Chapter 15 - The End of the Fellowship
Sleep was often elusive for Maethoriel since her arrival in Middle Earth, but she had slowly been adjusting recently, managing to doze off for a few hours while the company rested around her. Last night, however, she barely even blinked.
Whenever she looked to Boromir, she felt a great unease in her heart that saddened her more than she could say. The Ring was a monstrous creation, and she could hardly stand to watch it gnaw away at the good hearts of the people she journeyed with. There was nothing she could do to save them from its influence, nothing she could say to convince them of its manipulation. Boromir and Frodo may have been the only two in the Fellowship visibly affected by its powers, but she was not naïve enough to think that there would not be more to succumb. It was only a matter of time.
They packed up their belongings and resumed their positions in the boats, traversing the water under another bright, warm sun. Merry seemed to be oblivious to any tension between Boromir and Aragorn, chatting happily to Maethoriel as he had done the day before. She allowed the distraction, letting herself get lost in his stories of the wonderful Shire and its inhabitants. His love for his home shone through as bright as the sun, and she knew that he missed it dreadfully. She was sure all of the hobbits did, being creatures of habit who rarely stepped outside of their lands. She could not imagine how difficult it must be for them, coming out into a world of danger and death. However horrible it was for her when they lost Gandalf, it must have been a hundred times worse for their small companions.
A few hours after they set out again, they came across an architectural wonder. The river narrowed somewhat as the cliffs on either side curved inwards towards it, though they didn't touch. The cliff faces nearest each other had been carved into two gigantically tall statues – one she knew to be Isildur, while the other was Anárion – holding a hand out each against those travelling the river towards them. Merry paused rowing for a moment, busy staring up at the statues in complete awe.
"Incredible, aren't they?" Maethoriel murmured, observing the smoothness of the carvings. When they floated by the foot of one of them, she leaned closer to the hobbit. "I bet we could lay you down on that foot and you would only be as big as the toenail," she smiled. He grinned back at her.
Eventually the river opened out into a wider expanse, ending about a mile in front of them in a big waterfall. Merry commented jokingly about making sure to miss the deadly fall, but Maethoriel was suddenly uneasy again, being so exposed. She quietly watched the shoreline, twisting in her seat subtly so to avoid distressing the hobbit in her boat, looking for anything that seemed out of place. She caught Aragorn's eye at one point, and she saw his jaw clench, his eyes glancing away, hawk-like.
The noise of the waterfall was loud even when they pulled the boats up onto the beach a while away from it. Maethoriel spared it a short glance, before straining her eyes to see between the trees and into the forest. They unpacked again for the night, starting a fire over at one side.
"We cross the lake at nightfall," Aragorn instructed as he moved his possessions from the boat to the beach. "Hide the boats and continue on foot. We approach Mordor from the North."
"Oh, yes?" Gimli spoke up. "Just a simple matter of finding our way through Emyn Muil, an impassible labyrinth of razor-sharp rocks. And after that, it gets even better!"
Maethoriel looked up from the pebbles she held in her hands, watching Pippin's face slowly fall. She shifted uncomfortably, wishing the hairs on the back of her neck would cease their standing. Legolas was off to the side, she saw, peering through the same trees she had, and she knew he felt the same.
"Festering, stinking marshland as far as the eye can see," Gimli continued, never seeming to catch on to the others' uneasiness.
"That is our road," Aragorn replied calmly. "I suggest you take some rest and recover your strength, Master Dwarf."
"Recover my-ʺ Gimli repeated, snapping in offense. He growled, but spoke no more.
Maethoriel's eyes followed Legolas as he quickly approached Aragorn. "We should leave now," the elf insisted.
"No. Orcs patrol the eastern shore. We must wait for cover of darkness," Aragorn told him.
Maethoriel pushed herself to her feet and walked closer to them, meeting Legolas' cautious eyes for a moment.
"It is not the eastern shore that worries me," he said. "A shadow and a threat has been growing in my mind. Something draws near. I can feel it."
"Aragorn, you feel the same," Maethoriel murmured. "You know he is right. I have felt uneasy too and it has steadily built the closer we have come to this shore. I do not wish to linger here."
Aragorn was primed to reply, when Merry's question cut through any thoughts they had.
