When you had lived with a man and fought beside him for time out of mind you knew the signs. The tense set of normally easy shoulders, the restlessness, the wary glances east when no one should be looking. The little details that another would not notice, Twenty years and countless battles, long hours of endless boredom and stark minutes of naked fear together had imprinted a knowledge of the man few others had.
Faramir hid it well.
He had learned, of course, at the feet of a master. A father and a Lord who seemingly felt nothing that troubled a lesser man. Could take news of utter ruin and unlooked for victory with equal equaminity. It was, perhaps a family trait.
Madril stood below a beautiful ruined colonnade, watched theirCaptain-General so seemingly untroubled by the coming dawn lay a comforting hand on young Eldrin's shoulder and smile and jest with the new recruit. And knew.
Even Faramir in his heart of hearts had little hope.
"The Black Captain leads them once again."
The scout's fearful words had run through the garrison like wildfire through a steppe. The big newly-minted Captain cursed the need for ill-news to fly on wings and peered through the soupy dusk. Osgiliath's barracks-the long abandoned palaces and mansions of the city's once elite-had swelled to hold their allies too: bowmen of Anfalas and Pinnath Gelin, infantry of Lossarnach and Lebinin. So many of the faces in the gloom around were so very young; more mewling, earnest babes than hardened veterans, though all, he knew, were frightened. The only difference was the way it showed. The men of Osgiliath and Ithilien, already cursed by a taste of that black and vital dread, could not hold the horror back.
It was sheer madness what they sought to do. Too few to hold back the Black Captain's company, let alone his host. Would that they had half those who had last fought the Enemy at Dagorlad. Here on different, far greener, windswept plain they made scarcely half the van.
An image of Tolfalas, in spring, the cress and sea holly green and blue against warm golden rock swam unbidden before his eye. Born a fisherman, Madril had never taken to it, and now years of training had made him burly and strong, solid and confident in himself in woods and tumbled palisades that were once wholly unfamiliar.
A cup of thin and watered cider was raised to his lips and a wry smile replaced the standard frown. He knew himself still quiet as most Belfalas men were, more quiet than Annwn would like sometimes, but there it was. She and the girls would be there by now: to their childhood home, though they both had been so long upon the rock of Minas Tirith the island's flat grey shingle would seem foreign still. Home was the Refuge first and the White City next, not a lazy, salt-bleached, sun-baked isle. The Captain had told him the Steward had evacuated all the women and children, knowing a siege might come. Would even Dol Amroth be safe if they did not achieve what they set to do? He doubted it. The little distance to the island brought little comfort.
Eldrin's sudden laugh and booming jest rang out. Madril watched the lad's grey eyes, too bright and eager, and felt a pang. His old weathered heart clenched painfully to remember the bonny, tearful smile on his daughter's face as he had waved them all goodbye. Could it really be a scant six weeks ago? Eldrin was a good and steady lad. A man could be proud to call him son-in-law and he would, he knew, make Eliane very happy. Just as he and Annwn had been in their own comfortable, familiar way. A slow smile spread along chapped lips, creased the laughter lines that gathered like crow's feet corner of his eyes. Well, not too comfortable for all that. Annwn's nut brown and open, merry face swam before him. He flushed and smiled as other, more private, memories swirled like scattered leaves.
Faramir moved on. There were too many things to do, too many demands for the Captain-General's precious time to spend too much of it with a single lad, however preferable it was to briefings.
Madril watched Eldrin thoughtfully in his wake. The Ranger Captain knew he knew his job. Knew his men and all their mounts. Knew to watch for the fear that took the younger ones. The smooth boyish face before him was taut and grim: eyes white-ringed and staring. The exuberance of youth had swiftly given way to the nameless fear. The one that could make even veterans break and run. Throw arms away and run madly from that thing.
"The fewer men the greater share of honour" That had been Eldrin's keen response to Faramir, but Madril shook his shaggy head. Nay. That was a young man's fancy. Perhaps he had become too much the grizzled oldster, but how much more of war had he seen? Nigh forty years. Each battle and each skirmish he could still recall. The useless waste and waste of life.
