Disclaimers: I do not own LotR. It belongs to the lamentably but very firmly dead J.R.R. Tolkien. Suffice to say, I am not he.
A/N: Can you feel your keyboard radiating an aura of gratitude? That's me, sending waves of love and goodwill through cyberspace to all my reviewers. Hurrah.
And, after a month's respite, we come at last to chapter six!
In these, the last days of the Third Age, the city of Edoras was a city of Fear.
This is quite an understandable position for a city to hold in time of trouble. Under the lordship of an increasingly incompetent King, watching as surrounding villages and homesteads were subjected to violent and unexpected attacks, hearing of strange and unseen powers rising in the East and vast armies dispatched from Isengard… Rohan was not the first and most certainly not the last kingdom to succumb to hysteria under such conditions.
Meanwhile, the peacekeeping officials of Edoras did all they could to ensure the security of city.
"Look," said Aragorn, pointing at the ground excitedly. "It's a Torn Rohirric Standard of Deepest and Most Potent Symbolism™!"
"I've had just about enough symbolism and ambiguity for one day, thanks," stated Boromir flatly, though it was to Legolas that his glare was chiefly directed. The Elf looked away pointedly, and Boromir, rolling his eyes, removed the stopper squelchily from his flask of Ent-draught, and, for what may have been the sixty-fourth time in the last ten minutes, took a swig. Electricity and vigor seemed to crackle and surge from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair, and he vibrated a bit. Aragorn gave him an odd look, at which Boromir quickly hid the flask away, just in case the look happened to be one of covetousness.
Following the lead of Gandalf, who had concealed the blinding surge of fluorescent white light that inevitably clung to his person beneath a gray mantle, the three Walkers abandoned the fluttering banner that still writhed like an injured snake in the grass and trudged through the cobbled streets of mournful and fear-fraught Edoras. As they ascended the stone steps of the Golden Hall, they found their path barred by a stocky red-haired guard, who scowled at them.
"Alright, surrender your weapons, we're doing a search," he said gruffly.
"A search?" repeated Aragorn with all the kingly indignance he could muster. "Whatever for?"
"To make sure you aren't smuggling anything in."
"Such as…?"
"Don't ask questions!" barked the guard. "Surrender your weapons!" He circled them like a large, bad-tempered vulture as the four companions produced numerous lethal artifacts—bows, quivers, swords, knives, and a number of small daggers hidden away in unlikely and unsavory locales—and placed them in the custody of a group of surly sentries. Bereft of all arms, they made to enter the hall a second time, but the guard stopped them yet again. "Ah ha!" he cried triumphantly, gesturing toward a glint of silver at Legolas's belt. "What's that?"
Legolas held up the object in question between his thumb and forefinger. "A nail file?"
"Hand it over!"
"What?" shrieked Legolas, horrified.
"I said, hand it over! You could stab a man's eyes out with a weapon like that!"
"It's not a weapon, it's a nail file! A personal hygiene item!" protested the Elf.
"You see, this is exactly why I don't bother with those sorts of things," whispered Aragorn knowledgably to Boromir. Boromir edged away slowly from the close proximity, as well as the accompanying scent.
"… like a comb, or a hairbrush!" Legolas went on.
"Ah ha! Are you carrying a hairbrush?"
Nonplussed, Legolas offered a hesitant, "…Yes?"
"Hand it over!"
"What?"
"Hand it over! A brush can be very dangerous when hurled over long distances!" cried the guard, gesturing in an emphatic throwing movement to demonstrate. Boromir sniggered out loud, and the guard rounded on him. "What's this, then?" he exclaimed, trying to wrest Boromir's heavy circular shield from his grasp and nearly upsetting Boromir's precarious balance in the process. "A shield, you fool!" grunted Boromir irritably as he shook the man off.
"You could knock a man out with a weapon like that!" the guard panted.
"Look, this is ridiculous!" Boromir exploded. Glancing around, his eyes chanced to light on a large wooden building that stood nearby, and he gesticulated toward it furiously. "There's a convenience store right there! I could walk and buy another shield right now, if I wanted to!"
Legolas and Aragorn turned around slowly and saw that, not only was there a convenience store directly behind them with a large weaponry display in the front window, but that shields were marked half-off today.
