"If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet."
-Keith Richards, Keith Richards: In His Own Words
Amelia's legs burned as she rushed after Boromir, the streets alive with panic, and narrowly avoiding several collisions with grown men and women, who all fled in wildly differing directions, all semblance of order having been abandoned after the first stone had been hurled at the city.
Had daylight still been present, it would have been only a scant two or three hours away from dawn, but dark clouds hung over the city and not a sliver of light slipped through.
Amelia had barely stepped out of the armory when a tower above them had exploded into a rain of rubble, white bricks cascading downwards, because a boulder, bigger than even Boromir, who was wide of shoulder and tall even for his line, had been hurled into it. The houses, walls and watchposts of Minas Tirith were tall and the streets not particularly wide, and thus Amelia had no view of the field of Pelennor. She knew that, while she had been scrounging up scraps in the armory and stealing precious moments of the son of the Steward's time, who most likely had automatically been placed in charge of the city's defenses, the siege of the city had begun.
"Watch it!" She snarled, the tension getting the better of her, when a burly man bumped her shoulder painfully. He shouted some obscenity back at her, but she rolled her eyes and followed Boromir's back, who was getting further and further out of her reach. He didn't hear her calls for him to slow down, as they were drowned by the cacophony of screams and shouts piercing the air already, but she kept her pace and didn't lose track of him, even in the chaos of the crowd.
Then, she was thrown to the ground, along with everyone else, as half a dozen small houses to her right, the ones facing outwards towards the Pelennor, exploded into a fiery rain of debris. The air was knocked out of her and someone screamed into her ear, but she heard it through a haze of shock and confusion, her ears ringing and her hip paining her from where it had collided with the ground in an awkward position. Her head throbbed and her face and hands were covered in grazes and scrapes.
She coughed and choked on the dust, thick in the air as it was, and got to her feet on wobbly legs, disorientation making her head spin. All sound was muffled, as though she was under water, and her balance was shaky at best. Then, her eyes were drawn towards the massive hole in the line of houses, from where a flaming boulder had been launched into, and she stumbled forwards, gripping the smoking edges of the remains of the walls for support as the dust settled.
The field of Pelennor was black. Black and alive, alive with the thousands of orcs, wargs, trolls and beasts that snarled, growled and jeered, their ranks shuffling back and forth in a poor presentation of order, with myriads of torchbearers illuminating the coming doom of the white city with the flames that they carried. Siege engines, tall towers on wheels, ballistae and trebuchets, all built for war, were pushed and pulled forwards, approaching the white walls of Minas Tirith slowly, but surely. The sound of grinding wheels, the lashes of whips and marching, mixed with the insults and curses the army threw at the people of Gondor, streamed into the city, carried by the wind, along with the pungent odor of sweat, smoke and evil intent.
Even had they been half of their numbers, they could have taken Minas Tirith easily, given enough time.
Amelia stared at the force, dumbfounded, unable to comprehend the sheer vastness of the horde of orcs, her lips parted and a crease resting between her eyebrows.
"Up." She mumbled the word to herself, but her ears didn't hear the word over the ringing in her ears and the churning pandemonium around her. "Up. Up. Up." She staggered away from the view, turning on her heel and nearly falling over, and walked in the direction leading to the upper rings, stumbling and fumbling in the absolute chaos. She was too confused to realize that, several times, she tread on the limbs, occasionally severed from their bodies, of those who had not been lucky enough to survive the blast. Not all of the blood staining her was her own. Her blue eyes were unfocused and her steps were without their usual purpose and drive, though, inch by inch, she staggered forwards, towards where the great gates into the next ring of the city stood, proud and tall and inlaid with motifs of trees and eagles.
"Amelia!" A voice cut through the fog clouding her mind and she spun wildly, staggering sideways and colliding with a wall immediately afterwards. She groaned and groggily tried to find the owner of the voice, her sight spinning oddly.
A small hand then gripped her left one, as her right shoulder was still pressed against the wall of a house that happened to still be standing, and she blinked down at the worried face of a hobbit, whose name she struggled to remember. His lips moved, as if he were speaking to her, and it looked as if he asked her a question, inquiring about her wellbeing perhaps, but Amelia couldn't hear any of the words he spoke.
"Pippin…" She breathed and he seemed to give up, switching to pulling her along with him as he rushed towards the doors and, with his direction, Amelia made it through it in thrice the time it would have taken her, had she been alone and in her state.