Courage. Was it standing here, the eve before a battle and putting blinders on? Honing and sharpening one's kit, ignoring with keen attention the rising risk? Or was it to go against a superstition so ingrained it had become a soldier's second nature?
One did not speak aloud of death before a battle.
That night Madril, with Eliane's sweet and shining face swimming before his eyes, found courage in the waiting dark to utter a fervant prayer. Lips moving, head bowed and eyes shut tight.
A pledge. A trade. Life for a life.
It was all that he could think to do. Make sure the whispered words ascended to be heard by one eternally steadfast and valiant.
Tulkas, Lord of laugh and golden light…. hear my prayer… Bring him home.
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~~~000~~~
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The darkness had reached its full with the setting of the moon. Gloom and dread weighed heavier on men's hearts: it could be heard in a fitful, futile shuffling of blankets, in the faint scrape of boot on stone as the sentries on the ramparts paced restlessly at their watch.
It was already a more dangerous world than the night before. Away in the murky dim the host from Minas Morgul had gathered and was drawing nigh to Osgiliath's eastern shore. Swelled by ranks of Haradrim, it had not been a silent assignation. The sentries knew full well what lay in wait and the night had been punctuated by restless anxious twangs as another archer saw fit to a test his bow. But not too many. The morrow's need would be harder still.
Faramir sat upon a tumbled block, gazed past the cold stone of a merlon and out over the river he knew so well. Blearily, he rubbed a hand across his face, wiped the stubborn remains of sleep out of his eyes , and forced himself to take another bite. Madril's fierce admonitions still rang guiltily in his ears. The cider and the hunk of bread had been all he could accept gracefully and now the crust turned leaden as he chewed and the cider burned like the worst of Anborn's still. Better that the extra morsels had gone to a more eager hand he thought, wondering where his appetite had fled. Nerves or tiredness it seemed, could chase hunger like a wolf a wounded stag.
The sky above was lightening to just pre-dawn, the barest tint of less black to a murky grey, enough to see the shape of the city coming back. A few songbirds saluted the morning that would not come and he listened, amazed, to the delicate trilling from a nearby climbing rose. Abandoned by Men but not Manwe's capricious airs, Osgiliath was half-clad in green, like some regal cloak for an ancient dowager. In another time and place the rising chorus from the pale green buds presaged the spring. Perhaps yet it did.
Sauron might command the stinking clouds from Orodruin's vent but not yet the turn of Arda's seasons.
Already the companies had begun to rouse and the empty courtyards were filling with quiet fortitude. The breath of men and horses rose up in the still, chill air to form gusty clouds that could not be disguised. Breathing alone should not be so very hard but for them all there was no deep steadying breath before the plunge, the brown air was too thick with fume and did not give. It mattered not. The Enemy knew full well where they were, had overwhelming strength of numbers and the luxury of time. They had not even bothered to irritate their foes. No stray arrows strove to pick off Men upon the wall. The disdain was almost as thick as the foetid air.
Gondor's reluctant Captain-General stayed where he was because for one pure liquid moment nobody needed him. To be alone had become as unfamiliar as the weight of the heavy armor and Faramir savored it: watched a busy chickadee poke a twig into an unused arrow slit.
Tried to decide at last what he felt about the city more, anxiety or longing.
Osgiliath would be the site of battle once again. Would be lost, again, and though it would fall, though that eventuality could not know be stopped, some small part of Faramir's heart hoped that it would not be impossible to regain. That imagining her ruined dome remade once more, the symbol of their struggle, was not a fever dream.
He had touched its western wall of grey weathered stone the eve before and seen her proud and high. Was it but his yearning for the city to not be a symbol; of a foothold in two kingdoms: the one fading and the one already lost that made her so hard to lose? Ruined wonder, a memory of beauty, showing merely how far they were to fall not an emblem of greatness to hold against the dark?
Now, in his mind's eye Faramir saw only the tiered stone looming high, bright sun casting shadows between the now dark columns, and wondered painfully if there ever would be somewhere that did not hold a memory of the one who rode away.
