Chapter 120

On the Unreliability of Memory

So, there you have it. After so many efforts and my very many lamentations that no good change ever happened unless we worked our socks off for it, I managed to change this thing through sheer negligence. Don't think the irony of that is quite lost on me. The longer I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed to me. Then again, that is this whole war in a nutshell, so perhaps I should not be so surprised.

The arrival of the dead turned the tide of the battle in our favour. That did not mean that it was all over within minutes. Mordor had brought the numbers. Killing all of said numbers took time, even for an army of dead men who did not get hurt or out of breath. The more sensible enemies made sure to get the hell out of this place as fast as they could, because this they knew they could not win. There is no bravery in trying to beat something that cannot be killed.

Some of these deserters got clear, but most of them did not. The dead and indeed the living had no reservations whatsoever about killing off anything that owed allegiance to Sauron. No quarter was given. It was a slaughter.

I stood in my tower and filmed it all, as I had done at Helm's Deep. I was mostly just very relieved that it was all over, that this battle had been fought and won. The people I cared most about had made it through it in one piece, more or less. I looked for them and found Gandalf on Shadowfax, waving about with Glamdring and his staff both, right there where the fighting was thickest. Boromir was easy to locate on Teddy, still mowing down the orcs by the dozen at a time. Théodred, Éowyn and Merry took me longer to locate and for a time I feared they might all have been trampled in the confusion. I only noticed them when they stumbled through the gates and Faramir pointed them out to me.

They looked really bad.

Théodred was moving under his own steam, but only just. He moved like a man who had been clobbered over the head and now no longer had any idea where he was or where he was going, but who was still moving. It was a case of one cripple leading another, because he was half supporting, half carrying Merry, who was even more out of it. Behind them came a man Beth never met, and he was carrying Éowyn, who was out of the game entirely. I knew that she still lived – or that she should still live at any rate – but from a distance she looked very much dead.

I wondered if I had looked like that after my run-in with a Nazgûl and suddenly understood all the fuss that had been made over me.

They were spirited away and I didn't see them again for some time. I was still in my tower, filming, until at last the sun began to set and Faramir deemed it safe enough for us to leave the city…

Beth

As in Edoras, the smell was the first thing that hit her when Beth stepped through the gates on the second level and emerged onto the first. It was the smell of burning. Wood, people, anything else even remotely flammable. It had all gone up when the Enemy started chucking fireballs on it. Nobody had the time to go and put it all out, so it had burned merrily on until the flames ran out of fuel. Now the stench was everywhere.

Many of the houses were in ruins, thanks to the bombardment, but very few had actually burned down. This was not Edoras, where most things were built of wood. This was Minas Tirith. This was built to last. Doors had burnt to a crisp, furniture and shutters and plant boxes had turned to ash. The structures still stood, blackened, but erect. If the projectiles the Enemy had chucked at them hadn't reduced them to rubble of course.

There is hope here still.

Yet she filmed it all, because as Boromir had said, someday someone needed to hold Sauron to account and this was the evidence. This needed to be recorded, because something like this should not just be forgotten. So Beth steeled herself and filmed white brick turned black and brittle, she filmed the broken bodies and the puddles of blood and somehow she managed to do all that without bringing up all the food she had eaten in the past twenty-four hours.

Hold on, did I even eat at all?

The question took her far too long to answer. She had been taking sips of water and she thought she might have nibbled on something every once in a while, but the memory of that was a little unclear. The fact that her memory was so foggy might also mean that it had been far too long since she slept.

I'm going to find my husband and then we're going to bed, she resolved. Of course the most exciting thing that's happening there is that we'll sleep for a week. At this point she was almost beginning to think that the universe was conspiring against them spending any time together. Yes, here come the fanciful notions. Definitely time for sleep.

But she had not come here in search of sleep. She had come in search of the man she married, who had hurled himself headlong into danger for almost two entire days. Yes, today he had been sitting on Teddy's back, leading that charge. He would have been safe then. But he had fought before. Was he hurt? Was he going to be all right? Almost to her own surprise she yearned to hold him and reassure herself that he really was okay.

