Two Captains make a final stand and the white bishop retires from the board
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March 14, 3019
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"No!"
Faramir stared, horror-struck, at the tattoos he knew so well; the shock to recognize them crashed like a cold sea wave across his face.
How could this be? How could it be Najir who sat, fierce and unyielding, across bare yards of churned and bloody earth?
His words, spoken so many years and leagues ago, came back from the depths of memory:
O my friend. Out beyond right and wrong there is a field of gray. I will meet you there."
He had not known that he spoke True.
Luck, like strength, is needed in a battle yet it seemed then that all his had been spent. Poured out in the early hours of the morn, until at last across a chasm of regret stood the one man in Mordor's host he would not wish to harm.
A man met not on a field of grey uncertainty but one of desperate red…
He looked up and found Najir's dark liquid eyes looked just as shocked, even as the wicked sword recoiled from their blow. Could it be that the sheik had been enslaved? Traded his body for the safety of his tribe? The man he had once known would have done just that, would have seen it as the better part of honour.
Faramir felt just slightly sick. Had his father not had his way Najir would be at his back, helping Gondor to survive another day, not raising his sword to strike and seeking to strike it down.
My friend we played you ill.
A flash of light, a streak of shining black, caught at the corner of his sight. Torn from his reverie, instinct said to raise his sword but his body moved too slow.
Faramir cried out. There was a sharp, searing pain and a heavy thud and the force of the arrows' flight flung him back, took him out of the saddle and swept him across Mithros's dark-streaked rump.
He was flying for a moment, shocked and surprised, suspended in the air, before the ground rose up and took his breath.
Dazed, he coughed a little wetly and dragged the foul acrid air back into his lungs. It hurt. Spots swam before his eyes and filled all his sight with black and white and red.
Move. You must move.
Experience said the hungry Southron swords would come and he was vulnerable down and on the turf. He tried to turn, to protect his body but the arrow jostled and a white hot pain lanced through. One arm hurt too much to move; the other he lifted, shaking, to protect his neck.
With a ragged, stifled cry of pain Faramir tried again, forced his shoulder round and at last he pressed his cheek to a patch of mud.
He had to pause, panting, to catch his breath for the effort took all his strength. When he opened his eyes he saw a tiny miracle: a small patch of grass lay beside his hand. It was sprinkled with his blood as if someone had scattered a handful of rubies or red rose petals down among the green. Ridiculous to think they were wrong colour for these fields but they were. The Pelennor in spring should be brushed with the white and yellow of anemone. Not red.
He clutched one gauntled hand across his neck and tried not to regret too hard. He was so very very tired. Tired of failing. Tired of duty. Too weary to get up, he lay and shivered and waited for the end. The mud was cold. For days he had felt chilled and now a dark and damp rose out of the earth and seeped far into his bones.
The pain around the arrow shaft was sharp, like ice held too long against one's heated skin.
How much longer would it be?
When no slashing pain bit into his back he blinked open his eyes again. The hated helm had flung right off and he could see. Dizzily Faramir forced his eyes to focus beyond his nose and took in a pair of mud and blood splattered legs and trailing broken rein.
Mithros?! Oh bless him. The stallion had not bolted but stood his ground, defending his master to the very end.
The air around them shimmered with an angry foetid heat and a thunder shook within his muddy bed. From far away there came the sound of silver trumpets, a high and ringing blast such as the Tower Guard would give when the Captain General rode out to war.
Boromir! The thought leapt like a deer within his chest.. but no. He had to choke back a sudden sob. His brother was gone and he has lost.
Arrows for us both. Regret coiled like bitter winter smoke below his ribs. It hurt to end this way. He thought he would have liked to have seen the King, the man Grandfather Adrahil had seen, but then perhaps the dark-haired Ranger had only ever been a dream, just a taunting vision from the Enemy, intended to hinder and not to help.
He closed his eyes. It was too late. The Rohirrim would not come and for Minas Tirith there was no hope…
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~~~000~~~
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It was no solace to have been right.
He had told the Emperor to hold them to the last. The Qahtani were the finest horsemen in all Harad-no others could hold their mounts right under the Nazgul's wings- and now they flew as though winged themselves. The company of red and blue and black thundered through the country lanes, past the sunken roads, and ditches, leaping obstacles that others had to lead their horses through. The Pelennor was home to the enemy but Najir had at least seen it once. He led his men, skillfully and sure, through shortcuts none would dare to take, until the main road to the city spread before them straight and sure as any arrow.
