A/N: A chapter in which there is little angsting and much violence, and political intrigue in Rohan.
Boromir and Aragorn both gently set Harry's litter on the ground as the Fellowship stopped to rest, having reached the end of the snow line, and had come upon an area of large flat stones. He had yet to wake up. All the company save Gandalf who sat on a large boulder smoking his pipe, obviously deep in thought, cast worried glances at Harry's unconscious form. Finally Legolas voiced the questions they were all thinking.
"How does he Gandalf? And what happened to him? Did his spell go awry?" Gandalf didn't reply for a few moments, as if he hadn't notice the entire Fellowship stop setting up a fire and some lunch, and blew a smoke ring.
"He performed his transportation spell perfectly. It was Saruman who interfered and caused his injury." He took a long draw from his pipe then continued slowly, "Harry once told me of spells in his world designed to keep his kind from using this spell, to protect a place from attack or to imprison a fugitive. He told me he had seen it put to both uses, and the implication was that it required a great deal of power."
He sighed and said, "And if there is one thing Saruman does not lack these days, it is power. And he is gaining knowledge that was never available to any of my order, from a distinctly unwilling source. Harry's godfather." By way of explanation to the Hobbits he added, "an adopted kinsman of a sort, a guardian who was entrusted with his welfare upon his parents untimely deaths, though for reasons Harry has not elaborated on, this did not happen."
"Like Bilbo was to me." Frodo said. The normally talkative and cheery Ringbearer had until now been subdued, the Ring obviously making its presence known in its effect on his mood and bearing.
"Exactly so Frodo. Exactly so, though he is not Harry's kinsman by blood, only by bond." The old wizard confirmed.
"None of you are to tell Harry of this. His godfather's apparent death broke his heart once, his reappearance as a tortured victim of Saruman would do much worse. He isn't ready to face Saruman in battle. Not yet." Gandalf spoke quietly but firmly, his voice full of authority. The company gave their collective, reluctant in some cases, assent.
"As for your previous questions Thranduilion, he is well enough for now, and I believe he is probably in a degree of shock. It is more than possible that he doubts his chances of success against Saruman, particularly if he fights him at the heart of his power. And his wound was great. I deem it likely that he shall come round soon enough." Gandalf stood.
"You should eat quickly. We have much ground to cover and little enough time to do it. There is an evil in these lands that not even Balin's Moria can dispel."
"Aye, that there is Gandalf. However, once we get to Moria it will be a different story of course. You and Balin will have a lot of catching up to do!" Gimli said with a smile, trying to break the gloomy mood.
"Very true Gimli. I know for a fact that he will be happy to listen to your tales of our journey, and to meet you too Frodo." He said with a weary smile, looking at the quietest member of the party that was currently conscious. "He has heard much about you from his various visits to Bilbo."
Frodo smiled slightly at that, then perked up even more when Sam had managed to fry some wild mushrooms to go with the dried meat and fruit that made up most of their diet. The sausages were being carefully rationed. As Merry and Pippin both jostled with one another to be the first to the mushrooms, a softly amused voice rasped from behind them. "You'd better leave some for Frodo and I, before you two eat them all."
The entire company turned to see Harry levering himself up carefully on his elbows, wincing as he did so. Aragorn quickly moved to his side, pushing him back down and said, "You should rest my friend. You were grievously wounded." He nodded down at Harry's chest. In answer Harry fumbled for his wand, tapped his chest with it and muttered something.
"Check." Harry said.
"Harry, it will not have even begun to be healed y-"
"Check." Was the insistent reply.
Aragorn rolled his eyes and did, muttering about stubborn wizards under his breath. What he saw drew a sharp gasp from the normally stoic Dunadan's lips. The wound was not completely healed, true, but it was healing before his very eyes, leaving only a little scar tissue in its wake.
"Eru…" He breathed. In his long life he had never seen anything like this. Gandalf who was watching smiled softly and thought of his own saying about hobbits. You could learn their ways in a week, but after a hundred years they could still surprise you. The same applied to wizards. Of all kinds, he thought, his good mood souring as he returned to his contemplation of Saruman's betrayal. Losing the White Wizard had been an enormous blow to the forces of good. As much as he had disliked it, Elrond's speech about the list of allies growing thin was far from wrong.
Still, as long as there was happiness and laughter in the world all was not lost, he thought as he watched Harry summon a plate of mushrooms, wolf them down with some water and dried meat then go back to sleep, saying that powerful wizard though he was, even he needed rest whereupon the rest of the Fellowship jeered derisively, saying that all he did was sleep. Harry responded with a presumably rude hand gesture of raising the middle finger of his left hand in the direction of his companions briefly, and went back to sleep. Yes, there was still some hope.
