This is the second of today's two chapters. There will be two tomorrow, too.

Chapter seventeen: A Matter of Trust

From Trials of Manhood: A Story of the East, based on the true story of Bedir of the Red Sun, as imagined by Thanniel Scrivener, F.A. 1657

It was the flies that first betrayed the wounded man. Without the flies, Bedir would never have found him.

Would anything have turned out differently if he had not?

Perhaps not.

That was how he told the story afterwards, anyway, in the dark times when stories were all that was left to them. He would smile ruefully by the camp fire, the movement pulling at the blade scar on his cheek. Faces surrounded him, eyes gleaming in the flickering light. Young men's faces, all, who had never known a settled life. Wolves howled in the darkness beyond the circle of their wains.

Later, much later, he would tell it differently again. He was old then, and his braided hair was brittle and grey. He was more than half blind, the fire in the hearth just a faint glow, with dark faceless shapes that passed before it, and stopped, sometimes, and spoke his name.

Would anything have turned out differently if he had not seen those flies?

Perhaps, he said then, as he dreamed of the clans uniting under a proud lord who heeded him. Perhaps.

But later, even later, the story changed again. Would his life have ended differently had he had not seen those flies?

"Oh yes," he would say. "Oh yes."

Aragorn showed no reaction. Samir's voice rose towards the end, and he finished it ringingly, loud enough, surely, for the guards outside to hear. The warrior grinned, raising his sword. "Yes," the woman was breathing. "Yes!" Only Bedir looked troubled, back in the shadows by the entrance.

"You will not," Aragorn said quietly, when it was time to speak. "You will try, but Gondor is too strong. Why lose another generation before the walls of Minas Tirith?"

"You threaten me?" Samir said.

"Should I not?" Aragorn smiled. "You threaten us."

"But unlike you, I do so in the heart of my army." Samir spread his hands, indicating the world outside. "You do so alone." Then suddenly he laughed, and from the reaction of Mablung and the others, they had not expected this at all. "You dare do so, even when alone. I think I like you."

They prized audacity, did these warriors of the clans, but their lords also demanded humility. Truly it was a hard line to walk. Aragorn had gambled. His bloodline had the gift of reading the hearts of men, but sometimes even he had to hazard everything on the roll of a die.

"But I have killed men that I like, ere now," said Samir, his laughter cutting off as sharply as with a knife.

"I do not come to threaten you idly," Aragorn said, reacting neither to the laughter nor the threat. "An army from Gondor lies two days' march away, as your scouts have doubtless told you. Its numbers are as great as yours. It has evaded the parties of horsemen that you left in its path. It knows where you are and knows your movements. This you know. The fact that I found you so easily has already told you that much."

And this, too, was a gamble. They had captured several scouts and spies who were bringing news of the Gondorian army to Samir, but it was too much to hope that all such scouts had been intercepted. They had kept the news from breaking too soon, perhaps, but they could not have kept it from breaking at all. He might have only known about the Gondorian army for hours, but he knew. Surely he knew.

"What can we gain from fighting," Aragorn asked, "but the needless deaths of so many of our fighting men? We lost many in the War. You lost-" Samir's eyes blazed, daring him to continue. For the space of half a breath, Aragorn considered backing down, but he sensed that audacity would serve him best. "You lost more," he said.

The woman sucked in a sharp breath, and her hands were tightly clenched in her lap, fingers digging in deeply.

"So you would have us throw down our weapons and walk away?" Samir demanded. "Is that what you come here to ask of us? You dare?"

"No," said Aragorn, as he took another risk. "Your lords are eager to fight. Such is their love for you-"

"That they will seek glory in arms to impress me. Yes. Yes." Samir was needled; Aragorn could tell. He was all too aware of the truth. Samir had united the clans by promising victory in war. If he backed away from that war, he would lose them forever. And Samir was only too aware that Aragorn knew this; knew this, but was forbearing through politeness from mentioning it. Samir hated this, but because of the veneer of politeness, could not quite bring himself to challenge Aragorn about it.

"I do not ask you to walk away," Aragorn said. "I do not ask that your men return meekly to their homes. I would never ask that."