There was of course no going back. Behind lay only ranks and ranks of red, the Emperor's terrible displeasure, and the all-consuming incandescent glow of the Lord of Fire's forge.As he wound his keffiyah once more (not nervously, oh no. It was purely to still his thoughts) Najir let out a steadying breath. Goran at least was safe. His nephew too saw red, but not the bloodied banners of Suladan. Somewhere, beyond the endless sand, Goran and their prophet lay safe; hidden by the red-ochre caves of Umbar's endless coast.
Sometimes it was only that knowledge that gave him the courage still to live.
Dark is a way and light is a path. Now there was no way but forward.
With a fierce defiant cry he touched heels to flanks, urged Nam'an onward to challenge a mounted Captain of the Gondorim.
The man turned, wearily, slowly, but with uncommon skill he forced his exhausted beast to stand his ground. Uncommon skill but not enough, after two days and nights of a tortured and torturous retreat. The Gondorim was spent. Around Najir his horseman scythed through the ranks of the enemy as if they were so much pale, churned butter,
Nam'an screamed once and raised up, challenged the grey afore and quickly Najir found the Captain had unexpected reserves of strength. His scimitar flashed and the man parried desperately, one hand on the reins, the other wavering on a bloodied grip. Their blades rang and sparked and even as he raised his sword to strike again he caught a bright glittering through the helm. Dark smudges of grime and fatigue hung below black lashes but the clear grey eyes below the silver wings were lit with inner fire,
Araw curse him for a fool.
He should have, of course, known the great grey mount but he did not. Not at first. Although something, a sense of recognition, niggled in his brain.
The man's eyes and movements, blurred though they were by a desperate need for sleep, seemed oddly familiar in a way. It took the voice, the bold challenge, to finally permeate his battle-fogged brain.
Faramir!
In that moment of startled clarity Najir held back a second strike.
Out beyond a field of right and wrong I will find you there my friend.
Eye to eye, both shocked, the world hung for an eternity and then came a flash and a sickly liquid sound as Faramir was hit.
The force of the dart swept the shocked Gondorim out of the saddle. He landed heavily on the muddied ground. Blood splattered as his helm came off and Najir found himself looking down upon familiar features beneath sweat-streaked, raven hair. He knew the brow, the great nose, the narrow cheekbones. Only the dull grey, unfocused eyes and white, drawn features were not as he had known.
How could they be? Faramir had not been fighting for his world back then,
Had not been one stroke away from death.
Najr forced down a rising tide of bile and in its place a fierce anger boiled up in a tortured shout of rage.
Araw curse them all! Curse Faramir's unbending father for his intransigence. Curse Suladan for his avaricious might. Curse the oath that had betrayed his very soul and the pride that would not let him hide away, like a lizard amongst the desert's rocks.
He had broken a sacred vow. Had hewed a good and worthy man. A friend.
And now there would be none to call his name and give him courage at the last.
Nam'an, exquisitely trained to the lightest touch, stood still while a tremor, a fierce shaking of despair, ran through his master's veins. Najir cried out, touched hands to brow and lips and breast. Prayed to his merciful god for absolution but his voice was gone, shredded by the pain.
A flash of blue and silver swept up as the great scimitar dropped away.
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~~~000~~~
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"Nay, young Dunadan."
Whence came the words? Faramir groggily tried to raise his head. There was roaring in his ears that no shaking would dislodge and a sweep of blue and silver filled his sight.
Uncle?
So he thought at first but the one who knelt beside his head had long golden hair and argent eyes. A circlet of pale green leaves enrobed the shining brow and the robes were a maze of pearly vines across a field of lapis blue.
They puddled in the mud but were not soiled with grime or dirt.
"Who?" Faramir hardly dared to breathe. The scent of yew wreathed him around and the Spirit gravely inclined his head.
"I am the brother of pity. Dreams and desire are my demesne. A great maze and garden is my hall."
"Lórien?"
Surely he was hallucinating? It could not be. The Master of Spirits come to men?
Faramir blinked sweat and dirt out of his eyes but the image was still the same. For a wild moment he wondered if his wound so very grave that already the lack of blood had befuddled his exhausted wits.
"Nay, you are correct. I am just as you see."
A blinding smile shone through a silver mist. It felt like the purest shaft of golden sun that broke through storm clouds up on high. Handsome and fair, terrible and fey, the Vala chuckled and at once a trembling took Faramir's bruised and weary limbs.
"You know your lore Faramir… and now I will gift to you a little more.. The Prince's vision was no dream."