He roused himself, and stretched. This quest, already a far greater hardship than the one undertaken with Bilbo and the dwarves, though this time the enemy was far greater than the mightiest dragon, even greater than Ancalagon the Black, mightiest of Morgoth's dragons who had been slain by Earendil in aerial combat. It made him long for the freedom his Maia form accorded him, when he would not be bound to this form with its aches and pains and could return to Valinor. And yet, he would miss this world when he finally left, in whatever manner he did so. Like the Music of the Ainur, for all the flaws Morgoth had introduced, it was still beautiful and all the more so for its flaws. He just hoped that Durin's bane still slumbered. If it had been awakened once more by Balin, there would be no living dwarves in the mines and the Balrog itself would be almost as formidable as facing Saruman himself. Especially if the tales from Moria were true, and it was a particularly large member of its kind.
He kept watch, alone with his thoughts and watching the darkness while the others slept. Then he pricked up his ears. The few sounds of birds and creatures of the forest had disappeared entirely. Silence enveloped the clearing like a dark blanket, and only the crackling of the fire and Gimli's penetrating snore were to be heard. And then he heard it. A long, low howl.
Wargs, the monstrous wolves of the forests. Calling them wolves was an insult to true wolves - magnificent creatures that his friend Radagast often spoke with - he thought, as he stood quietly, and moved to wake Boromir and Gimli, Aragorn and Legolas already being awake. Wargs were the things of nightmare, ugly, powerful and with just enough intelligence to be cruel and the smarter specimens had their own language. He had encountered them with Bilbo and the Dwarves, but then there had been goblins and they had had the aid of the great eagles. The Fellowship had armed themselves, with the Hobbits and Harry's currently comatose form in the centre of a ring of steel and courage, standing next to the fire. The first warg, a hideously massive beast with a dark grey fur and long jagged scars on its muzzle and flanks, wandered into the edge of the firelight and snarled.
"Build up the fire! It's our only hope, and stay together." Gandalf commanded sharply, and the Hobbits did his bidding, and Boromir covered their rear, and Aragorn and Gimli stood either side of him, while Legolas began to fire arrows at the phenomenal rate and accuracy only known to the very best elven archers. Legolas came from a family of great warriors, the mighty King Thrandruil and his father Oropher being only the two most notable, and no doubt royal training and the spiders of Mirkwood had honed his inherited natural talent, Gandalf thought with a grim smile as he drew Glamdring.
He glanced behind him briefly, turned to face the front then checked sharply and looked back. The Hobbits were wearing expressions being a mix of fear and defiance, and Sting glowed brightly. It seemed that its glow was engendered by wargs as well as orcs. How curious. But what surprised him was less visible and more a feeling. An aura of power was building around Harry, the like of which he had not felt since the War of Wrath, in his fellow Maia preparing for battle. He smiled fiercely, and exchanged a look with Legolas, who had briefly ceased his archery, presumably conserving arrows, and was looking rather puzzled. Gandalf merely nodded at Harry and Legolas frowned in curiosity, then shrugged, returning to his archery as the wargs massed for a charge. Pragmatism was one of the chief traits of the Sindar of Mirkwood.
The wargs charged one or two at a time, and were either dealt with by an arrow or a sword blow. Then Aragorn went down under a relatively small warg that came at him from the side as he fended off one of its companions. For a moment all were paralysed in shock, as Aragorn struggled with the creature that was intent on ripping his throat out, then a roar of rage was heard and a large sword whistled through the air and hit the warg in the side with astonishing force. The unfortunate beast howled, pawed at the wound, then collapsed, the light disappearing from its black and evil eyes. This incredible feat of bravery however risked destruction at the hands of the wargs. Aragorn was down with at least cracked rib and claw marks down his side, Boromir who had hurled the sword was armed with no more than a shield and a long dagger, and Legolas was running short of arrows. Then behind them Harry stood, and said 4 words very quietly, in a carrying whisper, "No one hurts my friends." Then he bellowed, "Incendio!", and whipped his wand in a wide semi-circle, a line of white hot flame issuing from the tip, setting the dry pine trees and some of the less fortunate wargs alight.
"Gandalf," Harry said with the sort of calm that was only reached on the far side anger, "you once told me that you could manipulate the elements, create a lake from a cup of water, that sort of thing. Would you do me the favour of assisting me in burning these hideous monsters to the bone?" Gandalf nodded curtly, then raised his staff, and roared something in Valarin. The already merrily crackling roared greedily with a new intensity, feasting on the trees around them and the wargs within. The Hobbits looked up at Harry and his cold expression with mix of awe and fear. Frodo was also uncomfortably aware that if either Harry or Gandalf sought to take the Ring in earnest, there was nothing he could do to stop them.
