Author's Note:
It finally arrives – the one with action after the last chapter full of talking and nothing much else. It was exceptionally difficult to write, I must say. Yes I know it is L/E centric, but I can't resist doing a bit of Aragorn there especially before the Dimholt Road… Thank you for reading and your kind reviews.
Chapter 5: Paths UnchangeableThe two horses that rode on swift wings now stood stock still, as though they were as dazzled as their riders by the Rohan's magnificent fields.
"Tell me about Rohan, my Lady."
She looked at him, surprised.
"How can it be…I meant…do you not know?" Her mouth grew slack with amazement; it felt foolish asking a question as an answer to his own question, unable to hide the very present curiosity within.
"I have smelled the Mallorns of the Golden Wood, yet cannot name the herbs that perfume Meduseld's hall; I recognise the sunlight splayed on Mirkwood's leaves and do not know the cold harshness of Forodwaith; I am part of a kindred that hallows light, but I have never beheld the Light of Aman, nor the silmarils. Shall I go on? Elves do not know everything, Eowyn." He said wryly, easily yielding. "I only know things as well as a sketch."
"Rohan is a land far younger than you."
He waited patiently, noticing her sly observation.
"It belonged to Gondor, Legolas, given to Eorl of the North by the Steward Cirion when they answered his call for aid. Eternal friendship – the Oath of Eorl – between Rohan and Gondor was sworn. Should one break the Oath because another dishonoured it?"
"Nay," he replied simply. "But I am proud to be called Rohan's ally because Theoden King honours the vow of loyalty."
"I – thank you."
It was a while before she continued.
"Superficial sight will tell you that Meduseld is not diminished in greatness, from the time it was built by Brego son of Eorl, but look carefully; you will see cracks on its walls and splintered wood." She gave him a sidelong glance, hard and stern. "Rohan breaks, as do we all. It reminds us that we pass from Middle-Earth as easily as the wood splinters. And now we ride to Dunharrow. Perhaps it is truly the end, the doom of our time before the walls of Minas Tirith."
"The end of all things? You ask the same questions that assail us all. Even Gandalf the white will not speak on this. Different gifts are given to the kindreds," he said absently, wondering if he stared at the same green fields that Cirion and Eorl trod through.
"The gift of Eru," she echoed flatly after a pause. Was it this same gift he spoke about that allowed men fall into oblivion and the resulting chaos that reshaped Arda according to the whims of the distant gods? But she knew these things to the Firstborn were sacred. "Let us speak no more of this, Legolas. Time does not allow it."
"Aye," he agreed immediately. "Theoden King honours the Oath and prepares to ride. We must return. Let us go, Eowyn." He looked at her briefly before turning Arod around, loosing the horse into an easy trot that turned in no time into a frenetic gallop, feeling her once again match him pace for pace.
**********
It was discreet enough with the cover, Eowyn thought. Should there be any –
"You ride with us?"
It was him again, the Lord Aragorn whom she thought loved as well as the rest of the men had come to do so.
"Just to the encampment. It's tradition for the women of the court to farewell the men."
Was that nonchalant enough for him to accept? But to her dismay, he was already lifting the blanket that shielded Theodred's blade from view – the flash of knowing that passed his face spurred her to pull it down again.
The sword receded from common sight.
Eowyn spoke hastily, waving the uncomfortable issue of arms aside. "The men have found their captain; they will follow you into battle, even to death. You have given us hope." Yet it was a statement veiled and weighty with implication; she had already counted herself among them, journeying to battle, unto glorious death where fear diminished and became unthinkable at the moment before breath left the body.
Distantly she heard her brother's fiery voice deep as scorching coals heaped onto the dead – Now is the hour, Riders of Rohan, oaths you have taken! Now, fulfil them all! To Lord and Land!
The ride to Dunharrow was unusually silent even by Rohirric standards, each man lost in his thoughts. When they reached, the earth trembled beneath the encampments, and the air cackled with each sword sharpened and re-sharpened restlessly.
It seemed too short a time that they had before a hooded visitor entered the tent of the Rohirric King and thereafter summoned the Ranger. It was not a trick of the eyes that led her to a quietly snorting Brego who was being saddled not long after –
"Lord Aragorn, you leave us on the eve of battle – the war lies to the East! Why do you leave – where do you go that we – or I cannot follow? Will you now abandon the men?"
