The Breaking of a Storm

Sweet was your song of the world’s desire
When life was yours: now your days are sped
I set at your feet my Lydian lyre,
And my Phrygian flute to mark your head.

~ Anonymous Greek epitaph ~

North Ithilien, 20 June 3018

THE WOODS WERE silent. It seemed that all the forest creatures had fled, leaving only the trees, unmoving in the hot summer sun, for there was no breeze now to stir the still leaves and parched brown grass. It was as though all Ithilien was holding its breath, awaiting the breaking of a great storm.

Suddenly a bird screamed and soared like an arrow into empty sky, circling angrily before it fled away into the west. Once more, the forest lapsed into its uneasy stillness.

Then, a curlew called softly. Twice, its voice pierced the silent air.

In the brown dappled shade, a man moved. But none saw him, for he made no sound, and his light feet left no mark on the forest floor. Passing swiftly from shadow to shadow, he ran with the sureness of one who knew every tree from its brother, and every stone from its twin. Loping up a gentle hill, he ducked behind a bush, and paused to draw a long hunting knife from his belt, and dull its shining blade with a handful of earth.

Not much more than a spear’s throw away was a high outcrop of moss-covered stone, surrounded by low shrubs and brambles. Within its shelter, one could look upon well nigh all of North Ithilien; and a man with keen eyes would see far to the south, the grey ruins of Osgiliath, and beyond it the shining face of Mindolluin, and the White City at its foot. And to the east, the black heights of Ephel Duath.

Knife in hand, he crept through the deep undergrowth, by a secret way known only to a few, a path cleared of bramble thorns that would have snared their clothes and left the tell-tale signs to servants of the Enemy. Then he slid through a deep fissure in the stone - and checked violently.

A tall man, hooded and masked, stood before him in the rock-strewn space beyond, and an arrow, nocked to his bow, was ready to make its deadly flight. Slowly, the newcomer raised his hands in surrender.

In a pleasant voice, he said, “Mablung, your welcome is over-warm.”

The other quickly lowered his bow, and a smile came into his eyes. “Well met Captain Faramir. But I see that you too, come not unprepared.” Then, he was grave again. “You have seen it, sir?”

“I have,” said the other, sheathing his blade. “It is an ill sign.”

“Yet, there is more. Look, and listen.” In a crack between two great stones, the greens and browns of North Ithilien fell away before them, and in the darkening east, the vast wall of Ephel Duath seemed to swim in noon heat. At first, Faramir saw nothing; then he felt the still air tremble with the sound of marching feet, and his straining eyes caught a glint of metal in the shadowy eastern woods, before it vanished, as though it had never been.

Behind him, Mablung laid a hand on his shoulder and whispered. “Stay but a moment, sir. They come now to a path unmasked by woods, and we may know then what their strength is.” They watched and caught their breath as they saw first, little more than a grey dust cloud that soon became a long black column swarming in the distance, and the ragged standards lifting in the wind of their passing. For a long while - too long - the Enemy’s forces swept on and on, like a torrent till the last dark trickle died away into the trees.

“They are so many, and they march at a great pace,” said Mablung grimly.

“The scouts - have we had any word from the scouts?”

Mablung shook his head, and his face was troubled. “Not a breath, though I sent a party east three days ago. They could not have come so far unnoticed, unless -” he stopped abruptly, and sighed. “Well, what now sir?”

But Faramir’s blue eyes had turned to the west, and there was a frown between his brows. “This is ill news indeed. A great band of Southrons are coming up the old Harad road. I’ve sent a company south to harry them, but I fear our numbers are too few.”

“Osgiliath,” Mablung said grimly. “There is no other place that the Enemy may make the crossing in force, save by the bridge.”

“Aye. They make for Osgiliath, and the attack will be upon us this very night, unless I am much mistaken. Thus the hammer blow falls at last.” Then he straightened, and said, “Mablung, go swiftly now to Boromir and tell him of this thing that we have seen. I will gather our brothers, and make what resistance we may, but we cannot hold them for long. Go now, there’s not a moment to lose!”

“Aye, sir. Swift as the wind, I‘ll be.”

In spite of it all, laughter came suddenly into Faramir’s eyes. “Swift or no, you’ll be wet before you know it, my friend. I smell a storm in the air.”

“Just as well, sir. We all need a bath.”

“Or two, Mablung.”

They clasped hands, then Mablung was gone.

For the second time that day, the curlew’s call echoed through the hills of North Ithilien, and here and there, it was taken up; then all sound died away, and the silence of the trees was not broken again, save for the growing tramp of enemy feet, coming nearer with each step to Osgiliath.

* * *

THE RAIN HAD come suddenly, dark torrents of it tearing through the wind-driven trees, washing away the heat of what had promised to be a blazing afternoon, and swelling the calm waters of the great Anduin to a white whirling madness.

All that afternoon, the orc army marched westwards, following the ancient road built by the kings of Gondor in the days of old, and the host of wild Easterlings followed, straggling behind. The road was little more than a narrow pathway now; for when the men of Ithilien had fled the evil growing in the east, they had let their roads, once white and shining in the summer sun, go back to the wild. Year after year the trees above it had crept so close that they blotted out the sky; grass grew and cracked the proud stone paving, and here and there, the marsh had swallowed it, and sometimes for leagues, it was nothing but a straight dirt track.

The storm did not stop them, for orcs and the Easterlings were hardy, and they swept on, as dark clouds driven by a great wind; yet, by late afternoon their numbers were something fewer than when they had started out a day and a night before. Through the rain-greyness, deadly flights of arrows sped silently from the woods, and tore gaps in their ranks. Naturally, they too sent their own black arrows singing blindly back into the murk, but the Enemy never knew whether they found their targets. And they did not dare follow their unseen foe into the trees, for they knew that those who did would not return alive.

All the long afternoon, the green fletched shafts pursued them, but the long harried column marched on, leaving a trail of sodden corpses to leak their dark blood into the darker earth.

But now the rain had stopped at last, a grey sky showed above the dark dripping leaves above them, and the woods seemed silent and empty. Yet for a while now, the Enemy had made slow progress, for the road was now a narrow muddy trail that sank all too often into marsh, hemmed in by trees on both sides.

* * *

IT WAS A MEREST hint of sound, the faint tramp of feet far away. The watchers in the woods sat up, some reaching quietly for their long bows. They had been waiting since the rain had eased to a pale mizzle; they waited, sitting on their heels, still and silent with their drawn swords darkened with earth, and their long, fair arrows thrust into the ground before them. They numbered some hundred men, masked and grimly sheltering under their green hooded cloaks on either side of the old road.

Ill tidings had come to them early that afternoon, for a company sent south to waylay the oncoming host of the Haradrim had been beaten off with grave losses, and now their remnants were harrying the Southrons on the road to Osgiliath, to slow their march if they could. But the Enemy was still advancing at a great pace, and it would be all too soon before the rangers would have to fall back behind the ruined city walls.

Their captain had taken the news with his usual calm, and had paused only to issue fresh orders to the weary galloper who had come to them by the secret ways through wind and rain. Now, hooded like the rest, he stood leaning lightly on his bow, his keen, narrowed gaze turned northwards. He too, felt the odd thrumming in the air that always came before a battle; the hammering of men’s hearts within their breasts, the scarce-taken breaths, the slow tautening of nerves. He could hear voices now, low growls that passed for speech among the orcs, the uncouth tongue of the Easterlings and their heavy steps growing ever closer. There was a scent of damp leather in the air, and sharper now, the sour smell of orc. Soon the vanguard would be in sight.

The moment had come. Cupping hands to his lips, Faramir whistled softly, as one bird calls lazily to another. The rangers took up their bows and came soundlessly to their feet. A stocky man shouldered up beside him, his eyes bright in the darkness of his hood.

“We’ll be off now, sir.”

“Be careful, and remember to break off at the signal.”

“Aye, sir.” Tensely, he watched the small detachment peel away and melt into the shadows, and with a quiet sigh, drew on his mask, for with that tiny knot of men went all their hopes. Then he too, fitted an arrow to his bow, and turned to the road once again.

He was just in time. The first ragged standards, clinging wetly to their shafts winked darkly between the dripping leaves below, and the vanguard, struggling and cursing in the mud burst quite unexpectedly into sight.

A man beside him laughed quietly. “There they are at last! We have waited over long.” Another chuckled, “Hush, Anborn, you’ll scare them away.” The breath of laughter caught, then died away altogether, and the smell of drawn steel that was the smell of battle came to him, and for an instant, Faramir could hear nothing for the pounding of blood in his ears. Odd, how some men took such easy delight in war, in the clash of blade against blade and the letting of blood; for the way of war had never come easy to him.

The Enemy was close now, so close that he could have almost reached out and touched one with a spear.

Like a storm, the battle burst upon them. A flight of arrows screamed; orcs and Easterlings fell, and others, roaring, rushed for their weapons. Then, Mardil and his small band, drawing their swords, leapt into the open, crying, “Gondor! Gondor!”

Enraged, the Enemy swept in a dark mass toward the tiny knot of men, and overhead, black arrows darkened the sky. Rangers fell, but Mardil and his little detachment grimly stood their ground.

“Now!” cried Faramir, and behind him, the shrill, mocking note of a hunting horn echoed in the trees, and the men on the road turned and fled for their lives. Still the orcs charged, the Easterlings behind them shoving the rest along in a furious wave, and somewhere, the Enemy’s booming war horns bellowed in answer. Onward they rolled, yelling their savage rage, and their black standards streamed in the wind.

“Ten paces,” a man whispered tautly.

Only little more now. Faramir’s hand tightened on the shaft of his bow, and he felt the silent, in-drawn breaths of his men hold, and hold. Five more paces. Mardil and the rest leaping for the cover of the woods.

Suddenly, the front ranks buckled with a terrible cry, and the innocent earth yawned and swallowed them, while the bear traps, with their sharp, fired stakes did their bloody work, for the ditch was deep, and wider than the arm spans of three men. The charge broke into a mesh of tangling, pushing, threshing bodies, as orcs and men who escaped the stakes scrambled out, and some were on swept into the ditch by their fellows and yet others came swarming over the bodies of the dying and wounded.

A great cheer rose from the trees, and the arrows tore from the wooded shadows like flights of dark birds. The arrows whistled from his bow with the easy speed of long use, and the straggling column of the Enemy swarmed and crumpled in upon itself, and several times, their ragged standards tumbled, then righted themselves again. Then the orcish arrows came thrumming into the woods; one grazed his ear, and beside him, a man dropped with a strangled cry, clutching at a black feathered shaft in his throat.

Catching up his sword, he cried, “It’s time to finish the work, my brothers! Faramir for Gondor!” All around him, the battle cry was taken up; the hunting horn screamed once more, and they fell upon the enemy, yelling and hewing as they went. From the other side, more men sprang out from the trees; rangers, orcs and Easterlings crashed together as the white surf crashes upon black rock, and the battle began in earnest.

* * *

THE GALLOPER HAD broken out of the woods in the afternoon, and the lookouts, sighting a stranger through the slant-wise rain, bent their bows upon him. Then they saw that he was one of their own, a young ranger drooping in the saddle, sodden with mud.

He had ridden on many errands that day, and would have fallen on the grey-cobbled ground, had a pair of gentle hands not caught him.

“Get him out of this rain, quick, and bring some strong wine.” A man’s familiar face; eyes with the light of the evening star in them. Relief overcame him; then a wave of blackness, like the terror of great beating wings swept sight from his eyes, and he knew no more.

It seemed an age before the light came again. He woke to the glow of a crackling fire, the hammering of rain outside, and men’s voices hushed and grave. And he lay warm in the rough folds of a bear-skin rug, warmer than he had been for a long while now. In the fire-glow the boy saw two men; one slight and dark, in the green-brown garb of a ranger and another, whose bright armour glittered like the sun on river water. And he held his breath, for the man was tall and grave as a king of old.

Yet he knew their faces - Mablung’s with its kind grey eyes, and the other, fairer, and more noble, yet with little gentleness in it.

“Mablung! My lord Boromir!” Rising suddenly, he choked like one half drowned.

“Nay, lie still now Beleg, and drink this,” said Mablung gently, dropping to one knee and taking the boy in his arms. The wine, hot and sweet, went down like fire, and the colour came flooding back into his cheeks.

Boromir’s long shadow fell over them both.

“What word does my brother send?”

Under the lord Boromir’s grim gaze, Beleg stammered out his errand, and told of the fell thing that had hunted him in the woods. For a long while after he had finished, Boromir said nothing, but his fingers grew white as bone on the hilt of his sword.

“This black-winged creature - have you seen it Mablung?”

“Never, sir,” Mablung answered, shaking his dark head. “Else we would have brought word of it.”

“So, a new terror comes upon us,” said Boromir, rising to his feet. “Yet, we can only watch and wait, and hope.” Outside, the rain was easing at last, and with it, his heavy heart lifted a little. Then he turned away, and the look in his face, shrouded in the shadow was one that few men had ever seen. Faramir, Faramir, why do you not return with your brothers? Would that I were with you! Yet he knew that Faramir had done the only thing he could.

And so must he. The thought of it lay like a stone in his belly.

“Come Mablung, there is much still to be done.”

Boromir had turned away, but the boy Beleg cried, stumbling to his feet, “My lord, what can I do? My brothers are away, and I will not lie here abed while others do the work of war!”

He was a mere child; and Boromir, looking across twenty summers, saw with a catch in his heart the ghost of another boy, fair and scholarly and full of the same eagerness. “Nay, rest now,” he said gently, setting his hand on the child’s shoulder. “ You have done a man’s work this day, and there will be more to do tonight. Your company rode in an hour ago, and you may join them when you find your feet again. Your captain did well to entrust this errand to you, Beleg, for you have done him proud.”

With a smile, he and Mablung slipped away into the grey rain, and Beleg’s eyes, bright with unshed tears closed for a moment, remembering those who laboured still in the woods and the captain who had kissed his brow before he rode away into the dark and sunless forest.

“Go now, and may the light of Earendil go with go with you.”

* * *

IT WAS RED work. The enemy recoiled at the first onslaught of the tall, masked men who swooped down on them with their long sharp swords; and they drew back from one in particular who was taller than the rest, whose pale eyes seemed to blaze with the fire of the elven-kind, and whose deadly brand wreaked ruin in its wake.

So the battle raged, and the Enemy’s force, strung out perilously along the forest road broke in many places, and fleeing into the dark woods, were hewn down by the men of Ithilien. The rangers spared none, and each blow they struck was for the memory of the homes and kinsmen they had lost long ago.

Blood and mud mingled, churned by feet of friend and foe alike, and the bright gold of many an Easterling lay dulled on the red running earth. It seemed that the tide was turning for the men of Gondor at last, and that the Enemy, numerous though they were, must turn and flee.

Then, at the height of the battle, a cry echoed in the woods. The sound of it chilled the stoutest hearts, and fear froze the swords in their hands. Even the trees seemed to shiver, and all around, green leaves fell like rain. And above the roiling battle, in the cold grey sky, came the beating of giant wings. A great shadow on the back of a winged beast, and a fell blade like fire in its hand.

