allowed back among his fellows, he was cast out from their halls publicly. And it was made known that this dwarf had lost all rights to bonds of kinship, so no dwarf would ever take him in. It was the worst they could do, because slaying one of their own was abhorrent.
But these men were not their own and they were a danger with every breath they drew. And yet he could not do it. Killing an enemy in battle was all good and well, but execution was not battle and it went against the grain to kill one who could not defend himself, no matter what his crime.
'Not so long ago Cilmion was beheaded,' Glóin observed.
It was true. But even then it was more in defence of Cathy than an execution. He told him so. 'And execution is not our way.' His mother might have been of mannish descent, but even she had not adhered to those traditions in any way. She had found them despicable instead. He felt more or less the same way about it.
He'd seen an execution before, when he had accompanied his father to Dale on business some forty years past and their business coincided with the death of a man who had murdered his own father. He had found that it had more to do with entertainment than justice. The whole town had seemingly turned out for the event. Market stalls had been erected at the sides and its vendors had done good business. There had been no escaping it and so they had stood at the fringes as the spectacle took place. Thoren was no stranger to death even then, but he found that there was a great difference between slaying an orc in battle and hauling a man up onto a platform and making him kneel down so that someone else could take his head off while the crowd cheered. Justice it may be, but he had only found it distasteful.
'Then why not use your own ways?' Tauriel asked.
He had an answer for that. 'Because they are not my people.' And if the men of Esgaroth had still a leader of their own, he would have been pleased to hand these prisoners over to him and let him decide what to do. But they did not, so that duty fell to him. Should he judge them according to their laws or his?
'But the crimes they committed were against your people and committed in your kingdom,' she pointed out, which was very true.
Glóin nodded with fervour. 'I don't like to say it, lad, but your elf is right again. Judge them and then turn them out. They may take their chances with their foul master, though I've heard he does not find the taste of failure all that palatable.'
'They do not know anything of importance now,' Lufur agreed. 'Aye, they know more about the Mountain than we'd like, but Cilmion like as not sold that information many months ago. They do not know our plans for the war to come.'
It was a risk to take, but one perhaps worth taking. Lufur had it right. And the Enemy was still some way away. The traitors would be turned out with nothing but the clothes they stood up in. Winter had tightened its grip on the land of late. These men would not find survival easy and, in the unlikely case that they did reach their masters, he did not truly believe that they would survive for very long. Glóin had that right; failure was not something Sauron tolerated lightly or indeed at all.
Glóin gave him a knowing look. 'The men won't like it whatever you do, Thoren. We've lost them.'
Thoren sagged back into his chair. 'Why will they not see?' Their best chances were here in Erebor and yet they continued to interpret everything he did in completely the wrong way. What more could he do?
It was Tauriel who answered. 'It is often that way among men. Their memories are not as long as ours. They don't remember.' She inclined her head in Thoren's direction. 'Your mother was the exception to this, I know.'
He did know. If it hadn't been for her appearance, he could often have believed her a dwarf by birth. She was never quite like the people she ruled, but she had more in common with them than she had with the men, something that always became very clear if he witnessed her in conference with them.
The men were other and he could not understand them. 'Very well,' he said. 'Glóin, see that they are made ready to depart at dawn.' Those who wanted to could come to witness, to see that justice was done. He reckoned that some of his people needed to see that.
Glóin nodded and departed, though he did not get far. He opened the door only to find Dwalin on the other side.
'You might want to come down to the gates,' he said. 'We have visitors.'
Beth
'This is foolishness,' Aragorn said.
Beth crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. 'Is it?' She had expected better of him. 'You're content to let his body lie there among the orcs? I thought he was your friend!' So she had come to believe at least.
She had riled him now. 'I am not content to do so.'
'Well, that's something.' Not much, but something. 'Now will you get the hell out of my way?' She tried to step past him, but he anticipated her move and stepped aside with her.
'Our people are still making sure the orcs are all dead,' he told her. He was tall enough to block the postern gate entirely and she reckoned that he would catch up with her before she made it out of the main gate to take the long way around. 'We cannot take the risk.'
Not after Théoden.
She got where he was coming from, but this was different. Théoden had effectively been slain in battle. Yes, everyone believed that the orcs in that area were already all dead, but it had been somewhat foolish to assume that. 'Nothing has moved on those grounds for hours,' she pointed out, making a wide arm gesture meant to encompass the whole of the area behind the Deeping Wall. 'I know that.' She knew it because she'd watched it, perched high on the wall where she got in nobody's way until she couldn't stand the idleness anymore.
Aragorn still did not move. 'Boromir would not forgive me if I let any harm come to you.'
I know. 'That is why I'm bringing Excalibur.' She knew her way around a blade these days. 'And look, I've even brought Boromir's horn. I'll blow it if I'm in any real trouble, but I have to do this.'