"What, then? What do you ask of me?" An expression of anger passed across Samir's face; it was light enough outside for Aragorn to see it. "You are in no position to ask me anything. I could have you seized now as a hostage and put in chains. What gifts will your king offer me to earn your safe return?"

"What lord has ever turned from his path out of concern for a liegeman?" It was the clansmen's way of things, he knew. It was all too easy to see other cultures as mirrors of your own, and to think that because something was true amongst your people, it was true everywhere else.

"But they are soft in Gondor, I hear," Samir said, "and their king is over-fond of those under his command. But not a hostage, then. I could have you killed now: killed, and forgotten."

"You could," Aragorn said. "I would merely request that you allow my man, here, to return to the king who commands the army, to tell him how things ended for me. He would pass on your words. Your…" He smiled, just a slight curving of one side of his mouth. "Your threats."

"And what are threats if they are not heard?" Samir returned his smile, and the anger seemed to be forgotten, but it was still there, Aragorn knew, lurking beneath the smile. But the smile was genuine, too, he felt, and no mere act.

"Why have we come to this?" Aragorn asked. Outside, a trumpet blew, little different from the trumpets of Gondor. "No war was declared between us."

"No war?" said Samir quietly. "No war?" Through the canvas, the light of dawn showed Bedir intently listening. "The king of Gondor declared war with his actions."

Aragorn thought he knew what he meant. He pretended to misunderstand. "We merely established outposts in the Brown Lands," he said. "They are hundreds of miles to the west of any lands your people have ever claimed as theirs." He held Samir's gaze; made his voice steely. "And yet you destroyed them."

"An act of retaliation," said Samir.

"Killed them," Aragorn accused. "Men, women and children. They were no threat to you. They were in land that was once part of Gondor. Land that for thousands of years, nobody had owned or claimed. Land which was never yours."

At his feet, Mablung's eyes were blazing. Aragorn made no attempt to stop him. Let Samir see the hatred! Whatever else he did today, Aragorn would not let the dead lie forgotten.

"It is because of that outrage that the army comes against you," Aragorn said. "Had you left the outposts alone, Gondor would not have come against you-"

"Pah!" spat the warrior. The woman was half on her feet, but subsided without Samir having to look at her. Samir, for his part, sat completely still, making no more attempt to silence his followers than Aragorn had made to stop Mablung.

"You have provoked the wrath of Gondor," Aragorn said. "That is what her king does not understand." It was a lie, of course. Or not quite a lie, because everything else was just supposition: the reports of scouts mixed with the tale told by the palantír and his own insights, obtained after deep thought in darkened rooms. "Why kill two outposts that were never any threat to you, when by doing so, you prompted an army of thousands to come against you?"

"It was that Hasad!" shouted the warrior, turning to Samir. "You should have sent me!"

"Quiet!" Samir shouted, striking him hard across the cheek. "Look to your duty. Watch them!"

Aragorn kept himself completely still, lest anyone accuse him of trying to take advantage of Samir's bodyguard's distraction. Mablung, he was relieved to see, did exactly the same. He wondered what Samir would do now. The warrior had offered him a way to extricate himself from blame. The lord he had put in command of the raiding party had exceeded his orders. Instead of laying down a challenge, he had committed an atrocity.

Was it true? It could well be. If so, would Samir admit it? No, Aragorn thought. No, he would not. He would far rather be accused of murdering children than admit that his lords were more attached to their own glory than they were to obeying his commands.

"You talk of atrocities?" Samir hissed, then made a visible attempt to compose himself. Bedir's head was bowed. He knew what he had heard; knew, and did not like it. "The king of Gondor tried to have me murdered. That is what started this. That."

"He did not," Aragorn said quietly. "I know this for a fact. He did not. If anyone has told you otherwise, they lied."

"We knew that Gondor would come against us one day," Bedir said. He had recovered from his earlier confusion, and his voice was composed. He was saving Samir from himself, Aragorn knew; giving him a few moments to compose himself and become again the smooth, unruffled leader, who never showed any uncalculated emotion. "Of course she would. Her king claims to be Lord of the West, not just lord of Gondor. Such arrogance!"

Aragorn said nothing. There was nothing that he could say.

