A/N: We have reached the point in the timeline of events where this chapter inevitably deals with the death of two major characters.
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In which two Captains are sacrificed and the black bishop is checked.
February, T.A. 3019
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Rain fell in hard sheeting sprays. The drops pelted on his face and trickled down his neck, soaked the bright gold hair not covered by the helm. It washed the dirt from his clean shaven cheek, so much that oddly all around him smelled fresh, there was no tang of blood, no stench of Orc. As if he were just out for a moment's quiet ride on a bright spring day and had decided to lay down, to feel for himself the earth below burgeoning with new life.
There was in truth some pain, but not too much so long as he did not move. Two arrows; both through the gut. Even close range, meaning to destroy the 'Prince of the Tarks", the swarming Uruk-hai had been lousy shots. Once their target had been taken down they had retreated, mistaken, thinking him well and truly dead.
Not yet you vile and rapacious traitor. He cursed the Wizard long and well. It was little reassurance to have been right, to have known that Saruman would attack. In the end not right enough. Not one but two armies had issued from Isengard.
Dizzy and oddly numb Theodred simply lay and focused on each breath. He had no thought to try to stand. His fingers would not obey and he could not make them move, still less his legs and feet.
From far away there came a high and ringing peal: clear and true, but dim. Was that a horn? Surely it was not the raucous blast of the Uruk-hai but their own battle-call. Could it be but a trick of the rushing in his hearing? Of the tide of life beating ever more slowly in his blood?
It came again. Less faint this time, a double note. Elfhelm! Oh Bema it was Elfhelm's call and with it he heard the words: Eorlingas!
He could not see but felt the thunder through the sand of the river's small eyot. With a great wrenching, wavering cry of fear the army of Isengard turned on the shore to face their newfound foes.
Stout hearts, they will prevail. He steeled himself for the crash of steel and horse and blade. It came but just as quickly dimmed. The harsh sounds of battle, the ugly snarls and shouts, the clang of blade, the screams of man and horse, receded. Once again all beside was quiet but for the groans of wounded men and the soft patter of the rain. He closed his eyes and imagined the pain away.
He must have drifted for a time for the next sound he heard was a hoarse gasp and an urgent cry.
"My Prince. Marshall! Marshall over here!"
There came a pounding and the bright eyes of a young Rider were replaced by the grizzled features of an older man. He was weeping. The tracks of tears made silver rivulets through the grime as surely as the rain.
"My Prince…Theodred. " Elfhelm's words were choaked, his voice hoarse from the cry of battle and dismay at what he saw. Do not worry, he wished to say. It was just a pair of crude-made, black Orc arrows. Not so very terrible. And at times he did not feel a thing.
"Elfhelm." Theodred whispered, coughing a little as his breath would not catch. "Your timing has always been terrible. You missed the worst of the fight."
The weatherbeaten features spread into a grin and then another face swam into view: the long chin and clear blue gaze of his stoutest captain. "Grimbold." There was an ugly gash upon his cheek but he was safe.
""Do not speak my Prince, save your breath. Praise Este, we had thought you dead."
"The filth?" he asked. Where the people safe? His heart quavered at the thought of that foul host pillaging the fair golden fields of West Emnet.
It was Elfhelm who replied. "They have retreated to the north. We drove them back though they could have had the day had they pressed harder here." Both men exchanged a look of puzzlement. It seemed the Wizard's goal was not invasion. At least not yet.
"For now we must get you off this island." Strong arms reached down to raise him up. As they moved he could not bite back the cry. White hot agony pierced through his very core.
Grimbold blanched and quickly laid him down again "Sweet Eru he is pinned!"
The Marshall swore low and long, turned to shout an order to ring of men standing sentinel silently beside. "Quickly, get me a dirk!"
Bema did they not know how much it hurt? Theodred panted, wild with the pain and batted weakly at an arm.
"No more, old friend." His voice shook in his own ears. "Let me lie here - to keep the Fords 'till Eomer comes..."
A large hand, slick with sweat, carefully pulled off his helm and stroked the soaked, matted hair from off his face. "Lie still, my Prince. Do not move. We will free you as quickly as we can."
Free. Yes he wished to be free. Not tied to the land he fought to protect so very long. I tried.