"Where's Frodo?"
Maethoriel hated that she did, but she looked immediately for Boromir, nudging Aragorn's arm when she saw the man's possessions, including his shield, abandoned nearby. "I do not feel good about this," she whispered.
"He must have wanted to be alone for a moment," Aragorn said, loud enough for the others to hear. "There is no need to worry. But we are safer together. We'll see if we can find him."
Legolas and Gimli went off together, as did Merry and Pippin, while the rest split up. Maethoriel had tried to keep an eye on Sam, but he moved so quickly through the trees to find his friend that she soon lost him. She stopped for a moment, listening to the silence, feeling a small breeze brush against her skin. She looked around, struggling to differentiate anything from tree trunks and shrubbery. How she wished she could see the area from above, as her father probably could right now. It infuriated her that he could most likely see how far she was from Frodo in that instant, yet she could not know whether she was heading towards him, or in the complete opposite direction.
She decided to walk, as straight as she could, up the incline looming before her. One step after the other, she would walk ten paces, then stop, and listen, and look. Then she would continue, and repeat, growing steadily more worried the longer she could not see Frodo, or Boromir.
After a while, she stopped, and listened – and she heard something. A man shouting something, anguished. It was coming from her left, so she set off running as fast as she could, still climbing the hill, over fallen leaves and roots and branches, her heart hammering in her chest.
"Frodo, I'm sorry!" she heard, as she rounded some trees, finally seeing Boromir, frantically turning in a circle where he stood, his hair dishevelled and full of leaves.
"Boromir!" she called, running to him.
Relief flooded his face when he saw her, but there were tears sliding down his cheeks, and his chin was quivering. "Maethoriel, I have been a fool! I scared the halfling away, I do not know what came over me!" he cried, grabbing her arm when she neared him.
"It's alright, Boromir," she told him, placing her hand atop his. "Shh, now, it's okay."
He sniffed, leaning his forehead against her hand. "I am the ruin of the Fellowship," he muttered. "I would have taken the Ring from Frodo had he not disappeared."
"Where is he?" she asked, heartbroken at the state of him.
"I do not know," Boromir replied, straightening again. He looked as though he was calming down, regaining his senses. "He fled from me. As he should have."
"He knows it was not you, Boromir. The Ring is very powerful," she told him.
"I have been a hinderance to the Fellowship," he muttered, detaching himself from her. "I should not have come."
"That is not true," she frowned at him, defiant. "You have a good heart, Boromir. You want to protect your people, because you are a good man. And you have protected us. In the Mines, you were invaluable."
"And now I nearly attacked Frodo," he replied, deflated.
Maethoriel froze, her ears picking up an awful sound. Boromir looked at her, frowning, as she exhaled. She could hear the harsh shouts and loud stomping of an uncountable enemy, too close for comfort, only a little up the hill. "They have come," she whispered.
"Frodo," Boromir muttered, worried.
"I will find him. In the meantime, Merry, Pippin, and Sam are running around the woods trying to find him, unprotected and alone. If anyone can get them to safety, Boromir, it is you," she insisted.
"Be safe," he told her, nodding, before he hurried off away from her.
Maethoriel closed her eyes and rolled her neck, cracking it in two places. Her fingers reached down and closed around the grips of her dagger and tomahawk, and she pulled them free of their sheaths, savouring the sharp sound as they slid out. She tightened her grip, moving her feet as she steadily moved faster and faster until she was sprinting up the hill towards the rabble ahead of her.
Breathing evenly, she listened for sounds of fighting and circled around the left side of their enemy, so that she could join whoever was clashing swords at the head of the column. She looked through the trees at the Uruk-hai thrashing their heads and weapons, shouting ugly battle cries, and her lip curled in anger and disgust. She had no time to be afraid, and this was nothing like Moria – this time they were not trapped and surrounded; once she joined her companion, they would have the higher ground, and they would win. She would die before she let them take Frodo.
When she arrived, Maethoriel could see that Aragorn was climbing the steps of an old ruin, attempting to thin the mass of enemies out. Frodo was nowhere to be seen, thankfully – she just hoped it meant that he was getting as far away from the fighting as he could. Maybe Legolas and Gimli would stumble upon him and have the sense to bring him back to the boats and cross the shore to wait there for the rest of them.