"He plans to take back again all the ancient lands of Gondor," Bedir said. "Gondor once spread even to the shores of Rhûn, either through direct rule, or through puppet rules who bowed to her king. This we have learnt in recent years, but we do not remember it. Our people have long memories. We sing the songs of our forefathers and their forefathers before them. We like to think that our memories are as old as time, although they are not, because there are barrows in our lands that are built in ways that are strange to us." He raised his head, and for a moment it was as if his eyes could see again, more deeply than Samir's. "Our songs remember no time when our lands were not our own, but many thousands of years ago, or so Gondor claims, the strangers who lived in our lands bowed to the king of Gondor."

Aragorn could not deny it. "Many thousands of years ago, they did."

"So we knew he would come against us sooner or later," Bedir said, "and so we resolved to be ready. We resolved to stop him. Why should he rule us?"

"Why indeed?" Aragorn said. "Even in Minas Tirith, he wore no crown until the people agreed that his claim was just and asked him to take the throne."

"Pretty words," Samir said, apparently composed again, but there was too much light outside to entirely hide his expression. "I say again: the king of Gondor tried to have me murdered. You claimed it a lie. What say you now?"

Another quick touch on Mablung's shoulder, reminding him not to react. I should not have brought him, he thought, but it had already become clear that it had been the right decision. 'You came with just one man?' Samir had asked, wanting to scorn him because his entourage was so small. A lord with a bodyguard could pass as an envoy worth treating with. A man alone was a spy.

"I did not say that you were lying," Aragorn said. "I said that you were misinformed."

"I was there," Samir said coldly. "I was not misinformed."

"Seventeen days ago," Aragorn said, "a man from the clan of the Red Sun tried to murder the king of Gondor."

"You lie!" cried the warrior, surging to his feet. "When my lord kills him, he will kill him face to face in honorable battle!" His blade came to rest against Aragorn's breast, pressing just hard enough that it would have begun to break the skin, had Aragorn not been wearing mithril beneath his shirt. Even as he did so, Samir was shouting a command. Even as he did so, Aragorn was squeezing Mablung's shoulder, squeezing it hard, demanding that he made no rash move. Mablung's fury was evident, though. Every muscle was taut, and his eyes blazed with hatred.

The warrior subsided, returning to his place at Samir's feet, but Aragorn noticed that this time, Samir did not strike him. Samir wanted Aragorn to see this, he thought. Next time the warrior attacked him, it would be because Samir willed it.

"You must have wondered how I got the token," Aragorn said. "It was the badge of his clan, found on his body afterwards, when he died in the attempt."

Samir shook his head, and once more his composure was leaving him. "You lie."

"Why would I?" Aragorn asked. "If it is a lie, it is one that is only worth telling to the people of Gondor, to rouse them to hate you and all your men. Why would I lie to you, who knows the truth? Why ever would I lie?"

Samir glanced at Bedir, but Bedir's face was turned away. "The man who tried to kill me…" Samir began.

"Failed in his task," Aragorn said. "Failed at the last moment, and publicly so. Shall I guess? You put him to torture, and he was quick to talk. He said that he came from Gondor, and then you killed him. It was all the answer you needed. You had united the clans by warning them that Gondor would bring war upon you in the future. Now they saw that the time for war had come. They clamoured for war, and now you could give them what they wanted."

"Gondor gave us war!" Samir shouted. Bedir's face was still turned away.

"You accuse the king of Gondor of sending an assassin against you in a blatant act of war," Aragorn said. "I deny this. I accuse a man of your clan of trying to assassinate the king of Gondor. You do not deny this, although your man did." He looked down at his chest. "Quite insistently." But the time for smiling was long gone. Samir was far past that now. "But I say to you now: there was something strange about the assassination. The king saw that from the start."

"What was strange?" Bedir asked, when Samir said nothing. He was facing them again, and this time his blind eyes were looking directly at Aragorn, although they were a few inches away from finding his eyes.

"He was your agent; that much was plain. He had the look of it, and he was cut with your knife." His hand rose to his throat, brushing the place with his fingers. "But the attack was thwarted loudly and publicly, and by people unknown. Somebody took great pains to ensure that the news spread throughout Minas Tirith that your people were behind the attack. And lest they forgot, there were other attacks in the days that followed, and at one of them, at least, someone took great pains to ensure that your people were implicated."

