Yes, it seems that the world's slowest updater has finally managed to bang out another chapter. My problem is that I don't write sequentially. Once we get to the last few installments of this puppy things'll start rolling really quick. But until then…well, I've posted something, haven't I? Enjoy.
Title: Between the Woods and Frozen Lake (2/?)
Author: Slipstream
Rating: PG (For illness, non-sexual hobbit nudity, and brief animal violence)
Summary: While traveling on horse-back across a frozen Shire to visit the Tooks for Yule, a sudden accident leaves Frodo on the brink of winter and a battle hardened Pippin to care for him.
Notes: Because there should be more fics featuring the Frodo+Pippin friendship. Also, I did not know how few words there were to describe riding a horse until I wrote this chapter. Ugh. So if it seems a bit repetitive for you, give me some better synonyms and I'll use them, but until then this is the best I could do.
For Frodo Baggins of Bag End, also known as Febobe, bringer of healing!fic. As always, my dear. And also for Lily Baggins, on whose birthday this most certainly is (was, whatever, it is given in the spirit of the thing). A many happy returns!
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Peregrin Took shifted restlessly in his saddle and gazed up the road towards Bywater for what seemed the thousandth time. Where was his blasted cousin? They had agreed to meet here for the last leg of the journey, and Pippin had arrived long before Frodo could be expected to turn up. But several hours had passed and it was growing late, and yet he had seen neither hide nor hair of his dark-curled elder cousin.
But along with a growing sense of impatience, worry was beginning to edge into his consciousness. Frodo was a grown hobbit, he knew that, but the journey had left both his body and spirit weakened. Pippin would never forget the first time he had seen his cousin's broken form cradled in Gandalf's arms while the King changed the far-too-many bandages swaddling his skeletal body. Though he would be first to protest otherwise, Frodo had never fully recovered, and Pippin mused over these thoughts while huddling deeper into his cloak as the chill of the evening continued to settle.
"What's keeping you, Frodo?" Pippin finally muttered to the wind after another half-hour of waiting. He was beyond impatience now and deep into worry, conjuring up all sorts of horrific accidents or events that could have caused his cousin's delay. 'Fool of a Took,' he thought to himself. 'You are naught but a ninny-hammer, letting your imagination run away with you like that. Any moment now Frodo will come round the corner munching on some wild winter cranberries he's just found and laugh at your fool self, and won't you look the smart one, pacing and fretting like an old mother hen!'
'But still…' He turned again to look up the path. 'You know where he's coming from, and it can't hurt if you ride ahead just a bit and surprise him on the road. Then the two of you can have a good laugh at your impatience and head back to the Smials for some good hot cider and brandy.' The matter thus resolved in his mind, the young Took turned his mount up the winding path.
Despite his troubles, Peregrin could not help but notice the majesty of the winter day about him. Before he had left the Shire he had taken its beauty in the carelessly heartless way all tweenagers did. Even as they had slipped into the darkness of the Old Forest he had not been overtly worried. For every moment of Frodo's certainty that he would never see the Shire again, Pippin was just as assured that their journey would be nothing more than a quick jaunt just beyond the borders of the Shire, a merry outing that they would later laugh and toast over in the Green Dragon.
But that was not to be. Each day only found the young Took swept further away from home, deeper and deeper into lands strange in their geography and alien in their size. He remembered standing in the midst of the plains of Rohan and feeling the wind whip his hair about in the same violent, untamed manner in which it bent the plain grasses in rippling waves and feeling so lost and lonely, the ache of the distance between him and his own bed suddenly opening underneath him like a chasm. And the guilt that would swallow him for hours as he would suddenly realize that he had forgotten about Frodo and Sam for however short a time…the bittersweet taste of salted pork in his mouth at the gates of Isengard as he wondered where his fair-eyed cousin was taking his supper that night, if he ate at all.
He shook himself from dark thoughts, rubbing his chilled hands together and blowing into them in an attempt to warm them. Blast, but it was cold! He couldn't wait to find his cousin and return to the Smials, where there would be a roaring fire and plenty of warm, frothy…
The reigns fell slack in his numb fingers and Peregrin Took's eyes widened in shock. "Oh Eru, no…"
A bend in the trail had revealed a wide, snow-drift filled meadow with the road winding down the middle until it crossed Ederbourn Creek on the partially repaired bridge. The sunlight was filtered through an overhanging canopy of clouds, giving the gray sky a silver cast that sparkled blue and diamond. It was a gentle, peaceful scene, one shattered into sharp pieces by the harsh whinnying scream of the riderless pony thrashing injured and bloody in the snow near the creek bank.