Down and down it swept, and claws, sharp as spears, slew. All about Faramir, men fell, screaming, and the Enemy, with a roar like thunder, rallied. The rangers fought like heroes, but little by little, they were driven back and back into the woods, the mud sucking at their feet. Again, the black shadow swooped, and men, maddened by fear, threw down their weapons and fled. Soon the retreat would become a route.

Their captain, surrounded now by a knot of Easterlings was one of the last to turn. Grimly cutting his way back to the sheltering forest, his clear voice rose above the battle-din.

“Fall back! Fall back to the horses!” And somewhere, the hunting horn sounded the retreat. Again and again, it rang in the trees, till at last it broke off in the middle.

* * *

THE RIDERS BURST from the woods like a skein of geese flighting, a long stream of them in their sodden greens and browns, crouched low on slavering mounts. Up the old road they fled, riderless horses among them, the rest close to foundering, and the high, desperate cries of men, quavering with terror, reached the watchers on the ramparts.

“Open the gates!” cried Boromir. And he leapt down the rampart stairs, hand on his sword. Men and horses came clattering through the archway, and the sharp smell of sweat and blood was in the air. So many faces strained with weariness and horror. But where was Faramir? Fear, like a cold hand seized his heart. In the tangle of plunging horses, he pushed his way to a man he knew.

“Mardil,” he cried, “What news, and where is my brother Why is he not with you?”

The man was pale. His horse stood sweating and trembling, and blood foaming at her lips. “We were beaten off, sir,” he gestured helplessly to the riderless mounts, and swallowed. “Then a great terror came from the sky, a winged creature of the Enemy. It drove the horses mad, and swept men out of their saddles as an bird of prey snatches its quarry from the earth.”

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Mardil met Boromir‘s anxious eyes. “Our captain was not far behind. He, and a few others in the rearguard. Oh sir, let you bid the men hide swiftly in the ruins now, for the winged terror will be upon us! Mablung, Damrod and I will ride out to Faramir now and find him.”

A pause. He would have said, “And I will ride with you, for he is my brother, and I will not abandon him to torment and death.” But duty, duty bound him as surely iron fetters bound a prisoner to his cell. His entire being cried out against it, and for an instant, anger blazed within him; then he saw the eyes of his men, the simple faith in their faces, and rage died away. Who would lead them if not him? And so, he made his choice.

“Go now,” Boromir said gravely. “And know that my heart goes with you. Find him, and bring him back.”

“That I will, sir,” said Mardil.

Suddenly, a sound like the death-cries of a thousand men pierced the air; and two horsemen broke from the cover of the woods. Faramir, his fair hair streaming in the wind, and another. For a long moment, the men of Osgiliath did not move, for the terrible shriek had turned their limbs to stone, their blood to ice.

A great winged creature, bearing a black, faceless shadow swooped, scything. Horse and rider crashed to the ground in a flailing, screaming tangle of legs and limbs. Frozen with horror, men saw blood spurting crimson onto the green grass, but the ranger rolling clear, was on his feet, and stumbling towards the safety of the gate arch.

Then, Faramir’s clear voice rang in the unnatural silence; and swinging his terrified mount, hauled the man into the saddle before him, and swept onward to the gate. A cry of rage, and black claws tearing through the grey featureless sky, missed them by a hair’s breadth.

In the ruined city, a man moved at last, and shivering hands drew bow. A lone arrow speeding skywards, found its target, the Nazgul screaming this time in anguish. Then, as men found their courage again, more arrows darkened the sky, and tore through the great flapping wings. The creature, maddened with rage and whirling in agony, circled once before it fled screeching into the deep hills.

A ragged cheer of joy and relief erupted from the garrison, and Faramir drawing up before the great stone arch, saw his brother and raised a gloved hand in salute. The man before him slid from the saddle, and dropped to his knees, retching. The shadow in the sky was gone now, but the terror of its passing lingered still in the air, and some men looked up still in fear at the gathering dusk. They waited and waited, sword and spear and bow in hand, hardly daring to breath.

Nothing. Only the sky grew darker, for night would soon be upon them. Then they knew that the creature would not be returning. Not yet.

Boromir laid down his bow. Danger had passed, but there was a cold knot in his belly, and his fingers were stiff. Behind him, men slowly turned to their work again, talking in hushed tones, and here and there snatches of strained laughter reached his ears, and the cries of the wounded. Dark-cloaked shadows passed him by, and the subdued voices of his brother’s men reached him through the pounding of his heart. No doubt, in their own quiet way, the rangers would be seeing to their own, for the brunt of the first blows had fallen heavily upon them, as it always had.

Only Faramir, sitting very still on his horse bent his bright gaze skywards, a deep line between his brows. The last red rays of the setting sun blazed in the west, and the long horizon, with the White City far away, the Causeway Forts and the great ruins of Osgiliath burst into flame. He wished that he could cling to the golden sun and never let it go, for who knew what the night would bring with it? Darkness, like a great sea-wave swept suddenly between him and the sun.

Boromir’s quiet voice reached him. “What was that?”

“I do not know. Twenty summers I have spent in Ithilien’s woods, yet I have never seen its like.”

Then Boromir seized his arm and demanded sharply, “Faramir, are you hurt?”

He smiled, passing a weary hand over his eyes. “Nothing that bread and good wine will not cure.” Slowly, he eased himself off his horse, and quite suddenly, the earth reeled, and in his ears, came the sound of a river rushing. Breath left him, and he would have fallen, had Boromir’s hand not caught him. An instant’s fury at his weakness brought colour back into his bloodless cheeks. With great effort, he righted himself.

“It was a long ride, brother, and one made in great danger,” said Boromir.

So his brother understood after all. Had Boromir felt too, the tremors in his hands and seen the terror in his eyes? Was Boromir never afraid?

“So it was,” said the captain of the rangers steadily, turning to the west. The sun had melted away into darkness, and he saw across the river, Minas Tirith glowing softly, and nearer, a chain of lights, steady and unwinking along the Rammas, and on the west bank. Soon the torches would be lit here too, in the east. Night had come at last. “So it was,” he said under his breath.

* * *

THEY GATHERED IN the burnt out ruins of what had once been a library. It was still partially roofed, and in the blackened corners were the rotting remains of carved wooden shelves, and the fallen leaves of many autumns. The books of course, had long gone. Who knew what timeless treasures had perished here, in the smoke and fires of countless battles? What splendour was there now, that did not lie in ruins? On the crumbling stone wall, a wild rose bush had taken root, and in the flickering firelight, the fragile branches with their three pale blossoms leapt and swayed with a golden life of their own.

The captain of the rangers did not love Osgiliath now. Once, when he was a child, he had loved it for its memory, its lost beauty and its ageless sorrow. As a man, he saw in it only death and suffering, and the ghosts of a tragic, long-perished glory. So he had turned his eyes to Ithilien instead. Fair Ithilien still, though she bore now the marks of the Enemy; Ithilien, which belonged to him, and him to her in a way that he could not explain, and his heart was heavy, as though with incipient grief.

He was among the six captains huddled beneath their cloaks in the library; though it was summer, the nights were chill, and the small, crackling fire did little to warm them. Even the wine, hot, strong and sweet failed to lift their spirits. Sodden still with rain, he sat, like the rest of them, warming their bare hands before the flames, listening to Boromir’s quiet insistent voice, watching as he drew the battle plan on the stone floor with the end of a charred stick.

It was simple enough - to hold the walls and the city gate if they could, and if the enemy broke through, they would retreat in good order to the bridge. It was pointless, Boromir argued, to fight a running battle amidst the ruins - the Enemy’s numbers were too great.

Then Mardil looked up from the fire, and when he spoke, it was with the soft lilt of Lossarnach in his voice. Once, long ago the men of his line had come from Ithilien, but now, like so many of the company, they had become a scattered people.

“Will there be enough of us to hold them, even for a while?”

“I have called up the western garrison to add to our strength. Only a small force remains there to guard the city. But if the Enemy should chance to look -” he waved a hand, and they all turned to a window looking west. They saw lights, the glow of many camp-fires shining like golden stars across the river.

“ - they will find that we are a multitude.”

A breath of laughter rose among them, and Boromir smiled. Then, he was grave again. Pausing, he looked at each of them in turn. “There is one thing we have not spoken of this night. The winged creature of the Enemy. Fire arrows have been issued to the men, but use them sparingly, for there was not time enough to make more. But the men must stand. Fly, and all will be lost.”

“There is nothing for it. If we cannot hold the east bank, we must pull out. From here, the bulk of our men will fall back across the bridge whilst a small party will stand here,” he said, placing a small stone at the neck of the bridge where he had drawn it, “and hold it against the Enemy. The bridge is narrow, and a rearguard of perhaps two dozen men will suffice. Meanwhile, the sappers will hew down the bridge at my order. Once the rearguard makes its way across, the last beams will be cast down, and the Great River will take all with it.”

Then, one of Boromir‘s captains, a small scar-faced man nodded and said, “And since the Anduin is in full spate, there is no other ford for leagues around. That will hold them for a while and a while on the east bank.”

“Aye,” he said briskly. Turning to his brother, “What do you think?”

Faramir, who had said little, looked up and said, “I am with you. Though I am loathe to leave Ithilien to the Enemy, even if it is for a little while.”

“We have done what we can,” Boromir said quietly to his brother, laying his hands on Faramir’s shoulders. “No man could ask for more.” The grief in his brother’s eyes was as a knife turning in his heart.

“No man, not even him!”

The brothers looked at each other. Then, at last, Faramir nodded. “It shall be as you say. We will hold.”

Then, Boromir rose and said to them all, “If we yield the east bank to the Enemy this night I, Boromir, son of Denethor promise you this: we shall return one day to drive the darkness from these shores, and the silver trumpets will ring to our coming. The blood of Gondor will not be unavenged!”

His long shadow fell over them, and in the fire light, he seemed like a hero-king of the elder days, tall and golden and full of wrath and majesty, and their hearts were comforted. Then, the moment faded, and he was their Boromir once more, brave and beloved.

They parted soon after, with the little jests that men make before a battle; each man to his own duty, each to his own fears. At the last the brothers were left alone. What was there to say, after so many battles, so much death? What words of farewell could encapsulate the shared love and memory, the bond of common blood and brotherhood? So they embraced in silence, and reluctantly, Boromir let his young brother go. And he stood watching long after Faramir had turned away, a tall slight figure in a ragged cloak fading into the torch-lit dark, his fair hair gleaming gold.

A Rose Falls “Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me.
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?”

~Lays of Ancient Rome: Horatius~
Thomas Babbington, Lord Macaulay.

THE RAIN HAD come again, no storm this time, but a soft yellow mizzle, gentle and incessant, bright as fire-sparks in the pools of light along the rampart walls. It fell silently on the swords and shields and armour of the defenders, and on the sappers who lay waiting with sharpened axes in their small swift boats under the last bridge that joined the east and west banks of Osgiliath.

The bridge had once been a grand affair, fashioned out of the same white stone as much of the city itself in the glory-days of the South Kingdom. A man could still trace with his fingers, here and there on the crumbling moss-grown masonry, the faded reliefs of seven stars and a white tree, faces of nameless kings and lost battles. But many lives of men had passed since any had seen the great bridge shining with newness in the summer sun, or felt the smooth sharpness of its fresh-hewn stone. Long ago, it had fallen into ruin, and in some ancient battle, forgotten by song, the bridge had broken under the weight of age and the trampling feet of war. Though in after years, the men of Gondor built another bridge in wood to join the shattered arms of stone that still reached out from either bank, it was but the bare bones of a creature once living, once beautiful in the flesh.

Osgiliath herself had never quite been a fortress city, and it was only in the long years of Gondor’s slow decline, that the fortifications of the east bank had been hastily thrown up in the face of the oncoming darkness, with wood and stone gathered from the ruins. Time and again, the Enemy had broken through; time and again the men of Gondor wrested the city from the Enemy. So the tide of war ebbed and flowed over Osgiliath. On this night of nights, her defenders stood armed and in silence along the rampart walls, spread far too thinly for their Captains’ liking. Now and then, they looked from the black, soundless woods to the rain-blurred lights of the west bank, where the wounded and a small handful of men remained to guard the city.

Waiting, waiting. It seemed to Faramir that all his life had been spent watching and waiting in the wings. This night was no different, for he knew well the long, tense silence before a battle, the fraying of tempers, and the fear that lurked under the trembling fingers and bright eyes of men. Taut as a bow-string, they were, and he knew it. He stood, leaning lightly on his bow, as was his habit, staring into the tree-darkness to the south. For a long while now, nothing had moved save for a pale mist, crawling along the forest floor. Once, a small woodland creature had broken from the trees, and a young ranger beside him had drawn and nearly loosed into the dark. They had all laughed then, softly and breathlessly, and the boy, Beleg had laughed red-faced, with them.

Tonight, the southern rampart was his command, and the song of the Great River that once lulled the people of Osgiliath to sleep in ages past rushed still; but it did not lull the living now. On the northern wall, Boromir and his men were keeping also their vigil, to the east, another captain, and down in the rain-wet ruins, Mardil and his reserves waited. They had left only the west unwatched, for the swift Anduin would guard it against all comers.

Faramir had many things on his mind that night, and not the least of them, the fate of two score scouts who had not answered when the curlew call had echoed through Ithilien that afternoon, and the worry line between his brows deepened.

Behind him, a cheerful voice said, “Belly ache, sir?”

He started, and turned. It was only Mablung. Faramir smiled, and made way for him. “Hardly. It was the scouts, rather, that I was thinking of.”

“Well, they might come riding up yet. We could send out a sortie then, and bring them in. About time they pulled their weight in this thing, though of course, they could be -” and Mablung paused, his face grim.

“Beyond aid, or for that matter, any need of it. The Enemy would have made short work of them by now.”

“Aye sir, but there’s always hope,” Mablung said simply.

Faramir smiled. “Always, Mablung.”

Then they fell silent, and turned back to the dark.

With a terrible swiftness, the Enemy fell upon them. They had no warning, save for a rustle in the woods; then a host of shadow-men dashed from the forest-eaves and hurled themselves against the rampart, baying like wolves. It was then that the heads came over the wall, bounding, bloodied, their eyes open still, rolling to rest at the defenders’ feet. No need now to ask after the scouts, for they had returned at last. And as the long scaling poles crashed against the walls, a clear voice, ragged with rage rose in the dark, and the rangers bent their bows and loosed as one man.

Elsewhere, black night burst into flame, and wave upon wave of orcs and Easterlings swept upon the northern breastworks and the gate; and the very stone of the city walls trembled. Arrows sang in the gloom , fell with the rain upon the massed hordes and stirred them to fury. Above the surging strife, the shrill battle-cry of the Easterlings rose ululating, and mingled with the harsher war-song of the defenders, and somewhere a hunting horn brayed.

Brushwood, flung against the walls kindled with a blue-hearted flame that no water could quench, and all over, men and orcs struggled hand to hand, in a reeling, whirling battle-line. There were few, too few of defenders, and now they were hard-pressed on all sides. Then it seemed to Boromir that the heaving hosts of the Enemy parted as the sea parts before a rock, and a troop of orcs came charging up to the gate, with a great tree-trunk for a battering ram.

