Chapter 5

Aragorn straightened in his saddle, ineffectively trying to shift his posture and find a less strenuous position. The ride was already wearing on him and his men. They had stopped only once, briefly, to rest the horses and quench their own thirst before mounting again to ride on.

The midday sun was only now reaching its peak and they still had many hours at their disposal, but also still many leagues to cover. Ahead of them the crossing of the Erui was just about to come into view, the small stream that came down from the White Mountains seemed a raging river here, impassable, but it would level to a ford a little further …

What was that?

Dense smoke curled in the air on the horizon, drifting upwards in thick, billowing clouds. It formed a vast column, black and angry, and right ahead. Despite his mounting fatigue, he quickened his pace, knowing his men would match his speed.

As they came closer he saw what he had already feared to find. The source of the smoke was the way station: the stable and half of the supply building were ablaze in a raging, fiery inferno.

They rode into what had been the courtyard of the station but was now the epicenter of a pandemonium, all was chaos. Through watering eyes Aragorn looked around, trying to make sense of what he saw, trying to find someone, anyone who was in control of the situation. He dismounted, still looking left and right, but no one was ordering the stable hands desperately trying to round up the horses that had fled the burning stables. No one was coordinating the men and women running to the well to get water and throw meager bucketfuls at the blazing flames. Immediate, decisive action was needed.

"Egrahil!", Aragorn commanded. "Take half the men and whichever of the locals will stop in their panic to listen to you and arrange a bucket chain. We need a concerted effort if we are to stop the fire. Focus on the main house, the stables are lost."

He turned to Elladan. "Take the remaining men and try to round up the horses, please." He gestured for ten of his men to follow his brother, knowing that they might be wary of following the command of an elf. But Elladan would know better how to handle the frightened horses and he had little doubt that his men would follow his commands once he started giving them. His eldest brother commanded respect even from those who did not know him well.

Satisfied that his commands would be followed he set out to search for the overseer of this place. He grabbed one of the stable hands, who was running by with a bucket sloshing water. "The overseer?", he asked, but the man just shook his head.

"That is his wife," he pointed a shaking finger at a fair haired, soot-covered woman sitting at the edge of the courtyard, her face buried in her hands. Before he could continue his run towards the stable Aragorn turned the lad around and directed him to the bucket chain that Egrahil was setting up. "You will do more good there, the stables are lost."

He saw the terror stricken look on the youth's face and added gently, "Do not worry, it seems the horses escaped. They will return once the fires are put out."

Looking around once more to ascertain himself that the situation would be more or less under control soon, he made his way over to the woman the stable lad had indicated. As he got closer he could see that she held the unresponsive body of a man in her arms and was weeping openly. Her husband, Aragorn assumed, the master of the way station.

He was very clearly dead, a large wound on his side was barely bleeding anymore, most of the life-giving liquid already spent in a large puddle around him and his crying wife. His eyes stared unseeingly past his wife and unto the heavens above.

Kneeling down to her level, Aragorn approached her gently. "I am sorry for your loss, mistress. Can you tell me what happened here?"

Her sudden, fervious reaction caught him unawares. She grasped at him suddenly and clung to him as to a lifeline. "Why?" she demanded, though she did not seem to speak to him directly. "Why would he leave me? I gave up everything to be with him and he left me! Why!?" She demanded again and now she was looking at Aragorn, her tear-filled eyes damning him, as if he was to blame for her fate, the fate of her husband.

Something in her tear-stricken gaze struck him to the core and he hesitated even as the way station master's wife released her hold on him. The letter in his pocket suddenly felt uncomfortably heavy. His life, too, was filled with peril and dangers. How could he ask Arwen to bind herself to him, bind herself to Arda and choose a mortal life when he might not even promise her one that would be long and fulfilled? Any stray arrow, any combatant skilled or lucky enough, might cause his early demise, leaving Arwen alone and forsaken in a fate that she would never have chosen without him. Their love was more than the choice between him and her family, between mortality and undying life. He would be asking her to take a gamble, a risk much greater than what either of them could foresee. Did he even deserve her love when he expected her to make such a sacrifice?

"Why?" the distraught woman wailed again, repeating the single word, the single question over and over in a never-ending litany of despair. The sound cut through his distraction, his sudden melancholy and Aragorn shook his head to clear it of his own thoughts. There was much to think about, but now was not the time. He had to stem the fire, find horses and get to Pelargir.

He touched his chest again where the letter rested in the inside pocket of his tunic, just over his heart. Later, he would read her letter and order his thoughts, he promised himself. Trying to draw strength from the letter as he had done before, he found to his dismay that his mind was still too shaken to do so. He got up and drew a deep breath.