As she passed the doors, it was as if the fog in her mind was dispelled, but pain replaced it and she stumbled, gasping for breath like she had been submerged in water. Her thoughts flooded back into her mind like a river, but they were still addled by confusion and hurt.
"Gandalf! Where is Gandalf?" Pippin shouted, but there was only fleeing guards, ordinary men and women thrown into a bloody war with no warning, and they had no answers as to where the white wizard was.
"Ow." Amelia stated emotionlessly as Pippin pulled her along, her pain and confusion giving way to numb shock, but even then, there was some small part of her that was planning for every contingency, recalling details that could perhaps come into play later and frantically shouting that she ought to pull herself together.
"Gandalf!" Pippin shouted again, but his voice was clearer and more relieved than Amelia had expected. She followed his line of sight, blinking the blurriness out of her vision, and realized that the old man in a white bathrobe hurrying towards them was Gandalf himself.
"Hey." She smiled woozily at him as he reached them. Pippin pulled her out of the stream of people, so that they stood at the side of the road, where they could talk more freely. Amelia tittered at the wizard, though she wasn't completely certain why.
"What has happened?" Gandalf asked Pippin seriously, seemingly worried at the sight of Amelia. When she looked down herself, she saw that she was covered in a thick layer of grime, that her brown hair hung in tangles around her face and that she had never looked quite so battered before.
"I got blown up." Amelia grinned widely at Gandalf. "Again." She choked on a laugh and swayed slightly on her feet. She hummed to herself as Gandalf lightly placed a hand on her brow and closed his old eyes, muttering to himself. Slowly, Amelia's smile faded and, as Gandalf opened his eyes again, she stared at him. "Uh…" She fumbled for words as he gave her a knowing look. "The battle's started." She informed him helpfully, at a loss for words.
"Well, I'm glad you've noticed." He grumped at her. The three of them jumped as a boom sounded distantly and Amelia tensed, a nagging feeling springing up in the back of her head and the muscles of her shoulders tightening, but Gandalf merely shook his head.
"The gate will hold." He stated, though he sounded as if he was trying to convince himself most of all.
"Shite. I forgot about that." Pippin's eyes widened slightly as Amelia grimaced. "It's going to hold for now at least, but pretty soon, they'll bring in the big boy and then things'll get ugly." Amelia rubbed her palms against each other, too busy with her hazy recollections to pay attention to Pippin or Gandalf, both of whom looked concerned at best.
The ground beneath their feet rumbled as a large boulder landed in the ring above them, sending white debris raining down and the three scattered. Amelia held her hands over her head to shield herself from the worst, but that only gave her several long cuts on her hands and wrists.
"Those bastards are gonna bring the whole city down on us if they have to!" She shouted at Gandalf, who looked as disheveled as Amelia felt herself to be. "We have to find Denethor!" The distant scream of a woman filled her ears and another cascade of white bricks flew down from above. "Or some fucking good cover, and soon!" Amelia sensed something warm and sticky running down the side of her head, but she had no time to assess whether it was a mere nick or a more serious injury that caused her to bleed. "Pippin!" She looked around wildly, but she couldn't see the hobbit. "Gandalf!" Then, a small hand grabbed her right and pulled her with him, rougher than what she had even thought him capable of, up and through the chaos filling the streets of Minas Tirith. Amelia swore the Steward into oblivion as she ran, anger and fear churning in her stomach as she felt ground of white stone shake and heard the screams of both the old and the young, one dying just as easily as the other. It was turmoil, turmoil in the darkness that had descended upon Gondor's capital.
Pippin's hand was pulled roughly out of hers as the stampede of terrified citizens threatened to trample him and Amelia had to grab his scruff, pulling him out of the middle of the road and as close to the still standing buildings flanking it as she could. At the sound of yelling, not yelling born of fear, but of command, she tried to look down on the lower rings again. The remaining captains desperately tried to gather their men as towers of word were shoved up against the walls of the city, towers that allowed the orcs to climb up and over and into the city itself.
"What is it?" Pippin shouted and Amelia bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. Then, she pulled him with her as she continued to shove her way through the citizens.
