Chapter Twenty-Two
Running
We ran until dusk, leaving the forest for sloping ridges, and then for steep ones. Scrabbling up and down, helped by whichever of my companions happened to be closest, I made my way along. My tears were reduced to silent gasps of angry frustration. I remember looking up once, perhaps at midnight, and catching my breath at a sky swept with stars. The rage behind my eyes melted, I mopped my face with my cloak, and went on.
After half-sliding down the tallest ridge thus far, we paused. It was not yet dawn. The moist air was effervescent, and I could not gasp enough of it. Tired as I was, I did not think I would be able to sleep, which was fortunate, because I did not think Aragorn likely to call that long a halt.
The man's focus was astonishing, as was his speed. I, as the slowest, may have set the pace, but he held me to it, while simultaneously keeping an eye on the orcs' trail. He had lost it now, though, in the rocks and the dark.
I folded awkwardly to the ground, physically exhausted but mind alive, as he paced the valley. The run had freed clumps of hair from my braid, and they now straggled into my eyes and everywhere else. Frustrated, I pulled the tail from my tunic and finger-combed it out.
Trying to rebraid the lank mass in the dark with a right arm that would not bend behind my head proved more frustrating, and I had nearly given up when slim fingers slipped beneath my own and took the work from me. "You should not strain your arm," Legolas said.
Slumping back, I allowed him to tug, twist, and deftly elf-handle my hair into a herringbone weave, with warrior's side-locks catching up the wisps. The elf slipped away to converse with Aragorn as silently as he had come, even before I could offer my thanks.
A northward course was decided upon, as Aragorn thought the orcs likely to cut across the plains of Rohan. The sky lightened steadily, showing us our road, a stone-pocked gully sandwiched between sheer cliff and gray foothills. We pressed on, Aragorn bent nearly double and Legolas far ahead. The elf shouted, surprising us all, and we converged upon him. Gimli stopped so suddenly that, mesmerized by fatigue and the rhythm of my stride, I nearly ran into him.
We stared down at the five dead orcs that Legolas had found. Their corpses had been mangled, and the ground covered with their blood. Gimli thought it another riddle, but to Legolas it was quite plain. "Orc-enemies must needs be our friends. What manner of folk dwell in this place?" he inquired of Aragorn.
"None of the Rohirrim, and certainly not men of Gondor. Perhaps a hunting party found them, but I do not think it likely."
"Why, what is your guess?" Gimli wanted to know.
"That the orcs fought among themselves, and that the larger ones, who bore the S-runes, cut down the smaller folk from the North. Though what the dispute was over I cannot say."
"Let us hope," said Gimli, "that it did not concern the hobbits, and that they were not slain here also."
Aragorn searched further, but found nothing, so we continued. Less than a mile on, we came to a tiny stream, no more than a trickle, fighting its way through the rock into the valley. Shrubs and grass, a miracle in this barren waste, grew in and around it. I stooped to wash the sweat and dirt from my face, wincing as the water touched the orc's slashes.
Aragorn paused as well, but his interest was in the mud, not the water. In it were prints from iron-shod shoes. We had found the trail again.
Straightening, we began to run with renewed strength and hope. Upon reaching the crest of the hill, I turned back briefly, letting the chill dawn wind rUffle my hair and sting my face. I faced west once more as the sun took possession of the sky, turning the colorless clouds rosy. The plains of Rohan lay before us, carpeting green right up to the mountains, which rose like icebergs to our left. I imagined that I could see all the way to Minas Tirith, and Aragorn echoed my sentiments with a short, whispered poem about Gondor before urging us onward.
While sliding down our current ridge, Legolas spotted the eagle again, this time flying north. None of the rest of us could see him, not even Aragorn, but, while we were looking, he spotted something closer and more significant moving across the plains. Legolas guessing the party to be perhaps twelve leagues away. Gimli urged that we find the quickest path down onto the grass. For my part, I was glad to see the last of Emyn Muil.
We scrambled along the last cliff as the sun rose higher, finding tokens of our quarry as we did so. The orcs had left remains of food and other detritus littered in their wake. We followed this trail north and down, through another stream-carved ravine, and so to the plain.
The grass of Rohan rivaled that of Lothlorien for scent and springiness. Resilient beneath my feet, it smelled of spring and life newly begun after winter's darkness. The air warmed around me. I felt strength replace my pain and fill the emptiness within me. The rest of the company seemed similarly affected.
We spread out to run in single file, Aragorn replacing me as lead. It did not take us long to find the orcs' trail again. I had slipped back to stride between Legolas and Gimli when the Ranger veered off, shouting for us not to follow. Legolas, of course, stopped on a dime, but the dwarf barreled into me. Both of us went down, he cursing in Khuzdul, I stifling a yell of pain.
