Chapter eight: On the Trail

From Captains of the West by Faramir of Lamedon, F.A. 831

Little of importance happened on the first days of the campaign. The first day's march took them to the Crossroads, and after that, it was a case of marching slowly northwards through Ithilien. There are few records of those days; none than concern us, at any rate. Other self-styled "scholars" like to babble about the experience of the common man, but the only history worth telling is the history of great men and kings.

If Elessar made speeches in those first four days, they have not survived. If he and Éomer debated tactics in their tents, no scribe was there to record what they said. Messengers were sent back to Minas Tirith, of course, but they report only that the march was going well. Faramir sent letters of his own, but they, too, reveal little. If others, lengthier reports were sent by secret ways, they were not preserved.

History is the story of great men, but when the great men are silent, no tales can be told.

Hasad's wound was turning bad, but Kabil was not allowed to say anything about it. He had tried once, but Hasad had knocked him down with a blow to the jaw, and hit him again when he was down. He had done it with his left arm, though.

Kabil blamed the water. It had seemed like a minor wound, but Hasad had washed it in one of the streams that flowed through these bitter, blasted lands. The Brown Lands, the westerners called them, and it was an appropriate name. The water tasted wholesome enough when you drank it, but you couldn't take any chances when cleaning an open wound. Hasad should have known better. No, Hasad was Kabil's lord, and therefore he knew best, but still…

How long do we have to stay here? he wondered, but he knew better than to ask it. It was days since their last raid. There were no westerners left alive in the Brown Lands. News of the killings would have reached Gondor days ago, and the king of Gondor was bound to answer. He would send more men, stronger and better armed than the ones they had killed, and Samir and his army would be ready for them.

But the army was not here yet. It took time to move a great force across such inhospitable terrain, especially when the force was far from united. Samir had brought the warring clans together, but it was a loose alliance, liable to fracture at any time. Each lord would be eager to win all the glory. They would forever be riding away on their own forays and hunting trips. If they found good food, they would not share it. Even as they followed Samir, they would be trying to hamper the ambitions of the other lords. It was just the way of things. It was what a lord did. Hadn't Hasad himself sent over half his force away, because they owed their first loyalty to other lords?

"They will come," Hasad said, muttering it to himself as he stood stiffly in his chariot. Perhaps his thoughts had been following a similar course to Kabil's, or perhaps he was talking about something else entirely. He was feverish, although he claimed not to be, and sometimes muttered the strangest things. The bandage around his arm was stained with dark blood.

"Yes," Kabil said. "They will come."

"And they will die," Hasad said, so maybe he was talking about the men from Gondor, and not about Samir, after all.

They had no news of the westerners. Samir had a spy in Minas Tirith, Kabil knew, and messengers regularly rode down to collect his reports. They had seen one pass some six days since, but they had not yet seen him return. There were other scouts out, too, of course, watching to see what manner of an answer the King of Gondor had chosen to send. They would report to Samir, of course, but Samir would tell Hasad, surely, if there was any news that they needed to know. But he could not be sure of it. Samir was a lord, after all, and they were just his sworn men, men who obeyed.

So here they were, waiting in the Brown Lands where the hunting was so poor. Life was gradually beginning to return to the lands now that Sauron was gone. The men of Gondor had even started to farm it, and had managed to make a few, fragile crops grow, but Kabil's people were no farmers. They had to range far for their hunting. Hasad had split his remaining forces, because it was easier to feed two groups of fifty than to hunt for a group twice that size. They were more likely to encounter the enemy, too. Kabil had almost begged to command the second group, but then he had seen the sweat glistening on Hasad's brow, and had stayed silent.

So here we are, he thought. Fifty warriors in a blasted land, caught between Samir's challenge and the King of Gondor's answer.

"They will die," Hasad said again, looking up at a screecher-bird that circled high above, searching in vain for prey, "because we will kill them, every last man of them."

"Yes," Kabil agreed. "We will."

Pippin was hardly touching his lemon cakes. He took a small mouthful, then put the cake down. He picked it up again, and took a smaller mouthful, barely a nibble, really. Then he pushed his plate away.

"We need to be doing something, Merry," he said.

Merry was supposedly reading, but in the last hour, he had turned barely a page. "Yes," he said.

They weren't made for a life like this, that was the problem. Back home, Sam was fond of saying that Pippin belonged as much to Gondor as to the Shire, and Merry as much to Rohan as to Buckland, but it wasn't true, not really. Even when Pippin was Thain, he would still farm the family acres. Merry was Master of Buckland, but Brandy Hall was packed with his relatives, some of them very distant ones, of humble means. Mayor and Thain and Master, they all feasted at the common table when festivals came round.