He sent his own heavy sigh into the dark and as on so many other still watches of late let thoughts of Boromir steal in to fill the silence and reflection. Crystal and clear, pure and cutting, he remembered the water shining in the little boat. The glimmer of hope and light and peace. What bare weeks before had felt an image of sharpened glass now seemed a balm for none of them would be treated so should they fall in the city's ruined streets.
"My Lord." Toric had approached so silently Faramir was startled out of his reverie, had not heard the man until he cleared his throat, waiting patiently to be noticed. The veteran captain's mouth was set in a grim, hard line. He knew what it meant but Faramir was reluctant to give up his vision and the boat. To give up a hard won solace, painful though it might be.
Just a moment more brother, please.
He looked east. The light was still unchanged, it dragged at them all, but now the wind was rising. The dark grey was become grey-brown. Dawn, such as it was, had come. Farther away the mulish clouds obscured the slopes of Ephel Duath. His heart contracted for a moment for he could no longer remember what they looked like uncloaked in shadow.
"Mountains should be beautiful Toric, do you not think?" He managed, just, to keep the weariness from his voice.
"My Lord?" The man sounded puzzled, uncertain where his commander's thoughts could go. "The scouts report the sound of oars upon the water. The men are ready for your order."
Faramir could only nod. So it is begun. Soon the blessed quiet would fill with a storm of sound: of many many thousands of marching feet, of pounding hooves and ragged cries, the clash of steel. It would be the sound of the ending of their world.
Reluctantly he drained his cup, looked for a moment at the dregs and set it down upon the stone. "I will come down directly. Tell the archers to hold fire until my call."
Toric saluted and strode quickly back to the rampart stair. It would not take the flotilla long to reach the range of arrow-shot and Faramir yet had a some hope they could reduce the wave of filth a little bit.
Before they organized a retreat.
He rose, bent to pick up his heavy gauntlets that lay beside and from the corner of his sight caught of the Dome of Stars again. It had taken a plague of fever to rid the once grand city of her people. By that eve a plague of the Enemy would have it overrun, would deface the grand marble walls with filth and gore and soot.
By the Valar's grace he would never have to imagine Minas Tirith so.
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~~~000~~~
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Osgiliath was lost.
They had known it should be so and yet it hurt, felt like a death on all their watch, and then, as if that pain was not enough, not sufficient grief lying heavy on their hearts, more ill news ran on swifter feet.
Cair Andros had fallen, too.
The Causeway Forts were filled with exhausted, battered men. Behind, for now, lay the noise of the day's interminable, futile battle: the terror-filled cries of man and beast, the ring of steel, the snap of flame. Ahead rose the sound of desperate effort: the scrape of stone as the last flammable material was moved out of arrow-shot, the hammering and crash as the main bolts of the great gates were driven home.
The air was rank with the scent of blood and sweat, fatigue and fear. The men were drained. They had covered, step by backward step, scarcely more than a league but it felt surely like ten.
How ironic it had taken the entire day to lose so little ground.
And near three hundred men.
In the guardhouse's makeshift surgery Renil paused; from long habit used his elbow to sweep a lock of hair out of his eyes, and bent again over the gash in the young soldier's calf. The wound was deep but not too long; an Orc sword most-like; not from one of the curved blades of the Haradrim, but still it took a bit of work to close. Silently he thanked Este that the lad (a long way from Lebenin's soft fields judging by his green and gold livery) had swooned at the first bite of the needle. There was no jerking as he stitched neat and quickly, bound the wound and moved on to the next. And the next. And the next after that. Too many fresh-faced and pained faces to be counted. Hour after hour he patched those he could with every scrap of thread to be had and when that was gone stripped the bows of broken bowstrings and boiled them clean.
"You let me know if your fingers become too cold," the healer told the latest case, a green-eyed pikeman from Nimrais whose forearm had been smashed. Renil tied off the bandage tight as he dared, checked his patient's fingers (warm enough) and rose, stretching tired, stiffened muscles. The cup of water passed by a runner boy was a grateful boon. He sipped and surveyed the scene: tried not to let the biting rats of doubt nip hard at his tired brain.