"It is a lie," said the warrior, and, "Why tell me this?" asked Samir.

"It is the truth," Aragorn said, in answer to both. "Now, it is possible that you are playing a double game. It is possible that you set your agent up to fail, and that you deliberately set out to inflame the people of Minas Tirith to go to war against you. It is possible that you wanted us to send as large an army as we could, so you could destroy us. But you cannot destroy us."

The warrior's sword was up again. The woman's breath was hissing through her teeth. "Samir," Aragorn said. "Samir," and he turned as much of his will upon the man as he dared to unveil. "Let me speak freely, no risk of retaliation."

Samir opened his mouth; closed it again. Almost he faltered and glanced at Bedir, but he salvaged that much of his pride, at least. "You can," he said. He struck the warrior down, a casual, almost unthinking blow. However this turned out, Aragorn reminded himself, the clansmen's ways were not the ways of Gondor. They would have to tolerate many differences if they were ever to come to an understanding. "You can," Samir said, making it a command.

"You cannot destroy us," Aragorn said. "Our army equals yours, and it is made up of men who defeated the fathers and uncles and brothers of your army, not so many years ago. You can maul us, yes, but we will maul you, but we have more men than you. We have sent only a part of our strength against you. Even if you fought your way through our army, the tattered remains of your force would have to march through Ithilien, because there is no other way round. It is a narrow land, and it will be well defended. We will have ships on the river, and even if you win through to the Pelennor before Minas Tirith, where your fathers died, you will have to face our walls of stone."

"A threat?" Samir said. "I thought you said you uttered no threats."

"No threat," said Aragorn. "Just the truth." He said it with utmost confidence, and although he tried to conceal it, the warrior blanched. If Samir blanched, he kept it hidden, turning his face away into the last few shadows that still lingered in the interior of the covered wain. "But you must know this," Aragorn said quietly. "I do not believe that you would have willingly incited this war."

The woman sprang to her feet. "Gondor tried to kill-"

"No," Aragorn said. "Gondor did not. Just as Lord Samir did not try to kill the king of Gondor. Someone is playing a game with both of us."

"Who?" It was Bedir again, asking the questions that Samir's pride would not allow him to ask.

"Someone who wants us to sap each other's strength in fruitless war, while they creep up behind and take the lands we have left undefended."

"Who?" asked Bedir again.

"Umbar," said Aragorn. "It is Umbar that moves against Gondor."

"Umbar is far away," Bedir said. "We have no quarrel with Umbar."

"But you have a quarrel with the tribes to your east," Aragorn said. "Messengers from Umbar have been seen riding frequently between their own lands the lands of those tribes." Or seen once; that was the truth of it. Seen once in a clouded glimpse in the palantír, but that glimpse alone had been enough to shape a picture around.

Samir was shaking his head. He wanted to deny it, that much was plain. He wanted to react with fury, but he was too astute for that. A foolish man could not have risen to the position he had won. A man who let himself be ruled by affronted pride would never have kept command for so long.

"We will need proof," Bedir said, "before we consider believing you."

"Send messengers to your lands back home," Aragorn said. "Send scouts into the east. Urge them to muster any strength that remains to you, in case my warning is true."

"I thought you would command me to have my army flee back home like a flock of panicked goats," Samir said bitterly. He emphasised the word 'command.' The danger was far from over, Aragorn reminded himself. Samir could still lash out. He could still refuse to believe, or believe, but wish to kill the messenger.

"Who am I to give commands?" Aragorn said, with a smile. "I offer no advice. I only ask that our two armies do not engage until the truth has been demonstrated one way or the other. But I do say this: although the king of Gondor has sent as many men against you as you have sent against him, he has left many more behind, throughout the southern fiefs. Even if our army falls to yours, we have a hope of defeating Umbar."

