As it turned out, Ethuniel had to explain very little. Bardur and Almgeir led her across the camp to an older man with an air of authority and a considerable amount of blond beard who, before his son could say anything, widened his eyes and said, "My lady Ethuniel. This is a very unexpected meeting."
He spoke in his own language, which Ethuniel took to be a compliment, so she replied in turn. "I am sorry to have been thrust upon your protection, and to have surprised you all like this."
"Surprised?" The older man looked to his son. "Bardur, did you not recognize the King's niece? We had the honor of seeing her in Meduseld just – last winter, was it not?"
"Yes, sir," Ethuniel replied.
"I believe I was out in the Eastemnet at the time, sir," Bardur replied, with a small bow in Ethuniel's direction that could have been mistaken for a nod. "I did not have the honor."
"Well, my lady," Geirdur asked, "how did you come to be in the middle of this?"
Ethuniel told him the same story she had related to his son and nephew, and when she was finished he arrived at the same conclusion. "Right you were to come to us. Who knows how many of those demons may be wandering these hills now we've seen one band of them."
"Sir," Bardur interjected, "Lady Ethuniel's presence only makes more urgent a task that would have to have been undertaken anyway."
"Yes," Geirdur agreed. "Some of us must ride to Emyn Arnen in any case and tell the Prince what has occurred. Our Prince, that is," he addressed to Ethuniel, "though of course yours as well; though we do not report to him, these are his lands. And we can escort the lady home at the same time. Bardur," he instructed his son, "I think you and I, and Almgeir, with Alfarin, Bryn, and Elfgar, will be sufficient to ride for the city. The others can guard the encampment."
"If you wouldn't mind," Bardur suggested, "Aethelgar has received a serious wound – it will heal, but it will need some attending and surely his brother would like to remain with him for the time."
"Of course," his father said without hesitation. "Let Elfgar remain with his brother, and we will take Cuthred with us instead. Came you on your own mount, Lady?"
"She is over there with your own horses," Ethuniel replied, pointing to Brecca. She had managed to keep an eye on her mare throughout most of the fight, and Brecca, though disturbed, had not bolted.
"Good." Geirdur turned to Bardur and Almgeir. "Round up the others, and mount up!"
As they rode at a fair speed for Emyn Arnen, the leader of the eored positioned himself nearest to Ethuniel – out of politeness, to protect her, or simply because he wished it, she could not say.
"Do you not have more brothers than the one, my lady?" he asked after a while.
"Yes, I have two younger in addition to Elboron," she replied. "They are still in lessons yet, though soon they will be free of their masters."
"I believe I met Master Aldhelm in Rohan once."
"Yes," she said, considering. "That was some few years ago." In fact both of her younger brothers had been scheduled to be sent to Rohan for that visit, she recalled, but Theomir, the elder, had come down with fever and Aldhelm had been sent without him.
"A fine boy," Geirdur said. "He will make a good man."
"They both will," she said.
"A very fine horseman as I recall, though still a boy. Think you he might one day choose his mother's land to settle in?"
Ethuniel shrugged one shoulder as well as she could while still holding fast to Brecca's reins. "I do think the life of a Rider would suit him, but beyond that I cannot say. Though he is young, Aldhelm keeps his own counsel."
"Well, he must know the sister-son of Eomer King would be welcome in any man's eored – including mine."
"I am certain he does, but I will pass on your kind words."
They rode in this way for nearly a half-hour before two figures appeared on the horizon, galloping hard. Everyone tensed, but once the figures had come a bit nearer Ethuniel relaxed and said, "It is my brother and my cousin."
Elboron and Elfwine were very happy to see her safe, and Elboron joked, "Ethuniel, I did not say you had to bring the eored back with you." Then he stopped, and seemed to notice the state of the men, his sister's dirty face and tumbled hair, and the way none of the men seemed to be looking Elfwine in the eye. "What happened?"
"The Haradrim found the eored before I did, Elboron," Ethuniel replied to spare Geirdur the explanation. "They were beset when I arrived."
"And so you wisely stayed out of trouble?" her brother asked in a tone that managed to combine sarcasm and dread.
"She did the best thing she could have," Geirdur interjected. "She deemed right that she would be safer in company than on her own."
"Held her own, too," Almgeir said from his position on Ethuniel's right.
"Barely," Ethuniel muttered back, but she was grateful for the show of confidence nonetheless.