The journey through the lowest level of the city was slow-going. Many times they found their path obstructed by rubble in the streets. Faramir knew a number of shortcuts, but many of those were unusable as well.

This will take years to rebuild.

In the end it took them nearly an hour to make it to the gates. There was not a lot left of them. The left one had been beaten off its hinges entirely. It lay on the ground, bent and splintered. The other one was still on its hinges, but so badly mangled as to be almost unrecognisable as having ever been a gate at all. There was also decidedly less of it than there had been before the battle.

Here they also found more bodies, many of whom were also barely recognisable as such. Beth's little group had to watch where they placed their feet to avoid stepping in puddles of blood or pieces of human. Beth let her camera look down for her and tried desperately not to see.

It did not work.

People were torn apart where they lay. She almost stood on an arm that was no longer attached to any body that she could see. Moments later she almost stumbled over the body of a man who had been ripped in two. Orcs were not squeamish, and it very much looked like this had been done with bare hands.

I hope you burn in bloody hell, you bastard!

What a waste. What an absolute bloody waste of people. She had been horrified before, almost numb and overwhelmed, but now the anger put in an appearance at last. These were men who had fought to the last, who had done their duty, who had taken up arms against such overwhelming odds and who had given their lives so that their people may live. The orcs had no such noble motives. They had the numbers and the cruelty, but none of the dutiful courage of these men.

Rest in peace, she thought.

Then she was out of the gates and onto the fields of slaughter, where bodies lay piled up waist-high. She would have taken a deep breath to steady her nerves, but that was not a good idea here. The stench was omnipresent. There was no escaping it. Orcs and men lay where they had fallen. No one had yet got round to separating them.

We should. Just the thought that the men who had fought for their people would rest side by side with the creatures who had tried to destroy it all was abhorrent. If she already felt so strongly about this, how much more intense would it be for the people who lived here?

'There he is,' Faramir said.

So he was. Teddy was not so far away and yes, Boromir was next to the beast petting it almost affectionally on the paw. He was covered from top to toe in blood, but most of it appeared to be black, not red. He was standing on his own two feet, with no sign that he was about to drop and not get back up again.

He's alive. He's well.

For a moment at least she forgot all else. She forgot that she had a camera in her hands, she forgot that there were rules of decorum to observe. She ran at her husband, who saw her before she was even halfway, which was a good thing, because that way she could just run into his arms.

He's alive.

Having said that, he stank to high heaven, but Beth found she was not that bothered by it all of a sudden. War had a remarkable way to shift one's priorities to the things that really mattered. Personal hygiene, while still important, was not nearly as important as having her living husband in her arms.

He's alive.

So she clung to him and he to her. For just a few precious moments the world fell away and it was just the two of them, standing in the middle of the place where so many had died, living and breathing.

We made it.

We made it.

It was not the end. Beth knew this better than anyone else on the field here except perhaps for Boromir himself. There was another battle to come and she could lose him just as easily there as she could have here. But that was not yet. Right now they stood up to their knees in blood and mud, alive when so many others weren't.

'I did what you asked,' she told him when they at last let go.

'I did what was needed,' he said in return.

'And we are alive because of it.'

Which was more than could be said for the army Aragorn had brought with him. Now that she at last really looked around her, there was no escaping the dead. They flitted to and fro across the field, looking for Enemy survivors and dealing with them before they could become a problem.

Now that she was out on the field at last she got a good look at them. Up close they were see-through, but with greenish tinges to the see-through bits. If she came close enough to one – not something she did deliberately, mind – then their features were still very clear and well-defined. Over there was one who in life had his nose broken and badly set. Next to him was a fellow with disproportionately large ears. They had the remains of their clothes around them and some wore armour, as they might have done when they were alive. When they were too cowardly to actually go out and put it to good use.

'They will not harm you,' Boromir said.

'I know that.' It doesn't mean she had to feel at ease with them around. But with so many dead people around, it seemed wiser to keep that thought to herself.

Boromir turned to embrace his brother, which gave Beth the time to look for Aragorn. She hadn't seen him yet for all the dead around him and at this point she was beginning to wonder if he'd tread the Paths of the Dead alone or if he'd had the Grey Company with him, as the book described.