"Eowyn." He threw his whispered plea into her name, but his hand did not cease readying his saddle.
"I passed these lands in my youth; I do not desire adventure as strongly as I did. Eowyn, do you not know that I do not willingly choose the paths of peril?" Aragorn questioned her heavily, passing a hand over his brow. "It is not a gracious burden. Were I led by my whims, my heart would bring me back to Imladris."
The destruction of the carefully built illusion deflated her into silence, a real terror so underplayed by men even after their hard collisions with pain, reached solely by the route of mending already shattered dreams. Now there lay a gaping wound; yet she persisted doggedly, tearing it wider.
"You ride into the Dwimorberg. None who venture there ever return!"
"Aye."
There seemed no more to say – they were silent a few moments; she watched him ready Brego, seeing the silver gleam of Anduril that their visitor had bestowed upon him with each slight movement.
The irregular interplay of moonlight and firelight cast her with a ghostly light and actively roused his greater sensibilities; for a while, her splendour and his unspoken need combined, became to him nourishment. It was an invisible script played out – one that Aragorn knew was unavoidable.
"Why have you come, Eowyn?" The Ranger asked with eyes ablaze, needing to know the answer that she was about to give, knowing that his own hope for Arwen Undomiel waned – a commanding word from her and he would have crumbled and relented. He would have sought her out and thereafter put to rest any possibility of union between him and the Evenstar before Mordor's vengeance was fully unleashed.
Then he would fade, with Eowyn, with the peoples of Middle-Earth, along with the last standing kingdom of the Dunedain, as the stems of roses fell headless from Gondor's famed gardens.
It seemed a time both immeasurable and instantaneous that he wished as she did – now was this time – that they could have indeed taken alternate paths to freedom, unbound by duty, that he had not been given the Elessar that contained within it the life of the Undomiel. Yet to choose this path would evermore dissolve the frail bridge of alliance and friendship that connected the two kindreds that cracked with each oncoming age.
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost…from ashes a fire shall awaken, a light from the shadows shall spring, the crownless again shall be king…
It was a decision as political as it was emotional, filled perhaps with a certain iniquity, forged and shattered with the softest of breaths, a different and unsung song of this age.
The riddle's true answer did not lie in discovering the wandering Strider's veiled identity and the return of Gondor's King; many did not know that its ironic answer it lay instead in forking, forbidden paths that he could not take, and they had not conceived that this finely sculpted path of duty so lauded from birth had sooner diverged from this particularly wilder one route he now sought.
Aiya Earendil! Could it not be any different?
His apparent fate lay at the Black gates of Mordor; it could not remain camouflaged, nondescript among men.
"Do you not know?" She asked with a breaking voice. All seemed in this short time insufficient without him; the inexhaustible stairways of breathless anticipation that he brought to them buckled and collapsed.
Yet for that straightforward question, therein always lay leagues of sentimental clutter, the possibility of misinterpretation and futile discord. In that question Aragorn had been given the choice to acknowledge what he felt and dreamt, leaving with him also the interpretation of her question.It was a tempting path that he could nonetheless not tread – there seemed no way that he could let her love him – now it only made him want to curse the inalterable. Yet he hoped insanely it was a misplaced love that she had – perhaps her love resembled the same love countrymen had for their King and land?
Men and Elves – two kindreds breached by distrust and past betrayals – it now lay in his hands to heal, as only a king would.
What else was left for him to tell her?
"I cannot give you what you seek – it is but a shadow and a thought that you love."
And there it was – an answer he had furnished so eloquently, even deceitfully, in the last hope that she would turn away. Another word, and he would have faltered…and would have carried in each retreating step the breaking of Men.
"I will not ask for your love, Aragorn. Even a fool knows better where to step, although a fool would give you his all freely," she whispered brokenly. "I merely wished to ride with you – into the unknown – to honour you…as…my King."
He heaved a barely perceptible sigh of relief, taking her words for what they were supposed to mean, not thinking about what she wished them to mean.
It was too delicate a wound to puncture deeper.
"It is time, Eowyn. For me." The statement came as punctually as the matter at hand, thought the Ranger with no small sense of bitterness.