It was hard to explain why even to herself, but the sense of obligation was stronger than she knew how to resist. All she knew was that he had died and that his body was still out there somewhere, lying among the orcs he had fought all his life and nothing was right about that. Yes, she knew that many others were still out there too, but it did not matter to her. She only had the one man she needed to find.
'Let me go, Aragorn,' she demanded. 'I know you're needed elsewhere and you cannot stand here until the cows come home, and I am not going to budge. I'll slip out anyway when you leave.'
'I do not know how I ever mistook you for something other than Thráin's kinswoman,' he muttered.
Usually this type of comment annoyed her, but today it made her proud. Stubborn as a dwarf was what she needed to be today, stubborn and strong and as unmoveable as the mountains. She reckoned she'd already been, because she hadn't cried yet. She wanted to and she could almost taste the tears, but they were locked up inside and refused to come out. In their place she had a restlessness she could barely control and it went hand in hand with rapidly growing impatience.
Aragorn was not quite done yet. 'I do not know what was between you and him,' he said. 'But I know he cared for you and would not see you come to harm on his account.'
'Nothing,' Beth said and now the tears came at last. 'Nothing yet.' Just a hint of a promise that she had clung to in spite of her best efforts not to. And now it would never be. How can I want something that never existed in the first place?
Silence fell between them for a moment.
After what felt like an eternity he stepped aside. 'Take care of yourself. Don't take risks.'
What risks? The battle had been over for hours. Beth meant to ask, but he had already gone. And she was not about to go and question a good thing, so she opened the little gate and stepped out into carnage.
It had not registered much when she had stood in her tower, filming. The rain had lashed down and the battle had raged, but now all was quiet and daylight was much more unforgiving than the dark of night. Bodies were strewn everywhere. They lay where they had fallen and the living had stood on them and fled over them and fought on them. Many had been trampled almost beyond recognition. Others she could barely see at all for all the blood and the mud.
She was grateful for her boots that protected her from the worst of it. She was grateful too for the fact that it was still winter and still chilly. The smell was bad enough as it was. It would have been worse in the heat of summer.
Now that the tears had started to fall, Beth could not seem to force them away. It was as though her eyes had developed a leak. Aragorn's words had dislodged something that she had barely acknowledged, but that she could now no longer deny. Something had grown between them, but it had remained unspoken till the end. Who knew why Boromir had not mentioned something sooner? Beth only knew why she hadn't and none of it sounded sensible in the light of what had happened.
Boromir is here somewhere, she reminded herself. 'Get a move on, Andrews.'
He was not helped with her bawling her eyes out, so she followed her own advice, forcibly bringing her mind to heel. The wall was where she had last seen him and so that was where she would begin. He had been on the stretch of wall that no longer existed, but she walked there anyway, as close as she could get. Even so, she remained at quite a distance, because the lake got in her way.
The water was filthy. Bodies were piled so high they made little islands in the pool and the elves had wrecked up such a body count that the accumulated bodies formed a strange sort of wall around it.
She grimaced when she had to touch a dead orc to scramble up to the "wall" in order to see better what was around her, but this was not the time to be squeamish. She had been like that a year ago. But the Beth from a year ago would not recognise this new version of her. Beth was not even sure she liked what she had become.
Being higher up did not provide her with any more clarity, just the futility of what she was doing. The area behind the Deeping Wall was vast and many people had died here. If Boromir had been caught up in the blast of Saruman's thrice-cursed bloody bomb, there was no telling where his body might have ended up.
Most of them were blown backwards, she recalled, closing her eyes to call up the image. It was no easier to watch the second time than it was the first. She should have had a look at what she'd recorded for clues, but her bag with her equipment was in the room she had shared with a man who was now dead. Going back was not an option now that she had come this far.
Backwards, she decided and so she climbed back down and carefully began to make her way away from the wall. It was slow going, because she had to clamber over bodies and she had to pull the dead aside to see if Boromir had perhaps fallen underneath them. Her hands coloured black and red with blood and brown with mud and a year ago all that blood would have turned her stomach. As things stood, she barely noticed it at all.
Orcs were chief among the fallen. Elves on the other hand did not die easy; they took down ten of their foes at least before they gave up the ghost. When they did, the orcs in their rage had been especially cruel; many of the elvish bodies that she found were mutilated. They missed limbs and heads. Some even had bite marks where the orcs had torn out their flesh with their teeth. Sometimes an arm or a leg was all that remained of them. Beth found to her surprise that she could see all of this and not want to bring up the contents of her stomach.
Where she could, she brought the bodies of the elves out in the open for easier collection later on. The other elves on the field – and yes, she was not alone – had begun their search at the gate and spread out from there, searching every inch of ground meticulously. She wondered if they had yet any hope of survivors. She had not yet seen one, neither orc nor elf.
She had barely finished the thought when she head a soft moan to her left and when she looked she saw an elf she had believed dead. She had stepped over him not half a minute ago. But the dead did not blink.
'Hold on, I'm coming,' Beth told him. She looked over her shoulder and shouted at the top of her voice at the elves in the distance: 'I have a survivor! Help!'