The guard, however, remained immobile. "Them's the rules," he stated firmly. "What's that?" he continued, pointing at the cloven horn at Boromir's hip.
"For Eru's sake, it's the Horn of Gondor!" came the exasperated reply.
"… hand it over!"
"You would not part a Lord of Gondor from his Horn?" challenged Boromir
THE CODE OF LEGITIMATE HUMOR WRITING, SECTION 12, ARTICLE 7
The "Horn of Gondor" joke is a very old one and should not be used under any circumstances, as it has been done many, many times before.
"Fine, the Horn can stay," said the guard grudgingly, "but the shield has to go." Boromir surrendered it with a sigh, resisting the temptation to knock the sentry over the head with it as he did so.
The guard rubbed both large hands together. "Alright, then! Vambraces off!"
"What?" exclaimed Boromir, Aragorn, and Legolas simultaneously.
"You heard me! Vambraces off! I've seen what they can do!"
There was a long, expectant pause.
"They can leave welts, if you were to use them to hit someone!" supplied the guard.
Resignedly, Boromir made to undo the straps of his leather vambraces, when he saw that he wasn't wearing any. Odd.
Wait a minute… where were his vambraces? He'd been wearing them at Parth Galen, hadn't he? What had happened to them? Had he lost them in the Anduin?
"Where…?" He left the question unfinished as he cast his eyes around the vicinity and saw…
"Aragorn!" he cried out accusingly. The Dúnadan jumped at the sudden noise and glared at Boromir sulkily. "What?"
"Those are my vambraces!" he said, gesturing furiously at the articles in question.
"Er, no, they're not."
"Yes, they are, they've got the White Tree on them!"
"No, they haven't," replied Aragorn, folding his arms in what was evidently intended to be an offhand, casual movement in order to conceal the incriminating logo.
"You stole them, didn't you? I can't believe it! I mean, I knew you were an ass, but I thought you were an ass with some principles, at least!"
"I thought that you were dead when I took them!" countered Aragorn, reddening.
Boromir seemed to veritably swell up with the ire of it all. "Then you're a graverobber, aren't you? What, did you pinch my pockets, too?"
Aragorn muttered something about it only being a few old tokens for the Dol Amroth toll road and a Steward's Favorite Son ID card, anyway.
Boromir, deeply frazzled, uncorked the flask again and chugged some more Ent-draught.
Meanwhile, the guard accosted Gandalf, who had been silently watching the proceedings with an amused and not entirely benevolent smile. "Ah ha! And what is this?"
"My staff."
THE CODE OF LEGITIMATE HUMOR WRITING, SECTION 12, ARTICLE 8
In conjunction with Article 7, jokes about staffs are in poor taste as well. This rule also extends to swords, spears, javelins, bows and arrows, daggers, maces, bolas, wands, broomsticks, and staves.
"Hand it over!"
Gandalf adopted the sort of facial expression usually found on the countenances of small children begging for sweets and war refugees on fundraising commercials. "Surely you would not part an old man from his walking stick?"
The guard snorted and repeated his mantra: "Them's the rules."
Gandalf considered this for a moment, and then dealt the guard a sharp blow to the head with the head of his staff, at which he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
"My deepest apologies, Háma," the wizard said, addressing the guard's prone form, "but it was entirely necessary." Then, gesturing imperiously to his three companions, he swept into the hall, leaving five dumbstruck sentries in his wake.
"The courtesy of your hall is somewhat lessened of late, Théoden King!" the White Wizard boomed as he strode assertively toward the throne of the Lord of the Mark, while Legolas, Aragorn, and Boromir lingered uncertainly behind him.
The wizened man seated in the gilded chair raised bloodshot eyes blearily and croaked out, in a voice as dry as sawdust, "Why... should I welcome you…Gan…….dalf……Storm…….crow…..?" He cast a look of watery appraisal toward the small black-robed man who clung to the armrest of his throne like a limpet.
There was noise not unlike that of the five readers who have also read Stamps muttering that they've heard that joke already.
The black-robed man nodded, saying, "A just question, my Liege," and rose to his feet to ooze across the floor like large and oddly fluid bat. "Late is the hour in which this conjurer chooses to appear! Láthspell, I name you. Ill news is an ill guest."