An uruk spotted her and swung its spiked sword downwards at her, breaking her thoughts. She sidestepped easily and brought her dagger round to stab it in the back. To end it, she lifted her tomahawk high and thrust it downwards into the side of the uruk's head, breaking through its weak helm. Pulling her weapons free, she looked up to find a group of three watching her, grunting loudly. She took a deep breath, twirling her tomahawk, and advanced.
As she spun, slashed, and hacked her way through their enemies, their apparent leader took up a shout: "Find the halfling! Find the halfling!"
Uruk-hai began fanning out away from the fight, racing back down the hill. Maethoriel quickly finished the enemy she was fighting and sprinted after them, taking down a few from behind as she caught up to them. She caught Aragorn's eye as she ran passed the ruin, just as he looked like he was about to throw himself on top of the uruks running below. She heard his shout of "Elendil!" before there was a clatter, but she knew she had to keep running.
She veered off track slightly so that she could get away from the uruks and circle round to their front and cut them off. Her heart skipped a beat when she spotted Frodo stumbling a mere twenty paces away, and a rage ignited in her.
"You cannot have him!" she yelled, throwing herself in front of the creatures, slicing at legs to make them fall and trip those behind them.
She blocked attacks from several angles, struggling to get a foot behind her to keep her upright against the onslaught. For a moment she feared she would be overwhelmed, but then Aragorn appeared at her left, managing to stop another few from running past, and she grinned.
She planted her foot behind her and let the uruks get a few more blows against her weapons in, before she used their momentum against them and struck back, advancing up the hill as she sent blow after blow. Eventually, she found a gap in one of them, and quickly stabbed her dagger up into the uruk's soft neck, driving the blade as far in as she could, its black blood pouring out over her fingers, warm and sticky. She blocked another attack with her tomahawk and wrenched the dagger free, slashing the uruk's stomach as she brought it around her. A quick downward thrust of her tomahawk into the uruk's shoulder nearly hacked its arm off, and it fell at her feet.
A few uruk-hai had managed to slip past her as she fought, so she scooped up a small dagger dropped by one of her fallen foes and threw it behind her, watching as it embedded itself in the back of a creature's neck. She could take no pride in her kill, however, when she saw just how many of their enemies had got past them and were continuing down the hill. "Frodo," she whispered, terrified.
She had to stay where she was, when a fresh group of enemies descended on her, but her heart dropped when she could hear Merry and Pippin shouting. It sounded as if they were trying to get the uruk-hai's attention, leading them off somewhere. They were protecting Frodo, giving him a chance to get away; but she couldn't bear the thought of what would happen to them if their enemies caught up with them and discovered neither were the right halfling.
She kicked and punched, stabbed and slashed, blocked and hacked, her blood and the blood of her enemies mingling on her skin with sweat and dirt. She had a gash on her arm from when an uruk's spiked sword had nipped her, and a cut on her thigh after one she had killed fell into her on its way down. One had even headbutted her, breaking some blood vessels in her nostrils, and cutting her forehead when the sharp edge of its helm caught her.
She did not feel the pain, nor the exhaustion. She felt rage, and she felt strong, and fast. She broke bones, and hacked off limbs, sending enemy after enemy to the forest floor, dead or dying, and yet they kept coming and coming, endlessly.
Above her, she caught brief glimpses of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, fighting their way through the Uruk-hai just as she was. But seeing them unnerved her – there were four hobbits alone in the forest, and only one man searching for them, if he had not been caught up in the fighting already, and Merry and Pippin were without a doubt being chased down by the Uruk-hai. She wanted desperately to protect all four of them, but she didn't know how.
She hacked her tomahawk into her current foe's neck, nearly taking its head clean off, and froze at the sound of Boromir's horn. Three short blasts, and then a harrowing, deathly silence.
She looked up and saw her companions running down towards her, and she turned, sprinting towards where the sound had come from. She had to cut down more Uruk-hai as she went, as they were all following the noise too. They kept stopping to fight her properly, slowing her descent to an agonising pace.
Boromir blew his horn again, another three blasts, sounding like he was moving further away, trying to put some distance between him, whoever he was protecting, and the descending enemy.