Pippin spurned his own horse into a gallop and crossed the distance in seconds that he later would not be able to recall. He swung out of his saddle and hastily tethered his pony to a tree, then broke into a run towards the creek.
"Frodo! FRODO!"
He could see where the middle of the bridge had broken and given way. A few loose timbers still clung cautiously to the unsound structure, swaying slightly in the breeze. He scanned the waters upstream of the bridge but could find no sign of his cousin, so he abruptly changed course and dashed downstream.
"Frodo! Frodo, where are you?" He knew he was calling out to his cousin, but the wind seemed to tear the words away from his mouth and his ears were filled with the crunch his feet made in the snow and gravel. Frodo's horse screamed again, its groans ringing dully through the vale and mixing with the menacing laughter of the water. Pippin stumbled blindly on, following the curve of the rocky bank with a deepening dread. He opened his mouth to shout again.
A bend in the creek's course formed a long finger of the bank that jutted into the flow of the water, forming a partial dam made of soggy limbs and sticks that had been carried downstream. And there, lying prone facedown and washed up like some forgotten bit of debris, his legs still dangling in the water, was Frodo.
Pippin felt his cries die in his throat, and it was as if two icy claws had come suddenly and ripped out all of his insides, leaving only a bitter hollowness. The crash of the water was very loud, and in its rushing Pippin became acutely aware of the sound of his heart stopping. Then time speeded back up again, and he was kneeling in the gravel and sticks and mud next to Frodo's limp form.
With trembling hands he turned Frodo onto his back, and the sickening roll of Frodo's head filled Pippin's throat with bile. Frodo was alarmingly still; half of his too-pale face was covered with a shock of red stemming from a large gash across his temple and scalp, and when Pippin leaned close he could feel no movement of breath from his cousin's mouth or nose. Pushing back his panic, he rolled Frodo over enough to drain what water remained in his mouth, pounding his back until no more liquid came forth, then laid him flat again. He pinched the sharp nose closed, then covered Frodo's mouth with his own and gave him two deep long breaths.
"Breathe, curse you!" he sobbed and pressed his face to the soaked fabric of his cousin's weskit. He listed anxiously…and there it was! A faint stutter and bump, but a heartbeat nonetheless! But still no rush of air stirred within the skinny chest, and Pippin moved back up to breathe again for his cousin.
How long he crouched there in the mud, breathing and listening, breathing and listening, forcing Frodo to cling to life, Peregrin Took would never know. It seemed an age, and though it could have been scant more than a few minutes, he would later swear to Merry in private that the sun had set and the stars had spun around them in a dizzying dance before giving way to dawn again, a cycle that repeated endlessly for a millennia as he focused on the task of getting his cousin and best friend to breathe again.
And then, when he was about to give up hope and weep with despair, a warm rush of breath met his and Frodo gasped—the weak cry of a newborn babe. All of the aching emotion that had twisted itself into a ball in Pippin's chest suddenly burst, and he wept a bit in relief, casting himself across his cousin's body in weariness. It was some moments before he composed himself and settled back on his haunches to contemplate his next move.
Pippin was torn as to what to do. Remembering a cold journey up a steep mountainside smothered in snow, he knew that he needed to get Frodo out of his wet clothing and build a fire somewhere where he could trap its heat and re-warm him. But he had not set forth that morning prepared to make camp. He had no tent, no form of shelter, not even the means of which to build a fire. His timber box was home, safe in the warm confines of his bedroom. Pippin cursed himself, but there was nothing to be done for it. Best to just approach the problem with plain old hobbit sense.
One thing was for certain, however: he had to get his cousin out of his wet clothing, and he had to be careful about it. And that meant getting him out of the creek first and foremost. Moving on numb legs, Pippin hooked his arms under Frodo's shoulders, grunting a little with exertion as he dragged the limp body up the bank. He settled Frodo on a patch of gravel free from snow and began the laborious process of stripping Frodo of his wet things.
Frodo's cloak had been lost in the creek, the brooch that pinned it together torn off by the rushing current. The rest of his clothing was soaked and muddy, sprinkled with the occasional small stick or clump of dead leaves. Pippin was very careful as he unbuttoned the velvet coat and rearranged his cousin's limbs to aid in its removal—he was worried about Frodo's heart, knowing from gory stories told by the healers' assistants around bedsides when they thought young hobbit lads were sleeping off their latest vile concoction that too much movement could give him an awful shock and be his undoing.
