The creature came later that day, and perched on his window sill, ruffling feathers and preening until Grima approached and allowed the thing to flop clumsily from the sill to his arm. Grima winced as eight long talons dug through his layers of robes and pricked his skin. It was mostly crow. Mostly. There were the black shining feathers and a cruel beak topped by two flint hard eyes, but there was also something else indefinably unnatural - and there was a sense of kindred, for they were both Saruman's creatures, shaped to fit a purpose. The creature regarded him sharply and made a clucking noise, shifting its grip on his arm. Grima nodded. The presence of the messenger meant one thing, and one thing only. Deep laid plans were rising to the surface like fat in a rendering pot. Grima gave a small smile and produced a little jerked horseflesh from his robe. He offered it to the creature, which reached for it greedily.
"Feast now on the dried flesh of the nation, my friend, and soon you will be feasting on eyeballs and entrails after the coming battle."
The creature clucked once more, and shifted, flapping wide wings as Grima allowed it to shuffle from his arm to the sill once more. There was a tapping at the door, and a creak of the hinges as it began to open. Grima hissed, and the messenger departed in a flurry of black feathers as Rade edged around the half open door.
"What do you mean by this rude intrusion?" Grima demanded. Rade coloured.
"Forgive me," he said slowly, "but I must speak with you."
"And can you not wait but a few seconds for me to open the door to my quarters? You are not welcome in this room, Lieutenant. These are my private apartments. Leave immediately."
Rade hesitated, uncomfortable. "Forgive me, but I cannot. I must know –"
"What?" Grima interrupted, knowing full well what had forced the younger man into this situation. He waited for a moment, impassive, until Rade continued.
"I must know what you think you saw this morning. On your walk."
Grima could not stop the amused twitch from twisting his lips. What he thought he saw? Now could be the time to gain the young man's trust, for whatever future advantage. He was weak minded and too trusting, far too concerned with loyalty for his own good. And highly placed by Eomer's own side. Used carefully and precisely, Rade was valuable to both Grima and his Master.
"What I thought I saw? Why, Edoras, sir. Edoras itself! I had eyes for no other mysterious lady than our fair city. Certainly not one arriving with the dawn snowfall at the west gate."
Rade's face fell a little. "Then you saw…"
"Nobody. Besides yourself. Why? Is there aught of which I should be aware?" He let his voice trail away, and the silence speak for itself, allowing a tiny smile to curve his thin lips like a fish hook.
Rade took the bait.
"Oh. I see! Thankyou, Lord Grima. Thankyou. I can see that you are a man of fine sensitivities and understanding."
Grima nodded, a small movement with only a certain degree of acquiescence. "Indeed. Who am I to interfere with young love? I remember well my own youthful exploits. However -–"" he said, little louder as Rade began to speak again. "However, may I ask where the lady is currently? I understand that the unfortunate Leah is to be removed from the ice today, and the resulting flurry of activity may lead to your young friend's discovery. If, that is, she is an unfamiliar face where it ought not to be."
Rade hesitated. "No, she is safe. She remains protected here until tomorrow's dawn when she departs for her own village once more. Now forgive me, sir, for I must depart. I have duties to attend to." He fidgeted a little in place, and Grima waved a hand at him.
"Of course, of course. I trust that you are content to allow the matter to rest?"
Rade nodded firmly. "Of course, and I thank you for your.."
"Delicacy?" Grima offered. Rade nodded again, once, then sidled around the half open door and, with a final glance at Grima, left the room.
In his absence, Grima pondered and planned.
***
The task, in the end, fell to the ice cutters. With bleak faces and sombre tones, the party, including Hama, draped and muffled against the morbid chill of the morning, left Edoras for the Cauldron. The snow, mercifully, had ceased to fall an hour earlier, else the expedition would have had to have been postponed. As it was, Wenthe eyed the leaden clouds, and grumbled quietly. Hama and the others rode in stony silence.
When they reached the Cauldron, in the afternoon, the cutters went to work immediately, while the two spearmen who had accompanied them set about building a fire from fuel transported on the back of a pack pony. Einal, Wenthe and their team ventured cautiously onto the ice, to where a slender, mottled hand, frozen and distorted, poked from the ice as if in greeting. Sharing a grim glance, they knelt as one, and began to mark their block.
Standing on the frozen shore, Hama watched them, their movements resembling a formalised kind of dance as they rose and knelt, marked and grooved, and repeated again. As the ice axes rose and fell, creating a hard, syncopated rhythm, he remembered that ice cutters sang as they worked, usually. Today, they worked in silence. Despite his resolve, he shivered. The initial shock of discovery had worn away days ago. He could now behave as if he were, once again, a warrior of the Meduseld itself. But the silence of the ice cutters made him shiver, as he imagined Leah's frozen features slowly coming to the surface.
