Eowyn's pace did not slow even when she could no longer hear the pounding of hooves behind her. She did not slow, she did not look back, and she did not fear. With Windfola under her, a fresh shield and a proper sword by her side, she felt more free than she had in a long time. From the cold determination to find Faramir alive she drew the confidence of the willingness to kill for her goal.
Nothing would stop her, not the land, not the distance, not her own brother.
When at last her pace changed it was because Windfola needed it to, and even then the great steed as able and eager to keep moving, and so on they went.
Her first day she rode through fields and grasslands that covered the rolling hills surrounding the Pelennor, and at last gave way to a more wooded wilderness as she followed the Anduin southward.
It was on her second day of riding that she spotted the rangers in the distance.
Where thirty men had departed with Faramir to Harondor, twenty-one rode back, heads bowed. Most were injured and it was clear to see that all were demoralized; the capture of their steward had stung deeply and planted resentment that would fuel even greater retaliation, but the inability to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades was itself a crushing defeat.
As they drew closer, she searched their faces, drawing curious looks from the few who had enough energy or care left to spare it on her, but among them she did not find the Steward.
"Don't go much further south," one called. "We're at war again."
"And what of your Captain?" she asked, heart sinking with dread.
"Captured. Turn back now," another man called back, hardly paying her a spare glance as he rode on, which was fine.
She offered a salute with her spear tip as the last went by, but she kicked Windfola back into a trot, new determination set in her heart.
Captured meant alive, at least for now.
Time was not on her side.
Faramir struggled to wake. The cold, black of unconsciousness clung like an old friend to his senses, familiar, and perhaps a bit too comfortable- easy to slip backwards and accept, but hard to turn away. Still, he forced his eyes open, and the fright and pain of his situation came crashing back all at once.
Burning pain in his side spread up his body, pulsing with the unsteady racing of his panicked heart.
There was cloth over his mouth and nose, a hand holding his face down- more hands holding his limbs.
He could hear their voices, speaking in some language that reminded him of fire and shadow as the pain in his side increased. He'd been stabbed again- then again- fire tugged through the flesh and he slowly began to realize that his captors were stitching his wounds closed. He forced himself to be still, lungs burning as he struggled to breathe past the cloth and the hand.
It was a thick enough fabric he couldn't make out anything past the weave in what little light reached him.
At last the pain took him again, though it threatened to empty his stomach first, and he sank into unconsciousness with a sense of nervous relief.
Part of him hoped not to wake up again, but Aragorn's voice kept echoing through his mind.
Return to the light, son of Gondor. Be free of this darkness. Breathe again.
Faramir jerked upright, glancing wildly around what appeared to be a tent.
His wounds were clean, sewn shut, and aching powerfully. He could hear outside the tent that the guards were talking about him. His command of their language was rudimentary at best, and he wasn't quite able to make out specifics, but it seemed they didn't think he'd be a problem, even left unbound. "We'll see about that," he muttered, first searching the interior, and finding only a fallen pair of shears still coated in what was presumably his blood, began to check the edges of the tent, listening for breathing at each wall and corner.
Finding the back left corner was the quietest, he pried the shears open and pushed the tip through the fabric, just low enough for him to crawl out once the slit was open.
The blades, now clean of blood, were reflective and broad enough to show him if there were people outside, and when there were a few in view of his escape, he waited.
At last the way cleared, but more Haradrim were approaching the door to the tent, possibly to retrieve or interrogate him.
He wriggled hurriedly out the hole he'd made and dodged from tent to tent to the edge of the camp where sentries looked out into the surrounding desert in wide intervals.
There were likely to be only four, but it would be dawn soon, and he'd be spotted if he wasn't well away by daybreak.
Faramir readied his shears and crept toward the closest, heart cold as river stone.
A lone rider crested a red tinted dune as dawn broke over the western desert of Harad. She tugged at the reins as her eyes landed on what appeared to be an enemy camp, realizing she was in full view of the sentries. She could see that an alarm had been raised, and the interior of their defensive line was in chaos.
With a jolt, Eowyn looked again.
The alarm had been up before she had come across the camp, and the Haradrim hadn't bothered mounting a defense in her direction at all. Somehow, they had not seen her, and what was more, they were already in distress.
She raised a field glass to her eye and squinted through its lens at the tents.
No riders had saddled the Mumaks.
Men ran from tent to tent, throwing the door-cloths open wide and dragging out the contents, perhaps looking for something- or someone.
She tightened her grip on the spear and her hand went to the horn at her side, an idea beginning to form in her mind as she looked on. She kicked Windfola forward, urging the horse down the tall dune, toward the camp.
When she had gotten close enough, Eowyn dismounted, crawling until she reached the sentry, fully ready to jump out and dispatch him with her short blade, but no, he was already dead.
Hope fluttered lightly in her chest.
The man, slumped forward, a look of shock on his dead face, and blood still slowly seeping down from his slit throat told her that a ranger had passed through.
She stayed to the edges of the camp, just behind the sentries but not deep enough to be easily spotted by the still panicking soldiers searching for their escaped hostage. When she got as close as she dared to the resting Mumaks, she drew the horn from her side- and blew, abandoning every caution she had to make as much noise as suddenly as she could.
The Mumaks, startled awake, began to panic, breaking their leads and running into the camp, crushing all in their path.
She made a sharp whistle for Windfola, and began to run back toward where she could see her loyal mount.
A few men, having spotted her, stood in her path, but in the chaos, the advantage was hers, and they went down under her blade, spraying blood across the sand.
Mounted again, Eowyn felt a surge of deadly confidence, and turned Windfola forward into what was quickly becoming a slaughter.