Gandalf resisted the Ring well enough, but Harry was younger, more vulnerable and in some ways, far more powerful, Frodo thought as Harry wandered over to Aragorn, looked at the warg that had attacked him, and kicked it. When it twitched and whined he aimed his wand at its head, muttered something which caused a beam of orange light to obliterate the wargs head. He had not forgotten the last time the Ring had overtly tempted Harry, and he somehow doubted it would be the only time. He was shaken out of his dark thoughts when Harry walked up, carefully supporting Aragorn with his left arm and said brightly, "Anyone up for tea? I got some from Rivendell and," he gestured at the flames which were subsiding, but showing signs of burning through the night and chuckled, "heat won't be a problem." And with that, he summoned a kettle from Sam's pack (everyone aside from Aragorn and Gandalf jumped slightly at that), muttered a spell Pippin vaguely recognised and a stream of water that filled the pot, and grinned at the dumbstruck Fellowship as he lowered Aragorn to the ground.
"What bothers you so brother? And why was their blood on the floor of the throne room?" Eowyn said in an interrogating tone as soon as they were out of earshot of the throne room and Wormtongue and his lackeys.
"Harry Potter. He seems to have tried his travelling trick, the one where he disappears from one place and arrives in another in the blink of an eye. Something prevented him from doing so, and Wormtongue seemed unduly smug, so I would bet my horse and all my armour that is some fell sorcery of Saruman's making." Eomer replied grimly, striding towards Theodred's quarters so fast that even his strong and long-legged sister had difficulty keeping up. As they walked she noticed he had a piece of blood soaked black cloth in his tightly clenched left fist. When they arrived he rapped hard on the door with his knuckles.
"Cousin, I and Eowyn would talk to you. We are coming in after I count to 5 whether you are decent or not." Eomer said loudly, blending formality and the ribald humour shared between close family and friends.
"Honestly cousin, it is hardly as if I have anyone here with me." Theodred grumbled as he opened the door.
"First time for everything." Eowyn said dryly, eliciting a sigh from the casually dressed Crown Prince of Rohan.
"Are you two here about anything important, or merely to mock me?" Theodred replied, "Because I drank far too much last night, and my head still hurts."
Eomer opened his mouth to jest about his cousin being a lightweight before Eowyn swatted him around the skull. He settled for grinning and rubbing his head before his demeanour turned deadly serious. Theodred leaned forward as his cousins sat down on chairs provided for the purpose. Eomer was rarely this serious, and whenever he was it was never good. Such as when he had had to tell Théoden that Gandalf had interpreted the courteous and expected offer of a horse as 'take the finest horse in the King's stable'.
Gandalf had absconded with the King's finest horses on prior occasion, and to his credit usually returned them in one piece and often in slightly better condition than when they had left, though this could be attributed to the amount of time he spent among the elves, who were renowned for their way with animals, particularly horses. Unfortunately this horse, Shadowfax, was the finest in a generation. Théoden had not been very pleased.
"Harry tried to transport himself into the throne room, and gained a large wound. I only got a glimpse of it before he disappeared, but it looked like it was in the shape of a giant hand. And then there is this." He spread the blood soaked black cloth flat on the floor of Theodred's chambers. It was unmistakeably in the shape of a giant hand.
Theodred sighed. The evidence was strong, and he had seen Harry transport himself impossible distances in just such a fashion many times before, and never once be wounded by it. The wizard himself had mentioned a phenomenon known as 'splinching' in which one part of the body was separated from another. The casual manner in which he regaled them of a tale in which he was learning how to transport himself in this manner along with fellow young wizards in which a young woman had to have her leg reattached unsettled even the strongest Rohirric stomachs, but he had said that it almost never happened to those practiced in the art of what he called 'apparition'.
"You're certain it was Saruman?" He asked, knowing the answer already.
"Yes, and I am certain that he works through Grima to debilitate the King. You've seen how your father has deteriorated since that greasy snake became his chief advisor! We must confront Wormtongue, for those reasons and for others." He said, his voice growing stronger and more fell as he spoke.
"Others?" Theodred said, suspecting and fearing the answer.
Eomer tried to speak for a moment, then nodded curtly at Eowyn. Theodred rubbed his eyes and said nothing. Eomer fidgeted. It was clear that he wanted to do nothing more than eviscerate Wormtongue where he stood.
"Very well. I had hoped it was not true, but now I see that Wormtongue must be dealt with, and Saruman that honey voiced traitor as well. We shall speak to my father, and hopefully the truth of our words shall pierce the darkness that surrounds him." Theodred stated. In his heart he knew that if this roll of the dice failed, then the ramifications would be great and terrible.
Did you like my depiction of Theodred? I thought that he deserved more screen time as a living person as opposed to the dead/dying scenes he gets in the films.