Do you have the same hope? He left it unsaid, knowing that saying it would be a risk too far. But he knew that the clans had suffered grievous losses on the Pelennor, and this was very likely the whole of their strength. With every day that passed, it was harder for Samir to keep control of them. He had always been slowed by dissent. Some lords were eager for conquest, but as they crossed the Brown Lands, there would be many who remembered that the last time they had journeyed that way, most of them had died. How much easier would it be to maintain control if he took them back home, to defend their own hearths and their families!

None of that could be said out loud, of course. He had been given leave to speak the truth, but although Samir was willing to hear truths about the military situation, he would not appreciate having a stranger talk about the limits of his command.

"It would take many days before the scouts could report back," Bedir said.

"Indeed," Aragorn agreed, "but I can offer you something sooner than that. Not proof, perhaps, but corroboration, something that you might believe more readily."

"Show us, then," said Bedir. "Show us this proof."

They had ridden through the night. It was only when dawn came that Kabil saw that the tall horsemen who had guided them through the darkness was no man at all. "An elf," whispered the prisoner beside him. He grimaced at his bound hands, lashed, as were Kabil's, to his saddle. His right hand was further bound, tightly wrapped with cloth. "One of the ones who captured me."

An elf? What hope did they have, then? There was nothing to fear, the other prisoner had said, when he had wakened Kabil from his dreaming. It had all been explained to him, and they were going home. But who was he? Kabil had thought it a rescue attempt in those first wild moments. Then, when he had seen the party of enemy horsemen, he had feared treachery from this man who spoke his language and told him there was nothing to fear. But the other man's hands were bound, just as his were.

Morning came, and the day was grey and cheerless, and not just because he was riding as a prisoner to an uncertain end. The horsemen who escorted them were silent for the most part, wrapped in cloaks against the gusts of light rain. When they spoke, Kabil could not understand them. As their prisoner, he had learnt just four words of their language: 'yes' and 'you', eat' and 'drink.' "What do they say?" he asked the other prisoner, but as soon as he spoke, all the horsemen turned to look at him.

Could any of them speak his tongue? He had seen no sign of it, but the enemy was wily, and perhaps there was someone here who was waiting for Kabil to give something away in his own tongue. Even if there was not, they clearly did not like their prisoners talking together in a tongue that they did not understand. "They fear we are plotting," said the other prisoner, but then their escort took charge of their horses and led them apart, so that was the end of their talking.

It was only after they had stopped for the noontide meal that Kabil found himself close to the other prisoner once more. "I don't know," the prisoner said, and it wasn't plotting at all, just an answer to his earlier question. "I can understand the men of Gondor when they speak, but not these other men, these fair-haired men who ride as if they're half horse themselves."

"Who are they?" Kabil asked.

"From Rohan, I think," the prisoner said, and the men from Rohan heard him, turning towards them and watching them closely.

Rohan. He had heard of it. Some even said that they were kin from afar: old enemies who had once lived side by side in the north, and stolen each other's horses until both had moved to wider horse-runs elsewhere. Scarred and broken warriors told of the unstoppable charge of the men of Rohan on the field of slaughter outside the stone city of Gondor. But they were gone now, back to their own land. The king of Gondor claimed lordship over the whole west, and how they must hate him for that claim!

But the elves had departed, too, hating this upstart king who claimed the lands that had once been theirs. They were too few to fight him, and so they had left.

An elf was here, and so were the proud riders of Rohan.

And then they were on the move again, and they had wasted their snatched time together in talking about language, and not in plotting at all.

I am lost, Mablung thought. I am lost, and so far from home.

He had understood barely one word in three. But even if the conversation had taken place in his own language, he knew that he would not have understood it all. At times, the king and Samir had been like duellists, fencing with words. They read things in each other's faces, and conveyed messages with the silences between their words. The king appeared to know exactly what to say and how to say it. He knew when it was safe to provoke, and he knew when he needed to placate.

I could not have done it, Mablung knew.

To treat with an enemy like this! To sit there so calmly, knowing that a single unwise word could bring ruin to them all!

Captain Faramir had always been good with people. He had known how to coax the truth out of them with gentle words, and he had known when to use a stern command. As for Mablung… Mablung was a follower. He could fight and he could follow orders. He could hide and he could survive in the wilds. But this… This was not the life for him.

I could not have done it, he thought again.

Would I want to?