"This is bound to go nowhere good," grumbled Boromir, and quaffed another mouthful of Ent-draught for good measure.
"Is that addictive?" whispered Aragorn.
"Why do you ask?" Boromir whispered back.
"Because you've only drunk from it sixty-five times in the last fifteen minutes!"
"I refuse to hold discourse with you, vambrace-thief; ply your twaddle with Legolas instead," said Boromir in his most dismissive I'm-the-heir-to-the-Stewardship-and-Captain-General-and-that's-just-about-enough-out-of-you tone, as he stowed the flask away once more and turned from Elendil's heir to watch the Gandalf, who was now menacing the small black-robed man with his staff and spouting insults at will. Armed guards were now edging toward them surreptitiously, weapons drawn. Boromir reached for his sword instinctively, and then remembered that he didn't have one, and, as he cast his eyes warily around the vicinity, saw that there were no prospective armaments in sight.
So, when the nearest guard rushed him unexpectedly, Boromir tripped him with an outstretched leg and cracked the larger half of the riven Horn of Gondor on his head.
Legolas, meanwhile, had produced a curling iron from somewhere inside his shoe, and full-blown battle thus commenced.
"Too long have you dwelled in shadow," called Gandalf to Théoden over the din. "I release you from this spell."
Théoden laughed wheezily. "You have no power over me, Gandalf the Grey!"
Gandalf drew himself up to his full height (five foot eleven and three-quarters) and flung the gray cloak off his shoulders; the hall was suddenly bathed in (yet another) blinding surge of fluorescent white light. Théoden turned his head, squinting away from the dazzling brightness.
"Then I will draw you, Saruman, as poison is drawn from a wound!" And, thus saying, Gandalf raised his staff, opened his eyes, and…
The doors to the hall burst open.
Gandalf's personal radiance was swallowed up in the suffusion of golden sunlight that flooded the pillared vestibule; the battle halted, and Gandalf whirled around as a dark, solid shape separated itself from the glow of light and…
"I'm sorry; is this Chapter 7?" asked Faramir, peering around in confusion.
"Chapter 6," replied everyone simultaneously.
Faramir blinked. "Oh. I see. Well, I apologize for the interruption. I'll be going, then, shall I?" He glanced around shiftily. "I was never here, alright?" Quietly, he slunk back out of the hall, shutting the door behind him with a sharp click. A moment later, the door opened a second time, and Faramir poked his head inside. "Sorry to bother you lot again, but do any of you get the sense that I'm being used as a gimmick?"
"Oh, no! Never!" came the various encouraging responses.
"Well, that's good, then. Remember… you never saw me… I was never here." The door closed again, and everyone waited for a moment with bated breath, but it did not reopen.
Gandalf groaned and lapsed off into a muttered harangue about dispersing the tension of a climactic moment, loss of dramatic emphasis, and the tendency of Húrins to always steal everyone else's thunder.
The combatants glanced around at one another, but no one was particularly inclined to resume the skirmish. Everyone was certainly the worse for wear; many of the guards sported lumps on the head, and one of them appeared to be missing an eye (Aragorn was also holding a slightly bloody Evenstar pendant like a dagger, but nobody desired to inquire further). In addition, Legolas was rebraiding his ruffled hair with small crooning sounds of pain and indignation—it had become mussed in the mêlée—and all of Boromir's wounds had reopened, to his chagrin.
There was a moment in which everyone stared at each other awkwardly. "Anyone up for drinks?" suggested one of the guards tentatively.
This proposition was greeted with sounds of general approval, and the battered and battle-weary crowd, Aragorn, Legolas, and Boromir among them, began to shuffle toward the door.
"Wait! Don't you want to see the exorcism?" cried Gandalf in dismay.
There was a pause, followed by a resounding Nah!, and the former opponents made their way into the street, whooping and clapping one another on the back and wincing and generally congratulating one another on a fight well fought; forgetting, for a time, that they were living in a state of Fear, and celebrating the joys of camaraderie and the prospect of ale. Boromir collapsed from blood loss on the way to the taverns, but this went largely unnoticed.
A/N: For those of you who still held out a vague hope that this fic would settle down into any kind of normalcy as it progressed, I regret to inform you that it only gets worse from here.
Oh, and never fear, Gimli shall return! Not for a while, granted, but he is not forgotten…