An Elvish sigh, and Legolas helped both of us up before going to meet Aragorn. "Hobbit footprints," he cried, "small enough to be Pippin's. And this I have found also!" He displayed his prize, and my hand went to my throat, for the man held a brooch identical to the one that clasped my elven cloak. Legolas and Gimli's exclamations confirmed that it was indeed one of those that the Fellowship had been gifted with in Lorien.
"One of the hobbits cast this away to aid any who might be tracking them, and ran away from the orcs so as to leave a mark."
"Then one of the hobbits is alive, at least, and thinking. Walking about, too. Our pursuit is not blind faith," Gimli said.
"I hope Pippin did not suffer at the orcs' hands for his boldness," Legolas added. "Let us go! No folk should be used so, least of all our merry hobbits."
We concurred, and voted with our feet. Running across the plains was almost a joy. My staff was of more use of flat ground, almost taking the place of my lame leg. Given new strength by the atmosphere and new hope by Pippin's sign, we stopped only twice to rest that day.
Each time, Aragorn checked my bandages, in case they had been jarred loose, and made adjustments so it was easier for me to get along. I could not tell other than by how the wounds felt, but they did not seem to be healing. Of course, it had only been one day since I'd acquired them, but I did not think strenuous exercise to be the best remedy.
We halted as the sun's last rays vanished, and Aragorn called a council to decide whether to go on or rest by night. Legolas pointed out that the orcs would probably not rest, and that, even if they did, they were still leagues ahead of us. To which Gimli responded that even Aragorn could not track them with any accuracy at night. The debate went on for some time, with excellent points on both sides.
All the aches of the day had ambushed me as soon as I sat down, so I ignored the argument in favor of a nap. I woke to black midnight and staggered upright, wondering if I had been left behind. But no, two silent forms lay beside me, and a third stood gazing northward. Legolas turned at my approach. "Why did no one wake me?" I wanted to know.
"Firiel, we had not the heart." His voice was soft and without intonation.
I searched for pity in his face, but it was either not there or well hidden by poise and shadow. "I could have gone on. I have no wish to be coddled."
Legolas looked at me with wonder. "Were you an elf-maid who had lost her love, you would pass into the West, having no strength or desire left for life. Yet you go on, and do not despair, though your heart is broken. Nienna I name you, she of the Valar whose tears never cease, but give wisdom and endurance beyond hope, and sustain life instead of sapping it."
"That is well," I said, too tired to argue and a little stunned at this praise. "Call me Nienna."
We stood in silence for a long moment, and then something I had meant to ask him crossed my mind. "Teach me how," I began, somewhere below a whisper. The elf glanced at me oddly, so I elaborated. "You're taking yourself away. You do it when we run, and you do it while we sleep, and I want to know how it's done. Is it some sort of Elf-magic?"
Legolas favored me with an enigmatic smile. "It could be called so. Why have you wish to learn?"
I swallowed the lump that had appeared in my throat. "I'm not- I don't want to dream."
He nodded and folded bonelessly to the ground. "I shall try." I did the same, with much less grace. "Close your eyes." I did. "Now you must concentrate upon one thing, and upon one thing only: a place, an object, a place." His tone dropped on the last words, and I saw that he knew the face that had sprung unbidden to my mind.
I pushed back tears, seeing in poignant detail the strong, bearded chin, kind mouth and brown eyes. "Never let your mind waver," I heard Legolas say, as if from very far away. Then, I am ashamed to say, I fell asleep.
I dreamed in disjointed images. I saw my sister weeping, but when she spoke, the voice was not Amy's. Instead, Madam Alatar repeated her warning: "Do not touch the water. Do not touch the water." I was not sorry when Aragorn shook me awake.
It was still dark, but the Ranger said we must go, or lose the scent. He spent a long time with his ear pressed to the ground only to report horsemen riding away from us, which confused all of us, but still we set out for the third day of chase.
The weather could not decide whether to cloud or let the sun shine, and in truth I paid it precious little mind. We followed the orcs northwest, barely stopping to swallow lembas and water a few times. The pace slowed sometimes to a loping walk in deference to me, I think. I was beginning to be too exhausted to be grateful.
Towards twilight the terrain changed, the plains ahead easing into a series of low downs, the ground becoming rougher and the grass stubbier. Shivering in the quiet and the cold, I bent my head and kept running.
