"I've some skill with the spear, yes," Aragorn assented with a short nod, reaching out to take his sword back and slide it back into the sheath at his belt. "The sword will do well enough, though. I shall keep mine."
"King Thengel doesn't just want 'well enough,' Thorongil. He wants the best from Rohan, them as which're made here in Edoras."
"It will do well enough," Aragorn repeated, a little more forcefully. Selinethas held up his hands in a placating gesture, shaking his head slightly. "Trust me."
"Don't know why, but I do," Selinethas muttered good-naturedly. "Fine, then. I'll take your word on that. C'mon, we're going to the armory for spears now. Standard spears," he said pointedly, grinning. With a snort of laughter, Aragorn strode off the practice courts with him, headed up to the top of the hill where the armory was.
Two hours later, Aragorn realized just how much heavier human weapons were than elven ones in general, not just the swords. In his entire session on the field, he had not managed even once to hit the target with his spear, and every muscle in his right side seemed to ache simultaneously when he moved. Selinethas had no trouble at all hitting his mark on almost every shot, in contrast, and Aragorn wondered vaguely if that was the reason Men seemed so broad of body, compared to the slimness he associated with elves - weighted spear-throwing.
He tried to keep his arm from shaking out of sheer exhaustion as he heaved the spear up to his shoulder to line up another throw at the target, which seemed to have crept further away as the hours had whiled past. And a hand clapped him on the shoulder - he dropped his spear, both out of surprise and due to the fact that his fingers seemed to have lost their ability to bend. Selinethas picked it up for him, pressing it into his left hand instead with a chuckle. "A bit tired?"
"Just a bit," Aragorn agreed, rather stiffly.
"Ready to go back? It's nearly sunset. Baths should be set out in the rooms by now."
"--all right."
"Come on," Selinethas said with a grin, beckoning Aragorn up toward the path back. "What? Let me guess - your brothers taught you what you knew with lighter spears that did 'well enough'."
Aragorn could not remember a time when a single one of Elrohir's or Elladan's weapons broke, save that eventful day in the woods with the recurved bow, but he supposed that it wasn't really necessary to tell that. "You might say that."
"Don't look so disappointed. I've seen bigger folk than you manage less with a spear, lightweight."
"Lightweight?" Aragorn had the presence of mind to look indignant, at least. "You think I'm a lightweight?"
"Anything lighter than that toy you call a horse is a lightweight, lad."
Aragorn was too busy trying to get the right side of his body to cooperate in walking up the hill to think of a remark in return. By the time he got up to his room, his bath was - mercifully - already drawn and waiting inside, steaming faintly. He dropped into the water as soon as he had shed his clothes, and sank chin-deep in the hot bath until he rather fancied he could move his right hand and arm again.
The last two weeks had not been so bad, in Edoras. Thengel King was a good man, and his men followed him willingly enough that Aragorn did not mistrust in the nobility of the monarch. The other men in the sixth eored had accepted him willingly enough, though he had received more than a few odd looks for not divulging his homeplace or his father's name; too, Lhach had been the butt of quite a few jokes in the other ranks and the stable, the "hobbyhorse" as many had dubbed him. But once drills had started the last week, the jokes had died down, and Aragorn did not care whether it was due to the other men actually seeing Lhach's ability (as well as his own) or if they were simply too tired from the work to bother with needless jibes.
Selinethas, on the other hand, had been a veritable miracle. Aragorn wasn't quite sure what he would have done had the other man not been there to steer him from hall to hall, or to teach him the hand signals the men in the eoreds used during drills and the Rohirrim customs. Since Aragorn's first refusal, he had not asked for further information about his history, and yet in return he was more than willing to tell Aragorn of his own family and home. Aragorn never failed to appreciate the stories - they distracted him from the daily sting of homesickness that nagged at his heart, that which longed to return to Imladris and just accept that he would not wed the daughter of Elrond as long as he could stay with his brothers again.
"Thorongil! Are you coming back out?" Selinethas's voice demanded from outside the door, punctuated by the thud of his fist on the wood. Aragorn sat up in the water, jarred out of his thoughts. "The food's ready."
Aragorn paused long enough to scoop a handful of water onto his face, scrubbing faintly at the accumulated dirt before grabbing for the towel beside the basin. "Coming."
-------------------
Year 2355 - winter
"Rohirrim!" Lerebhon called, wheeling his bay mount in a tight circle. "We ride south!"
Aragorn lifted his spear automatically, heeling Lhach into a settled canter at the side of the eored as they set off. He rode no more than a horse-length behind Lerebhon, the fourth eored's leader, himself, and was careful to maintain that position carefully - it had taken him all of the year and a half he had been in Thengel's service to advance that far, struggling up the hierarchy just behind Selinethas.
