Sweat trickled down Boromir's face and back as he parried the stroke of one of the young men's blade. One of the many recruits that would be sent to battle, however, no amount training could prepare them to face the foes of Mordor. Steel clashed against steel in the training yard, only a precursor to the sounds of battle when men were screaming in pain, and black and silver armor were clacking against one another, and Orcs cursing and speaking in the guttural tongue of Mordor.
Nothing could prepare them, only a battle itself. He swung with full force, missing Boromir and stumbling forward with the weight of sword and shield. Had it been a real fight, it was likely such an ill-calculated move would have cost him his life. "Again!" The Captain-General called, and so the match began anew.
One of Denethor's personal heralds ran through the sparring men and stopped near Lord Boromir, his stance resolute as he told the Steward-Prince that he had been summoned to the Great Hall by his father. It was an urgent matter that needed to be discussed. Already irritated by the ineptness of even the experienced soldiers, he rammed his sword back into its sheath and followed the herald back to the Citadel.
Posted sentries opened the large wooden doors and Boromir entered, adjusting his vambraces, as none of the other nobles or commanders were present, he knew this was not an urgent matter. Lord Denethor sat in the marble chair beneath the King's Throne and rose, though his face darkened upon seeing the harsh expression his son wore. "What is your reason for summoning me here?" The Captain-General demanded, he was needed elsewhere, not answering his father's beck and call for matters that were of no importance to the security and wellbeing of Gondor.
The reigning Steward's face contorted in ire, "How can the line of Stewards continue if you do not have an heir?!" His father demanded unease and panic laced his voice. Boromir felt his ears burn, "This is what I was interrupted for? To speak of marriage?"
Denethor stepped off the dais and was no longer at eye-level with his son. "I will not see the likes of Faramir sitting on this chair!" Came the bitter declaration. Boromir moved backward and shook his head, this was not the time to speak of trivial matters. "Name the beauty that has your eye and you shall have her, wedded and bedded."
Boromir sighed, "I will not argue with you about this, father."
"It's her you want is it not?" He asked his son and took the silence as his answer. Twenty years of her counsel were forgotten and all the things she had done for Gondor. All Denethor could picture was the way she bent both his sons and the Elder Council to her will. She was a meddlesome liability in his mind, that had been what the seeing stone told him. "The witch has you under her spell! She wishes to take you from me!" He paced back and forth in front of the throne. "She will not take my son from me, not you, not my firstborn!"
Alas, he understood what Aeardis spoke of when she called his father mad. Boromir bit back his harsh response and thought for a moment about the prospect of marriage. He did not desire some highborn lady whom he had nothing in common with, not even if she were a great beauty would he want to wed someone that there would be no common ground with. After almost three decades, there was only one woman he had ever come across that would wish to take as a wife and now she was in Ithilien, with his brother. "And if it was her I desired to wed?"
"No!" Denethor shrieked.
"Father please, I have done nothing but your bidding, if I must marry...," he paused and could see her gentle smile and murky eyes, "let me marry Aeardis with your blessing," he pleaded. She was his light in the darkness that grew upon the land.
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Faramir crept along with a bow nocked with an arrow ready to shoot, as did the rest of the Rangers. Aeardis, however, kept her hand on the hilt of her sword, ready to draw it at a moments notice. In the low-lying, land was a hoard of orcs, marching on the Southern Road.
Of course, Aeardis had heard the tales of the cruelty and horrid orcs throughout the ages even knew the story of how that had come to be. Tortured and disfigured elves had been the first of the monsters, created by Morgoth himself. Now she was seeing them with her own eyes, not through lines written on a page or by word of mouth. Beneath the rusted and thick armor was skin the color of charred meat, mottled and heavy with unnatural things. The troop did not move silently or make efforts to pass through the land unseen, they had strength in numbers.
Madril turned back to all the Rangers and Aeardis. They would not stand a chance against the force if they engaged them without aid. It would be best to return to Minas Tirith in haste and begin the preparations for retaliating. "Stay low, out of sight," the senior ranger told them. Now there was a looming sense of unease. Each twig snapping underfoot was an ambush, every whisper became shouting.
They were making haste toward the first of the ranger's outposts, it was there that their horses had been left. Everyone kept a wary eye trained on the horizon and the other looking back over their shoulders. Even as the sun set, Aeardis and the Rangers did not dare stop. It must have been midnight when they arrived at the outpost, though no one could say for sure as the stars were shrouded by thick clouds and the moon did not shine. Only a moment's refuge was taken, enough to drink and refill waterskins from the brook that flowed alongside the encampment.
Faramir hefted the saddle up and onto Aeardis's brown mare before she had a chance to, he tightened the buckles and secured the straps. When their eye's met, he saw that, for perhaps the first time, she was afraid. Truly afraid. "We ride for Minas Tirith," Faramir declared from the saddle of his own horse, "Make haste and do not stop." The ranging party all drove their heels into the sides' of thirty horses and the night echoed to the thundering sound of hooves against barren earth beneath them.
By evenfall the White City was in sight, glimmering like a spike of hope against the darkness. Heavy iron and wooden gates opened for the ranging party, a single blast from a large silver horn signaled their return. The streets cleared for the stampede of riders that were making their way to the Citadel. At the helm were Faramir and Aeardis, though by the fifth level they rode alone, having left the others behind.