"It isn't Strider's fault," Pippin said, because they were alone, so he could call him by that name. "He wishes things were different. That's why he came out to meet us, just him and Legolas and Gimli, without any of these rules. These people of Gondor, they're so full of these rules of what you should and shouldn't do."

And he was a knight of Gondor, of course. He was supposed to obey those rules. But Aragorn had never called upon him to take up his duties. If he had done so, it might be different. If he had done so, Pippin might have been content to stay quietly in the Citadel, guarding the white tree with the rest of them.

"It isn't just because of the rules," Merry said, laying his palm on the open page of his book. "It's because we're their guests. They don't want us to be troubled. They value the laws of hospitality here."

"Just like we do," Pippin said. "Like anyone does."

"Yes," Merry said. "I don't mean to criticise them. It's just…"

It was just that they were stuck here in the Citadel. There was nothing like this at home. Minas Tirith was a city of layers, and between the Citadel at the top and the first level far below, there was such a great gulf. It was a necessary gulf, of course, especially during a war. The white tree had to be preserved, and the crown, and the king…

But the king wasn't here.

What entertainment had been planned for them, Pippin wondered, had war not broken out? The trip to Osgiliath had happened, but nothing else. They would have spent long days just lounging in the gardens with their old friends, eating picnics from patterned rugs. They would have visited Emyn Arnen and spent many days there. They would have…

No, he thought. There was no point in thinking about such things. What had happened had happened. This was what they were left with now.

"I want to go out into the city," Pippin said. "There are so many rumours flying around, or so Faramir says. So much fear. He thinks there are enemies still lurking in the city, doing their evil work."

"There are," Merry said. "There must be."

Pippin picked up his lemon cake, then let it fall again. It collapsed into crumbs, and a bee came in from the window and landed on the largest of them. "We're good at going unseen," he said. "That's what everyone says, anyway. Even Aragorn says it, and he's a Ranger, so he should know. And who's better than a hobbit when it comes to eating and drinking and carousing with people in taverns? That's where the secrets always are, and these men of Gondor, I don't think they're very good at those sort of things. And I packed my Lórien cloak. Did you?" he asked, and when Merry nodded, he said, "Good. That'll help."

"You're right. I've been thinking it myself. We should be out there, finding answers." Merry looked more hopeful than he had in days.

"Yes," Pippin said. "Of course, we aren't very…" He gestured with his hands, indicating his height. "Inconspicuous," he said. "On the contrary, we're quite distinctive."

"We can wear shoes," Merry said, "and in the dark, they'll think we're children. Tall children," he added, holding his hand flat above the top of his head, as if he was marking his height on the wall.

"Will Faramir let us?" Pippin asked, struck with sudden doubt.

"Can Faramir stop us?" Merry said, who was Master of Buckland now, and lord of his own domain within the northern kingdom, where Gondor held no sway.

Mablung had kept up. As the king had commanded, he had kept up for two days, and had been rewarded with a task. Another two days had passed since then, spent beneath the trees in Ithilien. He was hooded again, and clad in the old brown and green.

It was not the same. Ithilien was no longer enemy territory. There was no risk of sudden attack by orcs or creatures yet fouler. When he heard voices, he crouched down and hid himself in the undergrowth until they had passed, but they were no longer the guttural voices of enemies. They were farmers or lovers or children. He hid from them, but they were no threat.

Mablung was alone. Birdsong surrounded him, but the birds were real. There were no Rangers here, calling messages to each other in the wilds. There was no comrade at his back, and no captain to come if he called. Years had passed. They lived in a new age now, and the Rangers had gone from Ithilien.

It had always been a beautiful place, even then. Some of the Rangers had claimed not to notice its beauty, and saw it only as a theatre for war. When they looked upon a tree, they saw it only as a potential hiding place for an enemy, not as a thing of beauty in its own right. That was what they claimed, at any rate; Mablung had never been entirely sure that he believed them.

For him, though, the beauty had been at the very heart of things. It had reminded him daily of what they were fighting for. It had given him hope, because while the beauty of Ithilien endured, the enemy's victory was not yet complete. And just like Faramir, he had dreamed of a future in which Ithilien was free again, and farmers and lovers and children could wander its valleys openly and in peace.