Knowing that the day would be cold and that he would most certainly be waiting for a good while in the unmerciful wind, Pippin had ventured out of the Smials that day wearing two cloaks. The first had been his normal winter cloak, a dark gray woolen one with a hood and extra inches on the bottom to account for his height. The second had been issued to him as part of his soldier's uniform in Gondor, and so followed the Gondorian fashion. It was a deep black and lined with wolf fur, slightly coarse to the touch but thick enough to retain heat and keep its wearer warm even in the darkest night's chill.
Pippin removed both of these now, along with his velvet winter coat and over-tunic, leaving him in naught but his shirtsleeves and breaches. He draped the wolf-skin over Frodo, moving portions of it to access Frodo's clothes as he continued to undress him and towel some warmth into his cold, wet skin. Once he had Frodo's soaked things in a small pile on the gravel he dressed Frodo carefully in his own clothing, being as careful as he could through the awkward stages of getting Frodo into his tunic and coat. He then wrapped Frodo in the thinner wool before encompassing him in the thick warmth of the wolf-hide.
He pulled the hood up over the damp curls, kissing the ice-cold brow briefly while he lingered there. "There you are, Frodo-love," he sang. "All nice and tight like a caterpillar in a cocoon. You'd laugh if you saw me now, Peregrin Took, son of Paladin Took, willingly giving up a warm wrap of cloth! 'Who is this young rascal,' you would say, 'and what has he done with the fiend that would come in my bed, steal my covers, and stick his cold feet in my back?'"
Pippin's flesh prickled into goose bumps under the thin linen of his shirt. The cold was even more noticeable without his cloaks and jacket, but he gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it as he briskly massaged Frodo's limbs through the layers of cloth. There was no response, but Frodo's breathing was easier, and when Pippin pressed his ear to the thin chest the heartbeat there was faint but steady.
Seeing that his cousin was stable for the moment, Pippin hefted his sword from its saddle strap and set off grim faced to the side of the wounded pony. The roan had sunk back to its knees in the kicked-up snow, its sides heaving and eyes rolling wildly in pain. Pippin stretched out the fingers of his good hand to stroke the quivering neck and spoke in soothing tones as he circled the fallen mare. She groaned deep in her chest as her rollings made the sharp shards of her broken limb grind together.
"There, girl… Shush… shush…" Pippin crooned, his throat thick. Her coat was hot and slick with sweat as he felt her torso for other injures, frown deepening as his fingers skittered across swollen and bruised flesh, signs of broken ribs and possibly greater internal injuries. In his mind he measured the distance from here to the stables at Tookborough, but he knew it was a false hope. Alone, and with Frodo to take care of, there was no way he could coax the mare to ever hobble back to the stables in her state, and even then, horses were large animals compared to hobbits, and the Shire doctors were hard pressed to set and mend hobbit limbs that badly mangled, much less build harnesses to support such a large beast long enough for the bones to knit without even assurance that it could ever work the fields again. It was a hard choice, but one he had grown used to living on such a large expanse of farm.
Easing the mare's head back into the snow, Pippin straddled her once-proud neck and covered her remaining eye with a bit of cloth so she wouldn't see the glimmer of the light off the blade as he drew his sword. Giving her a last few strokes and words of soft comfort, he cut a long clean line along the stretch of her jugular vein, sidestepping quickly to avoid the spill of blood as the pony struggled once, twice, and then sank back into the snow with a last gurgling sigh.
Once the mare was dead, Pippin moved to salvage what he could from the sopping saddle bags. Most of Frodo's things were soaked through and nearly frozen, and as he could find nothing else dry with which to dress him he quickly abandoned that pursuit. As he closed the leather flaps his fingers found the sodden paper wrappings of Yule gifts, and his eyes filmed in tears. Could his cousin have no happiness? Should every occasion, great or small end in some tragedy?
The saddle was more difficult to remove, but what lay underneath proved worth the struggle. Protected by the wide leather skirt, the saddle pad and blanket were dry enough to be of some use, and Pippin used the still-bloody edge of his sword to slice off the frozen parts.
He gathered his bundle and moved back to were Frodo lay prone in the snow. He tried to ignore the deathly pallor as he gently wrapped him in another warm blanket, slipping his hand beneath his wrappings to feel the beat of his heart and gently rub some warmth back into his frozen hands. Frodo remained unmoving, but his breathing was still good and his heartbeat strong—the blood trickling from the wound to his temple had even slowed to a stop and frozen over—so Pippin thought it safe enough to get him atop his own horse and ride back to the Smials. Though how he would manage that, he had yet no idea.
