A/N: Changed updates to every two days. That means the next will be on Friday. And now we've begun getting into cliffhangers (who knows if we'll ever get out again...mwahahaha...). Thank you to all my lovely reviewers...and thank you to those who have not reviewed but are still reading and (hopefully) enjoying the story.
And now...
Chapter 4
"What horse-stealings?" Amrothos asked impatiently. "The ones you were blaming us for a few seconds ago?"
"He's right," Faramir put in quietly. "You're jumping to conclusions far too quickly."
Éowyn gave him an exasperated glare and then appeared to listen very hard for something. The noise had ceased, though, and all was quiet save for the stamping of hooves and shaking of manes from the horses. Éowyn stood, slowly, and the young men beside her stood as well.
"It's just got to be connected somehow," Éowyn murmured, walking toward the direction the sound had been coming from cautiously. "I'm certain of it."
"How?" Faramir asked curiously.
Éowyn gave him a look.
"I'm not sure. Call it a woman's intuition if you must. Éomer just calls it silly nonsense and an overactive imagination, but he tends to exaggerate."
She entered her horse's stall and poked around underneath the saddle blankets, feeling for any kind of lever or entrance that might lead to a trap door. Amrothos poked Faramir in the arm and whispered in his ear:
"Is she quite all there, this Éowyn? I mean, secret passageways in a stable? And was there really a reason for attacking us? I'm not sure she's quite sane. Or safe."
"She's certainly not safe," Faramir replied dryly, wincing as Éowyn tossed an indignant look over her shoulder, obviously having overheard Amrothos' comment about her sanity. "But she's quite handy with a blade, as you may have seen."
He rubbed his bruised cheek thoughtfully. Éowyn turned back to say something, but noticed the motion and changed what she was going to say.
"Your face…I did it again, didn't I?" This ruefully, as if she was angry with herself. "Éomer must've been right after all. Time hasn't changed my ability to get into trouble—especially with nobles from Gondor."
"Again?" Amrothos hissed at Faramir, who winced.
"I'll tell you about it. Later."
Much later, he added mentally, imagining what his cousin's reaction might be after realizing he'd been beaten by a girl—twice, rather than just once. And the same girl at that.
"At least it wasn't intentional this time," he said to her wryly. "You were only attacking what you thought were thieves—or so I gather. Last time the circumstances were quite different."
Éowyn raised an eyebrow at him.
"Indeed."
The subject seemed to be closed, for she turned back to searching in the stall. Amrothos glanced from her to Faramir, shrugged, and began searching as well. Faramir grinned as he watched his cousin study Théoden's niece every now and again. It was easy to see why. Amrothos had obviously never met anyone like Éowyn before. The women of Rohan were stern and noble, many as ready to wield a sword as a man, whereas the women of Gondor—and Belfalas—were not so well acquainted with the art of war, but were generally more delicate and graceful in manner.
All the young maidens in Minas Tirith had begun giggling whenever he or Boromir passed. The girls in Dol Amroth were a little better, but once they had learned they were sons of the Steward, they were suddenly a little politer, a little more formal, and a little less fun to be around. Lothiriel, Imrahil's only daughter and youngest child, was the exception. Her cousins could've been anything from kings to beggars and she would never have treated them any less affectionately. But even she was more elegant, more formal than this princess of Rohan.
Éowyn noticed his stare eventually and returned it with a curious look. He flushed, though didn't know why, and looked away.
"I know I'm not exactly a lady," Éowyn said after a moment, glancing down at her dusty dress and feeling her mussed hair with a look of extreme frustration. "I do try, though. Éomer says I don't try hard enough, but I can't help being who I am."
"Neither would I want you to be," he replied with a smile.
Her fair cheeks flushed pink, and she opened her mouth to ask what he meant when they both heard something shift with a creak, and then a crash. Both Éowyn and Faramir whirled around to find the source of the noise. Several crates had fallen from where they were stacked neatly against the wall to the floor. Saddles that had been stacked on them were strewn across the dirt. Amrothos was on the ground, having been knocked over by the crates, it seemed, looking at them with wide, apologetic eyes and a nervous look on his face.
"What did you do?" Faramir asked, staring at his cousin and only slightly annoyed.