Einal glanced up at the shrouded figure on the shore. Hama, as the cutter knew him, was a good man. A brave man. What he must be thinking now was anybody's guess. Einal returned his attention to the ice. His initial suspicion had been accurate – that only part of the body was trapped in the ice, an arm perhaps. The rest floated in the Cauldron's icy womb just below the ice. The cutters had marked three large blocks, next to each other, the centre block including the hand. The last block would be removed first, followed by the top block, so as to keep the body from shifting if the hand were freed too soon.
***
Later in the day, Eomer and Theodred met inside a musty smelling stall in Theoden's own stable. The stall's occupant, a large bay mare with two white socks, shifted nervously and rolled her eyes, snorting, before settling once more. Eomer moved similarly, his tension creating creases radiating across his wide forehead. Theodred mirrored his cousin with a similar posture of unease.
"Is it really Leah?" he asked the taller man. Eomer glanced at him and looked away.
"I don't know," he replied, spreading his hands.
Theodred released an explosive sigh, causing the mare to shift again. "I swear to you cousin, on Helm himself, I know not what happened to her!"
"Peace, cousin, peace. Bridle your anger," Eomer said, quieting Theodred with a gesture. "I accuse you of nothing… I merely enquired."
Theodred's features assumed a sulky cast. "Well enquire away then, for I care little for the tart."
He never saw the hand that cuffed him roughly across the jaw. Eomer stood back from him, and rubbed his knuckles.
"Mind your tongue, cousin. Leah is the niece of the Doorwarden, who has saved my life in battle many times."
Theodred said nothing, but rubbed his jaw and looked at Eomer sideways through slitted eyes. The mare, disquieted by the dispute, swung around in her stall, and both men stepped out of reach of her hooves.
"I merely enquire, Theodred, as I am well aware of your history with the girl."
Theodred let out a bark of laughter. "History? A tumble hardly makes for a history, Eomer. You yourself have been guilty of that, as I recall, and I am not interrogating you for your past sins."
Eomer looked away for a moment, then back at his cousin.
"None of the women I have known are dead, cousin... But come, and join me in the yards. I have a new colt that needs breaking."
From his vantage point in the Hall, Grima watched them leave the stable together and head to the colt yards. He could well imagine what they had been speaking of. The two had been conspiratorial since the announcement of the discovery of the body had been made. There was little that occurred in the lives of these two of which Grima was unaware, but he could not remember an incident that could prompt such sudden tension.
***
It became apparent that the girl was lying face down in the icy water, her arm twisted behind her, contorted. The cutters had removed the block above her legs first, and it lay on the shore, blue grey and murky. Then they had removed the block above her shoulders and head. Her long hair was tangled, sodden and ruined and too wet to be any colour but dark. From where he stood on the shore, close to the first block, Hama made out a swirl of dark red brown fabric across her back, and the twist in her torso as her arm stretched behind her into the final block of ice. Heartbreakingly, he had been close enough to make out the wet braid across the back of her head and the few brown and slimed flowers still caught in it.
As Einal and Wenthe prepared to heft the final block and free the body, Hama looked away. He heard a dreadful crack, and an awful sucking sound as the two halves of the ice block were pulled from the water. He looked back as Einal and the boy Elden, a rope between them, carefully pulled the body from the water. Hama made no advance as they laid her out on the ice, still face down, disentangled the ropes, and then gently turned her to lie on her back. Einal looked up at Hama, who forced his feet to walk forward. Carefully he knelt, and forced his hand to reach out and touch the cold, mottled skin, wiping a clot of hair from the dead girl's face.
Then he pulled back, whipping his hand back as though the girl had attempted to bite him. Einal looked at the Doorwarden curiously. Hama's lined face was pulled into shapes of shock and wonder. Einal glanced once more at the girl's stiff features, seeking a reason for the other man's reaction. She had been pretty enough in life. In death her features were a frozen mask, mottled blue and purple, her eyes half open. Einal cast his eyes down her garment, finding the stained rent where a blade had pierced her belly. He looked back up at Hama again as the man touched the frozen face once more.
"Its not her," he said shortly. "Its not Leah."
"Sir?" Wenthe asked from a short distance away.
Hama shook his head. "Its not Leah. Its not her."
"But the scar, sir?" Einal prompted. He wondered if Hama was unable to recognise his niece through his grief.
"They both had one. Some silly girl's pledge. Poor lass."
"Then who is it?" Einal prompted again.
"Hedda. Its Hedda, Leah's companion."