With his newfound height Pippin no longer had any trouble mounting the small Shire ponies. He had even bribed Merry into teaching him the little trick he had learned in Rohan, the flashy ways to mount a horse in a single leap. But with the burden of Frodo he could not simply get a running start and then spring lightly onto the wide back. He scanned the landscape, looking for some means of getting Frodo onto the back of the pony without simply flinging him up there like a sack of potatoes. There were no stepping-ladders here in the wild, but there was the bridge, whose base was still strong and sturdy.
He led his pony up alongside the first steps of the bridge, and the steed was content to nose the snow there for grass while he fetched Frodo. Pippin cradled him gently, as if he was a babe, and indeed he seemed to weight no more than a fat hobbit youngling in his arms. The bridge provided the height Pippin needed to place Frodo in the saddle without jostling him overmuch, and he mounted behind him, holding Frodo close in his lap. He urged his pony into a gentle walk, unsure of how this arrangement would work, but as they turned back onto the path homeward Pippin figured out where to put his arms and legs so that he could steer the pony while keeping Frodo from sliding off. It was awkward and involved Pippin snaking one arm around Frodo tightly and pulling him close to his chest, but perhaps this was for the best, as some of Pippin's warmth seeped into the Ringbearer's too-thin form. Frodo moaned a little, but otherwise did not stir.
The longer they rode the faster Pippin dared push his mount, keeping one eye on the road and the other on his cousin. Pippin had always been the type to think the return journey shorter than the getting there, but this ride seemed to stretch ahead of him, unending, eternal, deadly… His lungs burned with the cold air and the wind cut through his linen shirt like a sharp slap. He doubted he could have been any colder had he been riding naked. But despite his feelings of abject misery, Pippin bit his tongue and only urged the pony faster, faster, for surely if he was cold then Frodo would be at the point of freezing to death. Pippin shook his head fiercely, ignoring the headache it induced. No, best not to think about that… They would make it to Great Smiles before that happened, or his name was not Peregrin Took.
The sun crawled across the overcast sky and it grew dark. How long they had been riding, Pippin did not know. Slowly the landscape around them had changed from forest to fields, with the occasional dark hobbit-hole tucked into the hillside. The road was easier, and for a while all Pippin could hear was the dull thud of his heartbeat in cadence with the pounding of the pony's hooves. Every few steps Frodo's head hit his chin with a dull cracking of bone, his limp body bobbing with each jostling movement.
There was a cry from the road ahead. Pippin looked up, dazed, and was surprised to see another hobbit on horseback trotting toward them.
"Ahoy there!" the farmer called, reigning his mount to a halt. "What are you chaps riding about in this weather for only half-dressed? It'll be the death of you!"
"There's been an accident!" Peregrin panted, his frozen arms glad at the chance to slow the pace of his horse, which wheezed and shuddered for breath. "The old stone bridge collapsed, dumping my cousin into the creek! Killed his horse, and he's half-dead himself! I'm trying to take him back to the Great Smials."
Peering at the half-blue bundle in his arms, the farmer's eyes grew wide. "That's quite a ride still, lad. Is there nowhere else you could stop from there to here?"
Pippin shook his head, anxious now to get back underway. "No, and if there was, I don't know if there'd be healers as skilled as those at the Smials. I'm riding as fast as I can, but with two in the saddle and him unconscious I can't go much faster than a canter. Could you ride ahead and send word for a healer? Tell them to have hot baths and warm towels and whatever else is needed to thaw icy bones."
The farmer nodded. "That I can do. We have been traveling a long ways, but my horse is still fairly fresh and can make it there quick enough. We'll send your message, Master…?"
"Took. Peregrin Took. And it's Frodo Baggins as is injured."
"Right then," the farmer nodded, and waved farewell as he urged his mount into a gallop, soon disappearing down the road.
A sudden gust of wind caught the young Took across the face, and he shivered anew, clutching Frodo close. His elder cousin groaned as his body attempted to slip sideways out of the saddle, but Pippin's grip was sure and strong despite the numbness of his fingers. Letting Frodo's head rest against his shoulder, he buried a kiss in frozen black curls, pulling the cloak and saddle blanket back about his cousin's face. Bruised eyelids fluttered open beneath his fingers to reveal two slivers of ice blue, and Frodo's gaze roved sightless over the overcast sky. He quaked violently, making slight choking noises in his throat.
"Shhhh… shhhh…" Pippin soothed, his own voice thick in his ears. "I've got you. We'll be at the Great Smials soon enough, and then you'll be nice and warm and cared for. With steaming mushroom soup for every meal. Eh? How does that sound?"
But Frodo was silent once more, limbs dangling limp as a rag doll's. Pippin set his jaw and, ignoring the growing black ache in his throat, spurred his horse back to a quick canter towards home.
TBC…