Both Elboron and Elfwine focused their eyes back on Ethuniel. "You fought?" Elboron asked in near-disbelief.
"A little," she said quietly, anxious to have the subject over with.
"We thought it best to escort your sister home and speak with Prince Faramir – and you, my lord Elfwine – about the attack," Geirdur said smoothly. "The rest of the men have remained at our encampment to the north."
With a nod to each other the two younger men turned their horses back toward Emyn Arnen, both waiting for Ethuniel to catch up and ride between them. When they were out of earshot of the Riders, Elboron repeated, "You fought?"
"I think the most strictly accurate description would be, I used my sword," Ethuniel said wryly. "I did little damage, but at least I avoided causing damage to myself or any of the eored, which was my aim."
"Mother will be pleased you took her advice and carried your sword."
"Mother will be unbearable for three days at least."
"Yes, that is probably true." He grinned, then abruptly turned serious again. "I did not run into a single rider on the way back to Emyn Arnen. I am very sorry."
"Sorry for not finding any trouble? I would prefer you did not," Ethuniel replied.
"Sorry for sending you into danger. I assumed the eored would be safe . . ."
"And it was," she said. "I am unharmed, and the men looked out for me as best they could. You could not have known."
"That does not make me the less culpable."
"Of course it does; you did what you thought best. As did I." Elboron opened his mouth as if to protest again, but Ethuniel silenced him with a look. Her father was likely to be beside himself at her danger after all; she did not need her brother trying to claim responsibility for it on top of everything.
They were not met at the gates, but Faramir and Eowyn, with Legolas close behind them, were coming into the entrance hall as the entire party walked into the house. Eowyn did not wait until her children had reached her to begin talking.
"The next time you go looking for your sister out alone on the countryside with strange riders everywhere, you might consider taking the guards with you instead of merely leaving a message with Theomir that you and Elfwine have gone out to find her!" she stormed as they approached.
Elboron winced, but Elfwine spoke first. "We are sorry, Aunt. We did not know for certain whether Ethuniel had run into any trouble – we thought she would be waiting with the eored. And we did not wish to waste any time."
Eowyn looked as though she might be going to say something else, but Elboron had a moment of adolescent pique – he pointed to his sister and said, "She fought Haradrim."
Had Ethuniel not expected a thorough scolding followed by a great deal of crowing about her skill, it would have been comical the way her parents and Legolas all stared at Elboron, then moved as one to stare at her, all without speaking a word. Eowyn finally managed to stammer, "You – fought – Haradrim?"
Geirdur took that opportunity to bow deeply to his King's sister and explain about the attack, and Ethuniel's part in it (her deeds seemed to acquire more valor with each telling, by now she was receiving credit for having "disabled" at least one enemy). To Ethuniel's great relief, the opinion that she had done the safest thing was unanimous and after she had been tightly embraced by both parents she was able to blend into the background as her parents led Geirdur and the other men back into her father's council chamber.
"Disabled," she grumbled quietly to Bardur, who had fallen into step beside her. "Disabled his breastplate, more like. He would have lived, if that great tall one hadn't stabbed him from behind."
"Godwulf?" Bardur said, smiling broadly at her for the first time. "He is rather a giant, even for my father's eored, which is known for having the biggest men in the Mark."
"I could have guessed that." Bardur was no means the largest man she had seen in the eored, and even he stood more than head and shoulders above her.
The Rider's smile faltered slightly as he looked down at her, and he glanced around to see if any were in earshot before speaking. They had fallen behind the rest of the party, and so he said, "You have never been in a real fight before."
"No," she admitted. Surely he had been able to see that for himself?
"Have you ever seen a man killed?"
That gave her a moment's pause. "No. Not – before me like that." She wondered why he would be asking and her defenses were rising as she asked, "Why?"
He broke step and stopped to look down into her face. "Because you haven't stopped shaking yet," he said quietly. In some alarm she looked down at her own hands, which were indeed trembling. She hadn't noticed. Her face heated up, but he added quickly, in the same confidential tone, "Happens to everyone. I think your family was too busy being shocked to notice." He must have found some acknowledgement in her face, because he nodded slightly and started walking again. She followed without thinking, taking two hasty steps to each one of his.
By the time she and Bardur had entered the now-full council chamber, taking the last two remaining chairs around the large center table, Ethuniel had begun to notice other things. Her stomach had been fluttering unpleasantly probably for the last hour, but she had been too full of battle-energy to be aware of it. The smell of battle on herself, her clothes, her hair, and on the Rider sitting next to her was suddenly overwhelming. And try as she might, she couldn't control her hands.