That future had come to pass, and now, just a few short years later, it was under threat again. Farmers had died in the Brown Lands, and women and lovers and children. Once again, an army was moving through Ithilien. If it failed…

It will not fail! That was what the common men-at-arms said when anyone dared to breathe their fears aloud. Their captains said it even more fervently, determined to keep morale high. But Mablung was a Ranger, and Rangers were not afraid to talk of dark possibilities. Whenever Faramir had led them out, he had carefully considered everything that might go wrong, and prepared for it. It had saved their lives many times. If the army fails… Mablung thought. If I fail…

It was the day before midsummer, and everything around him was entwined with wild roses. Mablung grasped a tendril now, heedless of the thorns.

If I fail…

Then he let out a breath, chiding his foolishness, because in truth, there was little chance of him making the slightest bit of difference in Ithilien. He was only one scout out of many, after all, and many of the others were elves, with keen hearing and eyes still keener. He was scouting in friendly territory, only a few miles away from the army itself. He was looking not for fighting men, but for messengers, for spies and enemy scouts. "I doubt we can keep our marching secret," the king had said, "but I intend to try."

And Mablung was glad to be out here in the wilds, helping him, even if he had little chance of making a difference. His true task would start once they passed the Morannon and headed into the Brown Lands, but for now-

Not far behind him, a twig snapped. Mablung did not drop to the ground, because that would have made too much noise. He did not gasp, because even that might be heard. Instead, he lowered himself slowly into a crouch, and silently unsheathed his knife.

"Of course," Pippin said, "there's a flaw in our plan, something we didn't consider yesterday."

"There is indeed," Merry agreed. "Never mind. It might rain tomorrow."

"Tomorrow's Midsummer's Day," Pippin said. "Feastings and festivals and whatnot."

"Doesn't mean it can't rain, though," said Merry. "Do you remember that Lithe when it rained so much that all the waggons carrying victuals for the Mayor's party got bogged down in the mud and everything had to be carried halfway across the Shire by hand?"

"And, strangely, only half of it got as far as old Whitfoot's table." Pippin chuckled. "Ruined by the rain: that's what we told him, wasn't it? But that was back in the Shire. This is Gondor, down in the sunny south."

They passed a group of children playing soldiers on a street corner. One by one, the children lowered their wooden swords and turned and stared.

"Yes," said Pippin, "a definite flaw." It was just too hot! It was too hot for an elven cloak, and too hot to hide their faces under a hood. They could have endured the heat of it, but they would have stood out like a sore thumb. Everyone else was wearing their summer clothes. Cloaked and hooded, Merry and Pippin might have looked like children, but they would have looked like children with something to hide. In this climate of suspicion, they would have drawn the very attention that they were trying to avoid.

Even without cloaks, they were still the centre of attention, but at least nobody was trying to unmask them as enemies. Faramir's chief concern had been that the enemy agents in the city would target them if they went out alone. It was well known that they were close friends with the king, after all, and although murdering them would do nothing whatsoever to weaken the military might of Gondor, it would be a bitter injury to Aragorn himself. He needn't have worried, Pippin thought. The way everyone's staring so, anyone who tried to raise a hand against us would be brought down by a mob.

"Oh well," said Merry. "We can still keep our eyes and ears open, even if we can't do it unseen. Shall we go to a tavern?"

"It's a bit early, isn't it? Yes, let's," said Pippin, as a tower bell struck four.

He sniffed the air, trying to find the distinctive smell that an ale-house always produced. Instead, he scented flowers. Across the street, a woman was hanging out flower garlands, draping them from the railings that surrounded a pleasant-looking terrace. A girl followed after her, with many-coloured ribbons draped across her arm. She was supposed to be tying them in bows around the railings, but when she saw Merry and Pippin, she stopped to stare.

"They must be getting ready for Midsummer," Pippin said, fighting the urge to stare back at her. "How pretty it looks! Strange that they're still celebrating it, though, what with…"

"Of course they're still celebrating it." Merry sounded surprisingly fervent. "They'll celebrate it all the more. Life goes on. It's what we would do."

"Yes," Pippin said. "Yes, but…" But then he saw the wooden sign that hung from the building with the pretty terrace. "It's a tavern!" he cried. "The Sword and Stars. Let's go in! If we sit on that terrace, the garlands might hide us a bit, and we'll be able to hear what people are saying in the street. Then we can tell Faramir if we hear anything important or see anything suspicious. Suspicious things often happen in ale houses," he added, in case Merry wasn't convinced.

But Merry needed no convincing. He disliked the staring even more than Pippin did, it seemed. "It makes me think we don't belong here," he had confessed, "as if we're just visitors in a world that will never be ours."

Pace by silent pace, Mablung moved forward. The other man was less skilled than him. There had been no more broken twigs, but here and there, there were rustlings of leaves. This was a man who was being cautious, but did not yet know that there was anyone near enough to hear him. He was a man who was trying to travel swiftly, Mablung thought, but who knew that scouts were abroad, and so tried to keep himself hidden.