"Captain?" he whispered, because he couldn't bear the silence any longer.

They were still in the wain, and their hands were bound. The king had accepted the touch of the rope without any visible reaction. Mablung had reacted more strongly, unable to slow the hectic beating of his heart. Outside they were heavily guarded, he knew. Were people listening on the other side of the canvas? Probably. Could they understand? He had to assume that they could.

"Will he believe you, do you think?" he whispered.

"It is the truth," the king said quietly, perhaps meaning it for the listeners outside.

"I know," Mablung said, "but the truth is not always believed. People don't always want to hear the truth."

"No," said the king. He looked weary, Mablung realised suddenly. Perhaps he had spent days planning what he was going to say to Samir, and rehearsing the words as he sat alone on watch. For him, the true battle was not about merely getting here, but about what he was going to say when he reached his goal. The first part of that battle was over, and although he was a prisoner, at least he had a respite from his battle of words. At least, in a way, he was alone.

Mablung wanted to say more, he needed to say more, but he held his tongue.

If his king called him, he would be there.

"Do you believe him?" Samir asked at last, when they could not be overheard.

Bedir could have answered immediately, but took his time, pretending to give the matter some thought. "I am inclined to believe him, yes."

"Why?" Samir's voice was harsh. "Because he reminds you of your lost youth? Because you feel some fellow feeling with him, because of the few hours you spent together in a cave? He was your enemy even then. He didn't tell you his name, and he wasn't honest with you. Even then, he came from Gondor."

It was true. All was true, the first part as well as the last. "I knew that he wasn't a member of our clan," Bedir said. "Back then, that fact alone was enough to make him my enemy. I knew that. He never hid that."

Although in truth, he could remember very little of the things the man had said. Men were fools if they said that words spoken sixty years before we branded forever in their memory. His people thrived on stories, and an oft-told story kept an old memory alive, but stories evolved. They changed to suit the circumstances and the mood of their teller. Bedir had never told the story in quite the way it had happened. Now only the story remained, and the truth behind it was but a shadow of a memory.

"And he gave me some good advice," Bedir said, and that much, at least, was true beyond doubt, both in the story and the memory. "It is because of that advice that we are here today."

"And you feel that you owe him for that?" said Samir. "A debt of gratitude? An apology?"

There was a seed of truth in that, although Bedir would never admit it. Instead, he turned the talk into safer channels. "His words have the ring of truth. We knew all along that something felt wrong about the attempt on your life. The man was so very quick to implicate Gondor."

"He feared torture."

"A man bold enough and resourceful enough to be sent on such a mission?" Bedir shook his head. "And the confession didn't save him from torture, anyway, but only earned him more, but then he was silent. No screams, no pleas. He had made his confession, and he died bravely, in silence."

"Yes." Samir was nodding slowly, Bedir thought. He knew all his expressions, all his mannerisms. He had known him since his childhood, the quickest and the brightest of the boys born in the early days of their exile. Samir was not his son, but when the time had come to lay down his lordship, he was glad that Samir had been the one to win it from him.

"And there were the other incidents, too," Bedir said. "Rumours flying through the army, just as he claims was the case in Gondor."

"Yes," Samir said. "Yes."

They were silent for a while. Bedir felt the wind on his cheek and the rain on his hair, and turned his face towards the grey shroud that was all that he ever saw of the sky.

"You don't want to believe him," Bedir said. "I know that. It means overturning everything you have ever believed about Gondor. Worse than that, it means standing before your quarrelsome lords and telling them that you've changed your mind: that you no longer promise them a war of conquest against Gondor, but are taking them home."

Samir was pacing, beads rattling in his hair. "They might not accept it." It was something that he would only ever have admitted to Bedir, and even then, he did so with difficulty. "It has been hard enough for me to hold them together this far. They will not accept it."

"They will, I think," Bedir said, "if you command it." This would be the true test of Samir's leadership, he thought. If Samir could hold his army together through this, then they were his for the rest of his life.

"And if it's true…" Samir said. "If it becomes clear that I have led them hundreds of miles away from our home, while our old enemies have crept up behind us and fallen upon our defenceless homes…?"

