Amrothos looked at the knights milling around within the inner courtyard. In the flickering light of the torches, he could see Éowyn's eyes glittering beneath her helm. Her face, before she had donned her helmet, had been set in a rigid mask. Her earlier grief had been buried, frozen, cast in stone, and now all that remained was a bitter determination which frightened him. The Valar alone knew what it would do to the enemy.
He was pretty sure that earlier, as they milled around, putting tack on their horses, his father had spotted Éowyn. He was equally sure that his father had turned a blind eye. There was a knowing look which he had seen before, in happier times, when his father and mother had exchanged a glance. Then, Imrahil had said to his cousin that the hour was very late, and had enquired whether he would like a guest room prepared within the Dol Amroth town house, rather than returning through the cold to the Steward's Palace. Amrothos suspected his parents of knowing full well that the guest room would not be slept in, but did not care so long as lip service was paid to the proprieties. His father was capable of turning a blind eye to quite a lot when it suited him, or when the whim took him. Alas that the circumstances now were so very different.
He heard Erchirion address their father.
"Sir, when do we ride out?"
"We wait for dawn." Imrahil's face was grim and drawn. Amrothos shifted uncomfortably, keeping his back ramrod straight. There was precious little to be gained from the desperate sortie, unless some sort of miracle were to occur. The best that could be hoped for was a swift and honourable death, rather than a long, lingering enslavement. Unbidden, the memory flitted across his mind of his father and mother talking in the small hours of the morning, murmuring in an undertone as they discussed which sections of the city wall near their house were sufficiently high that "there was no risk of leaving the job half-done." He swallowed. Surely riding out to battle wielding a sword took less courage than cold-bloodedly taking that fateful step into the void.
Amrothos held tight to his mount's bridle, stroking his neck gently. There was a rising sense of tension, like a tightly coiled spring, among the men, and the horses could feel it. They were getting restless and skittish. And the oppressive, inescapable darkness was getting to him. The low clouds were lit from beneath by the dull dirty glow of red fires out on the battlefield beyond the walls. It seemed that even the air itself conspired with the enemy against them.
But then, just as Amrothos' mood seem to hit its lowest ebb, he felt a slight breeze, a freshening of the wind as it shifted round to the west, bringing with it the salt tang of the sea. And at the same time the clouds seemed to lift just fractionally, allowing the feeble grey light of dawn to creep beneath them.
Then, suddenly, cleaving the foetid air of the battlefield, there came the sound of horns being blown – a great baying of horns. At once a murmur of voices rose round the courtyard: "The Rohirrim are come"; "The men of the North"; "Help has come."
"Mount up!" Imrahil's commanding voice rang out across the courtyard. Amrothos put his foot into the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. From his new vantage point, he could see beyond the cavalry to the massed ranks of infantry, pikes and halberds at the ready, filling the streets behind. The city guards pulled open the gates and the host started to advance into the lowering, smoke-filled chaos of the battlefield beyond.
Amrothos felt the familiar sensation of his insides turning to liquid. Jaw clenched, he urged his horse on. He knew that at the first parry with the enemy the feeling would go, and he would become absorbed in the moment. By the Valar, I don't blame any man for crapping himself at a moment like this. His lips curled into a grim smile behind his visor. Around him, the horses and their riders started to move forwards.
~o~O~o~
Exhaustion was setting in. Amrothos felt as though his arm muscles were on fire. His body sagged in the saddle. But as yet he had been lucky, and had taken no injury. For much of the battle, he had been aware of the shieldmaiden somewhere to his left, fighting with a cold, ruthless fury. Boromir and Faramir's accounts had been right – her technique was impeccable, her speed and reactions amazing, more than compensating for her lesser strength. But now she had been swept away by the tide of fighting surging around them.
There was a slight lull in the battle around him, and he glanced across the field, looking for her, for his brothers, for his father. Then his eye lit upon her, on a slight knoll. He froze.
She stood, sword raised, facing the crumpled body of one of the fell beasts of the air. At her feet lay the body of a horse – a pale grey, and beneath the horse a man lay trapped. Not any man. Amrothos realised with a start that it was the King of the Rohirrim. Then, to his horror, as he watched, from beneath the wreckage of the beast, a black form emerged, so black it seemed to swallow up the daylight around it. Slowly, it rose, until it towered above Éowyn. He saw her sword waver, but she stood firm before it.
He started to urge his horse forwards, but it skittered anxiously beneath him, resisting his attempts to force it to move. The animal had more sense than its master, he thought grimly. No creature in its right mind would want to get close to that evil being. But Éowyn needed him. Getting the better of the horse's skittishness, he managed to get it to take a few reluctant steps. As he watched, he could see some sort of exchange of words, but though he could see Éowyn's lips move, the clamour of the battlefield drowned her words. Then, for some unaccountable reason, she reached up and took off her helm, casting it to one side, gold hair cascading over her shoulders like some rare and beautiful treasure in the midst of the gore and horror around.
Much good the gesture did her. Amrothos watched, powerless, as the creature of death raise his great mace and bring it hurtling down upon Éowyn's shield. She staggered and almost fell, taking a few paces backwards. Her shield had shattered into pieces; her arm now dangled useless at her side. He could see the look of agony on her face, then with a supreme effort she seemed to lock her jaw, and draw herself back upright.
