A/N: I LIIIIIIIVE! No, but really, it took me more than a year, but I finally updated, and that makes me kind of insanely happy. Unbeta'd still (any offers are welcome and will make me love you forever and always), concrit welcome and gladly received, and, well, I hope it was worth waiting a year for. :p
6
It was three days later, three days of hard marching, that they found the flag of Gondor in the long grass. Nick seemed to have the worst of it, unused as he was to such travel; on the second day, he cast aside the tattered remains of his shoes at last, the blistered skin of his feet now raw and close against the earth. Yet still he trudged along, those three long days, bloody, aching, and silent, though sometimes he muttered diconsolantly in his own strange tongue. He was pale and wan, the shadows under his hollowed eyes as dark as bruises. More than once in those last two nights, he had screamed the whole camp into wakefulness, dragging them up from their beds with weapons in hand, only to find him still deeply asleep, thrashing and crying out in the grip of nightmares. Even Boromir, ever the most forgiving to the strange boy, was beginning to lose patience – though Boromir perhaps best among all of them understood Nick's pain. How could he not, when the same agonies plagued him? When his dreams, too, were haunted by the phantom of Aragorn's still, noble face, blood-smeared and waxy with the pallid cold of death? His King, his liege... his guilt to bear. At the last, he had failed, and the last King of Gondor had fallen. Boromir's guilt besieged him, and evil thoughts swarmed his mind like blowflies.
Such evil thoughts gripped him now, so that when he first espied the flag in the grass, lit clearly by the golden evening light, he thought it at first some new trick of his guilty mind, taunting him with Gondor's loss, with what he had done. He raised a hand to his eyes, hoping to drive away this new torment his conscience had devised, but even as he did, Legolas – who led their group still, in solemn funereal silence which hardly suited the merry Elf – who pointed at the flag, his smooth brow creasing slightly into a frown of perplexion.
"Is that Gondor's mark which lies there in the grass," he asked aloud, "or am I much mistaken?"
"Not mistaken," Boromir replied softly, and shook his head. "Yet what it marks, or how it came to be here, I know not." He drew closer, cautiously, as though at any moment some doom might be laid upon them by the flag's nearness. It was small, smaller than his mind had at first made it – the design itself little more than a finger's-length from top to base, though with the roots tangled in a depiction of the Throne of Gondor - and oddly-placed; nor did it seem, as they drew closer, was it a flag at all. More like...
"A book!" Merry exclaimed, surprise evident in his tone, and bent to pick it up. "Or the front of one, at any rate. Look, there's still a couple of pages fixed here..." He peeled the pages away from the cover. It had clearly lain untouched in the grass for some time; wetted by rain and dew, the pages were so firmly clogged that they all but fell apart in the hobbit's hands. The whole thing was smeared by mud and grass, and some small animal had chewed away at a corner of it.
Boromir had been aware of Nick shifting nearby, poised as he ever was to catch the boy if ever he should fall. Even so, he was taken aback by the sudden, desperate speed with which Nick lunged forwards, snatching the sodden paper from Merry's hands and hugging it protectively to his chest. His grey-blue eyes glittered with unshed tears.
"His, then?" Gimli observed wryly, then looked up, seeing the look which passed now between Boromir and Legolas, and frowned. "Nay, you cannot suppose..."
"I can," Legolas replied solemnly, speaking for both of them, "and, Master Dwarf, I do. Boromir, ere we waste our time in vain on some false missive, will you ask him..."
"It is." Nick's voice was far from steady, but it was clear enough to stop Legolas mid-sentence, and to draw all eyes once more to him. "What you to think... it is." He was silent a moment, lips moving, then he turned the book once again for them to see, tracing a bony finger over the unfamiliar characters drawn out along the top. "Here says it Return of... of the King." His voice choked briefly, but he swallowed it down, biting his lip. "The tale I said of... in the tale is it third." He held up three fingers, emphasising his point. "Last. And the..."
He broke off sharply, eyes widening; looked for a moment at the book, then slowly back up at Legolas. "The other," he said forcefully, then reconsidered what he'd said. "The rest. The rest we must find. The..." Again, he broke off, frustration clear in his face as he sought desperately for a word he had no way of knowing. "After the tale. The pages of... the tongues, the other writ, the names..."
"Appendices?" Boromir hazarded, glancing at Legolas, who simply shrugged.
"It matters not," he opinioned. "The boy says we need them, and the boy is what we have. Ask him if he knows where we may find the rest."
But Nick had already turned away, looking around the grassy plain, and then, with sudden recognition sparking in his eyes, set off at a shambling, painful run the way they had come. Again, Boromir and Legolas exchanged glances, and wordlessly, Boromir was elected to follow. Nick was slow, injured and weak, and Boromir had no trouble keeping close distance between them. The boy drew at last to a halt, breathing ragged and heavy, a few scant yards from the way they had travelled, where a slab of rock leaned giddily from the sharp drop of the hillside. Looking up at Boromir for a moment, he half-fell down the slope, coming to rest almost out of sight as the Steward's son followed him down, more carefully.
