If there was anything Aragorn hated, though that word had never been much used in his vocabulary, it was being forced to stillness. He was capable when pressed, because of course his tutors had all instilled the necessity of ordering the mind in quiet, but it was not a process he had taken to naturally in his impatient youth.
Harwan had all but pushed him out into the rain when, finally, late in the afternoon of the next day, the eye of the storm began to move off. The sky had begun to lighten gradually, a pale grey made opalescent by the still sheeting silver rain, and it continued to rain as if the clouds had absorbed enough of the Sundering Sea to lay bare all the ruins swallowed up long Ages past.
It had rained enough already, Aragorn thought irritably, that he should be able walk right off the beach into what remained of Maedhros fortress, and on across the exposed floor of the sea through the ancient Girdle of Melian and over the drowned mountains into the remains of Gondolin.
The path downhill was even more treacherous than it had been going up the day before. Though he no longer had to dodge lightning bolts, the way was precarious and seemed to have steepened as though the rain had sheared off some of the mountainside. He spent quite a lot of the downhill trip on his backside, sliding in the mud when his bad ankle would turn as he came down on it wrong, or his feet suddenly hit a soft spot and spurted out from under him. Not that it mattered; he would no sooner pick himself up than the heavy rain washed him clean again. More than once he had the breath jolted out of him when he lost his balance sliding and smacked his bruised shoulder against the ground, or a fallen tree, or forgot and grabbed a convenient bush or limb with the wrong hand, to steady himself.
The mountainside looked as if it had been ravaged by war. In places, despite the rain, stumps still smoldered, lightning blasted trees, not quite dead yet, keened still, the sound almost below auditory senses, felt more than heard. Foliage had been ripped from the ground and lay draped, still green and shining now with raindrops, like glittering snoods over the still standing trees and bushes. Much of the forested hillside was laid waste, massive ancient trunks uprooted and broken like snapped twigs thrown down by a petulant child. They lay cradled against one another, branches interwoven in death as they been in life. He had to clamber over not a few blocking the path in his trek downhill.
Aragorn turned his hands palms up to examine them in the dim light. Quite wrinkled and water-logged they were. He had not been dry in more than twenty-four hours and from the looks of the ranked banks of clouds still standing sentinel off the island's leeward side, it was likely to be sometime yet before they would be able to dry out. He had picked up quite a few new swear words in his time in Lindon and strung them all together now, throwing in an elvish curse or two he had learned from his brother's to round out the lot.
Nothing like this had been in his plans when he had decided to trace the footsteps of his recently-discovered relations, though perhaps, he realized with sudden acumen, he was getting just a little taste of how it might have been in the last Age when the ocean had swallowed up those ancestors.
It was beyond arrogant, the Valar could have no interest in his mortal comings and goings, but it crossed his mind that perchance his desire to know his kin had piqued them in some way. And then he thought of the angry, seeking malevolence that had pricked his awareness as he and Harwan had struggled up the mountainside seeking shelter. Mayhap he was not so far off in his reasoning; Sauron had once been a close companion of one of the Valar. Though even that thought seemed inordinately presumptuous, despite the warnings his foster father had clearly articulated.
His feet slipped out from under him again and Aragorn arrived on the beach in a rather more precipitous fashion than he would have preferred, stopping only when his soaked boots plunged ankle-deep in wet sand at the end of the downhill path. He sat for a moment, assessing the shock of the landing his battered body had absorbed. He was weary to the bone, hungry, and not a little light-headed.
He rose, slowly, and pulled his boots one by one from the sucking sand, scanning the scattered and shattered remnants of scorched crates and barrels, their contents flung about as if a giant had been dicing with the containers. He had been anticipating finding the provisions unscathed. Alas, another false hope.
Salted-fish littered the beach like silver stones, here and there an incongruous round of cheese lay on its side like a cart wheel wedged deep into the sand, the crate of hardtack looked as if lightning had halved it neatly in two, the contents of which appeared to have melted into a massive sodden lump of paste. The barrel of peas might be salvageable, but they would need fire to cook the hard little pellets and that did not look like a possibility at least before morning.
Wincing as he put weight on that ankle again, he made a quick reconnaissance of the beach, pleased to find a wooden box of dates to go with a round of cheese he tucked into one of the voluminous pockets of his coat. The dates were covered in a fine grit of sand that not even the persistent rain and finger scrubbing could scour away, but they were edible, if a little gritty, and made a bit of headway against the lingering giddiness swirling behind his eyes.
While he wasn't particularly worried they would starve, their lot was, of a sudden, considerably bleaker than he had envisioned. He was sure he could feed them off the land for a time, if the bloody rain ever stopped. It would require foraging and snares as Harwan's bow had been in the wrecked boat and some cautious experimentation since he recognized little of the island's flora. But until Anor reappeared they would have to make do with cheese, dates and what edible wild plants he could find.