There was still a fire to take care of.

The wife of the overseer followed his movement, turning her unseeing, watery eyes on him. She appeared to see right through him still, seeing only the loss of her life's work, the stable in ruins and her house in flames. "No warning," she eventually mumbled, "there was no warning at all. They just burned it, the stable, the horses, everything."

"Who?" he asked, but the woman fell silent, cradling the body of her husband tight, heedless of the blood that soaked her hands, her face and her dress.

Knowing that he would get no answers here, Aragorn sighed and rose to his feet. He could ill afford this delay if they wanted to reach Pelargir, but he also could not leave these people to their misery.

He was grateful when Elladan approached, leading two frightened horses behind him. "Egrahil's men have the fire well in hand and we have rounded up what horses we could. But most have fled further afield, and all of them are terrified. Not many will be able or willing to carry a rider to Pelargir. If Elrohir were here he might be able to calm them more effectively, but all I managed was getting through to these two."

Aragorn sighed again but nodded his head in thanks. This unforeseen lack of horses complicated matters even further. He faced a difficult decision: should he spend the night here and wait for their horses to recover, or should he press on? Elladan's elven horse would manage the distance to Pelargir with ease and he could exchange his own steed for one of the two that Elladan had brought. Yet if they stayed, he could help contain the damage to the waystation, make sure the people here were taken care of.

He considered both options carefully, yet the longer he thought, the more he knew that he would have to move on. He could not delay bringing aid to Pelargir. Every minute lost might be measured in human lives and could give the corsairs the chance to withdraw beyond his reach, beyond Gondor's retaliation. Already the attack might well have come to an end, the town left in burning ruins, the corsairs gone once more.

Thick smoke still curled to the heavens from the wreckage of the stables, but Aragorn had made his decision.

"Egrahil!" he shouted. The wiry lieutenant wasted no time in joining him and Aragorn relaid his orders: "Find Anwion and tell him to take charge of the men here. Have them put out the fire and erect some shelter for the inhabitants, if they can. They will spend the night here and rest the horses then join us in Pelargir tomorrow. You, Lord Elladan and I will continue on, we have to reach the harbours by nightfall."

His orders were by no means popular, Egrahil himself would have protested if Aragorn had not expressly asked him to accompany him. For all the loyalty of his men they might have revolted if he had left with only his brother. He did the best he could to explain his reasoning and eventually his men relented, accepting his orders as he knew they would. They would see to the tasks he had appointed them.

After quickly changing saddles and gear of their horses, he, Elladan and Egrahil continued on towards Pelargir. Aragorn tried not to ponder the many questions left behind as they rode out of the way station courtyard and towards a wholly different fire.

-o0o-

Finally the sun had hidden itself behind Mount Mindolluin and the shady dusk of Minas Tirith had fallen. A cold breeze blew over the rim of the sixth level of the city as Elrohir made his way along the grey stone wall beneath the citadel, aiming for the simple passageway Aragorn had described to him and which he had tested once earlier today. It had been closed then but for once the grace of the Valar was with him: now it stood ajar. Glancing over his shoulders one last time to make sure he was alone he opened the door a bit wider and slid inside, silent as a wraith.

The inside of the tower base was dark and silent. High ceilings were reinforced with thick wooden beams, a bit of brown between the dark gray of the roughly hewn stone. Inside the main tower, the walls were painted in white, hung with rich tapestries and decorated with intricate carvings. No such splendour was visible on this servant's path.

Low voices, too faint to make out, drifted down from above, but there was no one in his immediate vicinity. Elrohir tried to reconcile the layout of the corridor he found himself in with Aragorn's hastily drawn map that he had memorized. Not three steps ahead of him was the second wall of the tower, the one that, to the tower's inhabitants, would look like the true outer wall. This corridor was wedged between those two walls, a hidden path for servants and guards. There was preciously little light trickling in from somewhere above, casting the corridor into a suppressive half-light. With a barely perceptible bend the corridor curved along the outside wall of the tower both to his right and to his left. At its either end was a steep staircase, leading downwards on the left and up on the right.

Elrohir turned right. According to Aragorn, the passageway would look like this on most levels, a short tunnel-like corridor with staircases at either end that wound back and forth along the eastern side of the tower. The nobility accepted that there were no windows opening to the East, presumably to keep out the Eastwind and the foul smell and feel it brought. The truth - the need for a hidden servants' passage - was much more mundane and much more practical. On each level, a small door led into the tower proper - a way for serving staff and guards to come and go: unseen by the royals, yet always available when needed.