The sea of wounded stretched out the door and spilled over the once sunny forecourt.
There were at least as many as there had been lost upon the road. Hundreds. They had only gained the Rammas and already a few hundred men were lost by his rough count. It was too many to be borne. The Enemy had toyed with them as a cat would a mouse, lapped at their heels and made them pay in blood and pain for every step to safety.
Sighing, he drained the cup and leaned against the wall's rough stone, closed his eyes for a moment and tried hard not to see again the faces of the ones he had had to leave. It made him angry, made a fury bubble up that set his fingers shaking and that surely would not do.
Grimly, he tried to breathe, to steady his fraying nerves and focus on the only consolation: the filth had been made to pay in kind. The courage of Gondor's men and their Captain had been something to behold. Not a man Renil knew had less then half a dozen kills, many had many more. He himself, had managed five.
They had been valiant and strong and still had barely held together. And had farther still to go to gain the City.
The thought made his stomach twist. It seemed an impossible, hopeless task, and yet, as Renil had watched his Captain-General earlier that eve, he knew there was none other whom he could imagine following through it. Faramir, surely more tired than any of them here, had not been still in all the hours since they passed the gate. He was everywhere at once, pressed by need to secure all that they still held, taking word from the scouts, laying a steadying hand the shoulder of a man still white-faced from a Nazgul's cry.
His lieutenant, from long experience, kept half an eye on their commander (even now in the late eve still calmly barking orders) for though Faramir sported a slash across his brow, (and who knew what other hurts) seeing to it would be the last chore that he would attend to, something to be handled after every other need had been set to rights.
From the looks of things that would be just before he mounted and led a charge again at dawn.
Renil pushed off the wall, passed his cup to another boy and gave word to the head surgeon he would be back in a trice. He was due a break, had been offered one just an hour past and so now he walked quickly out of a room hazy with muffled pain and into the torchlit courtyard. Or walked as quickly his own hurts would allow- a desperately parried blow from a mace, long hours in the saddle and working crouched upon the ground had made him feel like six and eighty not thirty-six.
Rubbing disconsolately at his side he pushed gingerly past a knot of men in the livery of the Tower guard and spied a familiar grey-haired form in mottled green and grey.
Madril had refused the heavy armour offered in Minas Tirith claiming they had nothing in his size. Renil suspected he had merely let it go to some other younger man.
"Mad have you seen Faramir?" he asked, glancing round quickly and lowering his voice. They were with the bulk of the army now and belatedly he remembered the easy familiarity of the Refuge was worlds away.
"What?" The big Captain frowned and shook his head, gestured to his ear "Can't hear you lad. Damn ears still ringing from t'heathen's bursting dart."
"Have you had that looked at?" Renil asked, speaking louder and stretching on tiptoe to peer at Madril's head. Worryingly, there was a trail of crusted blood below his offside ear though no outer damage that he could see.
Madril gingerly shook his head. "Not yet."
"Be sure you do." He hoped the admonishment and stern frown would have some effect on Madril's stubborn self but in truth there was not much that could be done if his ear had burst. Still it was Renil's rule that any injury should not be ignored unless they were actively under attack (and sometimes not even then) and that brought him back to the immediate errand at hand. "Have you seen the Captain-General? I need to see to his hurts."
"Evading you, is he?" A low chuckle rumbled in the burly chest. They both knew Faramir's impatience with weakness was focused only on himself. Madril gestured upward toward the north tower's parapet. "Up on the ramparts with Anborn, gauging the state of things behind."
Renil clapped a hand on a leather clad shoulder in thanks and turned to mount the tower stair. The twin towers of the Forts were manned by the keenest-eyed of the men, mostly Rangers that he knew, peering out into the dark and alert for the closing of the Enemy's long claws. How long before the filth breached the Rammas wall and poured in around, caged them in their grip? He hoped it would be at least some hours yet: the work of loading the wains with injured had not yet begun and even an hour or so of sleep would keep the men stronger on their feet.