"Father, "Wyn." The words were too faint. They came out as a trembling breath and none could hear. Perhaps it did not matter. They knew he loved them and really all would be well. Eomer would come. He would be sad to miss the look on the Worm's putrid face when he learned his master had not won the day.
They raised his torso once again and a cry tore from his throat. Torture. The pain as the arrows slid took his breath but then swiftly there came a lightness, a blessed sense of relief. In Elfhelm's hand a dagger shone with single drop of blood. He watched it fall; to nuture the soil and bless the land.
It drizzled harder.
At first the holes filled with a great aching emptiness. He had expected it but not the chill, the sense of fading warmth that set him shivering. His vision swam. He felt cool and wet and light, as if he were spray upon the foaming falls that ran down from Halifirien.
He blinked the wet out of his eyes. Another knelt in the driving rain. His grim Captain brushed aside a wet lock plastered to his cheeks, oblvious. How could he not see?
The newcomer was dark of hair and arrayed in silver mail. His shining helm was crowned by two great horns and in his hand was a silver bow. Liquid eyes, full of the moon's soft light, shone as pure argent as his silver hair.
"Come Theodred, son of Theoden, son of Thengel." The voice was low: fair as the brightest glade, rich as a stag's deep bell. "There are months yet to come and hard times yet to be before the end. War is loosed upon the land. There can be no feasting now but you need not fear. My master has bade me set you safely on your road. Namo awaits to feast you in his halls."
The figure bent, cradled the prince in his sinewed arms and raised him up lightly as a feather. Theodred gripped the silver mail. It was warm and a moon-kissed light seeped through.
He could not have said quite how but all at once, he knew. Tilion. The Shining One. Herald of the Hunter, of Bema himself had come for him. Oh but these were days indeed of wonder.
The Maia smiled his encouragement, placed a kiss of benediction upon his brow. Silver light like gossamer ran down and filled his veins. Its warmth and strength chased away the aching pain and emptiness…
The Prince of the Mark smiled and closed his eyes.
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~~~000~~~
As the hall of Meduseld glowed golden in the setting sun the fire of Anor's lingering swept down from burnished eaves to play, to scribe a bright checkerboard on the rune-filled stones culled from the gentle hills.
About the tables the folk of Edoras sat at meat. One who sat white-clad glowed golden as the sun. Her hair burned bright as late summer-corn. Her heart inside burned bright with rage and pain.
Two letters twisted within Eowyn's small, strong hands.
The first to come, from her brother to the east, had been grief enough.
"Wyn my scouts have warned that a host, branded by the wizard's hand, gathers upon the Eastern Wall. Emyn Muil has hidden them for long but now they move. This is grievous news indeed and I fear, as Theodred long has, that Orthanc allies herself with Barad-dur. We ready ourselves for battle. I have sent the herds and folk to Edoras. Guard them well. They are my charge and you will know how best to succor them."
The other, in Elfhelm's ragged script, the scrawl of one who learned to write but late in life, had been the greater blow.
"Fair lady I have but little time to write but fear how ill news needs but idle tongues to fly faster than a steed. I would not have you learn the evil news that way. Bema grant him peace. Your cousin fell this day."
The pain of it. That he had no mother to wash his broken body. No barrow in the line of Kings. No funeral feast with song and horns of heavy mead.
One by one the silent tears had stained the page. Tucked inside had been another for Godwyn and Malina, Theodred's concubine and daughter. The rain-creased pages were still here, still held at Medsuld, as was, to her dismay, another for her brother.
The messenger had come but not Elfhelm nor Grimbold. They might have acted but the young Rider was not so bold. While she had implored him go east to Eomer, her uncle sat, hesistant and silent, shrinking with grief before her very eyes. Grima beside shook and moaned extravagantly at the tragic news, flailing like a willow in a storm.
That had been nigh a day ago and still her brother did not know his beloved cousin, the bright lodestone of their days, was dead.
"Sister-Daughter."
Her uncle's quavering voice made her look up at last. About the hall the Riders sat, hands on horns, ready to make a toast. Their golden hair lay braided on their shoulders. The golden beards their Prince had eschewed shone just as bright.
"Sire."
Theoden turned kindly eyes upon her.. "Would you prefer to be excused?"