The rangers had thinned the war party a significant amount, and under the crushing feet of the Mumakil, even fewer were left alive to face the wrath of the Shield Arm. Only when the great beasts began to calm did she pull back.
"Faramir!" she called, straining to hear any response over the chaos. She thought she would have seen him in the fray, unless he was already on his way to Gondor again. She gritted her teeth in frustration. She couldn't stay much longer, but she couldn't seem to find the Steward either. With a wild shriek, she grabbed the nearest man by the top of his armor plating, Windfola's speed knocking the weapon from his grip.
The horse didn't slow down at all but sped on until they were out of the immediate range of their pursuers.
Eowyn dropped the soldier and dismounted, kicking him back down before he could rise and leveling her blade at his throat. "Who did you have here?" she demanded, but he didn't answer.
His face was a mask, but she could see in his eyes the fear of knowing she knew they had a prisoner at all.
"Was it the Steward?"
Still he remained silent, but his eyes told her everything.
"And he escaped?"
Yes, Faramir had escaped, and that was all she really needed to know.
"Lay down," she ordered, and when he stayed propped up on his elbows, she pressed the tip of her sword to his throat. "Down," she said more firmly, and he set his head back, slowly, grudgingly beginning to obey. She vaulted back onto Windfola, kicking the horse to a gallop back down the way they had come, sounding the warhorn as they went.
Faramir dimly heard the warhorn of the Rohirrim over the blood pounding in his ears, but whatever they had given him to keep him unconscious while they tended his injuries was starting to affect him- it seemed to have taken longer than they were expecting. He stumbled over the sand as the world tilted and helplessly reached a hand toward the red mare racing across the sand. "Eowyn, no," he mumbled, legs giving out.
The world pitched to the side and faded to black.
Again, Faramir jerked awake, sitting up and repressing a cry of pain as his side began to burn.
Several people began speaking at once, but he could not pick out even a single voice speaking a language he could fully understand.
He was again in a tent, this time laid upon something of a mattress. There were rugs covering the floor, a detail which confused him somewhat; rugs were impractical to bring on a military campaign.
Someone called above the din and the voices died down around him.
Faramir glanced around the room as his captors became distracted.
There was a low table with several ceramic tea cups sitting well within his reach. In a pinch, he could throw them, and the pot might break with large enough shards to let him have a weapon.
An old man entered the tent, apparently the source of the shout that had silenced the men and two women in the tent with him. He pointed at Faramir, who tensed, sending a glare back. "You are-" he waved a hand as if trying to remember the word. "Wake? A wake?" he corrected himself. "My West speak is rusty. You forgive me."
Faramir remained silent, determined to give his captors no useful information, even by accident.
"You not…?" the old man raised an eyebrow and sighed. He said something in Haradric that the Steward didn't catch before continuing to speak in Westron. "You safe here. We are Enuun, wanderers. We did not take gifts."
Faramir blinked at him in confusion, but the old man continued; apparently he didn't need to provide an answer.
"You do not trust us, we do not trust you, so all is well. When we again come to border, you be released. Understand?"
"I am safe," Faramir ventured in disbelief. "But you do not trust me?"
"Our people were once-" The old man clasped his hands together, fingers weaving through each other. "Same people, but there is much blood between us. Very old wounds. Bitterness made Lord of Gifts strong position to take our sons, take our daughters. No more. We be free of him, we be free of you."
Understanding began to dawn on Faramir with a combination of relief, scholarly curiosity, and fear. "Wait," he started, holding up a hand pleadingly as he struggled to get off the bed.
"You stay," the old man said sharply, stepping in front of one of the women, his daughter, perhaps.
Faramir raised his hands. "I need to return to my people."
"You will," the man said flatly.
"And soon," Faramir insisted. "They are in grave danger."
"You believe we are free enough to take you back, past slaughtered camp, to border?" The old man scoffed. "You fool," he said. "They blame us, they hunt us. We must go now. Take you back come season's change. Be glad we are not now killing you for trouble."
Faramir bit back a protest; they were already doing him a great service in taking him further from danger. "Could you let me go, then?" he asked. "I'll make my way back, and you won't be found guilty of-" he stumbled over the words. "S- slaughtering a camp? What happened?" He remembered seeing fire racing across the sand, hearing something screaming, or maybe singing, but the memory was too jumbled to make any sense.
"Rider came, blowing horn and killing men." He mumbled something in Haradric that was either their word for the Rohirrim, or simply meant "insane," which, on second thought, might have been the same word. "Then silence. Rider-" he shrugged. "Gone now."
The memory resolved into a more comprehensible image- that of a red mare in the desert- Eowyn had come looking for him.
His heart sank.
She hadn't found him.
He pushed away a wave of self-criticism, reminding himself that he could not have known Eowyn was coming, and that waiting longer may have just ensured that she found a corpse instead of a highly vulnerable camp of enemies. His escape must have made her raid possible, and there was that at least. He shook his head, realizing he'd missed the last few words. "I'm sorry, could you say that again? I didn't quite catch it."
"No," the man said. "We will not let you go. We do not trust you, but we cannot see desert kill you. You are not strong enough."
Faramir smothered down a wave of frustration. "When I am strong enough, please let me go."
"You will have debt to pay," the old man countered. "You must work for your stay. It will be payed off by season's turn if you work hard."
The words got stuck in Faramir's throat. He wanted to yell at them, or flee, or hide, or fight, anything but cooperate- but he had little choice now. He had no supplies, no way of knowing how far they had taken him before he woke up, and no allies. "Very well," he said, stomach a knot that would have emptied itself if it had anything in it. "I see that I must accept your terms."
The man nodded. "You are called Ihem now. Remember it. I am Eshati, chief of this tribe, and you are one of mine now."