We rested at dusk, and once again I fell asleep in the middle of the discussion. A night's sleep was not enough for anyone, I think, except Legolas, who was not, after all, sleeping. He roused us to a red dawn, and we set out with breakfast in our mouths, if lembas and water, which we'd been eating for all three meals for the last three days, could be called breakfast.
Near noon we reached the downs. They ran north in bare ridges, and a wide strip of marshland lay between them and the River. West of the closest slope, Aragorn discovered what must have been the orcs' campsite, and paused to examine it. He reported that even the trail leading out from this was cold: it had been thirty-six hours since the orcs had been there.
Although I wanted nothing so much as to plop down and have a good cry, I followed the others, tramping painfully along. Weariness had seeped into everyone's (except Legolas') bones, weighing us down. Gimli's strong back was stooped, and Aragorn had his mouth set in a hard, grim line. I was doing my best to detach my mind from anything below my neck.
Legolas led now, and it was he who called us up the summit of a green hill. This was the last of the downs, and from it we watched the sun set. The shadows of evening turned the green plains into a gray wasteland, with a deeper darkness off to the northwest.
"There is nothing to guide us here," Gimli panted, "so we must halt. The night grows cold."
Aragorn nodded. "The wind blows from the north- from the snows."
"And before morning it will blow from the east," Legolas said. "But we must rest. Tomorrow may hold some hope we have not looked for. We will know at sunrise."
"We have run for three sunrises, and they have brought us no hope." I privately agreed with Gimli's grumbling.
The chill increased as the stars came out, so Aragorn and Gimli dropped on either side of me, close enough to share the warmth of our bodies. I did not mind. All three of us were grimy and sweat-covered, and I had long since grown used to Gimli's stentorian snores, and Aragorn's fitful sleep.
They let me sleep late, which I am sure I should have been grateful for. When I did wake, it was to Aragorn's shout of "Riders!" Stumbling up, I found my breath stolen by the vista around me.
The sky had cleared and my spirit soared to see the sweeping expanses of grass that rippled beneath the hand of the wind, which was indeed from the East, like waves running across a golden sea. Fangorn Forest lay to the northwest, the Misty Mountains just visible beyond it. The orcs' trail turned from our hill into the River. Surveying this, I saw a shadow moving swift across the plains, and supposed it must be horsemen. Legolas reported that there were one hundred and five of them, and that they were little more that five leagues away. 'Fifteen miles,' said the back of my head.
"The distance matters little; we cannot escape them on these plains. Shall we wait or go on?"
Aragorn cast a calculating glance at me, taking in, no doubt, the way I sat favoring my leg. "We will wait. All of us are spent, and our pursuit has failed. They, however, are riding back down the orcs' trail, and may have news of them."
"But they most assuredly have spears, and who knows what use they may put them to," Gimli pointed out.
Legolas shaded his eyes and looked again. "There are no hobbits among them."
"We may not hear good news, but good or ill, we shall wait for it here." Aragorn put an end to all further discussion, and we left the hill, where we were truly sitting ducks, and sat together at its base, wrapped up in our cloaks. The chill and insidious wind found its way everywhere but directly through the weave of the Galadhrim.
"What manner of men do we wait for," I finally asked Aragorn, "and what welcome will they offer us?" My voice sounded strange in my ears, and it was an effort to keep my teeth from chattering once I had opened my mouth.
He took a moment to answer. "I rode with them, long ago. They are proud, but without malice, generous, bold, and wise in their way. The tales and songs sung in the Golden hall of a winter's night would rival those of any bard in Harad or Gondor. But I not know what passes now in the minds of the Rohirrim, and whether they would side with Saruman or no. They have long been friendly to Gondor, and have no fondness for orcs."He fell silent, chewing on his bottom lip.
"Did Gandalf not speak of a rumor that they now give tribute to Mordor?" Gimli questioned.
"Boromir did not believe it, and neither do I." Aragorn's shoulder tensed against mine, and I leaned a bit closer to him.
"We will know soon," Legolas said. "They are coming."
The air filled with the sound of hoof beats, and the ground began to vibrate under us, and then they were upon us like a sudden storm. As they rode they shouted to one another in a broad, rolling language that I supposed must be Rohirric. The leader swerved to lead the host back southward, and they followed in file.
An éored in full battle gear, riding at the peak of their mounts, is a thing of lethal, terrible beauty. The horses' coats shone gray and white and roan, and their manes were braided. The riders' hair flowed flaxen from under their helmets, glistening with their mail and spear points in the sun. They did not seem to see us.
All had nearly passed when Aragorn chose to stand and call, in a voice pitched to carry over wind and the noise of battle, "What news from the North, Riders of Rohan?"