It was not enough. It would have fooled a farmer, but it was not enough to keep him hidden from one of Captain Faramir's Rangers of Ithilien.

But who was he? That was the question. No elf would have broken a twig beneath their feet, that was for sure. The king was gifted in the ways of stealth himself, and would never employ a scout who made such a basic mistake. An enemy, then? Whoever he was, he was travelling north. An enemy scout who had sneaked close to the army, noted its strength, and now was hastening home to report to his captain?

A jay rose up from a treetop, shouting. Mablung took advantage of the brief moment of noise to hurry on several paces, almost running. He was scared of losing his quarry. But they were not that far from Henneth Annûn, and Mablung knew this terrain. If the other man carried on in the same direction, he would soon be halted by a steep-sided valley, but Mablung knew how to cross it.

He had no bow to bring the man down from a distance, but even if he had, he would not have done so, just in case this was a friend or an innocent. Life had been simpler in the days before the War of the Ring. Enemies had been hideous creatures, and you knew they were enemies as soon as you saw them. Now enemies could look the same as friends. They could hide in Minas Tirith with murder in their hearts, without attracting notice. The evils in the world now resided in the hearts of other men. It was men, not orcs, who had killed the women and the children of the outpost.

And then, for a moment, he wished that he had a bow with him, after all. If there was any possibility that this man had been involved in that… He couldn't risk letting a guilty man escape. He had to bring him down... No, he told himself. No… He pushed away the memory of the dead and the dying. He had to be sure. Onwards, he crept; ever on.

He was very close to the valley now. There was only silence ahead of him, not even the rustling of leaves. The man would have emerged from the trees to find himself on the edge of a steep fall, almost a cliff, that led to a rocky stream below. He would be debating whether to risk climbing down, or whether to follow the valley westwards in the hope that its sides would become less steep. Mablung would take him when he was distracted. He would take him, secure him, and then hear his tale. If he was a friend or an innocent, let him prove it!

Mablung breathed in, and let the breath out slowly, readying himself. He edged forward. Almost there. Almost there… Another step; another silent step. The man was just yards ahead of him now, facing away from him. Another step…

Mablung was just about to take him, when a bowstring twanged behind him. He never saw the arrow fly.

It was strange how traditions started, Daerion mused. Gondor was a place of tradition, and it was easy to assume that all traditions had deep meaning; that they harked back to some great tale from the past.

It wasn't true, of course. The Sword and Stars had been his father's tavern, and it was where Daerion had been born. When he was a child, the terrace outside had been enclosed by a wooden trellis on which a vine had grown. Then the vine had died, and for a festival one spring, his mother had tied ribbons in its place. She had left them there for years, adding new ones each spring, but letting the old ones remain, even as they had faded and become spotted with mildew.

The tavern was now run by one of Daerion's great-nephews, and the trellis had long gone. There were ornate metal railings around the terrace now, but they were still decorated with ribbons. The tradition had moved from spring to midsummer, and there were garlands now, as well as ribbons. If he asked his great-nephew's daughter why she tied ribbons to the railings, she doubtless wouldn't know. Either that, or she would tell him some reason for it: a reason that bore no resemblance to the truth that Daerion remembered.

The truth was merely that his mother was sad when the vine died, and ribbons had been going cheap in the market one day.

The people of Minas Tirith still liked to sit and drink on the terrace, though, whether they did so beside ribbons or beneath a vine. The two halflings were there, Daerion saw. One of them, the one who served Gondor, was entertaining the rest of the table with a story of some sort. The other was listening and smiling, but he was alert at the same time, watching the street. The other drinkers were probably unaware of his watchfulness, but Daerion had been a soldier for over fifty years, and he knew what he saw.

What is he watching for? Daerion wondered. And why are they down here at all, when they're guests of the king?

But it was not for him to wonder. They seemed to be in no danger, and their business was their own. Daerion was off duty for the rest of the day, and he had family to visit. Although they lived close to his guardhouse, he seldom saw them. Duty came first, of course. It always did.

The arrowhead had gone clean through the man's sword hand. Disarmed and in pain, he had been easy to capture. Even if they had not wounded him first, Mablung thought, they would have captured him effortlessly. He would have been less successful, had he been allowed to take that final step.

"I didn't know you were there," he said uselessly.

They had known where he was, of course. They had watched him prepare his attack, and they had taken measures to prevent it. Because they had feared that he would bungle it, and lose them their man. They were right, too; that was the worst of it.

