Chapter Twenty-Four
Fangorn
The jolt of a horse under me was quite different from the jolt of running, over any terrain. Aragorn was a consummate rider, and tried to make things easier for me, I think, but there was only so much he could do. Even I agreed that finding Merry and Pippin was more important than my comfort.
When we came to the borders of the Entwash, Aragorn slid off, steadied me, and went to look for the trail Éomer had mentioned. It did indeed come down from the hills and out of the East. He came running back to us, remounted, and urged Hasufel on a course parallel to the tracks. We followed them like this for some time, and then he dismounted again to run back and forth to examine the ground. This display would have been comical from anyone else, but from Aragorn it only served to increase our faith in his tracking skills. Still, when he returned, it was with sparse news.
"I could find little," he began, and all our hearts sank. "The main trail is mangled with returning hoof prints, but this one is clearer. No Orc tracks turn back to the River. We must go slowly, and look for signs that the captives were taken off once the orcs knew they were pursued." He climbed up on Hasufel once more, eliciting a groan from me, and we set out.
As we rode, the sky grew gray, not a dove gray or a pearl gray, but a sad gray, and clouds covered the sun. Fangorn Forest loomed ever nearer, and still we had seen no Orc tracks branching off. We 'had' seen, here and there, dead Orcs, riddled with white-fletched arrows, but no sign of the hobbits.
We reached the forest at perhaps four o'clock in the afternoon. Smoke and a smell like burnt meat drove the mist from the air, and in a glade in the edge of the woods we found the source of the stench. A heap of ashes still smoldered, and beside it lay the broken armor and weapons of the incinerated Orcs. The severed head of one had been spiked to glare out of its center. I retched, coughs spasming through my body, jarring all of my aches. I think I would have been sick all over Hasufel if there had been anything in my stomach.
Aragorn slid off and helped me down, then he, Legolas, and Gimli went to canvas the battlefield. I poked through the arsenal of detritus, squinting and trying not to breathe. Finding nothing of Merry and Pippin, I gave up.
As the dim and hazy evening fell, everyone returned, one by one, with as little to show. Gimli lamented that, of all the riddles that had beset us since Amon Hen, this was the hardest. None of us wanted to have to tell Frodo that his kinsmen were lost. According to Gimli, another of their relations, an older hobbit, waited in Rivendell, and would also been grieved. In addition, Lord Elrond had been against Merry and Pippin's coming.
"Gandalf allowed it," Legolas said, staring at the pile of ashes.
"Gandalf came himself, and was lost long before the hobbits. His foresight failed him." Gimli stared too, leaning heavily on his axe.
"Gandalf did not give advice that would lead safely to a happy end," Aragorn's voice startled us: he had come up silently through the trees. "It was better to begin this quest than to refuse it, though, and at its end, all may be lost. This he knew." The raw pain left his voice abruptly, and the Ranger was his usual pragmatic self. "We will not leave Fangorn yet, and will at least wait for the light of morning."
We removed to another clearing and made camp under a spreading chestnut tree. At least, I think it was a chestnut tree. It looked slightly strange. The entire forest, come to think of it, felt slightly strange, and the night wind that blew through it did not smell of green growing things, but of age and old leaves. I wished for Lothlorien, and Elves singing in mellyrn, and the air fresh around my love and me.
I collapsed in the center of the glade, as far away from the eerie tree as possible. Gimli stood by me, and both of us shivered. Considering pride to be a nearly useless virtue in my position, I gave in and asked: "Might we make a fire?" I waited for Aragorn, at least, to condemn the idea as dangerous foolishness, but he did not, perhaps remembering the sole blanket we had brought apiece.
Gimli seconded my idea, and Legolas pointed out that the hobbits might see the light and so find us, which cheered me to no end. I tried to pretend that I had thought of the fire for exactly that reason, but no one noticed.
"It might also draw other things," Aragorn said darkly from under the tree. "We are perilously close to Saruman's lands, and perilous it is also to touch the trees in this place." I wanted to stick my tongue out at him, but didn't have the energy.
"The Riders felled trees yesterday, and made a great blaze, yet passed the night here safely," Gimli pointed out. The vote was, after all, three to one.
"Their numbers were great, and they cared nothing for the forest's wrath. Also, they did not venture deep in to Fangorn, as we may have to." Gimli and I glared at the Ranger, and Legolas' eyes beseeched. Aragorn gave in, with only a warning not to cut living wood.
Gimli went off with almost a spring in his heavy step, leaving me to shiver in silence. Aragorn was thinking, and Legolas seemed to be listening to the trees. I rummaged in my pack for a bit of lembas to munch, and soon the Dwarf was back with wood. He kindled a fire with help from Aragorn's tinderbox, and we huddled around it, the others joining us.
