35 – THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Tíniel made the antidote herself as quickly as she was able, pounding the root until it was crushed into a sticky paste and adding water to make it smoother. Then she sat by Faramir and dipped her finger in.
"That's all?" Imrahil asked her, looking at it sceptically. "It smells foul."
"That's all,' she confirmed. "If it enters through the bloodstream, it is fatal. But if it enters through the mouth…"
She tilted Faramir's head back and dripped some of it into his mouth. He coughed weakly, and she knew he'd swallowed some. She handed the rest of the mixture to Petakh.
"Give it to the others, fast as you can," she said. Petakh nodded and took it from her, and Tíniel immediately turned her attention back to Faramir. His face was ashen, a horrible green-grey colour, and covered in a sheen of sweat. His breaths were so faint that they barely made his chest rise. His skin was fiery hot.
"Will it work?" a familiar voice asked. Tíniel looked up and saw Gandalf leaning on tiredly on his staff, worry evident in his face.
"If the gods are good," she said, fighting to keep her despair from leaking into her voice. "But I fear… I'm just afraid that he…"
"He is going to die," Denethor said, emerging from behind Gandalf. His shoulders were hunched and his face haggard. "You and your cure were too late. You have merely prolonged the inevitable."
Tíniel stared at him. "You cannot say such things," she whispered.
"I have seen it," he replied with the careless abandon of one who has given up. He sat heavily in the free chair by the bed and stared down at his son. "Now leave."
Tíniel saw Imrahil clench and unclench his hands. "My lord –"
"Leave," the Steward repeated emptily. There was a beat of stillness, and then Tíniel was the first to stand.
"You saw what the Enemy showed you," she said fiercely, "and they were lies."
Denethor didn't reply, and so they were forced to leave him there, his face more deathlike than his son's.
Anita shut the door after they had filed out. She too looked grim.
"There is nothing more to do for him," Imrahil said quietly. "The siege is underway outside the walls. We have much to see to."
"Then let us see to it," Gandalf replied. "You are with us, Tíniel?"
"Of course," she replied, trying to refocus. But Anita laid a hand on her arm.
"Before you go," she said quietly, "see to the boy you sent to get the roots. He has been weeping all this time."
Tíniel hesitated, but then nodded to Gandalf and Imrahil. "I will see you there."
Mugura was huddled under a tree in the gardens, his knees hugged to his chest. She knelt beside him and placed her hand on his bowed head.
"Mugura," she said gently. "You have brought honour to yourself with your deeds."
He jerked away from her touch, his head coming up. She could see in the dark that his eyes were wet.
"I am not worthy to be spoken to any longer, Khondyë," he replied, his voice cracking. "There was only dishonour in what I did down there."
"You saved lives, at great risk to your own," she said firmly. "What dishonour is there in that?"
A shudder ran through his body, and he beat a fist against his head in despair. "I told a lie, Tchakhura Khondyë!" he sobbed, the confession making him curl up tighter into himself.
"Oh," she whispered, sitting back on her heels. "Oh, my poor boy."
"I didn't know – I did not know what to do, and the man was asking me questions, and I just…" he squeezed his eyes shut.
Tíniel watched him helplessly. There was nothing she could think of to say that would make it better.
"I am a khaviga," she said quietly. "And yet our people still follow me."
"You betrayed three times," he said brokenly, looking up. "But have you ever told a lie?"
She hesitated, and for him that was answer enough. His tears started afresh and he buried his face in his hands. "The worst of it, Khondyë, was that it was so… so easy."
Tíniel moved closer and gripped his shoulders, forcing him to look up at her. "Mugura, we are in war," she said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried authority. "The sun has gone dark. Enemies have become friends. A khaviga is a Khondyë. There is no time to ponder our choices now, we must act. So I order you, boy, to do your duty. You are needed as a translator, and I will not have you hiding and weeping and shirking your responsibility."
A slightly guilty look crept into his eyes, but Tíniel supposed it was better than tears.
"In the meantime," she added, "know that I forgive you."
The guilty look was replaced by a tinge of relief, and Tíniel clapped him on the shoulder. "I have to go. Watch over our sick for me!"
The sky above them was as dark as night, though it was in fact the middle of the day. Aragorn looked glumly up at where the sun should have been. The only hint of its presence was a slight lightening in the gloom.
