Minas Tirith burned anew.
Countless hosts of Orcs and evil Men had swarmed form the East, wiping out the last forces at Cair Andros and moving swiftly on to the now near-defenceless White City, putting flame to all they passed. Faramir had mustered what forces he could, but all were very young, very old or wounded. It was barely a company that had manned a final desperate defence against the hordes of Mordor.
Faramir's head had landed in the garden of the Houses of Healing, where it had been found by the Lady Éowyn. She had carried it to her room, from whence none could persuade her to come.
Merry missed Pippin. He missed his friends. He missed long summer evenings under the Party Tree, eating, talking at their ease, laughing at some jest.
'I hope we shall see each other again,' he thought gloomily, crouching amongst the rubble that had once been a fair house. 'But I doubt – I doubt it will be in this life.' Slipping out and running bent-backed in the cover of a low wall, he could hear the jeers of the armies of Mordor, the clash of steel, and the screams.
Always, the screams.
He clutched one hand to his side, feeling his fingers itch as a new wound leaked through them. In the other he wielded a stolen orc-knife.
So far as Merry could see, he was living on borrowed time: he could merely stall, for now, the moment when he – like the blameless citizens of Minas Tirith – would be killed. But somehow he could not stand the thought of dying alone, ambushed from behind some ruin or crushed by oblivious toppling rubble.
So it was that he made his way to the Houses of Healing.
But the gardens, when he reached them, had been hacked and burned; the houses themselves were crumbled in places and daubed with foul graffiti and the symbol of the Eye. Merry stared up in sorrow at the once-fair house: the gleaming walls soiled and broken; the gardens that had striven to bear fruit even under the Shadow now slashed down and trampled, their soil trodden to viscous mud by the tread of many hobnailed boots.
He hurried inside.
The door of the room that had been Éowyn's was pulled clean from its hinges, and lay smashed and defaced on the muddied floor. Éowyn herself lay half-off the bed, one arm still cradled protectively about the remains of the head of Faramir. Her clothes were torn and bloodied, her exposed body bruised, and her face mutilated almost beyond recognition. The bed had been hacked and the curtains slashed.
They were all gone, Merry realised. Pippin was gone. Sam and Frodo were gone. Gandalf. Théoden. Aragorn. Éowyn. Sauron's claw would reach out – and even the Shire, the good green Shire, would be engulfed…
.-.
Checking the room, the Southron deemed the small figure stooped over the corpse of the woman to be no threat. As he entered, making no effort to muffle his crackling footsteps on the scree, the creature heard him and turned.
He judged it at first to be a child, but as he looked closer he saw that the face looked old, old as one who has seen many terrible things and had to grow up far too fast. And its eyes seemed cold and darkened, as if something had died inside whilst the body lingered on. He cut it down, for those were his orders.