Coming to awareness that there was a burgeoning gathering of soldiers behind her, she turned slowly, seeing faces that were truculent, fearful and disappointed. They murmured ceaselessly – he walks the paths of the dead, and is to us no more…does our victory at the Hornburg mean little to him…? Or does he leave because there is no hope? – disbelieving questions of the ignorant.
"He leaves because he must. And where he goes we do not follow." Theoden had stepped behind the gathering, a note of finality to his voice. "And I will say no more."
He hunched slightly, turning away, as did the reluctantly dispersing crowd, men who aged a hundred fold under the miasma of gloom.
They could carry on, she knew, but it felt as if they would ride with no limbs.
"You grieve. There is perhaps still hope left. Aragorn goes, for the sake of all."
Another voice – one that was now dearly familiar – Legolas! He motioned to Gimli who sat atop Arod impatiently several paces away, beseeching a moment.
"You leave too. And perhaps fall with Lord Aragorn." She was greatly dismayed that he and Gimli would follow the Ranger into the unknown, ever fearless.
He drew back slightly, frowning.
"You must understand, Eowyn. I bade my father goodbye, not farewell when I left for Imladris. But over this journey I came to accept that I may never walk among the trees of Mirkwood nor see any of my kin again," he paused, finding anomalous difficulty in his words, for saying them aloud seemed to pronounce a certain finality that cannot be withdrawn. "There is for me nothing left to lose."
"Then you have heard the words that the Lord Aragorn and I exchanged."
The Elf frowned, not liking the turn of the conversation.
"There is nothing I would say that will be of benefit to you or Aragorn, Eowyn."
"Time grows short, Legolas."
Was it not better that they parted now, on terms that were still somewhat cordial? She wished to keep her extraordinary memories of the past weeks as they were now.
"Then perhaps our paths are from here onwards sundered. Farewell, Eowyn – Elf-friend," he said softly, edging nearer until he took her face in his hands – and at that moment she saw – they both saw the strangled hope in his own chest, her forgotten dreams and charred pasts that were as tears of dripping wax tapered to a stump; knowing that they hoped for a future that might have already been extinguished. "I think we understand each other at last, my Lady. Anar kaluva tielyanna. Aurë entuluva."
Eowyn relished the strange, soothing words that swelled with power, knowing instinctively that it to be a customary farewell of some sort.
"Tell me its meaning, Legolas."
"It is old Elvish," he said softly. "The sun shall shine upon your path, Eowyn…and day shall come again." The Elf drew back a pace as soon as she spoke, staring wistfully at her before he turned away. With a last look in her direction, he smiled sadly. "We may yet meet under shadowless skies on this side of Arda, or maybe beyond, crafted with care by Eru, in all the glorious ages to come."
She called out to him, yet he did not turn.
"Then remember the Rohirrim beside whom you fought with – dare I ask that you remember them almost as one of your own, Legolas? Remember me too, when you swing your blade and loose your arrows," she boldly entreated and stepped back.
And she watched them leave – a Man, a Dwarf and an Elf, into the narrow pass of the mountain and into the interlocking valleys beyond, swallowed by the mists.
The Rohirrim were now left on their own, bereft of these three hunters who had, in such short time, become indispensable. But now they were gone; their hardened soldiers were suddenly as fledglings, flung from their nests into helplessness.
Tomorrow, they would ride deep to Gondor, and to war – and she would be with them.
**********
Courage Merry, courage for our friends…Arise! Riders of Theoden! Ride for ruin!Aye, death, nameless warriors riding for death that was sooner inexplicably linked with asphyxiating passion rather than turgid cold. They both would – as misfits of battle – ride together. One, a woman who was preferred in the healing rooms, and the other, whose length of arm was too short to slay with confidence.
Death!They thundered through the orcish army without breaking speed; spears were hurled, arrows were loosed, screams mingled with the haphazard gallop of horses and the lumbering trudge of trolls; decimated limbs decorated all battlefields and this was no different.
The Rohirrim scarcely dared to hope…yet it appeared as though Mordor's forces were dwindling – wave after wave of orcs that resembled a roiling black sea settled and quieted somewhat, but joy was short-lived.