"Towers." She yelled back over her shoulder. She stumbled as an armored guard slammed into her left shoulder. "They're sending orcs into the first ring. They're trying to- get down!" She pulled Pippin down with her as an enormous boulder, covered in oil and set aflame, sailed over their heads and into a tall house with a flowerpot in every window. Stone and fire rained down and people threw themselves to the ground or ran ever faster. "Come on!" She pulled Pippin with her as she painstakingly got to her feet and set into a dead sprint, making for the courtyard of the highest ring. Pippin yelled something, but it was lost in the roar of the army outside the city and the screams of those within it.
Amelia stumbled as she, at last, reached the courtyard, but Pippin pulled her up again and onwards. Amelia bled from both her head and hands, but her mind was no foggier than usual and her legs worked well enough to carry her.
"Where is Boromir?" Denethor and Gandalf were already in the courtyard, caught up in a vicious argument, but Gandalf approached her as soon as she scrambled towards them, Pippin hurrying after her.
"Out in the city somewhere!" Amelia shouted, though there was no need, as the wizard was quite close and she was no longer surrounded by panicked townsfolk. "Trying to do some damage control!" She didn't lower her voice, as she thought its volume to be quite fitting, but she forgot to think that perhaps the ringing in her ears hindered her hearing somewhat. When Pippin sent her a strange look, she misinterpreted it as worry for Boromir instead. "I'm not his nanny!"
"All is lost!" Denethor exclaimed angrily and Amelia was quick to groan and roll her eyes. "You have not seen what I have!"
"Shut your shit, grandpa, or I'll shut it for you!" Amelia scowled at Gandalf, who was frowning at her. "Why haven't you locked him in a cellar somewhere?"
"I will not be-" Denethor cried and Amelia's posture changed for the threatening.
"Shut up!" She shouted at him, anger making her fists shake. "Your people have suffered enough without your inane ramblings making it even worse for them now!"
"Amelia Jones!" Gandalf exclaimed and she growled aggressively. "Hold your tongue! It does little good here and now!" Amelia continued to mumble fiercely beneath her breath.
"Our doom is approaching. It is nigh." Denethor didn't yell the words. Instead, they came out broken and filled with despair. Then, he turned his eyes out over the city and then towards the horizon. Something changed in his face and he rushed forwards before Amelia or Gandalf could grab and stop him. "Abandon your posts!" It was unlikely that anyone in the city could even hear him, but he didn't seem to realize it and Amelia strode forwards, her patience snapped like a twig. "Flee! Flee for your lives!" With a yell, Amelia pulled her right arm back, with her thumb outside of her fist, and swung, hitting Denethor's nose with a resounding crack and sending him stumbling backwards with a gasp.
"Enough!" Amelia and Gandalf exclaimed at the same time. "I've had it with you!" Amelia cried as she was forcibly pulled back and away from Denethor.
"Amelia!" Pippin exclaimed and Amelia shook herself out of Imrahil's firm grip.
"If you'd be so kind as to escort the dear Steward to his rooms," She spat at the guards, who had approached swiftly with their weapons drawn, "I would be most grateful," She glanced at Denethor with a hateful sneer, "My lord." She turned her head towards Gandalf and blew a strand of brown hair out of her face. "There's fighting to be done and so help me, I will not let him ruin our chances any more than they already have been."
Amelia pulled Aeglos out of yet another orc and whirled around, slicing open the throat of another, who had tried to surprise her from the back. She had attempted to keep count, so that she could compare with Legolas and Gimli once she reunited with them, but her focus was ruined one too many times in the end. After an hour of running and yelling, of blood and fighting and death, she had no longer a clue as to where in Minas Tirith she was and how long she had even been fighting for her life.
She had grown used to how the city would groan rumble, how random buildings would suddenly erupt and explode as a burning boulder was slung into it from the avalanches outside the city, how the orcs snarled and how the men screamed and how it seemed that the city would come crashing down on her every time another house was reduced to a ruin. Nothing of that prepared her from when a steady chanting began to flow over Minas Tirith, coming from the orcs outside and inside of it at the same time. An awful groan of metal came from outside the main gate leading out to the Pelennor, where a battering ram had been steadily hammering away for a long while, though the gate was strong and had held. Amelia stiffened, nearly losing an eye to an arrow, and then made for the gate, since she had come quite close to it in her aimless battle through the streets and battlements of the city.