It was an exercise in futility; there were so many people milling about the place that she couldn't make out who was with who anyway. Uniforms were not really a thing here and even if they had been, it wouldn't have made a difference. Everyone who had fought was covered in blood and mud and other unidentifiable bits. Only the shapes gave away that they were people at all.

She did however see some of the elves that had fought at Helm's Deep. They stood out to her a first because they were not nearly as filthy as the other people on the field. She hadn't seen them arrive with the Rohirrim, but truth be told, she had not been able to make out faces anyway.

Aragorn appeared while her back was turned. Blood stained his clothes as well, but not nearly so much as Boromir's, who had been in the thick of the fighting. Beth had a sneaking suspicion that most of the fighting was already done when Aragorn disembarked at last.

'It is good to see you alive,' he said.

'You too,' Beth replied. 'Then again, it's not much of a surprise.' She looked around. 'You have been busy since the last time we saw each other.'

'I have done as you asked.'

Beth bit her lip. 'Well, ehm, about that.'

Eyebrows were raised.

Boromir snaked an arm around her waist and joined the conversation. 'I am impressed that you brought them here.'

'So was I,' Beth admitted.

'You told me to go and walk the Paths,' Aragorn said, frown in his forehead.

'Yes, I did,' Beth agreed. Come to think of it, her instruction had been sadly lacking lately. 'And it's really not your fault, you know. It's just that I was not trained to be an advisor. Gandalf basically recruited me and I had to learn on the job.' This really was not her fault, come to think of it.

'Did I do wrong?'

This question she could answer immediately. 'No. No, you didn't do anything wrong. I think that perhaps it's the book that's gone wrong here. It says that you would use this army to wreak havoc on the Corsairs, that you then take their ships to transport the reinforcements and dismiss them, which really doesn't make a lick of sense, because look at all the difference that their presence made here!' She made a wide arm gesture meant to encompass the entire area from Minas Tirith to Osgiliath. 'This is a good thing.'

Aragorn blinked.

After a short silence Boromir began to laugh. 'You mean that you forgot?'

The whole thing was so absurd that she laughed too. 'Well, yes.'

Aragorn's face, if pictured and framed, would have won prizes. Throughout their journey he was the one who usually took the book's text as the gospel – and aren't you glad now that you've never given him the book to read? – and clung to it despite its unreliability. He'd been protesting Beth's notion that he should go and walk the Paths of the Dead until she told him it was book stuff and it would all be fine.

Now here he was, breaking away from the text all by himself.

'You're welcome,' she said. 'Honestly, Aragorn, this is great. Do you have any idea how many more people would have died here if you hadn't brought them along? Yes, we would still have won, but it would have taken longer and in that time, lots of people would have died. And now they live.'

Still, far too many people had died. There was no escaping that fact. An entire generation had spilled their blood in defence of their lands. They are the Lost Generation of their time, Beth thought. Those that lived were in many cases maimed for life. Even those that had no physical marks on them would never forget it. They were scarred in different ways.

Yet their spirit was not entirely broken. They still dragged themselves up off the ground and put in the work to help those that couldn't move under their own steam to safety and help.

Aragorn looked around him, pensive. 'This is why Gandalf brought you here,' he said.

'Well, no, but…'

Her feeble protests fell on deaf ears. No one was listening anyway, because there was a dead man standing before them. Beth had not seen where he was coming from and she didn't think Boromir had either; he was startled just the same as she was.

Unlike the other dead people, this one came close, far too close for comfort. He had a ghostly sword in his hand, but Beth had seen those weapons do a ton of damage to the orcs, so she knew better than to believe that she could not be hurt by that. And this guy did not look particularly happy.

'We have fulfilled our oaths,' he told Aragorn. For someone who was apparently heavily dependent on Aragorn to get what he wanted, there was very little humility in him.

Aragorn took it calmly. 'You have,' he said.

He had not spoken loudly, but a lot of dead people had heard him; without warning Beth, Boromir and Aragorn were practically boxed in by thousands upon thousands of the dead. They said nothing. They did nothing. They only stood and watched, but the air was almost crackling with anticipation. Beth remembered that she had a camera in her hand and discreetly brought it up so that she could capture the moment for posterity.