"Here," Nick said, holding the rock slab for support. "I remember here. I woke here." He looked up at Boromir, eyes all but pleading, and repeated the last, quietly but firmly. "I woke here."
"You woke..." Boromir repeated softly, and then, as the light of understanding suffused his mind, "When you came here? This is where you were brought?"
Nick nodded, the tears in his eyes finally spilling out onto his cheeks, and reached under the rock, pulling out what was stored beneath it. Still mulling over the thought that this, this desolate hillside, was how the boy had come to this land, Boromir had all but forgotten their purpose, but the contents of the little cave brought that purpose back to him. It was a knapsack, of sorts, made of some black and grey material foreign to him, engrained like the book with mud and grit, but drier, at least. The top was open, and, as Nick put the sodden book cover to one side and began rummaging through it, Boromir saw that it was mostly filled with books; paper, not parchment, and whiter than any Boromir had seen. All were written in that foreign script, and Boromir saw no more designs nor letters he recognised. As Nick searched ever more frantically through it, he wept, putting aside its contents with reverence even as he dug through it wildly, frustrated. One scarcely had to know what he was looking for to know that it went unfound; it was read in every line of his face and in his frantic, panicking movements. Boromir laid a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Calm," he advised, and reached for the knapsack, replacing its contents. Lifting it onto the rock slab, he looked down again, into the space where it had been, and, seeing nothing, stood. "Take this back to the others," he told Nick, voice level, and held out the bag. "Tell Legolas to hold where he is until I return; I go to seek the book. Understand?"
Nick wiped his eyes on his sleeve, clutching the bag to his chest, and nodded. "You go to seek, you will return, he is to stay?"
"He is to stay," Boromir agreed, helping Nick up. "Unless he can help, for his eyes may be sharper than mine and his foot lighter. But the Company must remain."
With another nod, Nick turned, still clutching the knapsack as though he feared it might disappear, and scrambled back up the steep hillside without a backwards glance, a skinny, weak figure who cast a long and weaving shadow. Boromir watched him with a sigh, for the thousandth time questioning whether the boy was worth the trouble he had brought; his hand went unsensed to his still-aching shoulder where the arrow had struck, and he shook his head, forcing the thought aside. What was done was done. They could but try to make good of it – and, if Nick was to be believed, that began with finding the book. Turning away without another thought, Boromir headed into the shadowed vale at the bottom of the hill, knowing that to find it might take a miracle, not caring. Miracles seemed to walk in the daylight these past few months, and he would no longer be shocked by them. He would seek the answer until the light faded altogether, and still by starlight if he must.
Yet a voice whispered in his ear wasting time, wasting time, and he feared it. How could they know to trust Nick at all? How could Nick himself know that the tale would help? What could they do with the book that they could not without? What words could be so powerful that they would prevent a tragedy like that which had befallen the King above Rauros?
He knew not, and he feared his ignorance. But he trusted the boy, and above that, he trusted his instincts – his instincts which he had so rudely crushed on the banks of the Anduin, when they had warned him to move on; his instincts which for a while he had overridden, and whose overriding had led to Aragorn's death. He would ignore them no more, and now every instinct in him thrummed to this insanity, to find the book, to aid the boy, and to at least come home with some small part of his duty now discharged.
And so he sought through the long grass as the sun sank deeper in the sky, looking for broken stems or foxholes, any hint of that white paper, praying that it would reveal itself, that he sought in the right place or anything like it. He was still searching when, as the first stars peered through the wisps of cloud and the crimson sunset began to fade, he heard hooves and the voices of Men. Turning, he saw them, shapes in the near distance, moving slowly, with relaxed ease, towards him. They must have seen him, too, for an instant later he heard the voice of their leader ring out, and the host sped to a gallop. He heard the whisper of steel carried on the wind, and yet he smiled as he straightened, for he knew that voice.
"Éomer!" he cried aloud, as the horses neared and the helmeted riders became clearer. "Éomer, Éomund's son, it gladdens my heart to see you again!"
"Boromir?" Éomer drew his horse to a halt, signalling for the others of his host to do the same, and sheathed his sword, leaping from the saddle to stand before Boromir. "Too rarely have I seen you in the Mark, son of Denethor, and I am glad to welcome you! But surely you came not alone, horseless and unguarded? Do you not know that Orcs swarm these lands like flies of late? Ill would I see you wounded in Rohan's lands, Boromir."
"I came not alone," Boromir assured him, but his smile faded. "As for Orcs, we have met with them already, and they have tasted my steel – yet it bit not deep enough, for we lost one of our number there, and I fear more besides. Ah, but such tales can wait, and I would not gladly burden you with them. Come, I should return to my own company – the hour grows late, and the light is all but gone. Will you come with me, Éomer? Ill would I bring my companions deeper into the Mark without your permission, now we are met, and my company and yours may gladly rest a night under one another's guard."
Then Éomer laughed, and the sound was fair to Boromir's ears, for he had not heard a breath of laughter since the battle beneath Amon Hen. "Guard, Boromir? We guard ourselves, we of the Mark. Yet I will gladly come, and share food and fire with your companions. No churl am I, to turn aside company, and we hunt no more... come, I shall lend you horse and bridle, and you shall lead me to your friends."