I drowsed, warm for the first time in a long while, until Legolas startled us all with a calm observation. "Look," he said, "the tree wishes to be warm also."
The branches above us, which had hitherto been blown by the wind, now appeared to bend closer to our blaze of their own accord. I shivered -it was a very Wizard of Oz moment- and thought, not for the first time, that I could do without a world where trees behaved like this. The forest seemed to move around us, closing in, brooding, as if it had not yet decided whether we were good to eat.
Legolas broke the silence. "Lord Celeborn warned us against journeying far into Fangorn. Why, do you think?" he asked Aragorn. And then, directed at me, "What tales of this wood had Boromir heard?"
I shrugged: Boromir had never spoken of it to me. Aragorn answered for both of us. "Many tales I have heard of Fangorn in Gondor, and other lands, and but for those words of Lord Celeborn's I should call them merely fables. Do you not know the truth of the matter, for if a Wood Elf does not know, how shall a Man answer?"
Legolas, to my surprise, admitted that the Ranger was more traveled that he, and that he had heard nothing of Fangorn in Mirkwood. "We have only a few songs that tell how the Onodrim, that Men call Ents, dwelt here long ago, for this place is old, even by the reckoning of the Elves."
Nothing clicked in the back of my head at the mention of these new people, as I had come to expect, only a dim memory of their language, a long-winded tongue of no use to me. I didn't really care: getting to know Fangorn Forest or anyone who lived there was not high on my priority list.
Sleep 'was', but I was determined to pull my weight figuratively if not literally, so by dint of many forceful looks, I got the three stubborn males to include me when they drew lots for the watches of the night. Second watch, roughly eleven to two o'clock, fell to me, after Gimli and before Legolas and Aragorn.
Leaving the Dwarf to tend the fire, the rest of us lay down, and the last thing I heard before sleep was Aragorn, drowsily repeating his injunction not to cut living wood for the fire.
The sudden movement of those around me dragged me from the fog of sleep, and galvanized me up as well. It could not be my watch yet. The thing that had roused them stood on the edge of the clearing, at present doing nothing more that staring at Gimli. A hat hid the figure's eyes, but his body was bent under the concealing cloak, giving him the appearance of an old man.
Aragorn cleared his throat, rose into a crouch, and said, "May we assist you, grandfather?" Standing, he strode over to the intruder, whom I was not sure now was an old man. "If you are cold, come, share our fire."
I looked away, at said fire, to see if there was a convenient branch I could grab to use as either a torch or a weapon, and when I looked back, the figure had disappeared. I nearly joined the others as they searched the trees, having never felt so scared huddling alone by the fire, but my leg would not have it. Riding had not agreed with it, and it was cramping in retaliation.
"The horses!" Legolas shouted. I glanced to where we had tied them, and even though the night was as black as the inside of a witch's hat, it was clear that they were not there anymore. I went from being scared and cold to wanting to swear and kick something, but all any of us could do was stare after our mounts, who were by now far away.
Aragorn said as much, and then parked himself beside me. "Now we must do without horses. We began on our feet, and those we have still."
"Feet, certainly," I spat, "but only seven good legs between the four of us."
Aragorn reached out to touch my shoulder. "I will clean the wound at first light, and fashion a new dressing for you. With your staff, and our help, you should be able to walk. You must."
I nodded, seeing the sense in what he said, against my will. "Was that Saruman?" I asked, both because I had remembered Éomer's words and to get the conversation off my leg.
"I do not know," Aragorn admitted. "He wore a cloak, as Éomer said, but a hat, not a hood. Still, I think it was Saruman, but there is nothing to be done for it until daybreak, when we may leave." Gimli and Legolas returned to their bedrolls. I pulled my blanket up around my shoulders, wedged my leg into a marginally less painful position, and prepared to watch for two hours.
Aragorn's hand had not left my shoulder, and now he squeezed it briefly. "Sleep now, Firiel. You will need your strength tomorrow, and now I must think rather than sleep."
I set my jaw. "Then I will sit with you and think."
"Firiel," he ordered, "take some rest."
"I will, in a little while. When my leg will let me." I had jarred it quite badly, and now it throbbed with every heartbeat.
The gray eyes softened. He turned away from me, took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, and set to work filling one from the other, tamping the tobacco down carefully with his thumb.
I felt a lump rising in my throat that had nothing to do with how my leg felt. How many time had I watched Dad go through those very same motions, deep in thought, before Mum made him stop smoking? I swallowed and shook my head. Aragorn had smoked his pipe many times before in my presence, and it had never made me this melancholy.
Aragorn was watching me watch him. He had gotten the pipe drawing properly through much cupping and several applications of twigs set on fire. Without taking his eyes off me, he inhaled deeply and blew three smoke rings.
I laughed outright for the first time in I could not remember how long. Aragorn grinned and, as if to say 'Well, you do everything else, let's see you try this,' passed me the pipe.