Men riding on huge beasts thundered towards them, the impaling tusks of the mammoths flinging all in their path. With horror, Eowyn drew two blades, pushing the horse ahead towards the lumbering animals.
"Take the reins! Pull left!"
The Hobbit demonstrated surprisingly, a sufficiently adept handling of the horse, and they swerved left together, narrowing avoiding the wide swing of a Mumak's tusk, carving a path underneath the creature's belly. Severing its hamstrings, she sought once more Windfola's sure grip on the ground, its unfaltering gallop lavish as they raced outwards in the opposite direction, weaving around the falling orcs and the flying arrows.
They passed a staggering Mumak, and were hurled off Windfola as the beast fell sideways. Without her horse she felt painfully exposed –
Oh Eru…Merry! Surely he was not lost!
To her right a sudden parched wind blew as a deafening howl filled the air – all whipped around in that direction, and watched with dread, chilled to the bone. A hideously unnameable creature, at first necessarily small and confined by distance, its circular path now shrinking into a monstrously straight trajectory towards Theoden. With talons and claws outstretched it slammed into him with a swiftness too great to measure, lifting off into the air again with unquenchable rage as the horse and its rider spun and toppled along the ground before slowly returning to its previous path.
Between the tumbling horse and the ground Theoden was lodged, broken and panting.
Oh gods…She could not bear the passing of things, when the legs of time reduced itself to intolerable slowness borne of incredulity and disbelief.
The fell beast clambered towards the white horse that Theoden was pinned under, carrying the Black Captain – the Marshal that commanded with its piercing wail all of Mordor's forces.
Eowyn shivered briefly, staring agape at its deliberate crawl, sensing how it hemmed in darkness as a shield, as a ring of shadow that it so favoured. She fought the urge to cower – even a warrior's fear was sometimes all consuming.
Yet those who saw that lone figure who stood bravely in the sunlight that pierced the grey clouds thought the Valar would have surely themselves applauded the small warrior who now faced the acrid presence.
I will smite you if you touch him.The creature that carried the black Lord moved.
Stand not between a Nazgul and his prey.
Beyond the reach of human eyes, the black spectre barred even weightless light – Eowyn stared paralysed and unmoving, sensing for the first time with stunned wonder the lost colours of this fallen man who now rode emotionless on a Dwimmorlaik. As any man who depleted a great amount of energy pulling another from the swallowing quicksand, she wrung from its high-pitched wail the distant sound of the last plea of a king bound through greed to a ring.
Forth, Eorlingas!In its stare, abundant coils of the black breath released; it emanated the incense of evil, chanting a rhythm calculated to quail men's weak hearts. He was adorned with vileness and as cold as the grinding ice, yet she was colder, and as stern and palpable as steel against a substanceless form no longer held together by sinews and bones.
Her blade was swung in a furious motion – even without her realising it – it seemed to act on its own accord – a hard, downward swipe that connected steel with resilient scaly hide, leaving the Lord of the Nazgul with an incapacitated beast.
She snapped to attention as the shuddering Dwimmorlaik collapsed in a heap, leaving a faceless entity standing. Arms outspread, the apparition that spoke with a serpent's hiss stood tall and terrible, crowned with the torrid, surging strength and power of the wakeful Eye – and in the spectre's hand lay a black spiked iron poised to swing.
Quick diagonal swishes – facile flicks of the Nazgul's wrist brought the black iron jolting the ground – she had ducked easily the first time the heavy weight had been swung; it got progressively harder to dodge his blows…
The black iron's last strike wrecked the roughly-hewn shield that Eowyn had picked up, fracturing bone. Her neck was grabbed suddenly in a grasp as rigid and unyielding as the iron that had struck her, and great fear she now deeply understood…yet what was that remembrance that had also emerged when the Witchking's hand touched living flesh…? An island that stood with grandeur and sunk under Ulmo's waves in the middle of the sea, a honeyed web that divulged false allure, dank pits that were constructed beneath the earth first chillingly silent and then inhumanly wheezing with rage, narrowed to a ring forged by a wizened hand, worn with gluttony of the gleeful soul.
And then she saw the fading of skin and sinew as day gravely faded, and the paleness of eyes as gazes turned sightless…and the shifting of allegiances as elemental as the marring of Arda.