With a quiet nod here and there Renil made his way along the narrow walkway until the familiar tall but lanky form came into view. Faramir had left off the hated armour plate but was still clad in the black and silver surcoat and gambeson. In the eerie dark the moonstone of the Captain-General's signet ring shimmered faintly, lying still on a chain against the heavy fabric. Their beloved Captain may have assumed the mantle of the command but not the trappings: he had eschewed the ring, the sable cloak and the heavy, fulled-winged helm.
And they loved him for it.
"My Lord?"
He watched, lips twitching in amusement, as Faramir turned and his hand went to his brow. As if just noticing he had been cut. As if the healer would be fooled.
"Ren…I.."
"Was coming, yes I know." Eventually. It was no lie. Faramir did not lie but sometimes he needed to be held still long enough to see the truth. The cut, small but deep had been bound crudely, had not fully knitted shut. The bandage was red and soon it would fully soaked.
"Let me take care of it. It will be a distraction on the morrow." Renil explained. "Drip down into your eyes. Obscure your view and the helm is bad enough."
A quiet chuckle met his observation but Faramir did not resist as the healer directed him to sit against the wall. He leaned back and rested placidly enough as clean bandage and needle and thread were readied; gasped softly as Renil brushed the sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes and wiped clean around the cut.
It was telling that it was not the bite of the needle that drew the first gasp but another human's touch.
After several moments work the lieutenant was about to conclude the man was worryingly numb when a harder pull of the thread made Faramir flinch and curse.
"My Lord, keep still."
"Shall I swoon?" asked Faramir, forgoing a raised eyebrow in light of the quiet request.
"What, like Damrod earlier when I stitched a slash across his groin?"
Blessed Este it was a thrill to see a grin light that tired face. "Thank you, lieutenant. I shall keep that bit of intelligence until it is of most worth."
Renil tied off a third stitch and wound a clean bandage carefully around. He sat back on his heels and caught his friend's grey gaze. "Any other ailments you'd like to report?"
"Other than an irritating tendency to need to close my eyes?"
Renil inclined his head and shrugged expressively. "Only one remedy for that."
The resulting snort was disdainful of his prescription. They both knew how likely it was that the Captain-General would seek a bed. The circles below his eyes would just blend into the night.
"What word from Osgiliath?"
Faramir's gaze flicked warily into the distance. Loud booms from tumbling stone and raucous cries carried on the night air. "They seem to like what they have found. They could have pounced by now but instead are remodelling their new home." He sighed and accepted the proffered hand to rise.
Renil tidied his materials needlessly in his pouch while the drooping shoulders were straightened once again. By the time he looked up Faramir had settled and tied his rough-cut hair back out of his face. They were neither of them as young as they once were, but only Renil's dark locks had streaked with grey since the day they met on a muddy field of battle not far from where they stood.
"Lieutenant I would like you to go with the wains." The quiet request was unexpected; the protest automatic.
"But you need medics…"
"No." Faramir's careworn face became ineffably sad. "Tomorrow when they win the Forts and take the Rammas those who still need healers will be back within the city."
Because the tide of the enemy will be too great. The unspoken words made Renil's stomach churn sickly but he accepted the candor for the precious trust it was. A lie which was half a truth was the blackest and his Captain (nay, his Captain-General) was never one to lie.
There were those who would not survive the night much less the wains, and those who could not be moved… Poppy would be a mercy. No disabled man would be left to face the nightmare of thirsty swords.
"Will you go, find out how much poppy we do have?" The lips were set in flat and hard line but Faramir's eyes were pained.
Renil was about to give a quiet yea when a tall, ghostly figure separated itself from the turret's shadow.
"No. You need not take on that burden too, my young friend."
"Mithrandir!"
He gazed in awe had at the fabled wizard, glowing softly moon-white in the murky dark. His eyes were like two stars twinkling brightly, bravely, in a night of storm and cloud, and his small, enigmatic smile made the man's heart lighten for the barest moment.
Even the Captain-General stood a little straighter as a gnarled hand was clasped upon his forearm. "You are come…"
"Yes… and it seems I am just in time." The lines of exhaustion carved sharp and deep in Faramir's face softened the barest bit. "There is much to be done ere this long night is through but not that. Not yet." He turned to the healer and raised a long white brow in query. "Lieutenant, would you bear a message for me?"