With a boom like thunder, it struck, and men on the northern ramparts lost their footing. Some fell, yelling down into the forest of spears below. “Brace the gate,” Boromir cried, and with an order to fire like the fiends of Angband, he dashed down the rampart stairs, and waving up Mardil and his reserves, made for the gate. From the parapet, archers drew bow, but the orcs, heedless of loss, brought the ram crashing again and again, and the sturdy wood began at last to shiver. The reserves flung themselves hard against it, but there was little even Boromir could do, for the iron framework of the great gate groaned and bent, and at last, it tore apart in a shower of splinters. And the Enemy came swarming in.

They met with a grinding roar of shields, but in that instant, a screech rent the night sky, and the defenders, looking up saw four shadows winging out of the dark, and it seemed that the torch-light sputtered and dimmed with their coming. The terror-cries of men rose, and many, throwing down their arms, broke and ran for the bridge, and the Enemy poured after them, hewing and howling as they went. And the faceless wraiths, whose eyes glowed like coals in the gloom slew with deadly maces.

The city was burning in earnest now, despite the mizzle, and men were flying from the ramparts in horror. But from somewhere, the came the sound of a great horn booming, and a familiar voice crying for order; and slowly, men ceased their flight and began to turn at bay.

* * *

The pursuing Haradrim came storming down the southern ramparts, but the rangers, with hard-held courage were pulling out in orderly fashion, and in the retreating press, their captain grimly fitted his last flaming arrow to his bow. It sped up and up into the night, fizzling out in the rain, and struck one of the winged beasts in the neck. With a cry, it reeled and tumbled away into the dark.

He would have drawn bow again, but a ranger fell, and a warrior of the Haradrim leaping into the breach, brought his bright blade flashing down. Faramir’s bow, parrying, shivered in pieces, and swiftly, he drew his own sword and swung. The man dropped with a gurgling cry, but two more sprang up in his place. Beside him, another ranger went down, whimpering. It was the boy, Beleg. He hauled the child up by the waist, and weighed down by his burden, stumbled back.

Then, Damrod’s voice yelling in his ear, and a hand dragging desperately at his arm, “Leave him sir! Leave him. There’s nothing more you can do. He’s dead!”

And so he was. In the flickering torchlight, the boy’s eyes were black and still and Faramir saw for the first time, the deep wound in the hollow of his throat. So, he let go, and the face of Beleg slipped away, a pale blur into swirling dark.

The retreat sounded, and little by little the men of Gondor came together, pulling back to the bridge. The Nazgul swooped still, but those who yet wielded bow and arrow held off the ravening shadows for a time. But the defenders gave ground, and on each step they yielded lay a dead man. In the star-lit dark orcish arrows flew thick and fast, and men fell and did not rise again.

Company after company, they made for the bridge, leaving only a small rearguard to keep the seething Enemy at bay. Boromir, in the thickest press, swung again and again, and his sword was reddened to the hilt. Then another man’s shoulder crashed hard against his, a calm, familiar voice shouting above the battle-storm. Faramir, with a great smudge of soot on his cheek. “We cannot hold them. The bridge must go!”

So the moment had come at last. They were surrounded now by a vast sea of screaming orcs, a knot of gallant men grimly holding the bridgehead to the west bank, growing steadily smaller. Not more than twenty men now. Soon, he knew, there would be none left.

“Hew down the bridge!” And Boromir’s mighty voice rang above the crash and din about them; behind, the cry was taken up and echoed through the night in a grim chorus, and the sappers began their work.

A man beside him dropped, felled by a battle-axe between the eyes, and two orcs came yelping in. Red rage rose within him, and with a terrible cry Boromir swung his sword and cut both down with one blow. And now, he gave himself over to fury, and drove forward with all his strength, thrusting the great boss of his shield into the faces of his foes, and behind him, men rallied, and for a while, the rough shield wall crept forward.

In their small boats, the sappers hewed away like men possessed. Above the tumult, they heard voices, and the shrill fear rising in them. “The bridge! Cut down the bridge!” As the last of the eastern garrison fled across, and the valiant little rearguard stood their ground, but still the bridge held.

A flight of black arrows screamed overhead, and the small company on the east bank fell back abruptly, and many holes were torn in their ranks. A black shadow shrieked, stooping down from the air, and for an instant, men leaping forward, stumbled in fear over the hampering dead at their feet, and slipped on the rain-wet ground. It seemed for a moment, that the shield-burg had broken at last.

“Hold, my brothers, hold them!” roared Boromir. There were hardly more than a score left now, and many, so many were weary and weakened with many hurts. And for a little while, they held out against the crushing might of the Enemy. But, slowly, they gave way, and were driven onto the bridge. Weakened spars creaked beneath their weight, and with each step, Boromir felt the timbers shiver and moan like a wounded thing. Not long now, before it would go altogether.

Far behind, a triumphant yell, and turning back, he saw with a wave of relief, in the flaring torchlight on the west bank, that the last of the garrison had won through. “Pull back!” he cried, “Pull back! To the west bank, my heroes; the battle is done!” So, back and back they went, the rushing water black beneath their feet, dragging the wounded after them, and slipping the dead into the dark waiting arms of the Anduin.

Less than spear’s throw now to safety. A storm of arrows from the waiting defenders soared and fell like black rain into the Enemy mass. Still, the orcs hurtled after, with their short wicked swords, giving tongue, swarming over their dead and wounded; and Boromir, thrust back by the force of their coming saw Faramir standing his ground still, a cold light in his pale eyes. Orcs fell before his blade, yet one, mightier than the rest hurling itself upon him, splintered his shield with a single sweep of its great spiked club. Then he saw his brother go down.

“Faramir!” he cried, and leapt forward. Then, Boromir heard above the battle-clamour, a sharp cry of dismay rising from watchers on the west bank. The ground gave suddenly under his feet and the pale, clouded stars whirled overhead. All about him was the rumble of thunder, a deafening crack, then a sudden sensation of falling, falling into nothingness. The shock of icy water struck him like lightning, and before he could cry out, a drowning darkness closed over his head, and he sank, down and down into the deep.

With a groan, wood and rotten stone caved at last; and men and orcs tumbled together, scrambling on the crumbling beams, and the night waters came roaring and crashing over all.

And in a ruined library on the eastern bank, a rose bush burned, and three pale blossoms fell, one by one into the rising flames.

Sons of the Steward

“…O dear son Edgar,
The food of thy abused father’s wrath!
Might I but live to see thee in my touch,
I’d say I had eyes again!”

Gloster in King Lear
~William Shakespeare~

HE WATCHED THE grey dawn creeping over Osgiliath; it lit but did not warm the walls once white, but blackened now by blood, and the soot and stains of many fires. It brought no warmth to the men who slept the deep sleep of the utterly spent, only a cold comfortless mist that masked the eastern shore. A merciful mist, he thought bitterly.

Sleep, Boromir, sleep.

He tossed on his pallet, listening to the hushed voices of those who kept watch over the silent city, and the soft groans of the dying. The bitterness of defeat rose in his throat like bile. He was a defeated commander, he, Boromir the victorious, beloved of Gondor. What could he say to Denethor now? Father, I have lost you the east bank; the strength and blood of our people are spent, their bodies broken upon the black spears of the Enemy? That fair Ithilien was lost to Mordor and that the Enemy stood now on the very threshold of Minas Tirith?

Sleep, Boromir, sleep.

He would never sleep again. How could he, when the blood of so many cried out for vengeance? The sons, husbands and fathers who would never come riding home again? The battle of the night before still held for him something of a nightmarish quality. Perhaps he had only to wake, and find that it was all an ill dream. But it was no dream. He was sodden still with river water and stiff with cold. He remembered the icy embrace of the dark waters, and how he sank, down into the blackness, before he rose again, lungs bursting, to the burning night air. And he remembered too, the helping hands that hauled him into a boat, and later, the desperate search for his brother.

Beside him, a man groaned.

Faramir. His brother lay still in the pale light of the morning, and his eyes were closed. Someone had staunched the wound in his shoulder; and his left hand, bound in bloody linen, and stripped of its gauntlet and vambrace lay lightly on the hilt of his sword. Long, slender hands he had, like a poet’s. It had pained Boromir, even as a child, to watch his young brother take in his quiet, uncomplaining fashion, blow after blow, sword cut after sword cut on those fine hands of his, that were so like their mother’s, till they became as raw and war-hardened as his own. Now, there would be another scar to mar their beauty.

His young brother. Not so young now, for twenty summers of war in the wilds of Ithilien was apt to age a man. The years had touched his temples with frost, and put a deep line between his brows that did not ease even in sleep. There was so much in his face that had not been there in the old days, and so much of the laughter had gone out of it.

There were times when Boromir hated his father. There were even times when he hated himself. He turned over and gently smoothed the fair waving hair from his brother’s brow. The scar was there still, undiminished by time, a deep white seam at the corner of his right eye. It was the only time that Denethor had ever laid a hand on either of his sons.

Suddenly, the eyes opened, and long fingers seized his sword. A fleeting fury twisting, serpent-like, in the beloved face. With the swift practiced ease of a warrior, Boromir’s hand closed over his brother’s wrist. Gently, he said, “It is only me, little brother. There is no one to hurt you now.”

Slowly, the thing passed, and Faramir was Faramir once more. For an instant, pain crossed his face. Boromir quickly loosed his grip. “I am sorry.”

A ghost of a smile, “Fooled you.”

“You fool nobody,” Boromir said wryly. “A winding sheet has more colour in it than you. Here, have some bread and ale, if you can sit up.”

“I think not. I seem to have swallowed half the river. It is apt to make a man full.” Slowly, and with difficulty, Faramir rose, and propped himself against the wall. For a long moment, he bent his face into his hands and did not speak.

“Brother, what is it?” Boromir’s low, anxious voice came to him as though from a distance. The burning of his wounds stole breath away, and a strange sound, much like a child’s choking cry rose in his ears, and in the darkness, star-burst of coloured lights. Then, the moment passed.

His hands came away, and shaking his head, Faramir said, “Nothing. How came I to this place?”

“Well, the bridge went, and you went down with it. We found you in one of the sapper’s boats, drifting out to sea, and it was low in the water, laden with the dead. As to how you got there, no man knows. Clinging to your sword still, you were too.”

A shadow of a smile. “I am as you know, tenacious of life. Who was it that brought me off?”

“I daresay,” smiled Boromir, “that a number of us had a hand in it. Damrod and Mablung, Anborn, myself and a few others. You are not as light as you look, and it was no easy thing, hunting for a ranger in the night, when he is not minded to be found.”

“And what news of - of my men?”

“They do well enough. Something over two-thirds strength, licking their wounds, like we all are.” Then, a shadow passed over his face. “Mardil is dead.”

“So. May he be at peace. He was a good man,” said Faramir, with a heavy sigh, and closed his eyes. And when he opened them again, he found Boromir’s anxious gaze searching his own.

“Something troubles you. I see it in your face.”

“Death… and a dream, nothing more.”

“An ill dream?”

“No, not ill at all, only that it was a strange one. It has come to me before.”

A pause. Neither of them spoke of the defeat of the night before, for each understood its meaning.

“Ah. Let us speak no more of it then. Such dreams are better forgotten. And the wounds? Come, you’d best let me see them.”

“A scratch, a scratch,” said Faramir, laughing, and waving his good hand. But there was a whiteness about his eyes, and his laughter rang hollow.

“Indeed,” said Boromir dryly, “A scratch. I’ll wager you this horn of mine against anything you like that it will be a while and a while before you put that hand to a blade again. Or that shoulder of yours to any use at all.”

Laughter again, but this time, low and warm, with none of the hollowness in it. “Your horn? Whatever will father say? Nay then, not your horn, but I’ll take up your wager nonetheless. A new cloak for me, against…” Faramir paused for a moment, frowning, before the slow smile came back into his face, “A barrel of Lossarnach mead I have in Henneth Annun. Is that a fair bet?”

“Aye,” said Boromir smiling in spite of himself, “Though I think that you will lose your mead and your new cloak, little brother. You had best learn to fight with your right hand, as other men do.”

“Well, we shall see. Meanwhile, let’s strike hands on this bargain.” And so the brothers struck hands. For a moment, they forgot the pall of death and defeat that lay over them; and their laughter lingered still in the air, when a shadow fell in the ruined doorway, and a man in the livery of the White Tower bowed low and made his obeisance.

“I have a message for Captain Boromir, from my Lord Steward of Gondor.”

Boromir did not have to look, to know that beside him, his young brother had stiffened. In the long summer days of their boyhood, they had shared joy and sorrow, and every feeling that came between; and there were times that he felt that Faramir was so much a part of himself, that every agony, every fear that assailed his brother became his own. And so it was still. For a moment, he caught his breath, and slowly, very slowly let it out again.

“So. Speak then; what does my Lord say?”

The errand rider looked from one brother to the other. Both grim, both weary, but one much the worse for wear. “My Lord bids you make haste and ride now to the White City. He wishes to have word of last night’s battle.”

“But the despatches have gone.”

“Aye, sir. But those are my orders. I know no more.”

The man saw a look pass between the brothers. Then, Boromir said, “Very well then, I will do as my father bids me.” He turned to Faramir. “I leave Osgiliath in your keeping until I return.” And when Faramir made to rise, he put out his hand and whispered fiercely, “No! Your place is here. Stay, and let me tell him all that is needful.”

Then the man said uncomfortably into the silence, “My Lord says that you are to take Captain Faramir with you.”

“He is wounded, man! Can you not see that?” Boromir cried. He was on his feet now, heaving with rage, so furious that he felt as though his heart would burst. The man gave back a step, surprised, then courage returned.

“My Lord says,” and for a moment, his eyes strayed in pity to the young captain, propped against the cold stone wall; he was still, and pale as death. Then, he took a deep breath, and said quietly what he had been charged to say. “My Lord says that if Captain Faramir does not come of his own will, he must be taken by force.”

Boromir started, and he would have spoken, but what words he would have said they never knew, for a quiet voice came from the corner by the wall. A weary voice, but calm and firm as ever.

“I will come, since my Lord commands it.”

* * *

LIT BY THE westering sun, the White Tower glowed like a spire of rose and gold. And the men of the Tower Guard kept still their ceaseless vigil, their keen eyes looking far to the East, the grey ruins of Osgiliath, and the glittering Anduin to the wine-dark shadows of Ithilien beyond. There was little enough to tell of the carnage and death of the day before; the river did not run red, as they did in battle-songs of old, nor did the smoke and smell of burning mar the fiery sky. Only, if a man looked hard enough, he would see the dark circling wings of ravens, tiny as black moths that circled a candle flame, and hear their faint carrion-cries in the still air.

In the hall of kings, the sons of Denethor knelt before their father. Covered with grey dust from their long riding, they rose at his command, and stood waiting. For here, in the great hall, they were his captains, and it was not for them to speak until the Lord Steward bid them. For a long while, Denethor said nothing. Dark eyes surveyed them, and took in the open, restless gaze, the battered armour of the elder son, and the silent impatient shifting of his fingers on the hilt of his sword; the preternatural stillness of the younger and the wariness in his exhausted face.