Maethoriel took a moment to realise she was yelling, using the momentum of her sprint to jump onto the backs of uruks, stabbing her knife into their necks as they fell and she rolled off them. She pushed herself back to her feet and twisted the handle of her tomahawk so that the blade was facing upwards, and she stabbed it into another uruk's stomach, wrenching it upwards to spill the creature's insides out onto the forest floor. Immediately, she pulled it free and twirled it round again, using it to block an oncoming attack. She kicked her new foe in the knee, breaking it and bringing the uruk to the ground, stabbing her dagger into the side of its head as it fell.
Boromir continued to blow his horn, clearly facing the majority of the Uruk-hai by himself. Maethoriel was moving as fast as she could, but she could only get so far before another group of creatures would turn and make a wall between her and her companions.
She knew that she was catching up to Boromir now, because the groups of uruk's trying to slow her down were growing bigger and bigger, and she was coming across corpses that she had not slain. Aragorn and the others weren't far behind her, and she knew they would be with her soon.
So, she kept fighting, uruk after uruk, refusing to stop, refusing to slow. The horn had stopped blowing, but that only made her fight harder, knowing time was running out for whoever was down there with Boromir.
Suddenly Aragorn was next to her, stopping an uruk from hacking her arm off. He dealt with it quickly, and glanced at her.
"Go!" she shouted, blocking another attack. "I will make sure your back is covered!"
He nodded and ran downhill, and she quickly lost sight of him.
The uruks nearby surrounded her, shouting incomprehensibly. She twirled her tomahawk again, breathing sharply, looking between them all. They were ugly, evil creatures, and they were in her way.
Suddenly one went down, an arrow in its throat, and the one beside it followed not long after. Then a deep bellow sounded from behind her, and Gimli appeared, throwing himself at another.
"For Frodo!" she heard herself shout, before she charged at the uruks closest to her, and slammed into them.
It was a blur of swords and daggers, arrows and axes, but the three of them killed their way through the remaining ranks of Uruk-hai and lived to tell the tale. Without hesitation, as soon as the last creature fell, they kept running towards where they had last heard the horn sound.
The scene they came upon stole the breath from Maethoriel's lungs. An innumerable mass of dead Uruk-hai lay splattered across the forest floor, all thanks to the skill and bravery of Boromir. But, the man himself lay against a tree, with Aragorn hovering above him, punctured by three crude arrows.
Maethoriel's shoulders slumped at the sight as she and Legolas approached the two men.
"I would have followed you, my brother," Boromir was saying. "My captain. My king." He took a few more sharp breaths, and then he stilled.
Aragorn leaned close and pressed a kiss to his kin's forehead, as Gimli joined them and leant heavily on his axe. The silence was deafening, now that the fighting was over. Maethoriel was so proud of Boromir, of the way he so valiantly defended whoever he was protecting, of retaining his honour and dignity by protecting those who could not protect themselves. It was just a tragedy that the man could not have survived to be celebrated, to be honoured and to continue protecting his people. They had lost a great man today, and she was certain that neither he nor his deeds would be forgotten. There would be songs about Boromir of Gondor, when the war was won.
"They will look for his coming from the White Tower," Aragorn said. "But he will not return."
"We can't leave him here," Maethoriel said softly, her eyes stinging with unshed tears, and her heart aching.
They carried him between them back down to the beach, keeping an eye out through the tree trunks for any lingering Uruk-hai or hobbits. When they got back to the beach, they could see Frodo and Sam in a boat of their own, making their way across the water. Quickly, but respectfully, they made their fallen companion presentable, and laid him out in a spare boat, giving him his sword to hold and his shield behind his head. Then they gently pushed the boat off, and watched it float towards the waterfall.
Aragorn had taken Boromir's gauntlets, with the White Tree of Gondor etched into them, and attached them to his forearms. He stood looking out over the water, while Legolas went to the next boat and began to push it out.
"Hurry, Frodo and Sam have reached the eastern shore!" he exclaimed. Maethoriel's heart was in her throat, her concern at an all-time high as she saw their tiny figures leaving their boat. She marched to where Legolas stood, watching as his face slowly fell while he looked up at Aragorn.
Following his gaze, she saw their leader's slow movements, and fear gripped her.