"I didn't mean to…I mean, the crates…I only just touched them, and…"
Amrothos stuttered for a few seconds without completing a sentence until Éowyn stepped forward and set the first crate right side up. Faramir hesitated, but then joined her in righting the stack of crates near where they had fallen from. Amrothos stacked the saddles against the wall, and at last the mess was practically in order. Éowyn walked over to the wall the crates had fallen from, frowned, and knelt. She brushed back a pile of straw and gasped aloud in astonishment.
"Look at this!" she whispered, turning back to the boys with eyes practically glowing with excitement.
Faramir looked, as well as Amrothos. Underneath where the crates had been stacked, a great wooden slat about the length and width of a horse had been installed in the sandy ground. The crates, full of heavy things and covered in saddles, had been so plainly out in the open that no one would ever have dreamed of unearthing a secret passageway underneath them.
There was a handle on the slat of wood, and Éowyn grabbed it readily and lifted. With a familiar grating noise, the wooden trapdoor slid back to reveal a dark hole in the floor.
"By the ships," Amrothos breathed, staring down at his discovery with amazement and elation. "By the very ships of Dol Amroth."
"I knew it," Éowyn murmured, triumph and resolve melding in her steely gaze. "A blindfolded horse could easily be lowered—or led, with some kind of ramp—down such a passage." She turned to Amrothos with a scornful look. "Mentally unstable indeed."
"Unstable, milady? Never!" Amrothos quipped with a grin. "After all, how can one be unstable inside a stable?"
His cousin and Éowyn both groaned at the pun. Hardly funny, Faramir thought. But that was Amrothos. His jokes were seldom anything more than an amusing play on words, which was really more annoying than amusing at times.
"Whether stable or unstable, I was undeniably right," Éowyn continued, staring down into the darkness as if straining to see its limits. "This is a passageway, and I'm sure it's connected to the horse-thefts."
"Could it not be an old passage that was forgotten many years ago?" Amrothos asked, touching the ground around the hole's edges thoughtfully.
"I've never heard of any such passage," Éowyn replied sharply, but then amended, "But I guess it could be. And someone's found out about it—"
"—And begun stealing horses through it," Amrothos finished for her.
Their eyes met, and Faramir almost laughed at the excitement and triumph that shone in both their gazes. Then, all at once, he felt horribly left out. The realization that he was no longer a child fixed in his mind, and he found himself longing desperately that those days of playful eagerness had not come to an end so suddenly. He wished he could share in their childish excitement, but could not summon the will.
Fortunately, the moment passed quickly. Éowyn glanced up at Faramir and saw the longing in his gaze, and the smile left her eyes. He saw that she, too, was on the verge of growing up, somewhere in between the cheerful, carefree mindset of childhood and the serious persistence of adulthood. She seemed to be about to speak, but she shifted her weight and lost her balance.
Of course, under normal circumstances this would've had hardly any effect except perhaps in making her trip or stumble or something to that accord, but Éowyn was, at that moment, so near the entrance of the passage that she could have easily leaned over and stared down into it. As it was, loosing her balance had drastic consequences.
Her eyes widened as she felt herself falling backwards into the hole. Faramir and Amrothos both leapt forward, just in time to grab her hands as she slid down the entrance into the pit. Her body disappeared into the blackness, but her arms and head were still mostly in the light.
"Can you touch the ground?" Faramir asked, straining to hold onto her. It was an awkward position, as getting any closer to the hole might mean falling in himself.
"I can't feel anything!" gasped Éowyn breathlessly. "Can you pull me back up?"
Faramir leaned forward against his better judgment, and before he knew it, he, too, was sliding forward into the maw of the dark opening. Éowyn shrieked as she fell a little further down, but he clung to her hand and clenched his teeth with the effort. Faramir braced himself against the edge, and Amrothos grabbed onto his arm to keep him back, but it was clearly no good.
"Go…find…help," Faramir managed to say.
Amrothos' eyes widened, and he looked half angry at the idea that he might even consider leaving them behind. But Faramir's grip was slipping even further.
"Let go my arm," he gasped.
This his stubborn cousin would not do. The steward's son's fingers slipped again and then lost hold completely. With a shout from Faramir, a scream from Éowyn, and a surprised yelp from Amrothos, all three of them dropped from the stable of Edoras into the consuming blackness of the passageway underneath.
To be continued...