Once, Mithrandir had said that he played his sons as a man would play a lute. He remembered the occasion with some bitterness, and the hard words and harder parting that came after. For no man’s counsel could sway the Lord of Gondor, nor any wizard dictate the manner in which the he chose to govern his sons. After all, were his children not his own, to rule as he pleased? And were they not bound to obey, and do as he, their Lord and father bade them? His hands - a warrior’s hands still - tightened on the white rod of the Stewards.

His black gaze came to rest on his younger son.

“Where are your men now?”

Silence. Then the brothers’ eyes met, and quickly parted. But in that brief moment, Denethor had read in them surprise, a deep uneasiness, guilt.

“Answer me, Captain Faramir. Turn not to your brother!”

Flushing, Boromir stepped forward, his spurs ringing on the grey stone floor. Always Boromir. A flame of anger kindled in his heart.

“Father, as I am Captain General, do you let me speak for us both -”

“Be silent, Boromir till I bid you speak! I would hear from your brother. Answer me, Captain Faramir, and swiftly.”

“Father!”

Laying a hand on his brother’s arm, Faramir shook his head. He had the look of a man riding into battle, a sharpness about the eyes, a quiet watchfulness. And under it all, something else. And Boromir, who understood his brother more than any other, drew a deep breath and said no more.

His voice was clear and low. “They are in Osgiliath, father; where should they be?”

“So you have abandoned Ithilien to the Enemy? Tell me, who guards our borders now, save the carrion birds?”

For a moment, Faramir made no answer. The sun, shining through the high casements touched his hair with gold, and lent health to the pallor of his cheeks. But three days ago he had been in Ithilien, where the very same sun had warmed and comforted him. Now his limbs were cold, and he was tired, so very tired. What answer could he make, save the truth?

“I withdrew them all to Osgiliath, to strengthen it against the Enemy. They have fought a hard battle my Lord, and suffered great loss. The men must rest a while before such of them as are fit may ride out again.”

“So. A kind and generous captain indeed, who bids his men rest and sleep while our borders are unwatched and unguarded. Nay, but there is more.” Denethor’s voice was quiet, as quiet as the day before the breaking of a great storm.

“Your men are our eyes and ears on the frontier. How was it that the Enemy’s forces came so far, unmarked and unmolested into the heart of Ithilien?”

Slowly, Denethor rose to his feet, and their eyes met, the blue and the grey - and held. Faramir said nothing. Only his hands tightened, and every line of his weary frame grew taut. So it had always been.

“I did not send you to Henneth Annun to creep about like a worm, and cower in caves while orcs roam freely through our lands. It seems to me, Captain Faramir, that you have much to account for.”

Then the storm broke, and the white rod of the Stewards crashed at his feet. “Answer me!”

Boromir, thrusting between the Steward and his other son, cried, “Father, the fault is not his!”

“Is it not?” Fury shook his voice. “Then tell me, Boromir, why was it that word of the Enemy’s coming came so late to Osgiliath?”

They stood close now, father and son. So close, that Boromir saw at last the black rage in his father’s eyes; a bitter wrath so implacable and terrifying that for a moment he could say nothing. In the stunned silence they heard a sharp, in-drawn breath behind them. Then, Boromir turned away.

“I know not.”

“Faramir.”

It was colder now, despite the sun, and his wound had bled again. He felt the warm wetness of it; but it would not show, not through his leather harness, and the dark battered cloak wrapped close over his shoulders. Somehow, he made his way to Boromir’s side, and met with compassion, the shame and anger in his brother’s downcast eyes.

Turning to his father, he said steadily enough, through the rising sickness in his throat, “I have no better answer than what my brother has given, save that perhaps they came by secret ways unknown to us, or by the dark arts of the Enemy, for our scouts never returned.”

“Do you admit then, that the blame for this defeat lies with you?”

And the Steward swept down from his high seat. He was a tall man, taller even than his sons, and now, looking down at Faramir, with the light of the golden afternoon shining upon him, he seemed like a great king of Numenor when her power was at its noon-tide. There were few who could bear the gaze of Denethor without turning away, for his eyes were stern and so keen that it seemed to all that he could read the dark secrets in the hearts of men.

Yet Faramir had never looked away; never as a child, and not now. For a long while, the battle raged mutely between them, as it had often done before and Boromir listened in anxious silence, knowing that there was no place for him in this thing between his father and brother. He had never ceased to wonder from what depths of his brother’s gentle spirit sprang this manic courage. It was never Faramir’s words that drove his father to fury, but the quiet resistance in his hand and eye, as immovable as the mountains. But so was the will of Denethor, and it was not often thwarted.

Then, with a deep breath, Faramir said evenly, “No. It was a thing beyond my power, and that of my men. Nevertheless, I will take the fault upon myself if my Lord wishes it and I will bear whatever punishment there is alone. Let your doom fall on no other.”

For a moment, it seemed that Denethor would strike him. His stern face trembled, and his hand with its great signet ring clenched and shook. “You are proud, Captain Faramir. Always you clothe yourself in a mantle of nobility and wisdom, yet your pride denies the error of your ways!”

Faramir said nothing.

“Is that what the wizard Mithrandir has taught you? If so, I rue the day he ever set foot within the seven circles of this city! Long has he had your heart in his keeping, and I see now that he even turns you against your kin!”

“He has taught me many things, my lord, but of wisdom and nobility, I had hoped rather that I would learn them from lore and the high deeds of the Elder Days, and from others who now pit their strength against the Enemy, puny though that may be against the might of Mordor.” For a moment he paused, then, there was a great bitterness in his voice, “Let you know, my Lord, that Mithrandir is a friend to me, and a friend to Gondor and never once has he spoken an ill word against you, or any of my kin.”

“Indeed,” said Denethor. “But this is no time for noble deeds, Captain Faramir. We have fallen from our ancient strength, and the glory of this realm was spent long ago. So we must fight with what weapons that are given to us. Do not think that I am unaware of what you do in Ithilien, and how you deal with the servants of the Enemy. Gentleness avails no one now in these evil days!”

“Gondor is weak. Another defeat, and we may fall. What then? Will you let the light of this city be quenched forever, and the remnant of our people hide in holes like the mean creatures that crawl the earth? Will you let the tongue of our people become no more than the speech of slaves, our pride and lore trampled and forgotten? Remember that, Captain, before you spend needlessly the lives of your men!”

His composure broke at last, and before he could stop himself, Faramir said hotly, “Do you think that the lives of my men are any less dear to me than they are to you? They were my men. I loved them, my lord, for they were father and brother to me. I would have given -” Then Faramir saw Denethor’s eyes, and the words died in his throat.

Eyes like black ice.

Whatever strength he had gathered to himself suddenly left him, and for one dreadful moment, the ground bucked beneath his feet and the high seat of Denethor swam before his eyes. Desperately, he turned to Boromir, as he had so often done as a child, and a look like a touch passed between them.

“Well, Captain what would you have given?”

Slowly, he met Denethor’s gaze, and felt the wound in his shoulder bleed again.

“My life.”

Behind him, Boromir exclaimed and started forward.

“Hush, my son, let him finish.” And Boromir, turning from his father, stern and grey as the stone kings of old, to his brother, straight and slender as a spear, fell silent.

“I see that I have displeased you my Lord.” His blade came from its scabbard cold and lifeless in his unaccustomed right hand, and he dropped heavily on one knee. The bright tip of his sword grated on the stone floor. “There is nothing I can offer you in return for the blood of the fallen, save my oath of vengeance. Or if you wish it, I will go out tonight and fall on my sword. Thus blood will be repaid with blood.”

For a long moment, Denethor said nothing, watching the bowed head of his younger son, and the slender, scarred fingers clenched whitely on the worn hilt of his blade. The hands he had from his mother, the bright eyes and the fair, waving hair too. Odd, how both his sons had taken so much from her, and yet seemed so different. Coldly, he thrust the thought from his mind.

“Father, you cannot let him do this!” Flushed with fury, Boromir came between them. “The fault was mine too, for the east bank was my command. It was I who gave the order to cast down the bridge. If you must lay the blame on either of us, then let it be on me!”

Denethor closed his eyes and began to laugh, softly and mirthlessly. “Stand aside, Boromir. This is not your fight. Your brother is a man grown, and his battles are his own. I have read the despatches and I know very well where the fault lies. Oh, I know it well indeed. Seldom have I seen such a stunning display of incompetence on his part.” He paused, “But no blame attaches to you, Boromir.”

“No blame?” he blazed.

When Denethor opened his eyes again, they came to rest on the stricken, upturned face of his younger son. “No blame at all,” he said, pretending to misunderstand. Then, he rose and circled his sons like a bird of prey, the one standing proudly with wide planted feet, the other swaying a little on his knees. Robes of sable fur swept the ground silently, for Denethor was light footed. He had been a warrior once, long ago, and would be again, if the need arose.

“A noble offer indeed Captain Faramir. But we stand now at the twilight of Numenor, and the time for such heroics is long past. They died with King Earnur of old, when he rode out to Minas Morgul, never to return,” he said dryly. “Sheath your sword. I command you to live. Live, and remember always the faces of your dead, for that will be your punishment. ”

“Get up and leave us now. I wish to speak with your brother alone.”

The words reached him through a gathering mist, and the broken snatches of it echoed in his heart. “…your dead … punishment… live and remember… leave us…” The mist was thicker now, and he could only hear the blood roaring in his ears, and the hall growing black before his eyes. “Your dead… leave us… remember…no blame…” He never knew how, but he got to his feet, like an old, old man, and dimly, he saw Boromir reach for him, through the dark. He fended off the helping hands; and somehow, his sword hissed back into its scabbard with a jerk.

He made his obeisance, and turned. Denethor’s eyes burned out of the growing dark. “… his battles are his own…” The words pealed like a bell and reached him through the beating storm in his ears. He would not fall, not now, not before his father. Not before Boromir.

He was halfway down the hall, when the blood rose suddenly in his throat, and burst through its linen bindings.

Father and son watched him. He seemed steady enough on his feet, and slowly, Boromir’s outstretched arms dropped to his side. They saw how he checked, swaying for a moment, before he fell to his knees, then slid silently to the ground.

With a cry, Boromir left his father’s side, and his spurs rang like the clashing of swords in the great hall. Faramir lay very still in his arms, and his lashes were dark against the whiteness of his face. Slowly, Boromir drew away the cloak, the hand that still clutched the wounded shoulder, and the cramped fingers came away crimson. There was blood, blood everywhere now, on his own hands, in the dampness of Faramir’s dark tunic, and great smudges of it on the stones. Wordlessly, he held his brother close, and for a moment, he could have howled his grief like a dog.

“What is it?” And he found Denethor looking down on them both, his face inscrutable.

Boromir took a deep uneven breath. “He was hurt during our retreat; we held the bridge together, and he was cut down as we thrust the Enemy back to gain a breath more of time for the men hewing down the bridge behind us. Then the bridge went, and much later, I found him in one of the sapper’s boats, half-drowned, with that sword thrust in his shoulder, and a great gash in his sword arm.”

“You did not tell me he was wounded.” Denethor stooped and with unaccustomed gentleness, laid a hand on the pale brow of his other son. Briefly, a shadow crossed his face. “He burns. It is a deep thrust, though I think, not a fatal one. He will live, but you had best send for a healer now.”

Then, Boromir looked up, and there was grief and anger in his face. “I told you, father,” he said softly. “Did I not send word this morning? Yet you turned my man away. You would not listen. You never listen.” Suddenly, he felt unutterably weary. “There are other hurts on him too, that are not the making of the Enemy.”

Denethor gazed at his son in silence, till at last Boromir looked away. “This I will say once, and let you listen, for I will not say it again. Every man bears the scars of hidden wounds, Boromir, but it is not given to all to endure them with cheerfully and with courage. That your brother must learn, or he is no child of mine.”

“The eyes of the White Tower are not yet blind. I see a great many things, Boromir. I have seen your brother’s heart; I know his uses, and they are few. He is weak, and you are strong. Gondor needs you; I need you! I know what you are, Boromir - you are my own true son. Do not let your brother’s foolishness come between us.”

For a long while, Boromir stared at his bloody hands, quite unable to speak. Then, when he found his voice, Denethor had gone, as soundlessly as he had come, and the brothers were alone at last in the great hall.

* * *

THE NIGHT WAS dark, but in the Houses of Healing, a light burned yet in a quiet room that overlooked the garden. It smelled of herbs and summer flowers, but under it all, was the sharper scent of blood. There was no one now in that room, save for the man who lay in the narrow cot under the window.

His brother had laid out his sword and gear on a kist, and close to the bed, was a low stool and a small table bearing a lamp, linen and little jars of strong aromatic herbs.

Sleep had never come easily to him, and even now, he walked in the realms of dream. He was a light sleeper, used to waking at a touch, or a whispered word in his ear, but now drugged and fevered, he had sunk deep below the waking world. So, he never knew when his visitor came, for the robes of sable fur made no sound as they swept the ground, nor did the swift silent feet.

He drew up the low stool. It was far from comfortable, but then, he was not a man who set much store on bodily comforts. He found that it was not an easy face to read, even in sleep. The fair hair was damp, and the face flushed with fever, yet the likeness was there, even after all the years between; even after the winds and rains and suns of twenty years had scoured away the boy to reveal the man. There was something in the set of his head, and the eyes, when they were open held the kindness and pity that always reminded him of her. Faramir, her own true son. Yet was there not something of himself also, in the closed, subtle lips, the guardian of so many secrets?

Kindness, pity. Weakness.

There, on his slender hands were the marks of war; and there, the worry line between his brows, and the shadow of a deep, abiding sorrow.

“There are other hurts on him too, that are not the making of the Enemy.”

And so there were. He did not have to search long to find it. A deep scar, white against the flushed skin, just below the right eye. It was he who had made it, and he remembered it well, for he had never raised his hand at either of his sons till that day. And thereafter, never again, for her sake.

And how many other hurts had he taken, not to the body, but to the soul?

For many years now, he had longed to break this wayward child to his will. Skilfully, he had wielded words like a sword against this headstrong younger son, and each time, he had drawn blood. He remembered the flinch in hand and eye and the sudden, subtle pallor in those cheeks. Long ago, he had understood the power of words. He had understood also, and exploited without mercy the defencelessness, the guilt and punishment that Faramir had taken upon himself. Where the body healed, the soul did not.

He knew too the power of his rage. Today, like a storm tearing through trees, it had stripped away conscience, pride, and at the last, dignity. It was perhaps, too much for any man to endure without breaking.

Yet he had not broken.

Only, he had been hurt, and far more deeply than any of them had expected.

So, here he lay, this indomitable, vulnerable son of his, in his unquiet sleep. He spoke now, murmuring in a voice unlike his own, so harsh and broken with grief that it shocked his father. The words stole softly into the half-dark; words from nightmare and memory, half-remembered songs and poems, each one inflected with a sorrow and longing so profound that tears sprang unbidden to Denethor’s eyes. Even alone and in the half-dark, he did not give way to feeling. They trembled on his dark lashes like dew on the edge of a leaf, yet they did not fall.