"You mean not to follow them," Legolas said gently.
"Frodo's fate is no longer in our hands," Aragorn replied.
Maethoriel's breath caught in her chest and she dropped to her knees. A crushing terror gripped her heart as she considered his words, astonished that he would choose to let Frodo and Sam continue on to Mordor without their protection. She had been sent down to Middle Earth by her father to ensure the protection of Frodo, the destruction of the Ring, and the survival of Aragorn – her father had entrusted her with these tasks, and Aragorn was trying to tell her that she could no longer do two of them. She wanted to get in the boat and leave the three of them behind so that she could carry out the mission she was given, but she was torn – if she left Aragorn, that meant she could no longer ensure his survival; but if she stayed, she could not protect Frodo. She stared down at her hands, as if they could give her an answer.
"Then it has all been in vain," Gimli grunted, defeated. "The Fellowship has failed."
She could hear their footsteps as the elf and the dwarf approached their leader, and she looked up at them, lost. Aragorn met her eyes and put a hand on each of their shoulders.
"Not if we hold true to each other," he told them. "We will not abandon Merry and Pippin to torment and death. Not while we have strength left. Leave all that can be spared behind.," he instructed, picking up his dagger and sheathing it. "We travel light. Let's hunt some Orc."
Gimli growled excitedly, and shouted, "Yes!" before running after Aragorn.
Legolas was smiling too, Maethoriel saw when he turned to look back at her. But his smile fell, and he hurried to her. She stood before he reached her, and turned to look again at the empty boat on the eastern shore.
"Maethoriel?" Legolas asked gently.
"I have failed my father," she whispered. "I have failed Frodo." She looked up into his kind, blue eyes. "I don't know what to do."
He lifted a hand to cup her cheek, stroking over dirt and blood. "You failed no one," he insisted. "You helped give Frodo the chance to escape. We can still help him, even though we are apart."
"This is not how our journey was supposed to go," she told him, closing her eyes as a tear fell. She felt numb.
"No," he agreed gently. "Our journey could have gone down many paths, with many different consequences. We make our own fate, Maethoriel." He took a moment of silence, dropping his hand to hold hers. "Frodo has the most fiercely loyal companion he could have ever asked for," he told her, "But Merry and Pippin are alone and captured."
"I cannot pick between them," Maethoriel said. "Between Frodo and Sam, and Merry and Pippin, or between Frodo and Aragorn."
"You do not have to," he replied. "The choice has already been made. Frodo intends to finish his journey without us, and we have to respect that. Merry and Pippin were taken against their will. We cannot stay here and mourn the Fellowship – we have to keep going, and we have to save our friends."
Maethoriel knew he was right. There was nothing she could do for Frodo and Sam now that they had made their own way. She could never leave Merry and Pippin in the hands of the monsters she had spent the last few hours battling. They needed her, she knew that, perhaps more than Frodo did, and she couldn't abandon them.
She closed her eyes against the pain in her heart, and considered the death and loss they had endured already. Her compassion was a strength, in some instances, but right now it was a hinderance. She was feeling too much pain, too much heartache, and she needed to move past it. But she couldn't. So, she did the next best thing: she locked that side of her away and clenched her fists, picturing a stone wall constructing itself around her heart. She would not be distracted by her emotions.
She opened her eyes, her face as hard and sharp as steel, and detached herself from Legolas. He stepped back, looking at her with wide eyes.
"I am going to kill every single one of those Uruk-hai," she heard herself say, low and harsh and deadly. And she meant it.
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Hi everyone! We've reached the end of the first film... eventually. I can't believe it's taken so long, and I want to sincerely apologise for that. I know how hard it is to follow a story that only updates every few months, if that. From now on I'm going to write a few chapters of a story before I realease the first one, and that way I always have something to give you.
University is a killer. I'm currently trying to write a dissertation (on Orphan Black, which is so much fun) and it is massively time-consuming and stressful. So, on the one hand, I might have even less time to post updates, but on the other, I might need periods of relaxation like writing far more. So, we'll see how I get on.
I'm going to continue this story as we go into the next film, rather than create a new one for each film. I hope you are still enjoying this, if there's anyone still reading it, and please forgive me for taking so damn long.