You fool! No living man can kill me!The pressure lifted. The Nazgul's right arm retracted as a piercing shriek emanated from the gaping hole where an unseen face must have contorted in pain, clutched closely to himself, stumbling, falling into the pit of his own sorcery.
Merry!
Taunted by the stab in the back – a creature that was neither Man nor Elf but a Halfling – a Halfling's hand had reversed it all – and now at the point that she thought was past changing –
Be gone, thief of the night!Yet no living man was she, and her golden locks that were bunched restrictively under the helmet fell free as she deliberately pulled it over her head –
It was her face she wanted the black captain to see; it was the triumph of mortal strength that she wished to celebrate, even though it would mean the last sight to pass her eyes would be a minute's scrap of overwhelming foulness.
Against the numbing pain, she found it in herself to thrust into the hollowness her last blow of vengeance and redemption and foulness as epic as Morgorth's blackness erupted. Theodred's sword held and stayed, as though pulled magnetically ever inwards; all Eowyn felt was the drain of all vigour, not knowing that she through her loss, administered freedom to his years of bondage and gorged out darkness so his sight might be regained –
Past imprisoned worship, through the soil of the ground and upwards into thinning air, ice abruptly pierced ice; it seemed as though the tight braid woven of the arch of time and its marred tapestry momentarily loosened and shrivelled – ever so slowly a crevice was nudged open – until a loud rush of wind churned from its depths and gushed through the widening vein like a heavy rain cloud that came apart at its seams.
Under an extraordinary nebulosity a spirit fled its grating confines of twilight at long last.
Shadow and its flaming darkness crumbled flamboyantly on itself, shrinking into the ever-growing spaciousness of the nameless void, wreathing, sucked bone-dry unto barely subsisting legend.
It burned alive, until it became mere cinders – and so did she, falling hard onto her knees and clutching her numbed, heavy hand that seemed to weigh as cumbersome sacks of salt.
Strength barely remained when a cresting wave of grief broke over her. But she feebly summoned life to fill her legs nonetheless to inch a pace, for as long as Theoden lived. Errant strands of golden hair flowed from her head, and it seemed fitting that its golden hue crowned the dying King.
"I know your face." The corner of the Rohirric King's mouth lifted slightly; he struggled to channel air into his lungs. "Eowyn…Eowyn…my eyes darken. Let me go."
There was no name that she could place on the misery that spasmodically contracted her belly.
"No," she interrupted hastily. Did not Legolas Greenleaf entreat her to hope for a time renewed? Eowyn harnessed its gentle power until voice was regained. "No. I am going to save you."
With growing alarm she saw his eyes slowly shut, a shadow regained where a shadow had just been vanquished – without the Elven insight into the cycles of life that peaked and dipped with each phrase of Eru's music she found herself dissatisfied, and inadequately accepting of it. Instead, all that mattered was the unfairness, and the injustice of it all!
"You already have, Eowyn," Theoden murmured gently, breaking her thoughts. "In many ways."
Did he not know Rohan's dependence upon its King? Had he so soon forgotten his flight from Saruman's nightmarish dreams?
It would be a while before he spoke again.
"You know this cannot be, Eowyn. I tire." He spoke now in gasps, slowing to a verbal crawl. "And now I join my fathers in whose company I need not feel ashamed…"
What did he say that she truly did not know?
She held his hand to her cheek, now unmoving and limp, damp with her tears.
"I had hoped so dearly…that…that there might have been another way."
The strength that had appeared now drained as she leaned over his still form, throat dry and bereft of breath, hating the unsated bloodlust and its guarantee of bereavement. What accomplishment it had seemed to fell the Nazgul now bit the dust.
There was little more she knew thereafter, gripped by fatigue so strong – a chaining weariness of life that had drifted past hope. The tide of the battle of Pelennor turned as surely as Arda turned on its axis, an impermanent imprint on Arda's permanent canvas. Among the dead, two motionless bodies entwined tightly, one living and the other dead.
**********
* Anar kaluva tielyanna. Aurë entuluva.
-The sun shall shine upon your path. Day will come again.
* All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost…from ashes a fire shall awaken, a light from the shadows shall spring, the crownless again shall be king…
- From 'The Riddle of Strider'