The crew of the Haedannen had been dispersed among the fleet so that there was someone on each boat who actually knew how to sail. They had been making much better time, but Aragorn still feared they would be too late.
"Mighty disheartening, isn't it?" the pirate called Harûk said, sauntering over to join him at the hull of the ship. "The sky being like that makes me start to wonder what we're sailing into."
Aragorn shot him a puzzled look. "One would think you would have considered that before you came."
"Oh no," Harûk replied breezily. "I never think too hard about what I'm doing. Having plans takes the fun out of life."
Aragorn shook his head somewhat disbelievingly and turned back to face the banks of the Anduin. "You're a strange lot. How did you all come together?"
"We were hired," Harûk said. "Not all of us have shiny swords like you, and we have to work to buy them."
"But in your line of work there wasn't much money."
"True," Harûk admitted. His face turned semi-serious as he considered it. "But there was a place to hide from whatever we are running from."
Aragorn considered this. He supposed it was the real reason why Tíniel had spent so much time with them.
"Where are you from?" he asked the other man, curious. "I can't place your accent."
"But you can place the blackness of my skin," Harûk answered cheerfully. "I am from nowhere, really. But I was born deep down South, in the deserts of Far Harad. Hotter suns there than you've ever seen, white man. I left that place long ago. I've been at sea since I reached my ninth summer."
"That is a young age to leave your home."
"Bah. Everyone thinks they're too young, too old, too weak for something until they have to do it. Then they just do it," Harûk said. He leaned back on his elbows and faced the crew.
"See that man there? He's come far. He's an Easterling. That man, Jako, comes from a tribe near my own. Mahaya is from Eastern Harad, near Khand. Grimbold is our token Northman."
The man he pointed at looked up from his whittling. "What are you saying, Harûk?" he snapped.
"I was talking about you, not to you, Grimbold," Harûk returned with a grin. Aragorn heard Mahaya sigh at the exchange.
"You said your captain was missing, though?" Aragorn asked.
"Aye. We heard the rumours of the East Queen, and it was he who made the connection to our Tíniel. But when we wanted to go help her…" he shrugged. "Cold feet, I suppose. Remuil always liked the sea better than the land, so he stayed behind."
"An Elvish name," Aragorn mused.
"If you say so," Harûk said. "Have you ever seen her?"
"Hm?"
"Tíniel. The East Queen. Have you crossed paths with her?"
Aragorn hesitated. "Yes. She is a friend."
I love you.
The last words he'd spoken to her in the doom dream they'd shared echoed through his mind. He hadn't dreamed of her since then, and something constricted in his chest. He wondered if she was alright, if she was alive.
"She was a friend to me too," Harûk said, a smile twitching his lips and his gaze far away. "One of the best. She would argue like anything, aye, but she was fun, you know? I missed her when she was taken."
"She seems to leave people missing her wherever she goes," Aragorn agreed, and Harûk chuckled.
"Sounds like her, sure enough. None of this lot can match her for a laugh. Mahaya will talk, but, by the great blue whale, he is the most boring man that ever sailed the sea. Grimbold is a right pain in the –"
"You shut your mouth, Harûk, or I shall do it for you," Grimbold growled.
"She could fight too, as well as a man," Harûk went on, barely pausing. "You know how the Khandi women are, and she is the best among them. She once –"
"Stars, by the way you talk about her, it sounds as though you are in love," the man called Jako grumbled. "Can we please have just a minute of quiet before we go and die for a bunch of Northmen?"
"Just because you fancied her," Harûk shot back.
Grimbold snorted, looking up from his half-carved bear. "That's true enough. Remember when you tried to seduce her, and she put you in your place?"
"Remember when she bested you in a duel three times in a row, all within five minutes?" Jako retorted.
Harûk burst out laughing at the memory, slapping his hand on the hull. Grimbold scowled.
"Don't act as though she never beat you, Harûk. What happened that time? The deck was slippery where you were standing?"
Jako and a few others of the Haedannen snickered, and the smile slid off Harûk's face. 'It was no story, Grimbold. Mahaya agreed that there was tar on the deck!"
Mahaya shook his head. "Leave me out of it," he said, holding up his hands.