"To the gate!" Something white rushed past her and she saw Gandalf, on Shadowfax, riding past her and galloping towards the gate. "Hurry!" Guards stormed past her and she caught glimpses of sweaty faces and blank eyes in the tumult. She hurried along, as resisting would end up with her getting trampled or shoved aside, and sprang through a ruined house, taking care not to get too close to the fires that burned there, and jumped. She fell and then, she was further down in the city, only a block away from the gate. She could hear the thumping and chanting of the orcs as if they stood beside her. The air was hot and heavy, with a foul smell of fire and blood.
She skidded to a stop as the guardsmen clumped up against the large gate and then, the ground shook violently. The doors creaked, groaned and bent inwards as something large and heavy slammed into it, much more threatening than the battering ram that the orcs had been using for a good while by then.
"What the hell is that?" Amelia shouted, but the men around her seemed just as frightened and uncertain as she was herself. "Gandalf?!" He glanced down at her from his horse, but she got no reply. Then she heard the chanting again and her eyes widened, her eyebrows knitting together above them. "Grond…" She breathed, horror filling her mind and panicked confusion, as to how she could have forgotten such a big part of the siege in the first place and not had the decency to warn a single soul.
The gate boomed again and shards flew from it. Men around her winced and some stepped backwards, but Amelia only had thought for herself and her own stupidity.
"Steady!" Gandalf called again, forceful and authoritative, readying his white staff. The gate boomed again, the chains on the inside of it rattling loudly, and men fell from the battlements above it, arrows sticking out of their knees and necks and faces. Several men readied their shields, adorned with the white tree, and Amelia blinked thrice, giving Aeglos a tentative swing, mindful of those she might hit with it. Then, the gate broke at another onslaught and the head of the battering ram stuck through as pieces of steel and wood flew. Amelia's face twisted at the sight. It had to be at least four times her height, shaped like a wolf's head and with a lit furnace in its mouth. "You are soldiers of Gondor!" Gandalf called as the battering ram was pulled back for a final push. The stomping and jeering from the orcs rose like a tidal wave. "No matter what comes through that gate, you will stand your ground!" Grond disappeared briefly and Amelia heard the man beside her let out a choked sob.
Then it slammed into the gate with a crash and the doors were thrown open by force. Amelia heard a gleeful cheer coming from the other side of the wall, but her attention was divided as the bulk of the first wave of invaders rushed inwards, roaring and swinging heavy, spiked clubs. It was a pack of trolls, not many, but enough, armored in layer of plate and with eyes glowing hungrily beneath their helmets. Amelia didn't know if she screamed, as the sound would have been deafened by those around her.
"Run!" Cried several men desperately and threw their weapons away, but that only made them more tempting targets for the trolls as they swung their clubs in wide arches. With no other choice, Amelia threw herself to the ground as a troll barged towards her and its club swung through the empty air where she had been standing no more than a second ago. In the mess, Aeglos was thrown away from her and she scrambled desperately towards it as the troll continued to mindlessly swing at the air. Her hand closed around the hilt, but when she rolled and looked up, the sight of a raised club blocked out the sight of the sky above her.
Gandalf chose that moment to ride towards her, taking advantage of the troll's raised arms to bring Glamdring across its unprotected stomach and Amelia scrambled to her feet, sprinting away as the orc roared and fell, sending tremors throughout the ground. Still, no other men were as lucky as her. The trolls cut through them all easily, sending men flying and trampling those too slow to move, and behind them came a wave of orcs, their spears silhouetted even against the darkness behind them. With no other choice, Amelia turned and fled, blood running down her neck from a deep scrape on her jaw.
"The city is breached!" Gandalf cried from up ahead, gesturing with his staff at the guardsmen running from the gate. Amelia shouted something foul at him, but it was lost in the noise and brought her no satisfaction in the end. "Fall back! Fall back to the second level!"
Amelia rushed past him and through the smaller gate leading upwards and into the second ring of the city, scrambling for support at the wall and she spat and coughed from her mad dash. She got no true reprieve however, for the orcs and trolls were close behind even as they filled the first ring, pulling women and men alike into the streets and stomping on their faces, breaking their backs and stabbing them in those places where it would take the longest for them to die, but still without hope of survival. The shrieking cries of babies echoed through the night.
"Fight! Fight to the last man!" Gandalf cried as he sent three orcs to their doom with Glamdring, Shadowfax kicking and biting. Men fell around him or were pushed up against the walls, the orcs tearing their soft throats out with their sharp teeth. The white stone was stained red. "Fight for your lives!" It was bestial and nowhere near glorious, as men struggled even as their arms or legs were separated from their bodies and skull bashed with hammers and maces.