"Of course, my Lord. Anything."
"Tell your Warden, the chief in care of the wounded, that I will come down to tend with all when the Captain-General and I have taken council?"
"I will. And gladly milord!"
As Renil, light of limb for the first time in all that day, hastened to do the wizard's bidding, he marveled at their luck. Bless Nienna for her mercy. Some men said he was ever a harbinger of ill but in the young healer's brief experience Mithrandir always appeared when there was most need.
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~~~000~~~
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The bleak words, spoken low so that the guardsmen did not hear, were the wizard's first troubling clue. A shadow had spread to even Faramir's steady heart.
"We cannot hold them more," he murmured, scrubbing a hand wearily across his face. "By tomorrow's eve, if not sooner still, the host will be at the City's gates. It is too far."
Mithrandir took in with concern the lines of fatigue, the grey, waxy pallor to the young man's cheeks. They both knew he did not mean the distance across the Pelennor. Ninety leagues lay between Minas Tirith and Edoras: the distance was great and the time they had was a noose, slowly shrinking around the City's neck, but hope was not lost. Not yet.
"That may be my friend," he said, mildly as he could, striving for the studied reason that swayed his pupil in the past, "but Minas Tirith has been readied well. It can withstand some days of siege. And I will guard the wains. They will be untroubled by evils from the air."
"We lost more this day than even I dared to fear. We are too few. I cannot hold them the whole way. And when…He… comes" a shudder wracked the trembling frame "….the Gate might as well be hundred leagues away."
Mithrandir narrowed his gaze as the dark head shook in denial and drooped again. For Faramir to be so..defeated... was something he had not seen before. What words had passed between the Steward and his younger son? Though the father brooked no advice from wizards this was most unlike the man he knew.
"It is indeed a cruel irony of Sauron's design that the pale, grasping king, he who in life instilled so little in his men, neither loyalty nor admiration, instills such nameless dread in mortal men. But He is not omnipotent Faramir. The Witch-King does not send all hearts flying before his sight."
"Not all…but far too many. They are afraid Mithrandir and I do not know what to do to help them."
"You give them hope, Faramir, and courage just by your resilience and your heart."
"I cannot give them what I doubt I have myself."
The wizard started at the unexpected words. What had transpired that long day to render his young friend so? Faramir had been grieved but resolute when he set out. Cautiously, he placed a hand upon the bowed shoulder, ready to shake sense into the man but then saw something that gave him pause.
Faramir had lowered his head, close to tears, and was struggling for control. It was the exhaustion. It must be. Or was it? The light grey eyes were fever bright and the Steward's son shivered in the gloom. How long had the Rangers been under Shadow? How many times had the Wraiths hunted overhead?
'You taught me well Mithrandir," Faramir went on bitterly, "I know my lore. What hope do mortals have? We are trapped this side of the Sundering Sea. The Eldar can retreat to the utter west should all go ill. But we? We are barred save from Namo's halls and must suffer here. Our people are the ones who will fail and be lost to the knowledge of the world."
What was there to say to that? The wizard shook his head, dismayed. Never more than now had his Master's charge seemed so important. Thou shalt rekindle hearts to the valour of old in a world that grows chill.
"That is not foreordained, Faramir, and I think that you will find that those who followed Gil-galad once will not abandon Men even now." For the barest of moments one who had learned pity at Nienna's feet, in a garden washed by her crystal tears, let the light of Valinor, its white and pure fire, kindle in his eyes.
"You are not forsaken Dunadan. Despair and darkness exist only in relation to the light. Without one there cannot be the other. The light will not end and Arda will turn ever in the music though it be marred; though it changed from the first."
"Have you heard it?" The grey gaze raised up to his and the tiniest tinge of eager energy crept into the Captain's weary voice.
"Yes…" Of course a Maia, born into the beginning of the world, had heard. It was his most cherished memory: the sound of pure joy and light unmarred by the hand of jealousy. "It is beautiful. Though none can understand truly what it means in these Years of the Sun. Those who hear an echo of it best are they who seek joy in the saddest places. Seek hope within the dark…."
