Chapter Five: The Dead Do Burgeon
Disclaimer: JRR Tolkien and New Line Cinema own everything.
Aldburg lay in the Folde – the King's Land at the foot of Irensaga, one of the cloud-swathed peaks of the White Mountains. Late February, and the melting snow belched forth perversions of spring from the frost-bitten ground. Hidden among the camouflage, the Evermind espied the company making their mounted way into the dale. At the head of the column rode Gamling and behind him came Éowyn and Gríma, and an escort of the king's household. A long horn-call rose in the valley, glanced on stones and was answered from below. Éomer's lieutenant was summoned to the gates.
'What is it?'
'Riders, Lord Elfhelm,' replied the scout breathlessly, 'from Edoras. The Lady Éowyn is come, with the Wormtongue.'
Elfhelm grunted. Wormtongue. Éomer will be ill-pleased, all the more for this surprise. When he returns from the hunt. 'What need drives her hither?' The soldier could not say and the Eastfoldman was obliged to make his own inquiries, at the same time delivering the news that his captain pursued a thieving orc-band. 'They made off with a herd of horses, though how that Mordor lot means to drive the poor beasts across the Emyn Muil I do not know. Your brother set out at once, with ten men. That was at dawn, yesterday.'
'Ten men,' Éowyn repeated miserably, weighing the odds against those that had been in her father's favour. 'Why so few?'
'He was in haste and would not suffer a greater host to be mustered.'
Gríma sniffed and was dealt a deathly stare by all except Éowyn who dismounted before the burg entrance. Said the knight, 'Éomer will return.'
Éowyn's attention turned to the graves. The knolls were more since last she had looked on them, and beyond their number a shadow moved on the plain running down from the distant Emyn Muil, jagged teeth on the edge of sight.
'Speak of the devil,' Gríma muttered unwisely, drawing more unwelcome attention. He did not care. This is but a means to an end. Soon my part will be over and she will be free of the bonds he has bound her with. That is all I desire.
'That is all you will get.'
Startled out of his hours-long reverie, the pallid counsellor found himself staring at the simbelmynë adorning the tomb of Éomund and Théodwyn. A bracket had been driven into the ground beside him and the flames burned in the oily sheen of his stringy hair. The night tiptoed around the torchlight and taunted the sentries that stood watch at Aldburg's gates. 'Saruman.'
'Worm,' said the wizard unkindly, shedding falsified respect for his agent. 'You have been here all day. To be called a worm is one thing, but a witless worm? I must confess that I began to worry about you.' His slate moustaches flared into a grin.
'This is wrong!'
'Ah! I would not raise my voice if I were you. Those Horse-lordlings like you less than you could imagine. They have been wagering bets on how long their master's look would leave you petrified here. Éomer was not glad of your coming and it is a mercy you do not remember.' A low, rich laugh rustled through the grasses.
Exhaling warmth into the chill night, Gríma glanced wearily over his hunched shoulders at the guards. The white wizard's cunning danced before their eyes and they were oblivious to it. Swallowing, he turned once again to his benefactor and whispered, 'There must be some other way.'
'What is the House of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs?' Saruman hissed. 'Perhaps when next you think of your poor mother you will also think more kindly your Dunland blood. No, Wormtongue, there is no other way.' He twirled the neck of an Evermind blossom between his fingers and made to flick it at the wooden door of the crypt.
'No!' Gríma's bony fingers curled like a spider around Saruman's wrist, desperate now. 'I will have Théoden on his knees, but I need more time.'
You have wasted mine long enough. The dead serve me better. He wrested his ancient wrist politely from Gríma's clammy hand. 'The House of Eorl will fall. The spirits of its children are dead.' The flower dropped to the green-grey earth, its bright eye bowed in submission at Saruman's feet. 'Go inside, Worm. The hour is late.'
Too late for Éomer. Too late for Gríma's half-imagined attempts at haggling a price less steep than the one the wizard had set on Éowyn. Stooping to the bushel of white florets, he raised the device of corruption and returned to Aldburg. 'To wither? I think not.'
In the watch-tower above, one of the Rohirrim chuckled despite the gloomy dismissal of his fellows; a week's worth of wages was his.
TO BE CONTINUED