It was too late now. Too late. The words rang in his heart, and its every echo was as the pealing of funeral bells. Long ago, he had lost this son to the green shadows of Ithilien. And between father and son flowed the waters of a river as great as the Anduin, and there was no bridge now for either to make the crossing.

There lay his sword. The Steward did not need to draw it to know that it was fell and beautiful, for he was its giver. It was a ranger’s blade, long, light and bright-burnished; and its notched cross-piece and the battered scabbard were embellished with the swan of Dol Amroth graven in leather and gold. She would have wished it so.

Had twenty summers passed since he swore faith, tears and blood running down his cheeks, and his eyes so like her own?

“Here do I swear fealty and service to Gondor, and to the Lord and Steward of the realm, to speak and be silent, to do and let be, to come and to go, in need or in plenty, in peace or in war, in living or dying, from this hour henceforth, until my lord release me, or death take me, or the world end. So say I Faramir, son of Denethor Lord Steward of Gondor.”

And he had answered:

“And this do I hear, Denethor son of Ecthelion, Lord of Gondor, Steward of the High King, and I will not forget it, nor fail to reward that which is given: fealty with love, valour with honour, oath breaking with vengeance.

Hear now the will of the Lord of Gondor. You shall ride to Ithilien on the morrow‘s morrow, and there you will stay, till I bid you return.”

It was three summers before he saw his son again. He had gone, a lonely child banished by his father’s will, and the boy had never returned. A man had come in his place, made in her image.

What am I to you then, save the Lord and Steward of this realm? Am I not your father too? And he remembered what Faramir had said, and the taste of it was like gall on his tongue.

“I loved them, my lord, for they were father and brother to me.”

And his heart hardened within him. Slowly, he rose, looking in silence upon his son, and in that moment, pain and memory came flooding back. Another face, another time, and another place. It was as though she lay there still, her rose-gold hair dulled with illness, her fairness faded, and her life leaving her little by little.

Sharply, he drew breath, and his trembling hand reached for her. Finduilas.

Then he saw it was not her, but another, and his fingers curled into a fist, and dropped to his side.

He shut the door, and outside, the cool night greeted him. He did not know how long he stood in there the garden; but when he looked up, the moon had set and the dark vault of sky above with its myriad stars brought no comfort.

In the window, a candle burned still.

Why had he lived when she had died?

A Dream and a Journey: Part 1

Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and for ever!

~The Lady of the Lake~
Canto III, verse xvi
Walter Scott

FLAME AND DARKNESS. A boy’s face falling away into a whirlpool of blood and fire; a cry like the shrieking of the dead, and a shadow blacker than night. The beating wings of a thousand ravens, then white water rearing and crashing as the waves of a great sea.

Your dead.
My dead.

Seek for the sword that was broken…in Imaldris it dwells…do you admit then, that the blame for this defeat lies with you?… if you wish it, I will go out tonight and fall on my sword. Thus blood will be repaid with blood…

A man and woman, and behind them, a candle burning.

Heart of my heart, let you come away, for you are weary. There are others here who will take your place. There is no need for this endless vigil.

Who but I should keep it? For I am his mother.

A man stands over him. He is tall and dark, and on his hand is a ring that glitters with a pale flame. The boy looks up, white with defiance and grief, his fair hair gleaming in the sun. Then, the stroke falls. Silver and stone crushes skin, flesh and bone. The boy drops without a sound, and there is blood; blood and tears on his father’s fingers.

Strong hands, seizing his hair and the neck of his tunic; and again and again his head dashes against stone. Blood everywhere, and now he can keep silent no longer. In his agony, he cries out her name.

Hands, hands on his shoulders.

Pain, like a spear-thrust.

He wakes in darkness, gasping like a man drowning. Then the darkness grows into light; a taper, a beloved voice calm and soothing, and behind it, his brother’s anxious gaze. Gentle hands on either side of his face, but he flinches away from them.

So it was only a dream.

His heart’s pounding slows, and he shuts his eyes, listening to quiet words in the half-dark. At first the words are meaningless, mere sounds lost in a dissolving storm of horror; then little by little, they become memories of a time before sorrow; a time of spring and summer. His face is damp and slowly, his fingers find and trace a deep trough beneath his right eye; it is there still, though the blood and tears are long gone.

He opens his eyes again. He sits shivering, hunched over his knees on his narrow cot, and the bed-clothes are knotted and churned about him. His brother, silent now, holds his hand; the small brown light flickers over his dark tunic, and the bands of silver embroidery at its hems warm to bronze.

Slowly he lets go, his cramped fingers trembling; by and by he even brings himself to smile a little. Their eyes meet for a long moment; and his brother, slipping away into the shadows, returns with strong wine. The long draught burns his throat and brings tears to his eyes, but he drains the cup to its dredges. His brother looks on, his grave grey eyes luminous in the brown dusk. But he says nothing.

For a time, they sit shoulder to shoulder, watching the shadows leaping on the wall. Tentatively, his brother reaches out to smooth his tumbled hair, and with loving fingers draws a long strand, dark with dampness behind his ear.

When Boromir speaks at last, his voice is low and warm in the night. “It was the old dream again.”

“Aye, that, amongst others. It has been a while and a while since it came to me.” The old smile flickering, full of self-mockery. “Though it seems to have lost none of its power.”

“And the other dream I had?”

A deep sigh. “Yes, that too. You’ll tell him, will you not? He will turn me away, as always.” Faramir looked down at the empty cup, then at his own hands and saw the faded lines of old scars, and the pale healing skin of the new, scoring deeply from fore-arm to wrist and across the back of his hand.

“I shall, if you wish it.”

“I do.” Then his eyes closed, and under them were shadows the colour of bruises. Darkness. If only he could sleep without dreaming; better perhaps, if he could sleep without waking ever again. “I cannot stay, Boromir. Not any more, not like this!”

He understood at once. How could he not? From youth to manhood, his brother had grown from strength to strength; but now, he was close to breaking, just as a supple willow wand that had been bent once too often. She would have been grieved, she who had loved this child, more perhaps, than any other. Two halves of an almond she had called them. Her twins; how strange it was that one had had to wait five years for the other. Yet, had his young brother looked up, he would have seen that Boromir’s face was inscrutable, as though he too, hid a dark secret in his heart.

Gently, Boromir said, “There will be time enough for that later. Up now, little brother and get yourself dressed. The sun has set, and it will not do to keep him waiting.”

“No, it will not do indeed. Not today, of all days.”

* * *

THEY MADE THEIR way down to the River in the shrouding shadows, three dark-clad horsemen with the Tower Guard following behind. They bore no torches, nor was there any moon or star to light their path. There was only the song of the Anduin and the wind in the rushes to guide them.

Yet, they found their way easily enough in the dark, through long waving grass, from hard earth to the soft river-ground where their horses’ hooves sank soundless into mud. Leaving the Tower Guard behind, they came alone to the secret place by the River, a place where rush and alder and weeping willow grew thickly along the crumbling bank. Here, even the watchful eyes of the Enemy would see nothing but shadow and the slow dance of drooping branches in the night wind.

So they had done every year on her death-day. Thirty years since she was howe-laid by the sea, and each year like yesterday. In silence, they dismounted; the sons following their father, three tall shadows against the lighter dark of the night sky. The wind ceased, and all was still, save for the rushing River and the long grass that swayed and parted for them.

Without speaking, they stood beneath a willow tree, whose black boughs trailed in the water like a woman’s long hair, whilst the Great River, lapping against the low bank swirled darkly away over long knotted alder roots.

Each man bore a water lily in his hand, freshly cut from a green pond in the Houses of Healing. In the day, if a man looked hard enough, he would see small silver fish darting in the shadows between the round flat leaves, and above them the sharp-petalled flowers blushing rose against the brilliant summer sky.

Then, their father turned, his face a pale blur in the night. “Boromir.”

A small feeble flame grew between his sheltering hands, then became a leaping spear-head of light. In silence, Boromir lit the lamp at the heart of each blossom; they caught at once, glowing brightly, and the leaf-veins grew dark, as though the sun was behind them. The Great River would carry them down to Belfalas, three yellow stars in the sea, and perhaps she would see them from her high and lonely grave and know that they remembered her still.

Then, their father turned once more to the Great River, and spoke in low measured tones, carefully stripped of all emotion, words that were older even than the kings of Numenor, words born in the dawn-days of the world:

I am as a branch carried away on a stream
I am as the snow driven in a storm
You are going where I cannot follow
You are going beyond the circles of the world
Let this light be your guide
Through the long night, to the sun’s rising.

With bowed heads, they set the flowers adrift, father, son and last of all, the one who had her fair hair and slender hands. The River caught and spun them away, whirling into the night the three rose-coloured flowers with golden flame at their hearts, until they vanished suddenly, as though the bent world had fallen away under them.

“Let us go,” said Boromir heavily. “We cannot tarry here.”

All the long road back, they did not speak; not in the dark, and not even when they reached the torch-lit ways that led to the Steward’s House. At the threshold, their father checked and drew aside his dark hooded cloak. And under it his face was sharp and white and his eyes were sloe-black in the whiteness of it.

“I bid you good-night then. We will speak tomorrow, Boromir, of the thing we talked of this afternoon.”

“Father.” And again, he saw his sons turn to each other, a moment of silent communion.

“I … we would speak with you, father, tonight.”

He looked keenly from one to the other, from the closed, shadowed face of the elder to the younger, and it was on his wide fathomless eyes that Denethor’s gaze lingered the longest. How pale he was, for even the shifting saffron torch-light failed to colour his cheeks. How still he was, in his plain, dark tunic, so still that he scarcely seemed to breathe at all. The sweet smell of wine came to him on the thin night air; then anger and scorn grew like thorns in his heart. “Very well. You can both come with me, and I will call for some bread and wine, though I think that one of you has started the night’s revelry somewhat early.”

And he saw then, with satisfaction, the painful flush in his son’s cheek.

Quietly, Boromir laid a hand on his arm. A hand heavy with grief. “Oh father, not tonight! For our mother’s sake, leave him be.”

* * *

“SO, WHAT IS this thing that will not keep till tomorrow?”

The Steward’s study was a small high-ceilinged room with long narrow windows that opened east. Outside, the black hills of Ithilien rose into a wine-dark sky. Boromir had almost forgotten the books; there were so many of them, on the long ornate desk with eagle’s talons for feet, and on the tall shadowed shelves. So it had been for as long as he could remember. He found himself a low, hard stool in a corner and waved his brother to the seat nearest the brazier. How bright his eyes were in the dark; they were the eyes of a man who thirsts, and finds water. For a moment, Boromir could have smiled; his little brother, the warrior-poet still. Odd, how some things never changed.

“It is a dream, father.”

“A dream? Your dream, Boromir?” The Steward looked sharply from the swirling wine in his cup to his elder son. “How strange.”

“No, our dream.”

A pause, long enough for a man’s heart to beat seven times. Across the brazier, Faramir put out his hands; they glowed, red as coals, and he saw in their redness, dark branches of bone. His fingers were warm now, but presently, they would be hot beyond bearing. They were a fence, a safe fence between himself and the man who was his father. Had it always been like this? No, it had not, for once, long ago…

“It is as I thought.” The Steward leaned forward in his deep chair. “So. I see that he has put you up to this. Faramir, what is the meaning of this chicanery? Speak, and cease this foolishness at once.”

A sudden movement across the fire, swiftly checked. “Father, the dream came to both of us!”

“Be quiet. Your brother has a tongue, so let him speak for himself!”

With carefully controlled grace, Faramir drew back his hands, and linked them to still their shaking. So it begins. He did not take his eyes from the flames. “Boromir speaks truly. We had the same dream.”

Denethor set his cup down with a crash. “Faramir, look at me.”

“Look at me!”

Faramir flung up his chin, and in his face was the old defiance, and something more. Anger perhaps, or self-mockery, it did not matter. “Tell me then, what was this dream that you shared with your brother.”

Here he was, forever caught between them; his father, so subtle and merciless in his endless grief, and the gentle young brother who did not know how to wound with words to protect himself. He reached for the wine and drank deeply. If only she had lived. If only, if only… Empty now. He filled it again, and the silver flagon, catching the ruddy brazier light showed him their faces. One dark and stony, the other, quite unreadable. And his own?

What did it matter? One does not make the Anduin flow backwards by tossing a pebble in it. He heard a deep breath, and his brother’s quiet voice, steady and toneless, as though he were learning a hard lesson by heart.

“In that dream, I thought the eastern sky grew dark, and there was a growing thunder, but in the West, a pale light lingered, and out of it I heard a voice, remote but clear, crying:

Seek for the Sword that was broken:
In Imaldris it dwells;
There shall counsels be taken
Stronger than Morgul-spells.
There shall be shown a token
That Doom is near at hand,
For Isildur’s Bane shall waken,
And the Halfling forth shall stand.”

Then, his voice faded. “ The dream has come to me many times, and once to Boromir. We know not what it meant, and so thought to seek my Lord’s counsel.”

For the space of a single heartbeat, the Steward’s black eyes flashed and his hands, a warrior’s hands still, tightened. Isildur’s Bane. Had he not seen it? In his dreams, had he not reached for it with his own hand? So small a thing, and yet so potent. And the Sword. Isildur’s Heir. Yet he knew so little, so little. Would that he knew more! Then the spark sank. His sons. Good, honest Boromir; and the other, whose pale gaze now met his own. What had he seen, with those sombre eyes of his?

And so, he said carefully, “I know not the meaning of this dream of yours. I know only that Imaldris is the dwelling-place of Master Elrond, a great Lord of the Elves. It is called Rivendell in our tongue. Far to the north it lies, beyond even the realm of Theoden of the Rohirrim; in Arnor which is now lost to us. It will be a long and perilous journey of many days across strange country. If ever once our people knew the road to Rivendell, there is none alive now who remembers it.”

“Perhaps Mithrandir -”

A sudden anger kindled in his heart. “Mithrandir! Mithrandir indeed! Do you esteem the Grey Fool’s wisdom so much more than your own father’s? I am not unlearned, my son. Let you remember that I am of the House of Hurin, and it is I who am keeper of the wisdom of Gondor! Does not Mithrandir himself come to me as a supplicant?”

“I did but -”

“Nay, say no more!” Swiftly he rose, towering over his sons. “Always you look to him, Faramir. Tell me, where was he when the east bank fell? Where was he when our people died for the cause he calls his own?”

In the crimson half-dark, Faramir said very quietly, “And where were you?”

Neither of his sons knew how fast he could move. He crossed the little space between them, and his trembling hand had begun its downward arc when another caught his own and held it; an iron grip.

“You will not touch him, father.”

He turned in disbelief, then read in Boromir the signs of weariness and grief. “Not you too, my son. Not you too!”

Shaking his head, Boromir did not speak. And slowly, Denethor lowered his hand, and somehow, found his way to his seat. For a long while, he sat, blind, with his face in his hands, and tasting not for the first time, the bitterness of betrayal on his tongue. This was his betrayer, his beloved son, kneeling now by his side.