Bedir smiled. "And you came to know of it through a whisper on the wind, and took your host home again, and arrived just in time to save the halls and homes of every lord…?" He touched Samir's hand. "Don't dismiss his words just because you don't want them to be true and because the price of believing him is high. You are greater than that, and wiser than I was as a boy. I almost dismissed his suggestion out of hand. I thought he was criticising the ways of my people. What did he know of it: a wounded stranger in a cave? But I took a risk. I looked past my affronted pride and saw the truth of his words."

"And now we are here," Samir said, smiling wryly.

"Yes." Bedir nodded. "And now we are here."

"And he wants us to ride out with him, you and me and a small party of us to see this proof of his." Samir gave a bark of laughter. "Oh, he offers us guarantees. He has told us our destination, but he will let us choose our own route there. He will let us watch the road for ambushes and traps." Another laugh. "He is a clever man, and he slipped past three lines of sentries, and would have slipped past the fourth, had he not deliberately revealed himself. If he plans a trap for us, I am far from confident that we will escape it."

"It would be a risk," Bedir said. "A great risk."

"Yes," said Samir. "I will not do it. I will tell him- No, I will kill him."

"I didn't mean riding out to see this proof of his," Bedir said. "I was talking about refusing to do so. About dismissing his words because you don't want to hear them. What if he's right? What if he's right, and you ignored him? That is the true risk. That."

At the end of it, it all came down to having faith in others. Aragorn had to believe that Legolas had conveyed his messages correctly, and that they had been passed on. He had to believe that Éomer had led the army well in his absence and acted in the way that Aragorn needed him to act. He had to trust that Samir would react the way he expected. He had trusted in his cloak and in Gimli's mithril shirt. He had trusted Mablung to move with the utmost stealth, and to give nothing away, although Aragorn had forced him into a situation that he found almost unendurable.

And he had to believe that his judgements were correct. He had to believe that all the pieces would come together as he had planned, and that all the players would perform as he needed them to. If they did not, the fault was not theirs, but his, for misjudging things.

The plan was his. If it failed, the fault was his.

And it could still fail. Samir had agreed to come with him – Bedir had played his part in that, he thought – and that was one battle won. Once the decision had been made, Samir had moved swiftly. The armies were two days apart by the speed of marching men, but far less than that on horseback. Aragorn had suggested an escort of twenty warriors, and so Samir had brought thirty, as Aragorn had known he would. Éomer would have sent twenty-four. More than that, and Samir might feel threatened and launch a pre-emptive attack. Too few, and he might attack anyway, scenting a certain victory.

Supposition, he thought. It was all supposition. Everything was. Supposition and insight, but insight could be flawed. He was the Heir of Isildur, but he was not immune to errors of judgement. Nobody was.

No, he thought, as one of Samir's scouts signalled from a hill top to say that the enemy party had been sighted. This is not yet over. There were still so many ways in which it could all go wrong.

Late in the afternoon, the horsemen halted. An early meal, Kabil thought, or an even earlier end to the day's journey, but the horsemen didn't dismount. "What is it?" Kabil asked. "What are they saying?"

The other prisoner shook his head, saying that he didn't know. Kabil wondered if he should jab his heels into his horse's side and make a run for it, but he didn't want to die. I'm sorry, Hasad, I don't want to die! He was nothing without a lord to give him orders. All he could do was wait.

"Samir," the other prisoner breathed. "My lord."

Kabil's head snapped up. He saw dust clouding in the east. He saw banners, limp in the rain. A group of horsemen: twenty, perhaps, or thirty? "How?" he asked. "How do you know?"

"Because it has to be," said the prisoner. "Samir himself, or someone close to him. It would make no sense otherwise."

It makes no sense to me anyway, Kabil wanted to say, but who was he? Just a man without a lord; a man whose lord was dead.

The party came closer, and he knew the sigil on the banners. Even in the gloom, he knew it. "An ambush…" he breathed, but even as he thought it, he didn't think it was. The enemy horsemen held their spears upright, more like an honour guard than an ambush. He had seen those spears at work, and knew how deadly they could be, but for now, at least, they were not being readied for war.