"Aragorn?" The name Mithrandir had told him to forget that day so long ago breathed out in a painful rush. The dusty archive seemed like a blessed haven now. He shook, as an icey agony throbbed hard about his wound.
"Yes…" A gentle hand reached out and touched lightly at his wound. The fingers were soft and cool but dry; not callused like a warrior's and yet he knew here was one of power beyond which he had ever known.
"Hold the knowledge close, son of Gondor. Sleep now and when you dream remember your vision and the voice. Stay strong. Fight hard against the chill and in the days to come be not afraid. Though the way ahead is dark, as you told your men, the light of Telperion and Laurelin yet rides above. Sleep…"
Faramir wished to give a breath of thanks but his eyelids were too heavy to hold up. all He had no strength for speech. The sight of blue slipped away and he felt his heart hammer, wild like a bird.
A purest gold and liquid warmth flowed through the Valar's touch and chased the cold away.
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~~~000~~~
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He burned.
His son burned as bright as the anger in his heart and there was nothing at all that that Denethor could do.
The Steward of Gondor sat silently by the low sickbed and felt at once impotent and enraged. It been bare hours since Imrahil bore Faramir's body back to him and already there was no moisture on the boy's once sweat-slick brow. The fever that wracked the spare limp body was drying him out swiftly, mercilessly as an unrelenting eastern wind. Faramir lay unmoving but for subtle spasms in his limbs or a few whispered ravings when he restlessly tossed his head.
When his father bent close to hear the words were all of war.
A lined and trembling hand reached up to brush the raven hair from off the fevered brow. When had his boy become so thin? When had the strain of the past few weeks become more than he could bear?
Denethor had sent his youngest out on a myriad clashes great and small but never before he felt this crushing sense of guilt. All his orders had been required, all necessary. Faramir had been hurt in his service many times but this day, this time, he felt responsible. As a father and not a Steward. It was a parent's duty to protect their child but was it not his first to protect his land? Both of his sons had understood the price they that they all paid.
Perhaps, for all these years, he had not truly understood the cost.
Looking down on Faramir's flushed and haggard face, Denethor found he wished, yearned with all his heart, to take the hurt upon himself. It was maddening. There was no wizard's magic that could change their place, could put him upon the bed and Faramir sitting anxiously beside.
To be powerless was an unfamiliar feeling.
Denethor dipped a cloth in cold water once again and wrung it out, carefully, before pressing it to burning cheeks and brow and neck. He did it without the expectation of a change. Nothing had worked: no poultice or tonic made the fever abate in the least, but the motion helped him to hold the slender thread of hope.
He had waved Lothiriel and Ivriniel away.
"Denethor.. you must let us tend…" His sister-in-law's lips had been set in the thin determined line he knew so well. She had held a steaming vessel of some sort of febrifuge but he had refused.
"No..I have done that." He had. He had spooned nigh every potion in Varan's store past Faramir's parched lips himself. Had packed the snow from Mindolluin's slopes around his son's body but none of it so far had done any good. The fever rose only higher still.
Lothiriel's small white fingers had touched softly at his arm. "Uncle, please. This one is different. We do not know what ails him. One other may yet work."
Her clear grey eyes were wide and white-ringed, fearful and so like her cousin's that Denethor had to turn his face away.
He alone would tend his boy. He had taken the limp, too hot hand once more and sat dry eyed. A Hurin did not cry and all the tears that could be had were long since fallen in the dust. A few for his eldest who not come home again. An ocean, once, for her.
The Perian and his seneschal had implored him many times to rest and eat. The food they brought hoping to entice was sent away untouched for it would have choked him else.
Soft crumbs would be sharp as glass to a throat closed up by regret.
Only Amerith had had the temerity to push past the guards and berate him for his desertion.
Denethor looked up, face drawn with worry and fatigue, and flat out stopped her tongue. She held yet another pointless flask. None of it had worked. None of it would work.
"Can you heal him?" he spat, gesturing to the rows of vials and cups crowded beside the bed. "Can your accusations and imploring whisk away a fever better than the simples here?"
"No…." The duchess stood, hands clutched white in the folds of her skirt. He saw the frustration, the fear in her face, and the longing in her heart.
It was the same as his niece's and of course Ivriniel's, though the Princess hid it more.
"Let me sit with him Denethor, while you rest."
"No!" Jealousy flared, hot and acid in his chest. If someone was to fail the battle for his son it would be him.
He did not let her even so much as kiss his fevered brow before she left.