Yet, he composed himself at last; and when he looked up again, he found that he could speak after all, quite steadily, and without flinching. “So it seems that we must learn the meaning of this riddle. I will send a messenger to seek the road to Rivendell, and there perhaps he may find the answers we desire. And so too, may he bring to Rivendell word of our peril and our great need.”

“I will go,” said Faramir.

“You?”

“Yes, my Lord, for you do not need me here. You have my brother.”

For a long moment, they stared at him. There was a hotness in his eyes, an uncharacteristic recklessness. But he was sober, painfully sober, for neither bread nor wine had passed his lips. The words hung in the air, a challenge waiting to be answered.

“How true. He is worth two of you.”

Silence, and in that silence, devastation. When would it all end? Suddenly, Boromir could bear no more. In an instant, he was on his feet. “That is enough, both of you! Let me go, father. Let me seek Elrond of Rivendell and you shall have your answer to this riddle!”

His breath came in great gasps; then he saw for the first time, wine pooling darkly at his feet, running into the stones, and somewhere on the floor, the silver flagon gleaming in the shadows. And he stopped breathing when he saw his brother’s eyes.

“Sit, Boromir,” said Denethor sternly. “You are not yourself. ”

He did not move.

“I cannot spare you, Boromir. Gondor cannot spare you! If there is any need at all to send either of my sons, I will send Faramir.”

“Father, he is hurt!”

“He was well enough to ride with us tonight,” said Denethor dryly. “Were you not, Captain Faramir?”

“I am well enough, my Lord.” If there was irony in his voice, neither father nor brother marked it. “As the dream first came to me, let you send me, for I would not have another man hazard his life in my place.”

He rose, and with a curious grace and dignity, bowed his head and dropped on one knee before his father’s chair. “Do so, my Lord, and I will not fail you.”

Then Faramir looked up to the brother who stood so tall and stern beside him, and for the briefest of moments, their eyes met.

I beg of you my brother, do not deny me in this thing.

Slowly, Boromir shook his head.

So, he had betrayed both father and brother this night. No need then to look into his brother’s face to know what the dull ache in in his breast had already told him; and so, he turned away.

And Denethor, watching his sons as a falcon watches its prey, said nothing.

Then Boromir said, “I will go father, as I am the elder and stronger of us both.” There was a strange resonance in his low voice; it filled the little room and echoed faintly from wall to wall, as though a greater power spoke through him. “And did you not say that Master Elrond is a mighty Lord among the Eldar? It is only fitting then that I, your heir should go on this errand, since the White City cannot do without its Lord.”

In the brown shadows, the Steward drew a great signet ring from his finger and turned it from palm to palm, so that the light in the ancient stone that was its heart woke and slept. He had made many choices in his long life, but none quite like this. Only once in his life had he listened to the soft whisperings of his heart; and now, now as it had so often done, it was the cold day-light reasoning of the mind that won out. Deliberately, he slipped the ring onto his finger.

They were watching him, one taut as a drawn bowstring, and the other, motionless as stone.

“Go, Boromir and do not fail me. Go swiftly and return swiftly, for neither I nor the White City can spare you for long.”

Relief, joy, and a strange regret swept over him all at once. “Thank you father. You have my word,” and stooping, he raised his father’s hand, with its great signet ring to his lips. It was glowing faintly now, and in its heart of stone, his own dark, shadowed face looked back at him.

Briefly, Denethor smiled. “Rise then, both of you. The hour is late, and I am weary. Boromir, we will speak tomorrow on this errand of yours. There are a great many matters to be dealt with ere you leave us.”

“Aye, father.”

So, the heavy door closed behind them, and together, they walked, neither looking at the other till they passed out of the great-nail studded door of the Steward’s House, and into the cool summer night.

He could not endure the silence under the lightless sky; the sudden loneliness of a man who knows he has broken faith.

“Little brother, listen to me,” Boromir said awkwardly at last, “I did what I thought best. Try to forgive me, if you can.” And when Faramir made no answer, he cried, "You are not well. The journey will kill you! Do you not see that?" And he seized his brother's hand, a bear's grip.

"Boromir, you must let me go," he said quietly.

"I cannot."

There was no anger now in Faramir’s eyes, only a profound sorrow. And together, they looked down; slowly, Boromir’s fingers came away, leaving red welts behind. Soon, there would be bruises.

For a long while, neither man spoke. Then, Faramir said, with the odd half-smile he had so often seen before. “It is near midnight, and I doubt the Warden will be pleased that I have been gone so long. I bid you good night, brother.”

“Let me come with you,” he said impulsively.

“There is no need,” said Faramir as he turned away into the dark. “It is only a short way to the Houses of Healing.”

* * *

Note:

The words I have attributed to Faramir in relation to the dream were actually spoken by Boromir in Fellowship of the Ring.

A Dream and a Journey: Part 2

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling - my darling - my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

~Annabel Lee~
Edgar Allan Poe

THE DOOR OPENED on an empty room. A flaming sun-square on the empty bed; and through the open window came the wind-song in the trees, and green leaves dancing in the brilliant summer air. The scent of herbs lingered still, sharp and bitter, the room was cold and bright, and it seemed to him that everything in it had the keenness of a knife-edge.

A quickening of the heart, a flare of fury. Had he left after all, without so much as a word of farewell to his own father?

“Where is my son?”

And the Warden, startled by the sharpness in the Steward’s voice, gave back a step. “Why, he must be in the garden, my Lord. He walks beneath the trees every day now, since he was well enough to leave his sick-bed, and often he sits under the old oak tree where my Lady - ” Then he broke off abruptly, for he heard with horror what he had said, and saw the sudden darkness in his Lord’s face. “Shall I fetch him, sir?” he said faintly.

“No. I will go to him. Leave me.”

“Aye, my Lord.”

Footsteps died away, and he was alone at last. His quick eye caught, in a shadowed corner, a kist - and on it, a battered sword, a small earthenware jar of wine, books and an assortment of small packages. So, he had not left after all. Slowly, the Steward made his way to the cot by the window. For a long while, he stood in the sun, staring at the thin striped blanket, neatly folded; then his fingers, quivering a little, ran over the harsh wool; here he had laid his head; here he had slept, and dreamed his unquiet dreams.

Quite suddenly, he recoiled, as though he had been stung. What had he to be sorry for? Why should he berate himself? It was after all, not he who had been in the wrong. A hard look came into his face, and swiftly, he turned away to tread a path he had not walked for many and many a year.

* * *

THE MUSIC DID not come easily to his fingers now. It was so long since they had done anything but the work of war; so long since his hands had lost their cunning. It sat easily in the crook of his arm, this harp of black bog oak, once a friend’s and now his own. Even in the shifting leaf-shade, the old sword-scars on the front stay, starkly white against the smooth dark skin stared up at him. But the strings, still and silent, were bright and warm on his fingertips.

For a moment, he made as though to put it aside on the old stone bench, where the oak-leaf shadows danced on yellow sun-warmed marble. The old guilt, worming insidiously into his heart; guilt for learning its ways in secret, guilt for wishing, as a child, that if he could only master its tongue, he could somehow speak to her again, for she had been so skilled at the harp, and made its voice so much her own that after her death, neither his father nor brother could abide the sound of it.

What if someone should hear him? Laughing softly, he shook his head at his own foolishness. He was alone, and there would be none to hear him save the grass and the old oak tree and the small silver fish darting in the lily pond. And what did it matter if they did? He was no prisoner here in the Houses of Healing, yet it had come to him one night, as he lay tossing in his cot, that he was lonely. There were few visitors now that most of the Company had returned to Ithilien, and Boromir, he had neither seen nor spoken to since that night; and his father… his father who had not come at all…

No prisoner, yet the weight of chains quite invisible to the eye lay heavily on him, and each day, as the longing for freedom grew greater, and so too did the urge to talk, so unlike himself, about anything to anyone - anyone at all. Together, they strangled sleep and made the daily task of living unbearable. And always in the distance loomed Ithilien’s hills, now juniper green, now gently golden in the afternoon, now wine-red at the sun’s setting.

Lightly, his fingers wandered over the shadowed strings, awkwardly at first, as just a man who has not spoken for many years fumbles to find his tongue again. A whisper of sound like the wind humming became a shimmering skein of notes, and little by little the music found its way back across thirty years and more, across the mists of sorrow and grey grief. A woman in a plain dark kirtle, and a small fair child playing at her feet. Slowly, she laid aside her head-rail and loosed her long hair that was warm and bright as the sun on river water. And there she sat, on a bench of ancient stone, braiding, turning and parting the shining strands with her slender fingers, humming softly in the sun-dappled shade of the great oak tree; a golden, honey-sweet humming that became a song:

An Elven-maid there was of old,
A shining star by day:
Her mantle white was hemmed with gold,
Her shoes of sliver-grey.

A star was bound upon her brows,
A light was on her hair
As sun upon the golden boughs
In Lorien the fair.

Her hair was long, her limbs were white,
And fair she was and free;
And in the wind she went as light
As leaf of linden-tree.

And here and there in the grass green as emerald, grew the pale white stars of alfirin and the sweet summer scents of rosemary and lavender and wild thyme lingered in the bright air. He remembered looking up at the leaves rustling in the wind, and the shards of blue sky shivering in the spaces between the dark oak-leaves, and how, he had tried to catch in his childish hands, the little patches of shifting sun-gold.

Beside the falls of Nimrodel,
By water clear and cool,
Her voice as falling silver fell
Into the shining pool.

Where now she wanders none can tell,
In sunlight or in shade;
For lost of yore was Nimrodel
And in the mountains strayed.

A harp of silver wood lay by her feet, fair and graceful as were all the things she had brought out of Dol Amroth. Lying on the grass, the child traced with small tremulous fingers the flowing lines of swans and ships on its slender stem, and suddenly, with great daring, struck a stream of shining notes from the strings of white bronze. Flighting into the golden air, they mingled with the woman’s voice, and then her low, sweet laughter. Flinging a heavy braid over her shoulder, she set her small son on her knee and laughing still, her eyes as blue as the sea, “By and by you shall learn to wake the singing magic, little one. We will make of you a harper yet!”

But there had been no time for him to learn to wake the harp’s singing magic, for not long after, the sweating sickness came to the White City, and for many days, the Steward’s younger son lay in a wandering fever, and the Lady Finduilas, who had nursed him in the long sleepless nights and days of his sickness, took ill at last. Yet while her son mended, life and strength left the Lady, and it was said by many in those days that she had given her life’s grace to her child and kept not enough for herself. And one day, before summer faded to autumn, the bells of the White City tolled her death-song, and so she died, crying for the sea and the white strands of the south, and the long home of her fathers.

They buried her on a wind-swept day on a high promontory, where the tall white cliffs fell away to flaming sands and crashing surf below, and the shimmering sea soared into blue cloudless skies. And in the quiet air, the seabirds sang their plaintive song; and so would they keep her company until all the world was changed, and the sea came no more to Belfalas.

He would remember always that day of days, the green mound that was her burying-place, and the two grieving children clinging to each other within the circle of dark-clad mourners; and how their father in his heavy black robes drew at last the shroud, hemmed with silver stars, over her beloved face. He was stern and silent, and the rising wind lifted his hair, the colour of a raven’s wing over his pale cheek. Did the Steward remember then how he had once raised her bridal veil long ago, when she had come to him, a princess of this kingdom by the sea?

Her fair hair braided with gold lay like a bright pall on her breast; at her feet lay her harp of silver wood, and on her white kirtle, her slender hands were clasped in sleep. And as they laid the Lady in her green grave after the manner of her people, singing the sad half-forgotten songs that had come down to them out of Numenor in the west, her younger son turned away trembling, to quench his silent tears against his brother’s shoulder. And for a long while, he clung to the warm wet darkness of Boromir’s tunic, listening only to the beating of his brother’s heart. Then, a cry shattered the song, a man’s harsh cry of grief and loss and despair; a cry that seemed to him the splitting of the world, for surely the earth could not endure it. But when he looked up in horror, the sun still shone, the seas had not dried, nor had the earth sundered and swallowed them.

And he saw his father, falling to his knees, shuddering, his face bent into shivering hands, and his uncle gently taking the other man in his arms. But the sound of it echoed still in Faramir’s heart, long after the wind had had borne it away to the sea and in after years, it was to haunt his dreams.

“Boromir,” he said, drawing closer, and his brother’s reddened eyes met his own.

“Hush now, little one. It is all over,” said Boromir, and drew the other child into a fierce embrace. “Hush now, it is all over.”

And so he sang into the silence, the last verses of the Lay of Nimrodel he had learned so long ago, and the sun shining through the dark oak leaves glimmered on the harp-strings of white bronze, waking them to gold.

From helm to sea they saw him leap,
As arrow from the string,
And dive into the water deep
As mew upon the wing.

The wind was in his flowing hair,
The foam about him shone;
Afar they saw him strong and fair
Go riding like a swan.

But for the West has come no word,
And on the Hither Shore
No tidings Elven-folk have heard
Of Amroth evermore.

He did not hear the light footsteps along the shaded colonnade, or how they hesitated for what seemed an eternity before they crossed the grass; and the last strains had hardly faded away when a sharp voice struck him with all the cruel suddenness of summer lightning.

“Is this how you divert yourself in Ithilien, Captain?”

Guilt and surprise burning in his cheeks, the Steward’s son turned, made a small convulsive gesture as though to lay aside the betraying harp before he stilled himself.

“Father - my Lord, I did not think to see you here.”

“It seems clear that you did not.” Crossing the remaining space between them, he marked the wary eyes dogging his every step, and how Faramir’s narrow hands grew white on the harp still settled on his knee. Taking the far end of the bench, Denethor said quietly, “Put it away. I wish to speak with you.”

A pause. Then obediently, Faramir set it down on the seat between them as a man lays down his weapons. “What is your will, my Lord?”

How could he speak now the words he had come to say? The harp-song had wounded him more deeply than he had thought possible, and he was shaken to find that he too, was not beyond hurt. Anxiously, he turned over in his mind the words so carefully rehearsed, spoken in a dozen different accents in the fastness of his heart; and hearing again the dozen different answers that haunted his dreams, he hesitated.

I would not lose you; not when your brother is gone. I would fain have you stay. Stay, and we shall be as father and son should be.

What would he say, this strange child of his? Had he forgiven the years of suffering and banishment? Did he understand now the gift his father had given him - that of strength in adversity and courage against all odds? So near they were, and yet so distant. The Steward had only to stretch out his hand to touch his son, but it was as though all the sundering seas lay between them. And suddenly, he was afraid.

The words stuck in his throat, for he had never found it easy to speak to this younger son who was so like her, and whose clear eyes saw so much. Long ago, Faramir had put up a shield between himself and all the world, a shield he lowered to one man only - and that man was not his father. So, an odd trick of fate, it was Faramir, who could no longer endure the enforced silence, who spoke first, and the chance was lost beyond all catching back.

“My Lord, may I have your leave to return to Ithilien?”