Not even going to attempt an imitation, but determined to show him I knew what I was doing, I merely held the smoke in my mouth for a moment, blew it out through my nose, and passed the pipe back. I think Aragorn had expected me to cough and choke and generally make a fool out of myself, but Dad had often shared when I caught him smoking, as a small bribe against my telling Mum.
The throat-lump reappeared, as did the pipe in front of my face. But this time I pushed it away, overwhelmed with the thought of Mum, long gone, and Dad, lost in dementia. And what about Amy? Did she miss me, or had she forgotten she'd ever had a twin?
I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, that I had no way of getting back and, even if I had, I'd made a promise to Boromir and myself. I had not yet gotten to Gondor, and didn't really see how I was going to. Yes, it was vaguely in the direction we were aimed now, and Aragorn would get there eventually, but would I be with him? Could I get anywhere on foot, with my leg?
I put my head down to look at the offending limb, but the firelight was too dim to discern exactly what had changed. The pain had not subsided, but neither had it grown much worse. The sharp throb had become a dull, hot ache. The wound seemed to be the only part of my body generating its own heat. Shuddering, I drew closer to the fire.
Aragorn was singing. I realized it slowly, as the words crept slowly into my consciousness. It was the one he had sung on the River, but there was more of it this time. The soft Elvish words, barely murmured to any tune at all, wrapped around my heart, warming my soul. I could have thrown my arms around him and kissed the weathered cheek somewhere beneath the stubble, but I did not want to break the spell he had woven around me.
The Ranger had put away his pipe, and sat staring into the forest, lips moving almost unconsciously I laid back, head on my elbow, and before I could find a star through the trees, fell asleep.
The first of March dawned gray and cold. I woke as everyone was making ready to set out searching once more. Seeing I was awake, Aragorn came over to see to my honorable war wounds, just as he had promised. As he tended them silently, I saw that both leg and arm were red and oozing. I did not protest when he told me to mind the fire, ostensibly in case Merry and Pippin or the horses came back, while the others searched the woods.
I did not mind much, since I knew it was the sensible thing to do. While waiting, I ate a bit, twiddled on my flute, and mended a rip in the sleeve of my tunic with needle and thread borrowed from Aragorn. I would have liked to use the time to bathe, but we were too far from the River, and I didn't think I could get there anyway.
The hunters returned around noon, with news. They had found the mallorn-leaf wrapping of a piece of lembas, and signs of at least one hobbit. These signs had led into Fangorn, and it was there that we now must go. I was, apparently, coming too, at least on this expedition.
Any movement of my leg was agony, but I knew Aragorn would be otherwise occupied, so, after a bit of experimentation, I developed a gait that pivoted alternately on my staff and good leg. It allowed me to move quite fast, but I am sure I looked very silly. Everyone was nice enough not to say anything.
We plunged into Fangorn, Aragorn doing most of the tracking. I concentrated on the ground as well, finding level patches to step or plant my staff. We returned to the stream the three hunters had found earlier, and searched along its banks. Some ways up, in the mud, were the footprints of two hobbits.
"This is good news," said Aragorn, straightening up, "but the marks are two days old. And the hobbits left the stream here."
"What now?" Gimli echoed all our thoughts. "We cannot follow them through the entire forest, we have not enough food. Even if we did find the hobbits, it would only be to sit down and starve together. Merry and Pippin would not thank us for it, hobbits being a folk over-find of food."
"If all we can do is starve with them, then we will do that," Aragorn said grimly. "We must go on."
We went on, until the path ended in a sheer rock wall carved with rough steps. Only a few long-awaited rays of warm sunlight kept me from despairing utterly. Mustering all my remaining reserves of bravado, I said jauntily, "Well, I'm going up. Perhaps you might look about down here." I took two steps up, propelled solely by momentum, and fell backwards into Aragorn's waiting arms.
I did go up. Backwards and on my bottom, with much help from the others, but I went up. When at last we all stood looking down from the plateau, Aragorn remarked, "I am nearly certain the hobbits passed here before us, but there were other marks on the stairs, not made by Merry or Pippin. Perhaps up here we may discover where they went next, and who accompanied them."
I looked around, seeing only trees. To the east the view was open, showing the forest marching toward the plains of Rohan. "We have taken the long way 'round," Legolas observed. "By leaving the River on the second or third day and striking west, we could all have come here safely. But no one can know where their road may lead until they come to its end."
"The company did not wish to journey to Fangorn," said Gimli, as if he still did not wish to.
"But here we are after all, nicely caught," Legolas began, as if he did not mind. "And here- Look!" The Elf pointed.
"What?" all three of us asked at the same time. He hushed us, and ignored our protests that we hadn't his Elvish eyes.
Down on the path we had just come up stood the old man from last night.