Faramir nodded slowly, allowed himself to be clasped in Mithrandir's rough embrace, suffused with warmth and the hopefulness of another time. The young face, for the nonce, was less strained and his body no longer shook like a leaf in a heavy wind.
"I will try…"
"And the music be in your heart."
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~~~000~~~
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That night the cloud and shadowed cover broke: let the waxing moon dance with the brilliant stars, slow and stately in Tilion's shining arms. What followed did not become the stuff of legend like the White Lady and the Witch King. Or the Ringbearer and his gardener. No one tells legends of retreats, however hard they are fought, however bitter and difficult the march.
Those whose lived it, step by blood-soaked step, remembered many things. For some it was the horror of the black-tide that swept inexorably on. For some it was the maddening, hate-soaked cry as the Nazgul stooped to strike again. For a Steward's younger son it was the unexpected beauty in the dark. The endless flickering torch flames of the Enemy, glowing red, unending little rivers of light that were beautiful even if one knew whence they came.
Faramir's hands gripped tighter on the parapet as he pressed his forehead against cool stone, sucked in a deep and steadying breath. Below in the courtyard the men waited, silent, bows and spears in hand, swords heavy at the hip, ready for his command. Madril stood, tall and patient as a tor. And like a tor, disinclined to rush. For once it did not help. It was time: he could delay no more, but there was, perhaps, one last thing that he could do.
In the quiet of the night he had seen the swiftly stifled fear. Heard the whispers. Heard clearer still the thoughts of pain, dismay and panic, for he was so very very tired and shielding all the time was a luxury of energy he could not afford. It did not take his gift to be aware, to see what was in their hearts. It was in his too, however resolutely he shoved it down.
But to hear it, openly, from Damrod, that was what had filled him most with dismay.
"The days of Gondor are numbered, and the walls of Minas Tirith are doomed."
He had done all he could in the early morning muster, moving among them with an arm-clasp here, grasp on the shoulder there, words of praise and encouragement for men whose lives, like his own, forfeit as pawns to a Steward's seeming whim.
(Not a whim. Please not, he thought, remembering a light flickering in black polished stone, spears tipped like fire by the Sun.)
They could not do this without some shred of hope. What could he give but what he already had himself? Though the Steward had not seen fit to tell any man, save his son, of his precious vision, it was time to not hoard it to himself.
His voice, at first, was thread-thin but soon gained in strength. All the men were silent, straining to hear their Captain-General one last time. Mithrandir stood to one side, not smiling but nodding gently and that in itself gave Faramir the heart.
"This is hard, aye. We are the gate where the hardest blow will fall. It is dark above us, yet the Enemy does not direct the circles of the world. Not Anor nor Ithil, they ride still above. Just so he does not direct us, men of Gondor: our hearts and swords are free.
You know of the errand my brother set out on, of the vision, the gathering darkness and thunder in the east, against which, in the west, a light was set. We are that light. The honour and hope within our hearts.
The Men of Rohan, who swore the Oath of Eorl to our longfathers of old, they will not fail us. We must not fail them-must make sure our fair City stands, even if on its knees, ere they come. Each step we take today, each hour that passes ere the Enemy reaches the City gate, they come closer.
We must prevail. We shall prevail. And there will come a king again."
The sound of pikes on stone and sword on shield was deafening.
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First I'd like to apologize for this taking so long to update. I truly had imagined it would only be 3 weeks but I got very sick and am just now back to functioning, somewhat, again. No more promises this time :)
A huge thanks to Knight of Wings for favouriting and following this past month and also to Adelie P, Sherman 1865 and TolkienScribe for following. And also to any one who I may not have thanked for their review-I have not been as up on that as usual obviously. Your comments and encouragement make a huge difference..my sincere thanks.
To Annafan, Artura, Thanwen and Wheelrider at Garden of Ithilien; big hug and thanks for friendship that has seen me through a difficult month and for, as always, greater critters and encouragement.
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