With a pang she understood what he meant. The insult. That he, so frail, so bent with age that he seemed almost as a dwarf would think her weak, too cowed by grief to sing. It made her blood roar but then she looked upon the guileless shadowed face, on the snow-white braids held by a thin golden band and held her tongue.
He, shorn of wife and son too soon, deserved more than the sharpness of her tongue.
"No, thank you, my Lord. I will abide." Eowyn sat straighter then, reached as steadily as she was able for her silver cup.
At his liege's nod away beside the great long hearth the scop plucked three somber notes upon his crwth. Almost, in the hushed expectant silence, one could hear a single indrawn breath and then, the music, as dozens of voices rose in song. It was strong and deep, swelled in the cadence of the words. They wound upward with the crackling fire's smoke to twine around the carven golden pillars and waft outward to the sky.
They sang. Not for what should have been; not a new song for his bright self, his courage and his fire. Not proud words for all his days and glories that should have been, nor teasing rhymes for his temper and his beardless face. They sang the formal lament for any fallen warrior. Nameless. Souless. Less than a Prince of the Mark deserved.
The words, mouthed well by rote, shamed her lips as they slipped past.
A muffled sob made her look down the room. There sat Grima, cheeks shining with two wet tracks that reflected the ruddy glow of torchlight.
Like a torch she burned.
The Worm's lizard tears made her angrier than any other single thing that he had done.
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~~~000~~~
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He lay still.
More to save his failing breath than to avoid the jostling of the shafts. The pain was an animal that clawed rabidly at his chest. It would not let go but it was truly as nothing next to the anguish that clawed hungrily at his heart.
What had he done? Forgive me Great One. I did not see.
No tears. Truly he must not. He had too little time and all too little breath for that.
Brother. Faramir's tired weary face at Osgiliath swam before his eyes and then another: wizened, red and tiny, sheltered in their mother's arm. Oh it was sharper than he had thought now at the test to leave him, to leave the father he could not please and the people he could not protect. I have failed. Even when I thought to do but one selfless thing.
Perhaps then it was fitting to be alone, here where the tree's great roots cradled him at last.
There came a rustle, a sound of running steps and then he was there.
Aragorn's familiar grim countenance appeared, streaked with grime and blood, lined anew with grief and care. "Boromir."
They spoke a little. A few words of fiercest need but his time had come and his shallow rasps could not encompass all he had to say. A face of grace and love filled all his fading sight as words of shining promise filled his troubled mind.
When gentle hands reached down to heal, to take away the pain, all unknowing they brought with them something more.
A wound is the place where the light can enter…
Hope, sharper and more piercing than any arrow shaft, ran in. It filled him. Suffused his very soul and washed clean the dark stain of despair.
Ai..the fierce ache of it. To be filled after so very long. To be warm and replete where before he had been a chill and empty vale. It was almost more than he could bear.
A sigh of purest joy took all his breath.
He smiled. Looked with wonder on the gaze of the man he would have followed all of his days. Who knew that a heart when full could welcome more?
At last, at peace, he laid his lashes down.
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~~~000~~~
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Anduin was a river of many moods.
In the north she ran low and slow: her fenlands and broad meads let the ever-streaming water glide languidly, untroubled by her flood. Farther south, at the once-fair City that strode her narrowed banks, the water swelled her unquiet breast and cut the verge more sharply back. It was there, where the water's rush made a straight and roiling course, that the greatest danger lay, where much could be hidden upon the troubled water.
The Steward, prudently, set men to watch.
Upon this night a young pale moon shone down upon the river's whirling eddies. It was late winter yet. The wind was from the north: its dry, cool gusts set the sad reeds to rustling and lifted the black locks and cape of the young captain who stood watch beside the colonnade.
He shifted, unconformtably, pulled the cloak more tightly about his shoulders. Somehow the blackened stone and the ruins of the bridge had made him ill at ease, made his thoughts turn unceasingly to the brother he sorely missed.
Most times all Faramir needed was to bring to mind Boromir's blazing smile and his mood would lift. But not tonight. He felt restless, untethered, as if some ill was yet to come and he could not hold it back. His heart shying from the spaces they had walked he picked his way farther down past broken stone, seeking something green and comforting, some to settle the feeling of lingering woe.