Boromir was waiting in the Fountain Court for their arrival, his downtrodden mood lifted immediately upon seeing her. It didn't matter that dirt and sweat clung to her skin or that her hair had fallen from a braid and was knotted, none of that mattered. She was safe and that alone was enough. "Aeardis!" He exclaimed, catching her as she nearly fell from her saddle. The Steward-Prince steadied her, concern now rising in his eyes as even Faramir seemed exhausted.
"I fear the ranging life does not agree with me," she uttered, to which both brothers' laughed, then, however, the air grew tense when Aeardis added in a grave tone, "We must speak though, it is urgent." She told him of the orcs marching toward the Anduin, their approximate numbers, the weapons they carried, and the few words that had been overheard in a broken and mangled version of the Common Speech.
"An army?" Boromir questioned, disbelief overcoming his expression. Aeardis nodded, knowing what this meant for Gondor, what it meant for him. "Yes, they will arrive within three days if their pace has not slowed."
He looked up to Faramir and the ranger nodded, "It is true."
Boromir sighed, "Then it seems we shall not have much sleep tonight." He straightened his back and in an instant, the Captain of the White Tower was standing before them, tall and regal in the starlight. "Faramir, speak with your Rangers. Take them to Osgiliath on the morrow and scout the ruins and the eastern part of the city, do not engage them until we have arrived." The Ranger nodded and turned back toward the lower levels of the city.
"Aeardis, find the other commanders, alert them that they are to report to the Great Hall immediately so that we can discuss the fortifications and defense of Gondor." She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded as well, though before she went, she looked over her shoulder, "What of your father?"
A hardened look that she had not expected crossed his fair features and in a stern, almost cold voice he said, "I will handle him."
Night had fallen when all the commanders, Rangers, and nobles gathered in the Great Hall. Aeardis spoke her piece, both Faramir and Madril supplemented her claims. The enemy would first take Osgiliath as a stronghold and there were be no way around a head on battle, having already realized that, Aeardis left the meeting early to begin making her own preparations.
She gathered several guards from around the Citadel and the Houses of Healing. With any luck, the battle would be contained outside the Rammas Echor, but neglect had left the dark wall weakened in portions and nearly destroyed in others, it would not slow them as they rolled over the countryside. "Go through the city and check all the trebuchets, see that they are ready to be used," the siege machines had never been used in all her years in Minas Tirith and she prayed they would never need to be. "Tell every woman, child, and man unable to wield a sword that if seven long blasts from a single horn are heard, they must move to the upper levels of the city."
"And the villages?" One of the guards asked. If she remembered right he was from a small fishing village along the Anduin. A deep set frown overtook her tired features, it would do them no good to come to Minas Tirith and be holed up waiting to die if it came to that. Aeardis shook her head, knowing what must be done, "They will not have time the time to make it here, but send ravens, doves, and pigeons with word telling them to make for the coast should the battle be lost. Prince Imrahil will help them in any way that he can."
It seemed now that Gondor was truly at war.
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Faramir had already gone with the Rangers to scout the fallen city of Osgiliath and the lands surrounding it. Now it was Boromir's turn to leave. He was dressed in the silver armor of a captain with the White Tree emblazoned on his chest and vambraces. Aeardis smiled, she was not blind to his looks and today he was more handsome than she had ever remembered. "Look for my return," he all but whispered.
She nodded and kissed his forehead as she had done with Faramir the morning he had left. "Always." Her hand caressed his cheek for a moment too long to be considered a friendly gesture and slowly slipped down to his breastplate. Aeardis bit her lip and stepped back as he replaced his helmet and mounted his horse. There was a twinge of pain in her finger and she looked down to see that it was bleeding, cut on one of the decorations on his armor. A small cut that could easily be mended, but bleeding badly. He will ride into battle with blood already on him. That is a bad omen.
Two weeks went by, they had no news but what the wind could carry, cries of death and the clash of swords. Two weeks of waiting, jumping at every opened door and booted footstep. Three days of looking always toward the east. Aeardis feared she would go mad by the time Boromir and Faramir returned to her.
Denethor refused her counsel, preferring to be alone in his grief and misery while the accursed Palantír poisoned his mind and worked against all progress that the Gondorian army had made.
When she was not reading or waiting to hear the call of trumpets, Aeardis frequented the Houses of Healing. The eldest of the healers bore the same name as her ill-fated mother, Ioreth. She was one of the last people within the city that remembered the young woman who had been swept off her feet and taken across the Great Sea. Her mother had been a woman of great beauty, low in birth but high in honor and courage, or so that is what the old woman told her.
The healers found she was a studious apprentice and within a week she had learned to prepare even the most precise poultices and teas for the wounded that had returned to the city heaped up in horse drawn carts. All of them spoke to her of Boromir the Bold, the Strong, the Tall, the Brave, the Fearless. The titles they had given him were endless.
She went to one of the soldiers that had lost his hand despite all treatments and salves that had been packed on the injury. Ioreth saw it festering and they cut off the poisonous limb before it could spread. His name was Bregdan and he was nothing more than a boy too eager to grow up, six-and-ten with his nameday only two months away. "He speaks of you often. Your counsel does not go unheeded," the admission was surely meant to comfort her but it brought tears, he was not the first to speak of such things.