On the bright side, they should have no difficulty sustaining themselves for the few days it would take Borlath to sail back to Tol Morwen.
When the tide was out again, he would have to see if their belongings left in the boat had had the decency to sink straight down where they might be retrieved, or floated off on the storm-wracked sea. Without much hope, he prayed for the former, though he expected the latter.
He tucked the box dates under his good arm, left the peas as they were and turned to head back up the mountain. There was little else to salvage and what there was would not be hurt by the continued rain.
He passed the bent twigs he had marked at the spot where he'd come out through the underbrush, he had had to splash his way quite a distance downstream in order to find a spot he could scale on his own in order to get up and out. Then turned into the trampled patch where Harwan had led the way across last night and made his way down the side of the ravine until he stood over the spot where they had sheltered.
"Harwan," he called, learning over the edge. The sailor's face appeared from under the ledge. "I found some things on the beach. Here." Aragorn knelt, then lay flat and handed down the box of dates and then wriggled the cheese out of the pocket he had wedged it into, passing it down as well. Their hands did not quite meet, but he could reach far enough down, and Harwan far enough up, that the drop was not precipitous and even one-handed the older man easily caught both items.
Harwan grinned and gestured for him to come back down, miming eating.
Aragorn shook his head. "I ate some dates. I am going up further," he pointed upstream, "to see if I can find a larger space. Something a little less exposed to the elements."
Harwan scowled but in no way tried to detain him, and Aragorn clambered to his feet, offering a jaunty wave as he backed away from the edge.
He moved steadily up the mountain, pausing to wipe rain from his face at the spot where Borlath had taken him through the trees up toward the natural spring. It was a known, easily available source of fresh water, he should begin looking for a more permanent shelter somewhere in its vicinity if he could reach it. He turned in, sick at heart at the continuing devastation revealed as he resumed climbing.
If he had not known better, he might have thought Glaurang yet rode the winds aloft the island, burning and singeing all within his purview. The bright heads of the riotous wild flowers lay broken as if trodden upon, their colors muted in the mix of mud and shredded foliage layering the ground. Here a new avenue among the trees had been opened up clear to the spring, as though the imagined dragon had stopped, perhaps for a drink, and swished his tail like a cat, uprooting and then pushing aside the fallen debris so it piled up nearly to the middle of the tall trees still standing on either side of the deforested cut.
Aragorn had wormed his way through a narrow opening, barely avoiding bringing the whole pile down on himself when the sword pommel he had again strapped to his back, caught on a jammed log, shifting the entire heap of debris. He had judged it too unstable to climb, but settled enough to get through. Heart in his throat he had squirmed enough to bend his knees a bit more and dislodge the pommel before sinking down to crawl the rest of the way.
Now he stood in the middle of the barren strip, squinting through the rain and preternaturally gloomy afternoon dusk, appalled by the desolation wrought all around him. Just yesterday this had been a lushly forested hillside, its wild landscape proudly displaying all that nature's bounty had bestowed. This afternoon, those trees that still stood stretched denuded limbs into the weeping sky, broken branches littered the ground, and stripped foliage plastered the muddy new pathway.
A different kind of chaos reigned today, reflecting none of the beauty of yesterday's majestic panorama.
He moved forward again, up the barren strip toward the spring, peering from side to side anxious to find some larger, less damp accommodation where they might at least dry out a little.
An hour's determined searching turned up nothing and Aragorn moved higher, toward the standing stone where the river Teglin, in another Age, had flowed swift and sure in its course. The trauma to the earth in the drowning of Beleriand had closed off that channel, but there were bound to be caves in and around the area, it was just a matter of finding one.
He searched until the light dimmed and he knew he would barely have enough time to make it back down the mountain to their current abode and was turning to make the trip back down when the absence of light caught at the corner of his vision and he swung around hurriedly to investigate. It was just a crack, a slight v-shaped wedge, but he slithered through it sideways, had to bend double for a couple of steps, but then the solid rock opened up airily into a roughly rectangular chamber snug and dry and warm. He had not realized he was cold until the warmth of the enclosed space enfolded him. He wriggled his way back out immediately, but real dusk was settling over the mountain already and he knew he would not be able to find it again in the dark.
But he could not in good conscience leave Harwan to wonder what had happened to him. And so he made his way reluctantly back down the mountain, the last of the silvered light dissipating as he splashed upstream to crawl in next to his companion.
Harwan handed him some dates, much less gritty, and then a wedge of cheese. Aragorn accepted both offerings gratefully, ate them with gusto, drank from their gurgling stream and after once more unstrapping the broken sword to lay aside, settled with his back to the uncomfortable rock wall.
He had found, frustratingly, that without the aid of sign language he did not communicate well with the sailor, and so rather than try to tell him of their good fortune, he settled to sleep, hoping against hope, the night hours would pass quickly and with them, the rain.
TBC