Once upon the bank Faramir nodded to the other guard, to Terrell farther down and peered silently across to the dark brooding stands of ilex and laurel upon the farther shore. Ungoverned, the forest was slowly making green again the city, devouring each stone inch by inch, spreading Yavanna's glossy cloak across the fading works of Men. It made all too good a screen for the Enemy, but this night at least to his eye nothing moved. The world and all within it slept. He should be pleased, yet somehow the young man could not shake the sense of heaviness. The moon was high and bright yet the air felt close and thick, as if a sudden storm was yet to break.
It was when he knelt to cup his hands and drink that he heard the sound. Clear and high, from the north it came: faint as but an echo in the mind. Three peals, clarion and rolling sharply with a note of urgency.
He turned toward the sound. The rising breeze brushed his cheeks and dried the damp of tears he had not felt.
Faramir's dreams those days had been formless, ever shifting, as if the very warp and weft of fate was skeining and unskeining day to day. This had been oddly comforting: that all was not yet set, not lost. To be taken now, high moon above, by a dream so sharp and bright, mute witness, was more frightening than any shadow, any vision of an enemy.
Suspended in the dream-crossed twilight between the birth and dying of the day, the vision held him fast. Beside the night-kissed river Varda's stars glimmered on the foam. Silver as the precious dew from Telperion they glimmered also in the tears that could not fall. Pain choked his breast as images rushed full on to his sight.
A boat, high-prowed and shining white. A beloved face, pain-filled and weary. Blood gathered in his mouth and on his collar. Breath rasping. Stolen. A fading gaze filled with love and reverence, blazing once like a meteor and then falling- still.
He knew it deep inside: a tide had turned. This was an alteration in the flowing of his life. The river that churned within him had suddenly burst its banks and was diverted: for so long it had flowed to the east but now it rushed toward the sea. With him.
Somehow he was on his knees and the night's rising dew had soaked through his breeches. The cool of it brought him to himself. Desperately Faramir shook his head, trying to dislodge the vision but there was no denying. It burned, took all his sight: but then, a sound.
First came a voice that he did not know. It spoke of honour kept and brave deeds done, of hope and strength and peace. It made his heart yearn to follow, not south where his soul had gone, crying for what it saw and what it missed, but some other where. North, south, east or west. Whereever this man should go, his heart was his.
Then, above all came the voice he knew. His brother. Clear as the ring of a fabled horn, speaking the words that he would hear always in the quiet spaces of the night…
Do not grieve for me, little one. I shall be always with you. Always near. Under your soles. In the bracken. In the stone. I am Gondor.
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~~~000~~~
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It would be said in later years, when history had time to reflect, that they were much alike the two Captains lost that day.
Two horns were blown and two of the same summers on Arda's turf were sacrificed, pawns to the yawning need of a Wizard's prideful greed.
One was barrowed and one not.
For both, comrades raised their voices in song. For both there was the sharper, piercing grief of a brother and one like a brother.
Bold and blithe, full of heart and merriness, there were many who thought the Son of Gondor was more like to the Prince of the Mark than his own stern and grave-faced people.
Hope, like a petal, is a fragile thing.
In both, a Prince of the Mark and a Lord of Men, it managed to take root.
It was one of the mysteries of Yavanna's grace that ever after symbelmynë grew where both Captains fell.
For Ages more, like countless snow-white stars it blazed upon the eyot and underneath the tree, blessed by the rays of westering sun that fell full and warm in the heady afternoons of lasting peace.
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A/N:
I first came across the idea that simbelmynë grew below Boromir's tree in Cruisedirector's wonderful "Middle-Earth in Brief." That idea is reproduced, and expanded on, here with her permission.
Note that for the purpose of Faramir's premonition I have shifted the time of his hearing of the horn to eve.. just perhaps it took the sound a fair while to pass about the land.
I am pleasantly shocked to find there are only four more chapters to go before the Houses of Healing. Time will slow down then and we will go one chapter a day between the Battle of the Pelennor and 'the kiss on the walls'. I am v excited to get there. After the emotional density of this chapter and the next few I think I need a little romance to write :)
Thank you to LadyJoselyn who favourited and followed this past month and especially to EarthDragon for the guest review. It is so very much appreciated.
Grateful thanks go out once again to the ladies of the Garden for helpful niggles, discussions and encouragement. Thanks to Annafan, Artura, Gwynnyd and Thanwen in particular this month.