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In the long spaces between each of Faramir's slow, shallow breaths he found himself tallying the many small cuts and blemishes that marred the too hot skin. There were so many, the patchwork of days and weeks of unrelenting fight. And yet underneath there was still the pale smooth skin, the fine proud bones of their beautiful little boy.
Finduilas…oh my love… he is the last of the good things we have done…
An old Noldorin saying held that time alone was without flaw. Oh, but it was. It was.
Denethor had come to understand sitting there, hour after hour, helpless within his thoughts. How cruel a thing to have no time left to tell his son all that he would. The boy lay so very still. Could he hear? Could he feel his father's shaking hand stroke the damp black locks? No.
Lightly, as though stroking a downy feather, he reached out and brushed the surface of Faramir's dim and fevered thoughts. They were slow, images and impressions moving as though in treacle, stuck and slowing down. He had little strength left for the fight. The knowledge tore Denethor apart.
He had sent one son on an errand to his death, another lay one foot already upon the Road. He sat, unable to do a thing, while the spirit of his last remaining child crumbled into ash.
Men must endure their going hence even as their coming hither but this was beyond enduring.
Denethor rose stiffly, bent and pressed a kiss too long delayed to a heated cheek. Walked out of the room to the hushed hall that led to the Tower's winding stair.
The only thing he could do now was what he had ever done.
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~~~000~~~
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"Cahil attend me."
"Yes my Lord." The older man rushed to obey, dark eyes widening as they walked quickly through the inky shadows that splayed like bruises on the white stone walls.
The few guards in Tower livery snapped to attention but most were out upon the walls or other errands. The space was quiet. Quiet as to death.
He ignored the panic that flared in Cahil's rheumy eyes at his gruff command. He should not need help but these past weeks his body did not feel his own. Each step upon the stair felt double it normal height: his legs leaden, mail dragging upon his body.
The chamberlain held the torch as they wound silently up and up. Denethor held the great ornate key: Calimehtar 's whimsy of an iron bird, an eagle, clutching a black orb in its claws. It turned smoothly now, no longer rusty with disuse.
They entered in. There was the faintest gasp from behind. It was the first time his retainer had seen the occupant of the tower room- the one long since become like a living, breathing thing. The stone at times seemed almost sentient, it took but the barest thought to turn it to his will, and often the images displayed before he thought, as if it understood what its master truly sought.
That was of course, how it should be. The Steward of Gondor was its rightful master…not some jumped up Captain from a rabble in the north.
Denethor gathered his thoughts back to himself with his cloak.
"Cahil leave the torch and bring me sustenance here in two hours time. I am not to be disturbed this night, save should my son awake."
A brief uncertainty flashed across Cahil's face. The older man bit his lip. His Lord had not said should the Enemy attack but Denethor had no patience for a servant who questioned his lord's command. He would know even before the scouts upon the battlements and saw no reason to let that secret out.
At his sharp gesture of dismissal the older man nodded curtly. He placed the sputtering torch in a black bracket beside the door and bowed quickly out.
The round Tower room was always dim but with the twilight black as night it was even darker than before. Echthelion's white stones seemed to shrink upon themselves as if afraid to light the images tumbling end over end upon the great black orb.
Denethor turned to face it, squaring his mail-clad shoulders, bracing for a fight. He had fled the sickroom for a space that was like a needle-thorn in the Houses of Healing far below.
Piercing but so very very necessary…
With a deep and steadying breath he focused his will upon the palantir. In the past days and weeks it had become a greater struggle, each time he thrust his will upon the stone it took more effort than before. Now he forced the stone to focus, made the images of the Enemy, rank on rank of marching Orcs diminishing forever in the distance, scatter like leaves before a gale. He brushed quickly past the seething Orc hive of Osgiliath, past Cair Andros of which he already knew. With relief he saw that the first of the two towers that he sought had not changed. Orthanc still smoldered about it base, the Ents of Fangorn had defeated Saruman and there was no further sign of his wizardry. That much brought the barest quirk of a smile.
Next he walked a little farther east, turned his gaze toward the Great West Road and felt his stomach plummet in dismay. The road beside the Rammas was near empty. The Red Arrow had not come, No column of dust churned with the passage of many men and horse and more disquieting yet, bands of Orcs moved freely near Anorien. Theoden and his Eoreds could not come, whether they wished to help or not.
Dismayed, but still resolute Denethor knew that next he must work quickly. He had to see all that he desired and quickly, for it would not be too long before he, the Eye, turned his terrible lens to the ripple of power that sang from stone to stone.
