#39: Dreams
For those terrible nights in the caves, Sam had dreams of Frodo, always of Frodo, of him being stabbed in the heart, bashed through the head, crushed in a troll's giant fist. He tells himself it's only a dream, but he knows he's just lying to himself.
When they begin the battle beneath Moria, Sam is always within reach of Frodo, just in case, and when an axe comes whipping at the hobbit's head, he doesn't think, he just reacts.
Aragorn patches him up, tells him that worse has happened to people slaying their first orc, and Sam just keeps quiet, never mentioning that if he hadn't managed to kill the orc, he would have taken as many blows as was necessary to keep Frodo alive.
"Sam!" Tiny hands grab onto his waistcoat and tug, pulling him bodily from the arms of sleep. Sam woke with a start, automatically flailing to get his arms raised. He struck out blindly…
"Oh," the strange, soft sigh as the air went out of someone's body and then Sam's hand was caught again, this time by a slightly bigger hand.
"I swear I'll knock you, Samwise Gamgee." Merry was no scarier than when he was defending his younger cousin, and Sam was immediately contrite. "And don't be too much louder…you'll wake Frodo."
The last thing Sam wanted was to wake Frodo, who'd been getting heavy circles beneath his eyes for some time now, whose hands kept straying to the chain around his neck, fingering the Ring endlessly, who seemed so much more distant than just a few months ago in the Shire. No, he wouldn't wake Frodo, not after he'd just found sleep.
"If you are going to insist on talking," said Gimli gruffly from his watch post at the entrance of the tunnel, "Move."
Sam didn't particularly want to continue talking. He'd finally managed to fall asleep in these awful caves when Pippin had woken him up. The Big Folk had to keep crouching to go through the tunnels, but the hobbits and Gimli didn't have to even bend their backs. But physical exertion wasn't Sam's problem – he was plenty tired. The caves just gave him such feelings, like danger was lurking every time he turned his back. He kept the sword he'd won from the Barrow-Downs close at hand. Just in case.
Even though he didn't want to follow the younger hobbits out of the circle, he knew that there was no way he'd get to sleep anyway. He carefully stepped over Frodo's prone body to sit cross-legged with Merry and Pippin.
"You having nightmares, Sam?" Pippin's eyes were round as saucers and Sam thought, not for the first time, that Little Pip shouldn't be on this mission. He'd known Pippin since the Took could fit into his arms, knew that a Quest of darkness and danger, while appealing to the Tween's sense of adventure, was really no place for the peaceful, fun-loving youngster.
But he couldn't deny the dreams and nodded wearily. Yes, the dreams were another reason he couldn't get more than a short nap. Always the same, with a glinting knife being thrust into Strider's stomach, Legolas' back, Pippin's leg…Frodo's heart. Always with Sam standing there, too dumb to do much of anything.
"Pip noticed." Merry said quietly, and Sam turned to him. He'd always liked Merry, finding him a kindred spirit. While Frodo was constantly in search of adventures, of knowledge, and Pippin was a right bundle of energy at times, Merry could sometimes be convinced to sit down and spend the day chewing the fat while Sam pulled weeds from Bag End's garden. "You know, Night Sprites can't catch you if you sleep with other hobbits. We're too strong for them."
"Do you think so, Mr. Merry?" Sam asked, amused by the strong assertation. But there was no denying that he was tired, and an evening being plagued by nightmares was not Sam's idea of a good rest. Pippin patted the spot next to him, his tiny hand perhaps a quarter of the size of one of the Big Folk's.
Sam retrieved his sleeping blanket from the other side of Frodo and lowered himself squarely between Merry and Pippin. He was happier than he could voice when Little Pip grabbed one of his hands and squeezed it tight. "Don't worry, Sam, the Night Sprites will eat Merry before they get to us."
And, finally, Sam fell to sleep, forgetting about the disturbing dreams, where Frodo was skewered with a troll's blade.
.***.