How easy it was to wound with words.

Denethor did not answer at once, but when he did, his voice was cool. “You may go whenever you please. You are not needed here, for Hurin can take your brother’s place until he returns.”

The palpable relief in his son’s eyes was unexpectedly hurtful.

“Thank you, my Lord. But you wished to speak to me - ”

“So I did.” The harp lay between them, and watching sun and shade fluttering over the silent strings, he said, fumbling a little, “It was your mother’s death-day but two days ago, and I - I have not been myself. Take this harp of yours back to Ithilien if you wish.” It was the closest he had ever come to an apology.

And he saw in Faramir’s dark eyes, a great hunger and loneliness, and something in them reaching out to him, tremulous and uncertain as a child’s first steps. “I would gladly lie down and die today, and not think it a heavy price to pay, if by my death I could give her life again. I would do that, and more, my father, if I could make anew all that is broken; if I could have all that is hurt made whole again.”

A deep, ragged breath in the silence. All around them, leaves fell, gleaming like green and yellow jewels in the sun.

He could not meet the eyes of his younger son, not now, perhaps not ever. Very deliberately, he opened his hands, and saw for the first time the deep crescents, red as wounds in his palms. “There is no power in middle earth now that can bring her back,” he said harshly. “I wish…” Abruptly, he stopped.

A woman’s quiet voice, and behind it, the sounding sea. I wish that the day and the light would be ours always and always, and that night need never fall; I wish that there were no tears, no grief, no laments in this world, only laughter and music and songs of joy.

Then it seemed to them that even the wind had ceased its blowing, and that there were none other than they in all the wide spaces and long ages of the world. Father and son. Son and father. Then the words came, a mere breath in the silence and he knew, without looking up that the other’s eyes were as darkly luminous as a deer’s in the instant that the hunter thrusts his spear into its heart.

“What do you wish, my father?”

He did not know what answer he gave, for he heard nothing but his heart’s pounding; he knew only that the words tore savagely from his breast as a creature long caged bursts for freedom; he came blundering to his feet, and eyes, suddenly black with pain following him. Grass and stone spun away before him, and then he was out of the sun, and walking swiftly into the safe, shadowed colonnades where the eyes could not follow.

For a long while, his son did not move. Then, he too rose, staggering like a blind man, and in the green shade of the old oak tree, rested his burning cheek against the cool bark. He did not hear the harsh, tearing sobs in the silence, the breathing of a hunted animal. He felt nothing then; neither the roughness against his skin, nor the leaves falling like tears around him. Yet, the merciful numbness wore away little by little, and the old pain returned, the turning of a dagger in his breast. As one whose strength is over-borne at last, he dropped to his knees, his slender hands crushed over his ears. He was alone.

Words, words.

When would they stop?

A Dream and a Journey: Part 3

Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows
The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.
‘What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?
Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?’
‘I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey;
I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away
Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more.
The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.’
‘O Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar,
But you came not from the empty lands where no men are.’

The Departure of Boromir
~ The Two Towers -

Minas Tirith, 14 July 3018

A MAN WAS waiting for him under the high shadowed curve of the great gate’s arch. He had the air of one who had been waiting patiently for a very long time, leaning easily against the cool stone with the bridle through his arm, his tall grey mare nuzzling at his shoulder. The dawn light, warming the white walls of the City to the colour of flame did not touch them, and they reminded him of a smoke-darkened tapestry he had seen once in the Hall of Theoden King at Edoras; a man and his horse, with a hunting horn at his side and a tall spear in his hand.

As he drew up, the Guard, in their black livery clashed to arms, and the man looked up, smiling faintly. “Greetings, brother. You look like a king, with the sun behind you and your long shadow before. If only your men could see you - it is almost as though Elendil the Tall walked among us again.”

Suddenly he felt a great weight lifted off his shoulders. Relief, and for an instant the joy of finding again a thing once lost. Laughing, Boromir said, “Almost, but not quite, I fear.” Then the laughter faded. “I was afraid you would not come.”

“How could I not?” And swinging into the saddle, he said, “I will ride with you as far as the Glanhir.”

Swiftly, his eyes took in what they had missed before, the journey-gear on the mare’s back, the old travelling cloak on his brother’s shoulders and the long sword at his side. “But that is two days’ journey! Does Father know? What does the Warden say?”

“Does it matter?” Faramir asked. There was an odd look in his face, hot colour rising in his cheeks. “No, wait, Boromir - do not send me away. I have leave to return to Ithilien.” Then, as the flush faded; a smile that did not touch his eyes. “I am cleared for action, shall we say, so what is a mere two-days’ ride?”

“Truly?”

“Have I ever given you cause to doubt my word?”

A long pause. He had not realised then how thin his brother had become; but now, he saw with painful clarity, the unfamiliar sharpness in his face, and cold, deep shadows like bruises under his eyes. Yet the fire was there, burning still.

Then, laying a gentle hand on the other’s shoulder, Boromir answered softly, “No, never. Come with me then. It is long since we journeyed together.”

The heavy gate swung open, and they rode out of it, their hair and the manes of their horses streaming in the dawn wind, the long green grass of the Pelennor waving as they passed. Behind them, the gate boomed shut, and Boromir, turning in his saddle, saw the fluttering standards of his father’s House glimmer gold against the great blue dome of sky, and the White City and the Mindolluin soaring above her, glowing in the young sun. Then, with a deep breath he set his spurs to his horse, and he was away.

For leagues, they rode in companionable silence, in the shade of the tall mountains that were brother and sister to the Mindolluin, and before them always the endless plains rolling north and west into the land once called Calenardhon that Cirion gave to Eorl the Young so long ago. His brother, riding with easy grace, had a look about him that was almost contentment, the sun bright on his hair, the lines of care smoothed from his brow. How long had it been since he had seen his brother at peace? Memory eluded him, but it did not matter; there were times that it was not good to remember too closely.

“Why do you look at me so?”

“It is nothing,” Boromir smiled. “I was only thinking of our wager in Osgiliath.”

“Well,” said Faramir, laughing, “You owe me a new cloak, brother.”

“Do I? Let you prove it then!” Without warning, Boromir swung to his left. The plunging horses crashed together, and his hard warrior’s hands aiming for his brother’s throat found empty air as slender fingers, quick and strong as his own closed on his wrists. With a cry and a single swift movement, Boromir twisted away and lunged once more. Again, they clashed, fist against fist, pitting strength against strength, but Faramir, seizing his arm, dragged him half out of his saddle, and for the space of a single heartbeat, he was dangling uncomfortably close to the ground, with the long grass whipping his face, and the horses’ hooves thundering in his ears.

“Do you yield?” cried a voice above him, and looking up into Faramir’s dancing eyes, he yelled, “No!” And catching Faramir’s arm, hauled himself upright once more. This time, he did not let go. Breathlessly, they struggled shoulder to shoulder, neither gaining on the other, until Boromir thrust the other away, laughing. “You are a tenacious one indeed, little brother. It is a draw then!”

And they reined in, panting and grinning at each other like fools. “A draw?” said Faramir at last, when he had his breath back again. “No, Boromir. I will have the cloak you promised me - you shall not escape so easily.”

Folding his arms in mock despair, Boromir leaned over his mount. “Well, what will you have then?”

“Another test.”

“And what would that be?”

“Race me to yonder yew tree.” Following his brother’s gaze, he saw, perhaps ten bowshots away, swimming a little in the heat-haze, a tall yew on a hill, spreading its green leaves in the summer sun. A long low bough, like an outstretched arm shimmered in the warm air. “First man to that branch wins.”

“On my word then. Ride!”

As one, they sprang away. For what seemed an eternity they raced neck and neck, sods flying in their wake, and the grass parting before them as the sea parts before the prow of a ship. Then, Boromir’s bay with her longer stride began to pull away. “On, brave heart! On!” he cried. She was half a length ahead now, her long mane flying in the wind, and he felt for all in the world like an arrow flighting from its bow, a strange exhilarating freedom that was in the cool rushing air and the pounding of hooves.

Half way there, and he was a whole length ahead; and turning back, he saw his brother crouched low in the saddle, urging on his grey with his voice and knee. And little by little he was gaining. “On, beautiful one, on!” Boromir cried, and gave her the lead. She was a willing beast, and the bending grass swept by faster than ever; dark earth clods spun away from her plunging hooves, and not far ahead, he saw the great yew looming against the brilliant sky.

He was suddenly aware of the grey drawing up beside him, and there was his wild-eyed brother, laughing like a boy. He had almost forgotten how skilled a rider Faramir was. They were so near now, so near that Boromir could see each green leaf quivering on the low branch that was their winning post; neck and neck now, the nodding heads and flying manes level. And then the grey streaked ahead, and he saw Faramir rising gracefully in his stirrups, and his hand reaching for the green branch.

And so it was over. For an instant, disappointment and something that was almost resentment smouldered within him; but when he saw the look in his young brother’s eyes, he smiled and knew then that he would have gladly lost a thousand races for this one shining moment. Gently the grey eased up beside his own heaving mount, and Faramir, looking up at him with laughter lingering about him still, took his reins as he dropped from the saddle.

“Well?” he demanded.

“That was hardly fair, little brother. You have hollow bones like a bird, and I have twice your weight. I demand another challenge!”

“Well, let you name it then!” Mirth, and a flush of excitement in Faramir’s cheeks, and for the space of a heartbeat, he again saw the boy within the man.

“I choose the sword.”

“The sword it shall be.” They turned the horses loose to graze and cool themselves a little; and together, the brothers found a patch of level ground not far away where the grass grew thick and soft and the stones were few. The sun was high and bright, and in the distance, they could still see the White City, and the great mountains that were her silent guardians.

He had never liked fighting left handed men, for they struck in all the wrong places. But Faramir was his brother, and he knew all the old tricks and feints he had used as a boy; Faramir the light-footed, with a wiry strength and grace that was all his own. Only they were not boys now. And suddenly his heart was heavy with a great sorrow; a sorrow for things lost beyond finding again, for things that are that never should be.

But now was no time for memory or regret. His brother’s sword licked out like a serpent’s tongue, quicker and deadlier than he remembered it. He dodged, and the shining blade shaved by with less than a finger’s breadth to spare; instantly he struck back, but Faramir was already beyond reach. Laughing, Boromir cried across the space between them, “You have learnt your lessons well, little brother!”

“I had a good tutor.”

And so the wary circling started, each man watching the other’s eyes, sunlight running on their swords like water. There was a familiar singing in his blood, a hot sharpness in everything he saw, and over all, the joyful edge that always came to him in battle. And he moved, although he did not know it, with such lightness and grace and beauty that his brother, watching with narrowed eyes wondered, and knew that it was the beauty that comes of a thing’s absolute fitness for the purpose for which it is made - a bird winging over sea, a fish darting in a stream, Boromir with his blade.

He was unexpectedly fast for a big man. Swinging, his sword carved a half-circle of light in the blue air, clashed on steel, and then rang again and again. He drove his brother back and back, as a storm-wind drives the rain before it, and Faramir gave ground, a deep line growing between his brows. His movements were sluggish, as though strength and skill had deserted him, wielding his sword as though it had grown too heavy for his hand.

It would be so easy to disarm him; he had only to sweep in, and with a twist of the blade, send the other’s flying. But quite suddenly, Faramir lunged under his guard, his sword flickering like lightning; but Boromir lifted his arm, swaying sideways, and the blade passed harmlessly by.

“So, that was a pretty trick!”

“Was it? Then you shall have a bag of them!”

Then came the rasp of steel against steel, a flurry of sword-strokes before they sprang apart, panting, and wary circling began again. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging. With a fierce joy, they engaged again, deadly and swift, their steps intricate as a dance; each blow jarring the sword-arm and all the while the war-hammering of blood in their ears. His brother was true to his word; and Boromir, scarcely breathing, found himself watching always for a feint or a ruse, and it took all his skill to parry the odd-angled blows, the unexpected cuts that leapt in out of nowhere.

It still surprised him to find under Faramir’s gentleness and learning a hard ruthlessness, and at times, a single-minded determination to follow no man’s will but his own. Obstinate, unbiddable, wilful, his father had once called him. He leapt back, gasping as a bright blade hissed overhead. How strange it was that neither of them saw how like each was to the other.

He took his chance when it came. It was an old trick, but it worked well enough. He flung out his arm, and as Faramir’s eyes followed its arc, launched himself into the air. They went down together in a roaring tangle, and somehow, as they thrashed about in the long grass, he found his brother’s sword hand, and with a single swift movement, twisted the blade out of it. But Faramir was a fighter, and he took several shrewd blows before he had the other squarely pinned to the ground.

“So, this round is mine!”

Pale accusing eyes looked up into his own. “That was no duel.”

“No,” he admitted, smiling. “But you fight like an Easterling. All trickery and quickness and cunning. Whatever happened to honest, old-fashioned sword-work?”

“In Ithilien, we must fight with whatever weapons that come to us,” Faramir said, with irony. “There are things worth the learning, even from the Easterlings.” Mirth now, behind the twitching lips. “Leave off me, brother; truly, you are heavier than an oliphaunt.”

“You begin to sound like Father.” Lazily, Boromir flung himself onto the grass, flattened by their wrestling, and watched his brother dust himself off, slowly hunting for his sword. Yet there was an odd stiffness in the way Faramir moved, the careful clumsiness of a wounded man. Then came a sharp intake of breath, swiftly suppressed. His sharp eye caught the sudden betraying movement of hand to shoulder, and in an instant, he was up again.

“Brother, have I hurt you?” A stab of fear in his heart.

“Nay, it is nothing.”

Laying a hand on his brother’s brow, Boromir said softly, “Must you lie to me even now? You are cold, and you tremble like a man with the marsh fever.” And cursing, he cried, “Oh fool that I am! I have been over rough with you.”

A hand, quite steady now, fended off his own. “The Enemy would have been far less gentle. Am I not fit for Ithilien after all? Boromir, I know myself - this is nothing a moment’s rest will not cure, and there are other wounds that neither time nor age nor even -” And quite suddenly, he broke off and fell silent.

And so Boromir knew that he must ask no more. For a time, they did not speak; the sun passed behind a cloud, and all around the tall grass shadows trembled and nodded and whispered as though the breeze herself had breathed life into them. But they alone were unmoving, an island of shadow and stillness under the shifting sky. Then he heard the quiet desolation in his brother’s voice.

“Why, Boromir, why have you have taken yourself away from us both?”

The question shook him; yet he knew must answer it. For a long while, he said nothing. His mouth was suddenly dry, as though he were a boy caught stealing. Then shame and anger receded, and slowly, he said, "I must go, for your good as well as mine. Do you understand?"

"I thought I did," Faramir answered, looking up. He seemed a stranger, pale and remote with his sword across his knees, his hair honey-brown in the shadows. "But I am not sure now. Do you speak your mind, my brother. I have had enough of riddles."

“He does not know your worth. Do not return to Ithilien; stay with him and take my place as Captain of the White Tower until I return. Why do you shake your head so? It is not too late. Think, brother! This is your chance to show him what you are, and all you might one day be!"