The White Mountains loomed ahead, snow-capped spires breaking the clouds that speckled the darkening sky. The heavy pound of hooves set the crowning beat of the group, and Lhach willingly sped along with the rest of the horses with no further urging on Aragorn's part. There had been a report earlier that day of Orcs raiding and pillaging along the feet of the mountains, and the fourth eored had been sent out both as a patrol and to drive out the creatures. Already Aragorn could see a thin ribbon of smoke curling away into the air from over the crest of a hill, probably where the last attack had been. He wondered briefly how it was that he could see smoke that thin if it was that far away - Lerebhon apparently noticed as well, lifting his spear in the signal for the riders to stop. Aragorn pulled up Lhach sharply, leaning back momentarily with a sigh and a reach upward to adjust his helm.
A moment's conference with two of the other riders at the head of the group, and Lerebhon's spear went up again - the riders were to fan out into a semicircle opening around the front, against the chance that they would come across any Orcs among the huge hills abounding around the mountains' bases. It was quick, quiet work for the Rohirrim, and after a moment they were heading forward again at a steady canter once more. Aragorn now rode in the first line, spear held at half-mast ahead of him, parallel to Lhach's shoulder.
It was just as well, for over the next crest they plowed straight into a company of a hundred or so encamped Orcs, taking the creatures by surprise.
Battle was upon them immediately - for all their disadvantage, the Orcs roused themselves to fight almost before the Rohirrim could launch their attack. Arrows whistled in the air - spears and swords tore flesh - the shrill cries of the horses, the clang of metal, the hiss and strangled roars of the Orcs melded into one long, continuous keen in the air as the Riders of Rohan cut a forced swath through the Orcs.
Aragorn found himself beset by three Orcs before two were taken down by spears from behind him. The last stared malevolently at him even as it raised its weapon, Aragorn's spear aimed for its throat - Aragorn's thoughts rippled back to a long-ago story of elves and yrch and death, and wondered if this was what Elrohir had felt once--
and then the world dropped out from beneath him.
Lhach abruptly stumbled and crashed to his knees. Aragorn hurtled over the horse's head and slammed into the ground with a crack of bone, dazed eyes barely clear enough to see the pair of black arrows buried in Lhach's chest. His spear clattered to the ground from nerveless fingers, and he found himself staring up at the leering face of an Orc with a blade held overhead - but then that blade, too, fell to the ground as the Orc staggered back, a Rohirrim arrow thudding through its gut.
Aragorn threw himself out of the way as huge hooves pounded the ground beside his head, blindly grabbing for the discarded Orc-weapon on the ground as he lurched to his feet, slashed at the face of an approaching Orc.
In a blur of movement, he was suddenly jerked off his feet, and he found himself atop another horse. The noise was fading into the night's obscurity with the diminishing rush of adrenaline, and he dimly realized that the Orcs already were dead; Lerebhon was shouting orders, the enemy corpses were being piled for burning, and those Rohirrim injured or killed were being taken back by a small escort out of the eored. Injured? He could feel pain, yes, a burning ache that was spreading all through his left side that seized up agonizingly whenever the horse beneath him or the rider in front of him moved.
"Horse," he rasped, coughing and trying not to. "My horse?"
Selinethas's voice carried easily back to him - it was Selinethas, of course, who else but he would be taking back Aragorn personally instead of just leaving him on one of the now-riderless horses to go back to Edoras? "Lhach's dead, Thorongil. Took a few arrows and threw you when he went down - you don't remember." The last was almost a question, but the big man apparently didn't want to look for answers, and Aragorn didn't supply them. "I'm sorry, lad."
"He's dead?"
"We'll find you another horse."
Aragorn couldn't find the breath or the state of mind in which to answer - his chest hurt beyond anything he'd felt in recent memory, and he did not feel like forcing his tongue to unravel the pain also in his heart at having lost one of his last ties to Imladris. Rohan's horses were the finest of Mankind, but the horses of the elves were fleeting and soon forgotten - much like his own elven nature. The ride back to Edoras grated both on his body and his mind, and he was grateful to be taken to the healers in the relative cover of darkness.
That night, he shifted uncomfortably on his bed, his side wrapped in yards of bandages in a vain attempt to assauge the pain of cracked ribs as he drained a mug of some foully bitter sleep-inducing tea. His head pounded, an ache settling behind his eyes, and he tried to ignore the stinging drops threatening to blur his vision. I am no crying child... The wind had stilled outside his customarily opened window as if in deference to his loss, and the low croon of a bird outside faded to silence as he drifted into a heavy, dreamless sleep.