The battle was blinding, confusing. Sam didn't know which way to turn, because there was no place where a sword or axe or spear wasn't being thrust into the fray. He just kept an eye on Frodo, like that children's game of watching the pea-pod even after it disappeared under the cup and was shuffled around. Though the setting changed, he had to focus on Frodo…he'd promised Gandalf.
He spun and swerved, thanking God and Boromir for sparring with him all those long nights on the trek up the Misty Mountains. Muscle memory did exist – he ducked a split-second before he even registered the anvil swinging through the air, dodged before the heavy pieces of brisk shrapnel hurtled past his head.
With a deft swing he poked the troll's arm, the one reaching for Little Pip. Sam remembered when they were younger, when Pippin would seek him out when Merry and Frodo went to visit older relatives and he wasn't allowed to come because he was the baby. Sam had showed him azaleas and anemones and asters and soon enough the young hobbit was mesmerized enough by the colors to forget what he was crying about.
Now the same young hobbit was hovering next to Legolas, his small hand patting the elf's cheek anxiously even as he tried desperately to stop the bleeding.
"Mr. Frodo…" Sam was running at a crouch, trying to block out the screams and roars, the symphony of battle. The dream that had cursed him until the night before was coming back to him in bits and pieces. "Mr. Frodo!" Shouting now, stumbling blindly…
"Sam!" The shout from Merry was all the warning Sam had to throw himself out of the way of the boulders raining down from above. Merry and Boromir had found a high perch and were hurling boulders on the cave troll bellow even as they fought off goblin attackers.
Coughing now from the dust in his lungs, completely unable to see, Sam ran dazedly through the cave, sword flicking out at random to catch an enemy in the chest, the shoulder. He just hoped that he had wits and luck enough to refrain from hitting a Fellowship member.
The sound of Gandalf's mutterings sped Sam along. He'd always been the slightest bit afraid of the old wizard and, occasionally, would wonder if he entirely had wits enough to be performing spells strong enough to send the whole of the mines toppling on their heads.
"Mr. Frodo!"
It was Sting that found Frodo for him. The blue light stood out in the semi-darkness and urged Sam forward even as an orc's hand, firmly grasping a sword, aimed directly for Frodo's heart.
If Sam knew what he knew later – that Frodo was wearing a vest of mithril, that he would have been winded by the blow, nothing more, he still would have thrown himself in front of the sword. He was Frodo's protector. He'd been around for thirty years to make sure that his occasionally-scatter-brained master didn't kill himself. You couldn't just turn that kind of thing off and on.
He hit Frodo's shoulder and the two tumbled, legs tangling on the downward descent. Sam felt something press white-hot to his lower back, but worse was the crushing impact that drove the breath from his body. The jolt of hitting the ground left Sam dazed for seconds that soon passed into a minute.
"Sam!" Something in Frodo's high, frightened voice made Sam open an eye dutifully. As soon as he did Frodo sighed happily, a sound that would become so familiar to the faithful servant in the months to come, as were the words following it. "My dear Sam. Did you throw yourself in the path of a sword to save little old me?"
Groans around them signaled the end of the battle as Fellowship members hobbled together, checking over wounds and watching warily as goblins and orcs retreated back into their caves. Legolas had blood on his scalp, stark against his white-blond hair. Aragorn was touching the wound carefully even as the elf flicked him away. "Never mind. We need to leave."
Sam didn't know if he could walk, let alone keep up with the pace set by the Fellowship in motion. He grabbed his pack and hoisted it over his shoulder, breathing in to will the pain away, out to help him balance. "Sam?" The question came from Frodo, and Sam managed a smile that didn't look too much like a grimace.
The run to the bridge was terrifying for everyone else, but for Sam it was simply nauseating. He kept repeating a mantra of one more step, one more…At one point, he was being forcibly dragged across the floor by Boromir, across the bridge spanning a river of churning lava.