"He knew you were following him," Lord Legolas said. "You could not see it, but he was ready for you. He might have killed you, or you might have killed him, or it could be that both of you would have gone over. We had to act."

The man was their prisoner now. His wrists were tightly bound, but the rope that tied his ankles was long enough for him to take short steps. They had wrestled him to the floor, and now the other elf was tending the wound on the man's hand, and getting no thanks for it.

Lord Legolas gestured to Mablung to follow him along the lip of the valley, and Mablung did so. When they were far enough away for the man not to hear them, Legolas spoke. "Lasdir and I have followed his trail for some leagues."

"He was spying on the army?" Mablung asked.

Legolas shook his head. "He came from the south. He was behind the army, and he skirted around it without stopping."

"From the south?" Mablung echoed. "From Osgiliath? From Minas Tirith, even?

"It could be." Legolas looked grave. The other elf looked up, even as his hands continued to work on the man's wound.

"But he's definitely an enemy?" The man looked little different from some of Mablung's fellow Rangers, whose families had come from northern Ithilien before its loss. He was a little darker than most, it was true, but in a hot summer like this, even lords with the blood of Westernesse lost their usual pallor.

"I believe he is," Legolas said. "He was preparing to fight you, and he has not protested his innocence, either because he does not know your tongue, or because he know that he cannot speak it without his accent giving him away."

"So what was he doing?" Mablung asked. "And where was he going, and what are you going to do with him now?"

"Take him to King Elessar," Legolas said, "who will have questions to ask him, and answers to obtain."

It was almost dark when Daerion left the tavern. As a child, he had been the youngest of a large family, with his oldest brothers and sisters already grown up. Now he was the only one left, and even some of his nephews and nieces had already died. He was the last of his generation, but visiting his old home never made him sorrowful. His childhood home was in safe hands, and his family always made him welcome. They were interested in his tales of the past, and that seemed more important with every year that passed. He was an old man with no children, and he wanted to be remembered.

And he would be remembered, he thought, if only for a little while. His family were not the only ones who would remember him. They still came back to him, sometimes, the guardsmen who had served under him in the past. Some had moved to other companies, and some had left the Guard entirely, but whenever they came to Minas Tirith, they sought him out.

"I wonder what the king's doing now," he heard someone say from behind an open window. "Four days since they marched away. They'll be somewhere in the north of Ithilien, I reckon. Will they pass the Black Gate tomorrow or the day after? Now that's a place I've only ever heard of, and hope never to see."

"He won't be afraid of it, at any rate," came the reply.

As a child who had adored Captain Thorongil, Daerion would have believed just the same. As an old man who revered his king, even now he was inclined to believe it. But he had once overheard a young guardsman declaring that good old Captain Daerion had never known a moment's fear. It was not true, of course. The king was different, but…

The king is still a man, Daerion thought, and like the unseen voice from the window, he wondered what the king was doing now, and where he was, and what he was thinking.

All the while, he was making his slow way back towards the guard house. The streets were busy, and he grew tired of trying to weave his way through the crowds. Instead, he ducked into a small alleyway that he had used so often as a child. It snaked between buildings and it passed through dark yards. It was a longer route, but he hoped it would be a quicker one.

The attack came when he was at the darkest part, shaded by towers on either side. He heard the hiss of a blade on a scabbard, and that was what saved him at first. Whirling round, he dodged the blow that would have killed him, but he was slow to get his own sword out. A second blow nicked his side, but got slowed by the folds of his shirt. He didn't think it had marked him much, but it was hard to tell in the heat of battle.

Then his own sword was free, and he fought back. It was too dark to see his assailant's face clearly, but he gained an impression of it: deep-set eyes, a prominent nose, a mouth that was pressed tight with concentration. Daerion parried another blow, feinted, and landed a blow of his own. His attacker leapt backwards just in time to save his body from the upwards slash, but the tip of Daerion's sword gouged the man's cheek.

Someone shouted not far away. "Help!" Daerion shouted, because you couldn't be proud when your life was on the line. Men who were too proud to call for help were the men who died. "To me!" he cried. "I'm a captain of the city! To me!"

But then the enemy's sword broke through his guard, gouging him across the ribs. He stumbled; struggled to right himself, but the enemy knocked him down. Daerion fell backwards, landing heavily on the jagged cobbles. Pain exploded in his head. The breath rushed out of him. He struggled to hold onto his sword, but the enemy kicked it away.

The shouting came nearer. He saw lights, torches carried in men's hands. Then he saw nothing at all, just his enemy towering over him, his body blocking out the light.