'Release us!' the dead man demanded. He did not ask nicely.

All sounds were hushed here. For the first time in days Beth heard nothing but her own breathing. There were no other sounds.

It lasted a moment.

It lasted an eternity.

At long last Aragorn spoke and when he did, his voice rang out strong and clear: 'You have fought well and fulfilled your oaths. Your debt is paid. Be at peace!'

Nothing spectacular happened. There was no flash of light. There was no solemn booming sound. There was not even a small pop when they went. They simply went. They faded into nothingness, melted into thin air before her eyes. If she had blinked during the process, she might have missed it.

She didn't.

One moment they were surrounded, the next they were still surrounded, but then by living men. Beth and Boromir stood half behind Aragorn, but that did nothing to impair her vision as a battlefield full of bloodied and weary men went down on their knees before their new King.

Thráin

'We must rest.'

Thráin loathed having to be the one to ask for it, but his feet would carry him no further. He'd only had the Ring for an hour, but already he had no strength left to give. The Ring sapped his resistance and his endurance until he had no reserves left and it was so very, very heavy. It had been heavy before, but never like this. To his shame he needed the support Gimli and Sam offered. He had one hand on Sam's shoulder and another on Gimli's. Between them they almost carried him.

Legolas, who led them, took one look at them and nodded. 'The day is ending,' he said. 'There is a hollow in the land just beyond the next ridge. We may rest there tonight.'

Thráin wished he had enough strength left to voice a reply, but all he could manage was a tired nod of the head. His feet dragged the last few paces to their makeshift shelter and there he dropped. Even without looking he knew that while the bandages around his neck had done a little to help him, they had not quite done enough. The skin was raw and quite possibly broken.

'The sticks,' he requested once they all sat.

Sam handed them to him without question.

He barely had the strength to hold them out to his friends and companions. They made it easier on him by taking one quickly. Legolas drew the shortest one. That was ill news. Legolas's senses were unmissable in this hostile land, so the Ring took great pleasure in corrupting them and playing tricks on his eyes.

Maker be good, this is a fool's errand.

Never before had he entertained such doubts. Yet here he was, in the Enemy's land with the Enemy's weapon, closer to their goal than they had been before, but somehow the end goal had never looked that undoable before. The Ring had never been so heavy. It had never been so powerful. And although the Fellowship had often trod the loneliest roads, they had never been so far away from help.

He closed his eyes.

Legolas took the Ring from him and the weight lessened. It was as though a Mûmak sat on his chest, preventing him from breathing. Now that the Ring was gone, so too was the weight. It lifted from his mind as well. It took the hopelessness and despair. They were not gone in their entirety, but rational thought reasserted itself.

'Beware of what it does to your mind,' he told Legolas. 'It speaks only poison and despair.'

The elf's eyes were solemn as he nodded his acknowledgement. 'It has grown stronger in recent days.'

It had grown much stronger. Never, not even with all his book knowledge, could he have predicted this.

'Rest tonight,' he counselled Legolas. 'We shall need your eyes again tomorrow.'

His strength returned to him. After a few sips of water and a few bites of lembas, he felt much restored. His neck still hurt, but that was only to be expected. Sam shot him a worried look, but Thráin nodded.

'I am well, Sam,' he said. 'It is only the Ring that does this.'

As it had to Gimli. As it had to every member of this Fellowship who had carried it today. They all had borne it at some point during the day and all of them had come out of it much the worse. It was in this that the despair found its roots. If it could hinder them so much during one day, then what could it do over the course of another week or more? By now Thráin was thoroughly cured of his delusion that he could shave some time off their journey through Mordor. They travelled as fast as they could, but it was not enough.

When all is said and done, what will be left of us?

'Gimli, keep watch,' he ordered. 'I shall go and see if there is a water supply nearby that may yet be of use to us.' If he were to resign himself to being here for more days than he had hoped for, they'd need more water, because at present they went through their supplies at an alarming rate. The hot, dry air made it a choice between drinking or dying. Those who bore the Ring were weakened enough. It was senseless to weaken their bodies even further.

Lack of water and the Ring. Those were their chief enemies in these lands.