"Gandalf!" Amelia screamed, spit flying from her mouth as she ducked the dagger of an orc and kicked it in the groin, sending it staggering back into the raised spear of a guard captain. He twisted on his horse, still bashing and stabbing whatever he could reach with both staff and sword. "We can't do this!" Gandalf easily pulled Pippin, who had been following him closely, up on his horse and stretched out his hand to her as she elbowed her way through the guards still streaming into the second level, fleeing the doomed first ring. Amelia's head snapped backwards and she winced as the unmistakable shriek of a nazgûl filled her ears. Resisting the urge to throw away her sword and cover her ears, she clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes to slits, groaning in the back of her throat as the sped her pace towards Gandalf. The nazgûl had been circling the city hungrily for a while, but had stayed airborne and not landed in the city, except for when they picked men off the ramparts and threw them from deathly heights.
"Quickly!" Gandalf urged as he grasped her hand and together they managed to haul her weight onto Shadowfax, who didn't seem too affected by the extra weight in the least.
"The fighting's here!" She called as Gandalf spurred Shadowfax on.
"And so it shall remain!" Gandalf exclaimed. "But our purpose takes us away from the gates and their captains shall hold it for as long as it can be held." Shadowfax set into a gallop and Amelia leaned forwards, pressing herself over Pippin who was in the middle, and shielded him from most of the world outside. The last thing she wanted was for a flying brick or a stray blade to hit his unprotected head and deliver him to an untimely and unfortunate end. Shadowfax rounded a corner at a dizzying speed and continued upwards, sprinting through the third gate of the city. "Boromir, where did you last see him?"
"Uh…" Amelia sucked in a gasp as Shadowfax jumped over a pile of dead men, dressed in poor clothes, lying out in the road for the flies. Then, he emerged out onto a small plateau, with no railing at the edge to keep them from falling down. "Up in the fourth ring, I think. We were separated-" Shadowfax suddenly rose on his hindlegs and screamed angrily, kicking and throwing his white head back. Amelia and Pippin tumbled off, having been caught unawares at the sudden stop of the horse.
Amelia grabbed Pippin's shoulder with her left hand and searched for Aeglos with the other, for she had not sheathed it when she rode Shadowfax. She had been able to take of the heads of two orcs as she passed them and she had been taught in her many lessons not to sheathe a bloody sword.
It was the witch-king of Angmar who had landed in front of Gandalf. Amelia knew it without a doubt, for her was bigger and darker and deeper than his eight other fellows and wore a metallic cross between a crown and a helmet. He managed to truly strike into the core of those who gazed upon him, magnificent in his terrible might and evil. His winged beast had landed close to them, blocking their otherwise empty path, since they had come away from the worst of the fighting, and snapped its strong jaws, a deep rumble coming from its scaly chest. It shrieked and Amelia whimpered, her hand finally finding her sword that had clattered away from her.
"Go back to the abyss!" Gandalf swung his staff expertly in front of himself, still on his horse and in an immediate defensive position. "Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your master!" The beast spread its dark wings and Amelia could see the sky through the thin membranes.
"Do you not know death when you see it, old man?" The witch-king's voice was like a knife scraping over a rock and Amelia heard Pippin's choked scream distantly, as if through water. She whimpered again and scrambled backwards, fear making her jerky. "This is my hour!" The witch-king unsheathed his pale sword and held it high and it burned with a dark, fiery flame as dawn began to break after a long and bloody night.
With the sound of a thunderclap, Gandalf's staff shattered in his hands and he was thrown from Shadowfax at the force. Amelia painstakingly got to her feet and took a step backwards, her back colliding with a still-standing wall and her face pale.
"Gandalf!" With a cry, Pippin pulled forth his own blade, but a shriek from the foul beast the witch-king sat upon made him freeze and stagger, enthralled in the horror of it.
"You have failed." The witch-king snarled as he got ever closer to where the white wizard lay on the ground. Amelia couldn't see her face, but she didn't care to in the moment, where her blood had gone cold and her hands shook so that she almost dropped Aeglos once again. "The world of Men will fall." He raised his sword again and it stood out starkly against the sky behind it, despite how it seemed to be a piece of night itself.
Then, the distant sound of a horn that Amelia had longed for throughout the long night that was about to end echoed over the Pelennor.