Samir rode right up to them. Kabil only had eyes for him. Words were spoken. Men took up their allotted stations. "Lord Samir!" Kabil cried, but Samir silenced him with a sharp look and a fierce nod. There were two strangely-clad riders in his group, Kabil noticed. Their grey cloaks made them difficult to see clearly, and the taller one was hooded against the rain, his face cast in shadow.

Kabil waited, desperate to explain himself, desperate to beg Samir's forgiveness. Was this an exchange of prisoners? There were two of them here, and two strangers in Samir's party. But the grey-clad strangers were not bound. When the tall one rode forward, nobody tried to stop him. Some of them wanted to, Kabil thought, but Samir stopped them, holding up a peremptory hand.

Oh, I don't want to be here! Kabil thought, and he pulled at his bonds, chafing the skin until it hurt. The shame of it! To be seen by all these people as a captive! He wanted Samir to speak to him, to tell him that he was forgiven. But as long as Samir ignored him, he could pretend that forgiveness would come. If Samir spoke to him only to scorn him…!

Then the moment came at last. "Kabil," Samir said quietly, so quietly that surely nobody else could hear. "I need you to tell me the truth. Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Don't try to make yourself look better than you were. I will know. Don't accuse our enemies of things they didn't do." He smiled. It was a strange smile, almost rueful. "I will know."

And so Kabil told him everything: about Hasad and the attacks on the enemy outposts; about Hasad's wound; about the conflict that had followed it. For the most part, Samir listened without question, except to say, "The women and children as well? He specifically told you to kill them?"

"He said it would show Gondor how strong we are, and force them to send an answer," Kabil said. "And we would be ready to meet that answer, and kill them all."

"And you have seen the size of the answer that they send," Samir said. "Hasad was always rash, but I had not pegged him as a fool, or cruel."

"You commanded…" Kabil began, but how could he know? All he had known about Samir's commands was what Hasad had told him. That was all any of them had known. As a boy, Hasad had always been one to take a command and exceed it, in an attempt to win himself more glory. It was what had earned him the beads of a lord.

"And so Hasad died," Samir said. "Killed by Gondor."

"No." Kabil had to shake his head. The truth. He had been asked to tell the truth. It was hard; harder ever than deceiving himself had been. "It was a minor wound, but he didn't tend it well. He would have died anyway, even without them."

He said more, telling Samir about the ambush they had set for the horsemen of Rohan and Gondor. They had been so sure of victory. Right up until the end, they had expected nothing else. "Hasad said they had few horses, and rode them badly, but they were good," he said. "Too good. And it's impossible to hide from them. They knew exactly where we were."

"We cannot beat them?"

The truth. Tell the truth. Kabil couldn't bring himself to look at Samir's face, only down at his bound hands, the hands of a shamed traitor. "I don't think we can, lord, or if we do, only at great cost. They could have killed us all."

"But they did not?" Samir asked.

"No." The truth. The truth, even though it should taste like ashes. "They tried hard not to kill us, I think. Most of us they took in prisoners, and they treated us well. We were bound, but we were fed. And they let us bury our dead." He looked at Samir, and found that he could barely see him for the tears that were welling in his eyes. "They let us say the proper words. Our people died far from home, but their spirits are at rest." He closed his eyes. "He is at rest."

Samir said nothing. By the time Kabil had composed himself, Samir had moved on to the other prisoner. He was a messenger and a spy, it seemed, who carried orders to Samir's agent in the great stone city, and took back his reports. Now that he said it, Kabil remembered him at last. They had seen him pass south but they had never seen him return.

"There was no report last time," the man was saying. "I went to the usual place, but it was empty. So I risked a visit to the city, and they were saying… My lord Samir, they were saying that he had tried to kill the king of Gondor. I thought they were lying at first. I knew what your last orders to him were, and it wasn't that. But too many people had seen it with their own eyes. They said that your sigil was found on his body, but he hid that. I know that he did that. I was there when he did it, when we travelled down together right at the start."

"Yes," said Samir, "yes," as he turned his back on them, apparently lost in thought.

There would be no forgiveness for Kabil, not today. He had told the lord of lords that he could not defeat the forces of the king of Gondor. He had told the truth, and now he was forever damned.