No one objected. He left them huddled together in their hollow. Legolas's gaze had turned inward within moments of putting on the Ring. Sam sat next to him, keeping a weather eye on his condition. Gimli on the other hand looked outward, beware of the dangers that could come from outside, hand on his axe.

It would have to do.

He made his way downhill. Within moments of walking he could no longer see his companions. These elvish cloaks had proven their worth many times over. They blended in with almost anything that they needed them to.

He looked for signs of water, but there was nothing to be had. Nothing grew here. The ground was barren. Everywhere he went he tasted ash and dust on his tongue. It got between his clothes and his skin as well until every last inch of him was raw and tender. If they were ever fortunate enough to leave this place alive, he was sure that he would not recognise himself if he looked in a mirror again.

They'd all lost weight. Armour that had been tight at the beginning of the quest was now loose. His belt was running out of holes; he'd had to tighten it again this morning to hold his trousers up sufficiently. He could see little of the change in himself, but he saw much of it in the others. Sam and Frodo had become thin recently. It was both startling and alarming to see it. Frodo's face looked almost hollow these days. Legolas and Gimli bore it better than the hobbits, but they too had lost weight.

All this is to the Ring's advantage.

So he continued his quest for water, but found none. At last he sat down on a rock and looked out over the land. In the distance he saw Barad-dûr. It could be seen far and wide. The same was true for Mount Doom, but distance was as deceptive as everything else in this land. They were many miles removed from it yet.

'That is our destination.'

Frodo moved so quietly that Thráin only heard him when he spoke.

'Yes,' he said. 'That is our destination.'

Frodo sat down next to him. 'Will we make it there?' he asked.

It was a question Thráin had so often asked himself of late. The truth was that he was no longer certain of his own answer. At the beginning he'd had such hopes. Beth's book had offered him many, though it warned him that the road would not be an easy one. As time dragged on he had come to see the reassurances of the text for the falsehoods that they were. The Ring was much stronger. It worked hard against them and their courage was failing. The fact that Frodo asked the question now spoke volumes.

'It is easy to lose hope in this land,' he said. 'And I cannot trust my own mind.' Perhaps it was too soon after he had the Ring. Try as he might, he could see no way in which they fulfilled their quest and yet lived to tell the tale. He still believed that they could destroy the Ring – if he did not, he might as well give up now – but the belief that they might survive was shrinking day by day. Soon there would be nothing left of it.

Frodo accepted this in silence.

They sat for a while and looked out over the desolate landscape. Sauron had chosen his place of residence well. Even if someone conceived the idea to destroy his Ring, they had to cross this land. It drained everything. Thráin was no longer certain if it was Sauron's doing or the Ring's that made him lose heart. It might even be the land itself.

'You always had faith,' Frodo observed. It almost sounded like an accusation.

Thráin said nothing.

So Frodo carried on: 'Sam is very wise. He says that we should carry each other when the load is too heavy. And that load is not just the Ring.'

It warmed his heart to hear Frodo speak in this manner. For some time he had feared that Frodo would fall, but that at least he feared no longer. He had recovered so much better than he had even dared to hope. Perhaps there was hope in that.

'Thank you,' he said, putting a hand on Frodo's shoulder. 'It is not just Sam who has been blessed with wisdom in this Fellowship.'

'Indeed,' said Frodo, though it seemed safe to assume that he was not patting himself on the back.

'How have you been of late?' Thráin asked. It had been some time since they had spoken. There had never been time. Yet that had not stopped him from wondering. A change had come over Frodo some time between leaving the Dead Marshes and their departure from Osgiliath. Thráin had been too caught up in his own missions to pay much attention to the how and why of it then, but he would like to know now.

Frodo thought about this for a moment. 'Better, I think,' he answered.

'I have seen it,' Thráin agreed.

'Yet I almost fell,' said the hobbit. 'In the Marshes, I was close.'

He had seen that too. It had worried him deeply then. 'What changed?'

This answer too took some time. 'It was your doing, if you would know. You reminded me of what I would become if I fell.'

Thráin remembered the incident. At least some good came of that, he thought. That had also been the incident that had sent Gollum into the arms of the Enemy, so he had bitterly regretted not watching his tongue more than he had.