Interestingly he even came across two floors that could only be accessed from the serving staircase. On these levels the second inner wall of the passage fell away and a large, level space opened up before him, the wooden floor stained from long and heavy use. Only the center was taken up by an enclosed space – the central tower stairway, completely surrounded by brickwork, and inaccessible.

Chairs, vases and tables were stacked in one of the two levels, probably a storage room for excess furniture. Should it be needed for big festivities, it could be brought to the nearby floors with relative ease and still be easy to hide once the dance floor had to be cleaned.

The other floor held a mixture of both cleaning utensils and weapons. An interesting combination and a sure indicator about who it was that was using these passages on a day-to-day basis. Right now, the path provided a fast and secret path for him, yet Elrohir was uncomfortably aware of how frequently used they were and how tight. If anyone else was moving through these corridors he would be hard pressed to avoid detection.

Glancing up at the ceiling, he judged the strength of the wooden beams holding it up, forming a tightly woven lattice far above the floor. If all else failed he could probably escape upwards, but he did not cherish the idea of repeatedly climbing the walls, of lurking between the ceiling beams like a spider.

He tested one of the small doorways leading into the tower proper and found the door opened without a sound on well-oiled hinges. Cleaning personnel in Minas Tirith was meant to be neither seen nor heard, so it made sense that the doors leading to their passages would be well maintained.

Elrohir huffed gently. In Rivendell guards and serving staff were a cherished and welcome part of the household. He was friends with stable hands, kitchen maids and cooks alike, and he found that acquaintance especially with the latter two could be very useful whenever he needed an extra portion or two of honey cakes.

A careful look around the door revealed that it opened onto another corridor. This one, part of the lavish inside of the tower was carpeted in thick velvet, its walls heavily hung with tapestries. The difference to the stark stone corridor he had just exited could not have been more clear.

Briefly, he wondered how long Aragorn would have had to come and go via the servants' pathways before he had risen in rank enough to enjoy the honour of entering the tower through its front door.

Not too long, he decided. Aragorn had been trained well. He was a warrior without match in the realms of men. And what was more, he had the heart and mind of a leader, Ecthelion would have been remiss not to see his potential early.

Elrohir allowed his thoughts to wander as he imagined his little brother's daily life in the big cities of men, both Minas Tirith and Meduseld. Aragorn had shared some of his past experiences with them last night, but more yet was left unexplored. It was a pity not to be able to share this part of Aragorn's life, and many times over the last years he had thought of his brother and his self-appointed quest. Still, it was always with pride that he looked upon his little brother and the path he had chosen. There was no doubt in Elrohir's heart that his little brother was the king that Middle Earth needed, the one that would put an end to all the years of the growing shadow in the East.

He willed himself to hold onto that thought, willed it to dispel the dark oppression of Minas Tirith that still weighed on his mind. The dark shadow lingered. Though it was not as intense as it had been last night, it took conscious effort to stave off the evil that permeated the air.

A sudden sound alerted him - footsteps, heavily muffled by the thick carpet, approached and Elrohir quickly turned around and returned to the servants' passageway. But instead of concealing silence he found that the corridors were not as empty as he had left them.

Voices came up the stairs of the servant's passageway, most likely from the storeroom that held cleaning and weapon supplies. Three men, he judged from the raised voices and intermittent laughter that he could hear - and one woman. Elrohir froze as he heard the clear distress in her voice, calling on the men to let her go, to let her continue her work.

He did not wait to hear more. Unfastening his cloak and storing it against the wall of the corridor he made his way down the stairs silent as a ghost. He was in luck, the three men had their backs towards him, they would never see him coming.

"Shoulda known better than'ta leave the door open. This'll teach ya!" One of the men was raising his hand to strike the petite woman cowering in front of him.

His strike never landed.

Faster than thought and silent as a whisper Elrohir had stepped up behind the men and caught the raised hand in an iron grip. Before the thug even had the chance to turn around, Elrohir brought up the dagger in his other hand and knocked the man unconscious with its hilt.

His comrades didn't fare much better. In the blink of an eye, they joined their companion on the ground, unconscious.

Elrohir spared a look at the maid to ascertain that she was alright. Her gaze was still firmly cast on the floor, her eyes squeezed shut, bracing herself for a slap that would now never come. Elrohir disappeared back into the stairway, hoping that she would not catch a glimpse of his retreating back, and pressed himself against the wall of the tunnel. Half expecting to hear a cry of alarm, the sound of heavy-booted shoes on the stairs as a pursuit was mounted, but everything stayed silent.