Halbarad sidled up to stand with Aragorn as the argument gathered momentum around them.
"I only met her once, but she seemed much too serious to have survived living among men like these," he commented.
Aragorn couldn't help but smile. "She would have been fine," he said. "She has a sharp wit, when times are easier. She can make anyone laugh."
Halbarad's lips twitched. "By the way you talk about her, it sounds as though you are in love," he said, repeating Jako's words from earlier.
The smile slid from Aragorn's face. "Shut up," he said. "Go and sharpen your sword or something. Go and fight with Harûk."
The pirate's head turned at the sound of his name, and his face was bright and eager. "Does someone want to duel me?" he asked hopefully.
Halbarad glared at Aragorn, but then stepped forward and bowed slightly. "It would be my honour."
Aragorn turned back and watched the shore slide past. The time could not pass quickly enough.
Tíniel stood at the wall with Gandalf, Lord Hirluin of Pinnath Gelin, Lord Dervorin and one of his skinny sons, and Prince Imrahil.
It was well into the night, and the blackness was almost impenetrable. But from the sounds drifting up from the plain below, Tíniel could guess at the sight that would greet them come morning. Her chest felt tight, and it felt like there was something heavy on her shoulders.
"There must be thousands of them there," Dervorin's son said, his face pale in the torchlight. Tíniel made no answer, and neither did the other men. There was nothing they could say.
"Any news from Rohan?" Hirluin asked. "Will they come?"
Again, Tíniel hesitated, meeting Imrahil's eyes.
"They would be foolish to," she said finally.
"I heard there was an army of them marching as we speak," Dervorin's son said desperately. "And with each Rider, a Halfling behind him on his horse."
"A likely tale," Gandalf snorted.
"We need to organise our defence," Imrahil added quickly, before the conversation could devolve further. "Do we have archers? Missiles?"
"We have rocks," Dervorin said, "and the city has trebuchets. They will be effective."
"I have five hundred bowmen," Hirluin offered. "We will man the walls."
"We need to make sure the first circle at least is cleared of anyone who is not fighting," Tíniel said. "That's where they'll hit first."
Hirluin snorted. "There is no way that anything they launch at us it getting over this wall," he said disparagingly. Tíniel raised an eyebrow, and Gandalf gave him a look that would wither a rose.
Fortunately for Hirluin, their conversation was interrupted.
"Tíniel!" Hirgon cried, jogging up to them and bowing. "I mean, my lady! The party to Rohan has returned!"
Tíniel drew in a sharp breath. "You mean Ingold and his men?"
"Yes," he puffed. "I went all the way up to the Steward to report it, but he didn't respond, and I didn't know who to tell, so I thought I would find you, but you're all the way down here…"
"Calm down," she said, placing her hand on his shoulder. "My lords, this is Hirgon, Denethor's errand-runner." She turned back to him. "Report anything further to us now, not the Steward. Where are they now?"
"They were in the Houses of Healing, lady."
"Well done, Hirgon," she said, and turned to Imrahil. "We should go. The news might not be good, but if there is any chance at all that Rohan will come, we should know."
"There is no chance that Rohan will come," Ingold told them tiredly.
"Did you meet them?" Tíniel asked desperately. "Did you see anyone?"
"We saw not a soul," Ingold replied. "We were hardly on the road, for fear of being found by orcs or Southrons. The land is crawling with them."
"Is there no hope that they will ride to our rescue?" Gandalf asked. "Théoden was preparing a muster last we saw him."
"They will not come now," Ingold replied, shooting a fearful glance in the direction of the plains. "It is too late."
"But… we need them," Imrahil said bleakly.
"We need an army ten times the size of what we've got," Tíniel said. "We need ten mumakil and a dragon. But we don't have them, so let's not cry over them."
"Well said," Gandalf said. "Now, we have work to do."
The next day dawn as they had expected it too – in darkness. But the dull greyness that the sun brought with it was just enough to reveal the Pelennor Fields before the walls of the White City.
As far as the eye could see, there was a moving, howling, shrieking mass of bodies. It seemed that Sauron had sent all the armies of Mordor to face them, and Tíniel feared – even felt – that they would be too much. There was something in the air, something pushing down on her shoulders, something that tasted bitterly familiar. There was doom in the air, and she knew that today she would lose something.