Elboron was quick to confess that Ethuniel had heard the Haradrim approaching before he did, but they agreed (after she had taken several deep breaths and managed to find her voice) that the riders had most likely come from the east. "After all," Elboron said, "they certainly did not come from Minas Tirith."
"They did not come at us from the north, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have come from Osgiliath in the first place," Geirdur cautioned. Now he was taking the trouble to speak in Faramir's tongue, and his Westfold accent was hard and prominent.
Ethuniel and Bardur both began to speak at the same time, but he stopped and nodded for her to continue. "There is a portion of the river," she began haltingly, feeling with relief her stomach begin to return to normal as she spoke, "that cannot be seen from Minas Tirith or from our hills."
"In the bit of forest," Bardur added, looking to her for acknowledgement. She nodded to him.
"But then we have the same problem again," Elfwine said. "The Haradrim sailed up the river, landed across from Minas Tirith, then rode around the eored to attack from the east? Just to confuse us?"
"They cannot have expected an encampment of Riders in Ithilien," Almgeir protested.
"I think they did," Ethuniel said softly. All heads turned to face her in curiosity. "When I arrived, I noted that there were about fifteen more Haradrim than Rohirrim."
"I think that is right," Geirdur said cautiously, waiting to see what else she would say.
"It is odd, isn't it?" she continued. "Too many for a scouting party. Too few for a real attack. But just enough men to outnumber the average eored."
"They underestimated our skill," one of the Riders said boldly in his own language.
"Yes, yes," Faramir said, now staring intently at some invisible spot on the table. "But the point is, they sent – let us say ten men more than your numbers, assuming Elfwine and his party would have been at the camp during the attack. Ethuniel is right – it is a strange number of riders to send on a scouting mission, unless they expected to run into an entire eored."
"They would have to have tracked us from far north," Bardur said.
"Or they had information that an eored had been sent out of the borders," Elfwine said thoughtfully.
"From someone who saw them leave Rohan?" Eowyn frowned. "Even if they were observed from the mountains, how would the Haradrim know exactly where to find them?"
"By knowing exactly where they had been sent," Elfwine said. This pronouncement threw a chill over the room, and no one spoke for some time.
"On top of everything else," Eowyn said in quiet horror. "On the other hand - it seemed impossible that Haradrim could have entered Rohan from the north at all unnoticed, but – Haradrim spies, in Edoras itself? Surely that must be impossible."
"There are perhaps two merchant families of Harad living near Edoras," Elfwine said. "Both families settled there long before the war, and none of them have ever showed any discontent. I cannot think of any others near the city, and precious few anywhere else in the land."
Geirdur nodded his agreement. "It isn't like Gondor – you know, my lady" (this to Eowyn). "Outsiders have never found Rohan particularly hospitable – not the people you understand, but it's a hard land and those born to it love it best. Foreigners from the South would catch a lot of attention."
"By freezing to death," another of the Riders said quietly in Rohirric.
Faramir sighed. "Elfwine, I think it best if we ride early tomorrow for Minas Tirith. Eoric should accompany us, I think, and Elboron as well." He looked to his wife. "From there I think we should dispatch a message to your brother."
"A hasty one," she agreed. "He will want to know what happened today, but also Elfwine's suspicions. With which I concur," she added quickly, nodding to her nephew.
Faramir turned then to Geirdur. "I leave it to you whether you will remain in the city for the night, or return to your encampment. You and your men are of course welcome here for as long as necessary, but I understand if you wish to see to the rest of the eored."
Geirdur thought for a moment before deciding that, as it was already dark, they should remain in Emyn Arnen and then return to the encampment at first light. Bardur assured his father that the wounded man would heal and would be well cared for by those left behind, and so it remained only to find accommodations for the six additional men between the great house and the guard station.
As they all trailed from the council chamber, Bardur caught Ethuniel's eye and offered her half a smile. She hesitated, then nodded subtly. His warning was well taken.
By the time she retreated to her bedroom alone and stretched out on her bed, the smell and the noise and the reverberation of swords clashing that echoed through her bones had built into a quiet roar. Still, she did not cry until Elboron had come requesting entrance and, seeing the look on her face, sat down on the bed and wrapped his arms around his sister. Then the silent tears overflowed, and she could be grateful that at least no one else had witnessed them.
To be continued . . .