Once more she spoke, seemingly taunting the black figure. Again, the figure stepped towards her, raising his mace, then seemed to stagger, losing his balance. As he pitched forwards, Éowyn raised her sword and drove it with all her strength between the Nazgûl's mantle and helm. There was an unearthly shriek, then, as if the body of the Nazgûl had evaporated into a dark smoke, the dark cloak fluttered to the ground and the empty helm clanged to the ground, rolling across the earth. But it seemed that the dark vapours had leached the life from her; Éowyn crumpled and fell.
Amrothos realised the yell which rent the air had come from him. Spurring his horse hard, he forced it forward to the knoll. He sprang down and dropped to his knees in the mud beside the fallen Rohir. Trembling slightly, he raised her hand in his own.
Suddenly he found himself surrounded by a group of knights on horseback. He looked up to see a fell warrior staring down at him, blond hair flowing from beneath his helm, eyes glittering through the slits in his helm. Then the man called out Éowyn's name. His words were in another language, but it was clear that the lament was bitter and anguished. Then he seemed to call his men of arms around him. He gave a great cry – Amrothos thought he recognised a word: "Death!" Then the rider spurred his huge war horse into a gallop. Amrothos watched as the riders swept across the battlefield, swords swinging, cleaving all foes in their path. There was a blood lust, a battle madness, a red mist about them that scared him, even though he was on the same side.
Amrothos sat in the mud, feeling stunned. This part of the field was now strangely quiet. The riders had hewn down the orcs; their corpses lay several deep, with a few men, both friends and foe, scattered among them. Éowyn's body lay in the mud. Her blonde hair flowed across the ground, incongruously beautiful amidst such destruction. He still could not work out why she had taken off her helm early in the fight; it lay on the ground a few handspans away. Next closest was the body of her King, pinned beneath his horse, then a little further away still a strange, small man, little more than a child in size. Amrothos realised it was another of the halflings – one had arrived with the wizard Mithrandir a few days earlier, and had been sworn into his uncle's service. Gathering his wits, the young prince scrambled to his feet and looked around for comrades to help him. He was damned if he was going to leave Éowyn's body on the battlefield for the circling crows to peck. Suddenly he felt almost relieved in the knowledge that Faramir was beyond the touch of grief.
With a sudden burst of annoyance, he realised he no longer had his horse – the animal, scared by the body of the fell beast, and still sensing the dark miasma of the Nazgûl even after its death, had bolted. What the hell was he to do? Scanning the surroundings, he spotted a small group of infantry men, pikes shouldered, marching back towards the city to regroup, and called to them. Somewhat reluctantly they came over. With the aid of some spears and cloaks, they fashioned together three stretchers and loaded the lady, her king and the halfling onto them. Amrothos took one of the poles himself, helping to bear Eowyn's body. They set off upon their slow trudge back through the dirt and chaos. Boots, hooves, siege engines – all had churned the once rich earth of the Pelennor into a nightmarish hell of slippery mud.
They were within a couple of hundred yards of the shattered remains of the city gate when a familiar voice hailed them.
"Amrothos, my son." His father's charger clattered to a halt beside him. Imrahil swung himself down from the saddle and strode over to the makeshift stretchers. "Éowyn! Alas. As a niece she was to me, a woman as brave as she was beautiful. Who are the others?"
"The King of Rohan, and his squire, another of the strange halfling-folk," Amrothos replied.
Imrahil held his hand to his breast for a brief moment, almost as if offering a benediction. Then he stooped to kiss Éowyn's brow. Abruptly he straightened, then held his burnished vambrace to her lips. A faint mist condensed on the cold steel.
"She lives! Make haste with your burden, my son, and carry her to the Houses of Healing!"
Thank you for all the reviews.
Boramir – thanks for your kind comments
Rachel – and yours as well! I guess you probably know this, but the barrage of severed heads is actually canon. (Tolkien will have been well versed in the gorier aspects of the history of warfare, and had been through the Battle of the Somme, so had no illusions as to how completely hideous war is).
I kind of swing too and fro on the issue of Denethor and the doomed attempt to retake Osgiliath… was it hubris and vainglory, or did it buy valuable time? My reading of the scene where Faramir agrees to make the attempt is that all Denethor's counsellors think it's a damn stupid idea ("Is there one captain willing to do my bidding?" or whatever it is), and that Faramir only agrees out of filial loyalty and a sense that everything is lost anyway, not because he thinks his father is right (hence Gandalf having to take him on one side before he goes to advise him not to throw his life away needlessly: if he's not exactly suicidal at this point, he's certainly in the frame of mind where, having lost his brother and then had his father tell him he wished he'd died in his brother's place, where he doesn't give a shit one way or the other). And the other thing is that Denethor has sent out the arrow and lit the beacons, but has no reason to believe the Rohirrim are coming (in fact, it is quite likely that Sauron is using the Palantir to misdirect him and feed misinformation), so the buying time theory is certainly not a done deal. But I thought it would be interesting to make Denethor less of a pantomime villain than perhaps I've been painting him as.
Sorry, another slightly short chapter, but if I'd added in the Houses of Healing bit it would have got too long.