"What are they waiting for?" Tcharum muttered beside her. She glanced at him. He was dressed in his full leather armour, his mithiri on his hip and his two vokhu sheathed on his back. Around his face was wrapped a new vadi, cut from the dark blue cloth that Tíniel had stolen with Anita.
"Thank you, brother," she said quietly.
He looked down at her. "For what?"
"Everything," she replied. "I am a khaviga and you took me back. You led the bamyë when I was gone. You defended me to Vadrë, held me when I cried. You are the best brother I could have wished for."
Tcharum watched her closely, his face grave and his brows creased. He took one of her hands in his.
"Remember what Vadrë always told us about battles like this?" he asked. "If you think you are going to die, you will die, he said. Do you think you are going to die, Tchakhura?"
She hesitated, seeing the spark of fear behind his dark brown eyes.
"It isn't something I think, brother," she said quietly. "It's something I know. Something will happen to me today, and it won't be good."
Tcharum stared at her, wide-eyed. A single tear spilled down his cheek, and he pulled her into a crushing hug.
"Then I love you, sister."
"I love you too, Tcharum."
They stood unmoving for a moment, and Tíniel could feel Tcharum's great frame trembling ever so slightly. She squeezed her eyes shut and held him tighter.
"If I die and you live, take the hamarakhi," she whispered. "Take a wife, and take the bamyë far away from all of this. Have children. Find somewhere to live in peace."
"If we lose this war," he said, "there will be no peace."
She released him and brushed the tear track from his cheek. "Then we must win."
It didn't take long for it to begin. The soldiers in the City could tell the attack was coming, because the howls and shouted insults from below had morphed into a growl of anticipation. But that didn't mean they were ready for what came.
Without warning, dozens of trebuchets were fired. Huge rocks and smaller boulders were flung at the City walls, sailing through the air like unearthly birds.
"They won't clear the outer wall," Lord Hirluin said nervously, gripping his sword. "It's impossible. Impossible."
He was almost right; the smaller boulders came first, and they clattered and crashed against the stone exterior of the wall. But then the larger ones came, stones that could only have been lifted by trolls, and by some magic, they made it into the first circle.
"Damn it all," Gandalf muttered.
"Watch out!" Imrahil bellowed, and Tíniel gritted her teeth as men were tossed aside and crushed like nothing more than beetles. The boulders all rolled to a stop, ugly lumps of red-stained grey among the white. There was an eerie quiet.
"What next?" Lord Dervorin murmured.
He was answered when the enemy launched a new kind of missile into the air. They looked like smaller rocks, but they were strangely shaped, strangely coloured…
They began to fall in the first circle, and Tíniel quickly ducked to avoid being hit by one, and she glanced down to see it as it rolled to a stop. There was hair, eyes, an open mouth, pallid skin, blood everywhere…
"Heads," she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. "They're heads."
They were white-skinned and grey-eyed, the heads of Gondorian prisoners that the enemy had taken. Cries of horror and despair rang out across the walls. Courage in the face of flying stone was one thing, but this was another.
"They are cruel," shouted Imrahil. "No matter! We are strong!"
There was a rumble of agreement, but Tíniel didn't join in.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing into the black mass below them. Something huge was being pushed toward them.
Gandalf tightened his grip on his staff. "A battering ram," he said. "The siege will not last long. The battle will begin."
Aragorn stood grimly at the helm of the ship.
"Almost there," Halbarad said quietly. "Are you ready?"
"I can't be," Aragorn replied tightly. "We do not know what we will find when we arrive. A battle? A city already sacked and burning? Minas Tirith in peace?"
"I think we can cross that last option off," Halbarad said darkly. "Look over yonder."
Aragorn looked, and his throat tightened. The land was covered in the darkness that had spewed from Mordor, but on the horizon, there was a dull orange light.
"Fire?" he breathed. "Have they lit the city on fire?"
"We will find out soon enough," Halbarad said.
A thousand apologies for the lateness of this chapter. I am exhausted and slightly relocated, but the fires appear to have burnt themselves out for now. Time to go back to the crippling drought!
Thank you all for the reviews – and never fear: lots of action will be coming up very, very soon.
See you soon...
S