Several heads snapped up and three of them dropped everything they were doing. Beth of course got there first. The elf blinked a few times, but there was no sign that he knew where he was and how he had ended up here. Cause of this would be the bloody wound on the left side of his head. His eyes looked feverish.
'Lie still,' Beth told him as gently as she could when he tried to move. 'Help is on its way, I promise. You're alive. You're going to be all right, I promise. Just lie still.' She dragged out all the clichés and platitudes, because they were all that she had, stupid though they sounded.
She might as well not have wasted her breath at all. The elf was fully awake now and fired off a rapid torrent of words that Beth could not understand. She understood just enough to get that he had a question mark tagged at the end of it.
'You're at Helm's Deep in Rohan,' she said, hoping that was what the question meant. Current evidence suggested that neither of them spoke the other's language – what else was new? – but if she just spoke calmly to him, he might just figure out that she was a friend and not a foe. 'There was a battle and you were injured in it. But we've found you now. Your friends are on their way and they'll take you to a healer and you'll be all right.'
That was all she had time for before the elves reached them and crowded around him, so Beth backed out and let them get on with it. From the looks of things, they knew what they were doing.
One of the elves put his hand over his heart and inclined his head in Beth's direction. 'We owe you our thanks,' he said.
Beth nodded. 'You're welcome.' What else could she say? That she had only found him by accident when all she really wanted was to locate Boromir? It seemed somewhat unfriendly and the elves did not deserve that. 'I hope he'll make it,' she added.
The elves left and Beth resumed her search. Daylight still faded quickly at his time of year. She'd left Rivendell less than two months ago, though it seemed so much longer. It was only mid-February, but there were many times when it felt like it had been years instead.
I only knew Boromir for less than four months, she thought. For all the impact he'd made in that short time it felt like it had been much longer. She certainly would have liked it to be much longer. After all, it was not like she was going anywhere when the war was done.
She had been such an idiot. It was always nice to know these things at least with the benefits of hindsight. She had been so blind. Time had been wasted. She was left with nothing but regrets. And Beth should have known that too; Kate had warned her after all.
This search was the least she could do and so she got on with it. Her progress was slow and she found no other survivors. She hadn't expected to. By now she was a long way away from the wall, but still she found loose bricks and, in one case, a whole piece of wall still intact. It had come to a standstill against the natural rocks, creating something of a cave underneath.
It was because she was marvelling at the fact that such a huge piece of wall was still in one piece and so far away from the Deeping Wall at that, that she saw it and even then only because the sunlight fell on it.
It can't be.
She had been at this for hours and so far she had found exactly nothing. But here was Boromir's shield at last. He never went far without it. He'd probably had it on him when the orcs blew up the wall. And if that was here, perhaps the rest of him was here too.
All of a sudden she was strangely apprehensive. Yes, she'd set out to find him, because she didn't know what else to do, but now that she was faced with the possibility of actually finding him, she almost backed away and ran. She had seen so many corpses today and so many of them were barely recognisable. War did that. Well, war and orcs. Boromir was unlikely to look much like himself.
Stop dawdling, Andrews, and get on with it. She had come this far. She was not going to run back with her tail tugged between her legs because she couldn't handle it. That had ceased to be an option a while ago. She had sworn an oath, even though the one she swore it to no longer lived.
The shield leaned against the rocks. It stood too neatly, almost as though someone had placed it against the wall with some care. It didn't make any sense. But now that she came closer she could see feet sticking out from under the shelter, as if someone had crawled inside, found out he didn't fit and left the lower part of his legs sticking out.
'Boromir?'
It was stupid to even say his name, but the position of the shield more than suggested that someone had put it there like that. This hadn't just happened. She crouched down and hesitantly touched an ankle. The boot that covered said ankle was caked in blood and mud in equal measure and it had dried to a thick paste that felt sticky on her hands.
'Hello?'
There was only so much information that could be gleaned from a boot and even less from one so stained. Beth was not even sure that this boot belonged to Boromir. It could be anyone's. So she shook the leg gently.
'Hello?'
For the longest moment nothing happened. Beth was already withdrawing her hand when the leg stirred and not long after she heard the kind of groan that implied that its owner was still alive.
'Hello?'
The silence dragged on forever, but then a voice returned: 'Beth?'
In that moment she could have laughed and cried and screamed all at once. He's alive! 'Boromir. Yes, it's me. Can you come out? Do I need to find you a doctor? Healer, I mean. Can you move?'
The answer to the last question at least was yes, though his progress was slow; Boromir was a tall man and he did not have a whole lot of space in that tiny cave. It took a good deal of manoeuvring and some pulling from her, but when she had him out at last it was well worth the trouble. He looked exhausted, he was covered in blood and his face was so pale, but he lived. Beth abandoned all her reserves and, while he still blinked against the bright light of day, pressed a kiss to his forehead.
Next time: the Fellowship is out of the Marshes, but runs straight into trouble again.
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