Frodo was not yet done: 'And then I saw what it did to you when you put it on your finger.'

Thráin chuckled. 'Not my finest moment.'

'It was.' Frodo's contradiction was immediate and without hesitation. 'You saved lives. It opened my eyes to what the Ring was. It did to you what it did to me and if even you could not withstand that alone, then I most certainly could not. And so my mind was saved.'

From what Thráin had seen of Frodo since then, it had not been in danger ever since. Frodo knew his mind. Yes, the Ring spoke to him. It whispered. Frodo heard it better than any of the others too, but he was no longer at risk, not in that way. This was one of the things where the book was wrong and Thráin rejoiced in it.

'And my mind is calmer because of it,' he said. 'What of your shoulder? I recall that it pained you at times.'

'It pains me still.' He rubbed it almost absent-mindedly when he spoke of it. 'I don't think it will ever fully heal, certainly not here in Mordor. Do you believe that we shall ever leave it again?'

Honesty was the best policy he had. 'There is hope still,' he said, 'though it is shrinking. If Beth yet lives she will send us help when we need it most.' At the very least she would urge Gandalf to send the help. He had seen no proof the wizard's revival, but he must have faith that the book could not have it so far wrong, not in something this important. 'So yes, I have hope still, even though it dwindles.'

Frodo pondered that for a while in silence. They sat side by side and looked out over the barren land. Once Sauron's hold on it was broken, even here things might grow and live again. And therein will our true victory lie, in reclaiming all that was tainted by Shadow. If we still live and thrive, we will have achieved true victory.

But it may not be for him.

It may not be for this Fellowship.

'I should like to see the Shire again,' Frodo said at last. 'When I lived there, I always longed to leave and see the world. Now that I have seen it, I only want to go home.'

Thráin understood. It was not just the longing to leave this place, it was the longing to see that which they had left behind. He did not cling to Erebor as Frodo did to the Shire, but it had been too long since he had seen his kin. He clung to them. If you were home more, Cathy had said when they both left home. She had not finished that sentence. He wondered how it had been meant to end.

'I should like to see my kin again,' he said. 'It has been too long.' And of late he wondered if any of them would still live when he returned. They would have gone off to fight. Everyone knew that not all the warriors returned from the battlefield. He sent a quick prayer to the Maker to keep his kith and kin from harm; his brothers, his uncles, kindly Lufur and even Elvaethor, who was not one of his children, but dear to Thráin despite of it.

'I should like to drink tea again,' said Frodo.

Thráin chuckled. 'I wouldn't turn down a decent meal with roasted meat,' he returned.

'Strawberries,' said Frodo.

'Books and old maps.'

'Birds in springtime.'

'The sound of hammer on anvils.'

'Fresh air and running water.'

'Cool mountain halls.'

'Leaves on the trees and grass beneath my feet.'

'Khazad-dûm.'

The last one slipped out unbidden, but it was not untrue. With so many other things on his mind it had been some time since he thought about it, but it was never far away. Khazad-dûm was where he was meant to be. It was the one place in the world that called him back, the one place in the world where he should like to dwell for the rest of his days. It was where his restlessness had ceased.

He recalled now that a long time ago, he had told Bilbo Baggins that the restlessness was not strange to dwarves, because Durin the Deathless had wandered for many years before he at last came to rest at Khazad-dûm. He had not then followed that thought to its logical conclusion.

Frodo looked at him. 'You will be its King if we survive.'

All those years he had outrun responsibilities and leadership, but they had found him in the end. And if his people were to thrive, it was not for him to run again. He was not even entirely sure that he wanted to. For that reason he would fight for survival.

'Aye,' he said. 'You ought to come and visit me there sometime.' He rose to his feet. 'Come, we should re-join the others.' He reached out a hand and helped Frodo back to his feet.

Nothing more was said, but Thráin felt calmer for having spoken of it.


Next time: Cathy has to be the bearer of bad news. Meanwhile Elvaethor, Tauriel and Dáin reach their destination.

This week there will be a Thursday update, so keep an eye out for that. Everything is about to kick off…

Thank you so much for reading. Reviews would be much appreciated, as always.

Until Thursday!