They left Gandalf behind. The old wizard had been flitting in and out of Frodo's and, though it, Sam's life since the beginning. Watching the grey traveler fall into darkness, a sacrifice in desperate hope that they might live, was almost too painful to bear.
Emotional agony was something Sam was not familiar with, and he soon found that it trumped the pain of the steadily bleeding wound, the cracked ribs. Gandalf? Gone? He dealt with the realization the only way he knew how – by going to Frodo.
It seemed that his friend had shared his sentiment. Gandalf deserved to be mourned, deserved more than what the hobbits could give him in the middle of the mountains, but the Quest and the Ring must be finished if Gandalf was ever to be given the tribute he merited.
The slow march through the woods was more of a stumble as the exhausted, hungry, distraught eight picked their way along the path. They were lucky they weren't being followed – their normal system of careful watchers in the front and rear of the group was in shambles. But for the hours following the battle in the mines of Moria, they weren't set upon by their enemies.
Just after the sun dipped below the horizon, Merry's high, concerned voice broke the mostly-still air of the evening. He was bent over Pippin, who could not find it in him to move another foot. "We'll rest here for the night." Aragorn said, picking up Pippin easily and setting him next to the fire Boromir was creating. "Let me see your injury, mellon."
Sam was stroking Pippin's back, trying to coax the younger hobbit into sleep, when Aragorn spotted the blood, blooming across Sam's back. "Samwise Gamgee," he murmured, "let me look at you." This was late into the evening, when even Legolas had succumbed to that strange sleep of the elves.
Aragorn could not find sleep in him, not that night, not for many nights to come. His entire life contained snippets of Gandalf Greyhame. The old, slightly paranoid wizard had been his main guide through adolescence. They would often go years without seeing or hearing from each other, but knowing that Gandalf was no longer alive nagged at something in the Ranger, something that said this isn't right.
And now he had a chance to do something with his hands, with this young hobbit in front of him, blood soaking into his clothes, into the ground. "Were you injured in battle?"
Sam nodded slowly, eyes aimed at the ground. He knew that there were more important things to be worrying about than this small injury.
Aragorn pealed back the clothing and found that it was no small injury. The wound cut from an inch left of the spine and around his side and was deeper than any gouge Aragorn had seen in recent memory. "Does it pain you?" Aragorn was surprised that the hobbit had been able to walk at all. This kind of injury usually disabled a man.
Sam shrugged, then coughed, embarrassed. "Not…not as much as my front." Sam turned slightly, so that Aragorn could see his bare chest. It was one large bruise, in ugly shades of blue and purple and, in some spots, deep black.
Carefully, carefully, Aragorn pressed his fingers into certain spots, certain places he knew as likely to be broken. When a hiss and jerk came from his patient he knew that Sam had suffered at least three broken ribs, perhaps four. "Did you fall?"
Again, Sam nodded, his hand rubbing small circles on his chest. "After the orc slashed me."
Trying not to betray his worry over the severity of the wound and, most of all, the sheer amount of blood that covered Sam's clothes, Aragorn said, "Worse has happened to warriors facing their first orc."
Sam knew he wasn't a warrior and said as much, stammering as he did so. Aragorn was a warrior, so were Legolas and Gimli and Boromir. Gandalf was even a warrior, as he could be fearsome when he wanted to. Even Frodo and Merry and Little Pip had it in them to be good soldiers.
"'Twas just a dream I had. I already knew what would happen, Strider, I was just doing all I could to prevent it, if you follow."
Strider did follow. He also knew that Sam needed a full night's rest, more water than they had, and herbs he should have carried on him. Feeling the body under his hands trembling from the stress of the day, the extent of the injuries, Aragorn said, slowly, "You, Samwise Gamgee, are perhaps the greatest warrior I've had the pleasure of meeting in my lifetime, which has been considerably longer than most.
"You see, the best warriors are those who don't even know they are one."
Next, because of this cool voting review system we have going, is going be 50 of Boromir's best moments. Who would have guessed the guy was so popular?
Anyways, please review