He waited a moment longer, hoping that the maid would leave down the stairs rather than up, his heart beating furiously in his chest. Eventually he heard as she finally scrambled to her feet and gasped gently, she must have seen the fallen shapes of her assailants. But no scream went up, no call for help or alert that an intruder was in the tower. She only ran downstairs, the soft sound of her hasty footfalls fading down the passageway.

Elrohir breathed a sigh of relief. Though he would act the same way again if pressed, he knew that he had taken a considerable risk. If Elladan ever found out, he would never let him hear the end of it.

-o0o-

The feast was marvelous. Denethor sipped his wine and listened to Lord Berior's praise of himself.

Life was good.

Actually, life was better than good. His father, upon accepting that his prized elven guest wouldn't be attending the feast in the evening had decided to celebrate a much more worthy cause - Denethor himself, and his impending victory in Osgiliath.

Already his men were gathered, their provisions packed and weapons mustered, and the last preparations would be done by the stable hands this night. At dawn he would ride forth - for Gondor! Towards victory!

And there would be no Thorongil interfering with his plans, ideally not ever again. He allowed himself a small smirk as he took another sip of his wine. All that was needed now, was for all the pieces to fall into place correctly. Perhaps it would be prudent to make sure that they were doing so.

His thoughts again strayed to the uncertainty introduced by the unexpected arrival – and departure - of the son of Elrond. What had the elf's true purpose been here? And why had he decided to join Thorongil on the path to Pelargir?

Glancing to his side at his beautiful wife, who was effortlessly entertaining the nobles with stories of their young son, Boromir, he came up with a plan.

"Quite so, Lord Berior." He interjected smoothly, stopping the ongoing ramblings of the aging fool. "I am afraid," he then announced to the room at large, "that my wife needs rest. And the opportunity to kiss Boromir good night." His statement was met with warm approval as he knew it would, people loved children.

Finduilas looked at him with surprise, but quickly gathered her wits and nodded demurely. "Please excuse me," she begged of the noble men and women at the table, then rose to follow him. It was only after they had left the banquet hall that she questioned him.

"My love," she began, "you have been tense for weeks - now you leave your own feast… What is the bothering you so?"

"I have other matters to attend to still," he replied tersely.

But she would have none of it. "Is it the battle tomorrow? Maybe Thorongil could lead the men in your stead…"

"Thorongil?!" Denethor rounded on his wife instantly. "He has left for Pelargir, but even if he had not - What could that northern mongrel do that I could not? He is but a lost wanderer without a home, trying to steal what is rightfully mine."

Finduilas shrank back from the venom in his voice and he forced himself to calm down. "You should not place your trust in him, Finduilas. Before long he will leave, and leave all matters of Gondor behind without a second thought. I am steadfast. The protection of all Gondor will fall to me soon and I intend to see these people protected in a way Thorongil never would."

His words were final and Finduilas did not argue. Her suggestion of sending Thorongil in his stead had probably only been borne of the wish to keep her husband from danger, Denethor decided. He was sure that his wife would not really think Thorongil better suited to the task - the way his father did.

Familiar anger burned through him at that thought, and he let it. The flames were what he needed to get him through this night and tomorrow's battle. Tomorrow, his raging anger seemed to whisper to him, he would be victorious and he would not have to spare another thought for Thorongil ever again.

He left Finduilas at the door to their private chambers, promising to join her in bed soon, before making his way up to the top of the tower. Higher and higher he climbed the structure until he reached the planetarium at the very top, the only room in the building with a window facing east.

Dark clouds hung over the Mountains of Shadow at the horizon, but the wind blew from the north and would not carry them towards Gondor. Lighting a lamp from the table at the center of the room, he stepped over to the bookshelf on the eastern wall. It was mounted on silent wheels and slid to the side at the barest of touches from his hand, revealing a ladder embedded into the very stone behind it.

With one hand, he lifted the cleverly concealed trapdoor in the ceiling and, climbing the ladder, disappeared into the room above. His father thought that the chamber above the topmost floor of the tower was a secret known only to him, but Denethor had befriended the architect and had seen the blueprints.

He had discovered the secret his father had wished to hide up here. A secret weapon beyond his wildest dreams.

Denethor had to use it now. He had to know how Thorongil was faring on his path to Pelargir. He had to see.

-o0o-

tbc...

A/N: Trouble in all shape and form is finally brewing, striking, and occasionally being averted. Just how much of it will our heroes soon find themselves in? Care to guess? ;)