Steadying his mind as a sailor would brace upon the deck he followed the worn footsteps around the plinth, turned east and held out his arms, prepared for the onslaught. The faint glow in the stone's dark heart increased, and soon the shape of a wing-like sail, dark and ominous, filled all his field of view.
A corsair ship? This was grievous news but it was not what he sought or thought to see. No ships sailed Mordor's arid plains.
Through the force of his adamant will Denethor turned his eyes, looked away to the desultory smoking torch.
No. He would not be mastered by another. Gathering all his strength again the Steward placed his lined hands upon the stone, forced the images to still, forced an image of a smoking, shrouded plain to come. Sweat beaded on his brow and pooled at his nape as he wrested the images to his will, scanned the ranks left yet behind Ephel-Duath. Too many. As he had feared the Enemy had not sent all his force, but perhaps, just perhaps, the City could withstand a siege, if the greater numbers were out on the Pelennor.
"Fool!"
The dark plain and ochre sky, the twisted battlements before him dissolved and in their place the stone glowed, fire raging in its heart, raging and condensing, becoming a black slit and oval, flaming orb.
He cried out and stumbled almost to his knees. The Eye held fast his sight- he could not look away - and like a rat caught by a swiftly pouncing cat, he struggled futilely.
The sound of laughter seemed to echo from the walls.
'The mighty son of Ecthelion seeks to spy upon me now? You dare too greatly proud Denethor for one who has gambled a losing hand. Did you not realize all you had to lose?"
The body of Boromir pierced by many arrows, headless, desecrated, floated within the stone.
He cried out but even as Denethor gripped desperately at the orb another image came into view… Faramir, white and bloodless, naked, hands tied behind his back, body dragged through the cobbled streets by a slavering band of Orcs.
"No!" His voice became a wail. "Lies, these are lies…"
They were. Though the Enemy thought to use his fears against him Denethor was still strong. He was the true master of the Anor-stone. The stone had moaned when the images flashed past.
The heart of fire flared. "Then I shall show to you truth."
Pale and sweating, just like his son below, Denethor stood, battered as a tree before a storm, a wave of fresh imagery passing before his eyes. Dusted, browned as if from the long dim past, the scenes hammered at his mind even as he tried to turn away.
The wizard has been more faithless then he knew.
Tears that he could not let fall blurred the images-Saruman, in white, speaking with a forked tongue and honeyed tone to a young man who was not a Steward yet. A phial of thick liquid red. His wife's ebony hair and light grey eyes that came not to carry the light of love, but an anger shut tight behind a wall. A wall that he had built with angry stubborn pride.
And last: the aching beauty of her stricken, poisoned face as she drank the potion back.
"No!" he cried, "Sound, damn you sound!', but the stone was stubbornly silent in the face of truth.
A harsh, choking sob clawed up as mocking laughter pounded his head. Denethor staggered back. Face grey and more bloodless than his son's, he raised quavering hands before his eyes, tried to stop the images that lashed but they tumbled still, a loop of misery, while the vile laughter echoed, mocking and assured.
Oh gods. How could this be?
Was he not a man who could judge other men? Could judge even wizards true? He knew. He always knew the best.
Except when he had not.
I have killed them all….
"No!" The anguished roar tore from his throat. Mad and unholy grief gave his mail clad arm a strength of ten as it crashed into the stone, swept it off the dais.
The ebony surface flared red with living tongues of flame but it was only the truth of the lower circle.
Burning. Everything was burning.
Weeping, tracks of tears burning hot salt across his cheeks, Denethor bent and picked up the palantir, cradled it gently to his chest so very like a child.
He had made a vow once on another threshold, the door to the other circles of the world, when he had cheated Namo of this prize,
And Steward of Gondor did not lie.
I will never let them take my son...
He knew what he would do.
Set a pyre. Set pyre and burn away in its cleansing fire the pain of his complicity.
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Thank you so so much everyone for all your comments this past month. Special thanks to guest whom I can't thank directly. I am humbled and awed by your lovely comment. And ck... so glad you Faramir is firmly in your heart ;) both of ours.. thank you so much..your comment was a treat. Thanks also to Cnunn who favourited and Cnunn and Fairiegirl who followed this past month.
To Annafan, Thanwen and Artura, my faithful slayers of typo, plot consistency and form over at the Garden of Ithilien..hugs as always.
Lastly, by no means least, a grateful and surprised thanks to the anon who nominated Captains and Pawns for the Fanatics Fanfic Awards this year in the category Best LOTR fic. Wow. I am as ever amazed and thrilled at the reception for this story.
Next stop..Faramir awakens in the Houses... (relieved sigh...romance here we come)