“All I might one day be,” Faramir said broodingly. Clear as a mirror, the blade of his sword showed him his own face, cold and quiet and inscrutable. Yet it had not always been so. How long had it taken him to learn to banish the betraying signs of thought and expression, to tame the tell-tale lines of joy, anger and sorrow? Too long, yet not long enough.

“Perhaps.”

“You could.” Above his own, another face crowding out the pale reflected sky. A determined chin, a mouth winged with laugher lines under a sharp nose; the eyes grey and kindly in the shadow of brown level brows - so like his own, yet so very different.

I could never be you.

Carefully, Faramir laid his sword down, so that it only mirrored the green grass with their corn-yellow flowers. "You would have me supplant you?" A sudden glint of laughter in his dark eyes. “You would do that, for me?”

“That, and more,” Boromir said firmly. “It is a price I would gladly pay.”

Then Faramir was grave again, "It is not one that I would accept; nor I think, would he suffer it. You are heart of his heart, marrow of his marrow; his own true son. You belong here, with him. And I ...sometimes…” he hesitated, fumbling for the words that would not come; words buried for so long that they came with a cruel wrench of the heart. “There are times that I do not know where I belong, or what I am, save that I am your brother, and that I have your love.”

"That you will have always. But listen, little brother. We spoke of many things last night, father and I. But most of all, we spoke of you.” Looking up from the long grass-stem he had been twisting between his fingers, Boromir saw how his brother stilled suddenly, how eagerness and dread marked his brow before instinct smoothed both away into careful blandness.

“Father told me what he said to you, under the old oak tree… and how he repented of it afterwards.” The slender blade, crushed and bleeding where green sap had run from its wounds stained his fingers. Carelessly he flung it away, and noted how his brother’s quick dark eyes followed it. “It was no easy thing. Do try to forgive him, for he loves you too, in his own way.”

"Does he?" And for a moment, Faramir looked away. “There is nothing to forgive. The wrong was mine after all, that I live and she is dead,” he said tonelessly. “Do not look at me so, Boromir. I have known this for a long while now.” And his voice was low, so low that it seemed that he spoke only to himself. “I would have gone. Then I would have been free, at least for a little while. And so would he.”

"But you are hurt,” Boromir said patiently. “This journey is not for you. I should not forgive myself if you perished in the attempt."

“Oh, I think I should do well enough in the wilds. After all, have I not spent twenty years in Ithilien?” And he smiled; a small wry smile with the winter’s chill in it. “Death comes to all men. Does the where and when of it matter so?”

“It does, to me,” Boromir said resolutely. “I would not have you hurt, not by him or any other; I would not have you throw away your life thus. I know what lies in your heart little brother.”

Incredulity crossed his brother’s face; then came the enigmatic half-smile he had always found so intriguing. “I was not intending to kill myself, if that was what you were thinking. At least, not deliberately.”

“Not deliberately?” Boromir could not help laughing then.

“No, not deliberately. It is the truth, whether you would believe it or no.”

“Even if it were not, I think you would not tell me.” Then he was sober again. Between thumb and forefinger, a slender blade of grass trembled, vividly veined in the sun. How straight and beautiful it was; just like a spear-shaft, yet so much weaker. He could snap it so easily now with his hand, this graceful fragile thing that bent with the breeze, as a spear could not. Smiling almost to himself, he let it go, and watched it springing back to its windy dance.

Gently, Boromir said, "Brother, let you speak your mind, on this day of all days. Do you hate me?"

And he saw how his brother stilled, suddenly. "Hate?" Faramir said, as though he were tasting the word on his tongue. Very deliberately, he slid his sword back into its worn scabbard. The leather was warm from the sun, smooth and darkened with age where it was not scored with old battle-scars. Almost idly, his light fingers began tracing the graceful tooled lines of sea and a single swan-ship riding its curling waves. "No...I do not, though I came close to it then. No, I could never hate you. I should not be here else.”

“That is good to hear, at all events.” So, he understood at last, the look in his brother's eyes, on the night that the wine had spilt like blood on stone.

For a moment, Faramir looked up, and his restless hands ceased their moving. “Did our father tell you why he would send you to Rivendell and not me?"

“He did. But that is a matter between him and I.”

“And will you not tell me?”

Man and boy he had found it no easy thing to turn his brother away. With a deep breath, Boromir said, “No, just as I would not speak to him of the things that pass between us, that are not for his ears. Therefore, I beg you, little brother, do not ask me again.”

“A hard thing it is to keep faith with the both of us, when the keeping of one so often means the breaking of the other. Very well then, I will not ask again.” A pause; their eyes met, and Boromir saw in his brother’s weary gaze pity and compassion. Softly, he said, “I think I know now why you claimed this journey for your own, and I … I do not begrudge it.”

“Do you? Then we understand each other.” With a smile, Boromir leapt to his feet. “Take my hand. Up, O lazy one, or I shall never get to Rivendell. We have tarried too long here, for I smell thunder in the air.”

In silence, they walked back up the gentle wind-ruffled hill where the horses were tethered under the shivering leaves of the old yew tree. And on the crest of it, Boromir turned and looked long at the White City, as a man looks his last upon a thing greatly beloved. Cradled by the green earth and a yellow sky rapidly darkening with rain, Minas Tirith glittered, tiny and bright in the distance, like a jewel in its setting. For a moment, Boromir closed his eyes; it seemed to him that he had only to reach out and take it, and hold it safe always and always in the palm of his hand. And so intense was the longing in his heart that he was surprised, when he opened his eyes again, to find that his fingers had closed upon nothing more than summer air.

Gravely, he said, “I leave in your keeping all that I hold dear.”

“All will be safe with me. On that you have my word.”

As they rode away, down the other side of the low green hill, the White City vanished from sight at last, and only the greying mountains remained, keeping their long silent vigil.

And from the East, came the faint rumble of thunder.

* * *

THE RAIN-WASHED afternoon passed into a flaming twilight, and in the deepening night that was the deep purple of bell heather on the moors, rose the star of Earendil to light the way into the Uttermost West for all those who could yet sail the straight road beyond the bent world. In a quiet sheltered vale, the brothers lit a fire to warm themselves and take what rest they could, and through the chill star-lit summer night that passed all too briefly, they spoke of many things, past, present and in time to come, forsaking rest and sleep. And often Boromir’s laughter rang in the leaping fire-lit dark, and at times, their voices joined in song, until the sun’s golden shield-rim rose in the eastern sky. But what they spoke of that night, no man ever knew, for Boromir told no one, and nor did his brother, in the long years that came after.

And with the morning, came the journey; and the dew drops that glistened like golden mead on rose-coloured grass. West they rode still, the deep silent mountains to the south, drawing closer with each league to their long parting. And all too soon, they saw a black ribbon of water springing from a crack in the mountain face, tumbling down and down into a burbling stream that became a river fringed by rushes and drooping alder trees, flowing its long way North into the land of the Horse-Lords.

For a time, neither spoke, for what was there to say at such a time as this? They came at last to a narrow ford where the dark waters flowed less deeply and swiftly, and the bank less steep than it was elsewhere.

Then, Boromir turned to his brother. “The journey is mine alone now, for you may come no further.” And Faramir returned his gaze steadily, and for a brief moment the old defiance blazed back at him. Then, with a sigh, he slid from the saddle and without words, took the reins from Boromir. Together, they crossed the marshy ground sloping down to the ford, where grass gave way to reeds and the knotted snarls of alder roots grew thick upon the ground until they stood at last at the very edge of the sodden bank.

Gravely, Faramir looked up and laid a hand on his brother’s knee. “May the Valar keep you. May they keep you always.”

Smiling, Boromir said, “No need for the always and always, little brother. Why, I shall be home before the spring, you shall hear the Horn of Gondor sounding across wood and water and vale!” And throwing back his head, he blew three mighty blasts, so that the mountains flaming now with the morning’s golden light caught the sound of it and tossed the echoes ringing back and forth among them, as though it were the ringing of the victory trumpets of Valinor.

“Aye, my brother, and assuredly nothing will bring me greater joy,” said Faramir, leaning back and laughing. “But do you cease your blowing now, or you will bring the Enemy upon us.”

“Let them come, then! We will fight them, you and I, and none shall stand against us!” For a while and a while, the brothers lingered in the sun, with merriment in their eyes and lightness in their hearts, as though the weight of all the world had fallen away, and nothing mattered; nothing, save this one glittering moment.

Then the wind rose, and all around them the tall reeds shivered, and the echoes faded like a dream. And the dark waters of the Glanhir, gurgling and bubbling over rock and twisting alder root seemed to wash away the day’s mirth with it.

Neither of them spoke. A slender branch, white-blossomed and still crowned with green swept by, borne away on the swirling stream on its long northern journey. Then Faramir said in a rush, “I would come with you on this hunting, brother; I would come with you to whatever end.”

“I know,” said Boromir quietly, looking long into the other’s upturned face. Love there was, longing, and sorrow also. And for an instant, he would have said, “Come with me, and we will do this thing together,” yet he caught the words back with a little lurch of the heart, as a man catches back a spear that has not yet left his hand. “But this hunting trail is one I must ride alone. Stay, little brother, and do your duty, as I shall do mine. We will meet again before long - that I promise you.” And stooping, he laid his hands on his brother’s shoulders and kissed his brow.

“Farewell.”

So Boromir turned away, and swinging his mare round, slid down shallow bank and into the ford; and the white wings of water rose, splashing, the drops of it not black but jewel-bright in the sun. Then river and rush gave way to tall grass, its corn-coloured flowering spearheads waving in the wind; before him were the great plains of Calenardhon and three days away, perched on its high hill like an eagle’s eyrie, was the golden hall of Meduseld. And beyond it, Rivendell. Suddenly he felt a thrill in his blood, as though he had heard in his heart the wild singing of a battle-song.

He did not look back.

And on the other bank, bright eyes narrowed against the sun, his brother stood watching, long after man and horse, shimmering like a dream, dwindled to a dark spot against the brilliant sky. Softly, he spoke into the windy silence:

“Go, dear brother and do your duty, as I will do mine. Go, with peace in your heart, for we shall do well enough, father and I.”

	Breaking of the Horn He is gone on the mountain, He is lost to the forest, Like a summer-dried fountain, When our need was sorest. ~The Lady of the Lake~ Canto III, verse xvi Walter Scott Henneth Annûn, 28 February 3019 SAVE FOR THE sentries, the men were asleep, huddled in little knots around small dying braziers. But a boy sat sleepless by a banked fire waiting for his first battle. He could not rest here, in this place where he could not hear the sea’s whispering and the high, thin wailing of the gulls winging across water. Footsteps, light and wary. A stranger, shivering and sodden with rain folded up by the fire, and the boy shifted a little to make way for him. He was masked and hooded, and all the boy could see were his eyes, blue and brilliant in the shifting fire-light, and a worry line between his brows. An old hand, then. Shyly, the boy said, “It’s been a wet day.” “So it has,” was the muffled answer, but the stranger seemed friendly enough. “Wet as leaking wine-skins, we were.” Then the dripping mask came off, and the heavy gauntlets; not an old man at all, the boy thought, surprised. A fair face he had, but gaunt as a winter-wolf; and his fine hands, blue with cold stretched hungrily to the fire. They were slender and long fingered, and in the half dark, he saw the marks of old battles, and over all, a newer one scoring deeply across the back of the left hand. He was suddenly aware of being watched; and looking up, met the pale eyes. They were keen, but not unfriendly, yet he found himself flushing, and turned away. “I have not met you before. You must be one of the cubs.” A low, pleasant voice with a smile in it. “I am,” the boy said earnestly. “I came up this morning from the West Bank, and before that, from Belfalas. It was a long journey. I did not think that Ithilien would be so cold; it is so much warmer by the sea.” The stranger was silent a moment, then smiled. “Did you? Be a good cub then, and pass me the wine, or I shall never be warm again.” The man tipped back his head, and from the darkness of his hood, came a glint of fair hair. It went down in a long, steady draught. “Not Lossarnach mead, but it does well enough,” he said at last, cheerfully. “Now, tell me, why us, and not the Tower Guard, or the Osgiliath garrison?” “I come to take my brother’s place.” He was a tall, dark child; solemn and wide-eyed, not more than eighteen summers perhaps. “My father would not have it any other way. Our people were from Ithilien once, long ago, before we came to Belfalas.” So, a younger son too. “Your brother.” Suddenly, the stranger was still. “What was his name?” “Beleg.” It was a name that still brought a lump to his throat. Huskily, he added, “He died at Osgiliath, when the bridge fell. We had a message from the Captain Faramir. It was kind of him to write, for we heard tell that he too had been sorely wounded.” “So,” said the stranger, and carefully built up the fire with deft, steady hands. “I knew your brother, and we miss him still. As we miss all our brothers who have gone beyond the circles of the world.” A pause. “What does your mother say, then? Is she much grieved?” he asked, kindly. “She is dead.” “I am sorry.” A sword, new and brilliantly burnished, lay across the boy’s knees, and he held it as though it were a thing greatly beloved. A gift, perhaps from a grieving father. His own lay by his side, a gift also, but dulled now and battered with much use. On the cross-piece, a swan glimmered dimly in the brown dark. “Nay, do not be sorry. It was her doom, and his. Only I wish that my father had not sent me away. He lives alone now, by the sounding sea. It must be so lonely.” For a moment, it seemed to him that a shadow had crossed the stranger’s face. But perhaps it was only the firelight. “Will you be joining us for the skirmish tonight?” “Oh, aye.” The boy’s eyes were bright. The same eagerness in his voice. “I am with Anborn’s troop.” “Your first?” “Yes,” said the boy defiantly. “But I am good with sword and bow. I am accounted the best in my village.” “Listen now,” said the stranger gravely, and his voice was low, so low that the boy strained to hear him. “A skirmish is no target-practice at a village fair. You need not come with us tonight; by and by, you shall learn our ways and one day, you may come with us when you are ready.’ “I would not have it so!” he cried. A flush of anger, rising swiftly from throat to cheek. “I would not shame my brother’s memory, and even if I would, it is for the Captain Faramir to bid me come or go as he pleases, and not you!” A man turned over in his sleep, muttering. Then laughter lit the stranger’s pale eyes. “Hush now, or you’ll wake them! You need not be ruffling your feathers, my young fighting-cock. I made my offer in good faith, and I see now that I need not make it again.” “No, you need not. And it is for the Captain, not you to be making such an offer.” “I have great influence with Captain Faramir,” said the man lightly. “Usually, he does as I bid him.” “Surely you jest.” Laughter now, low and warm. “Verily, it is no jest. Nay, it does not matter then; tell me your name, my brave cub so that we may be friends.” “I am Edrahil, son of Dior,” he replied stiffly. “A mighty name, and one fit for a man of courage. Surely even the Captain Faramir himself will not find it in his heart to turn such a one away.” Then the stranger laid his scarred hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Then I say to you, Edrahil, son of Dior, come with us on this hunting, if you will. Stay with me.” “Are you also in Anborn’s troop then?” the boy said, eager once more. “In a manner of speaking, yes.” Then, catching up his sword, the man came lightly to his feet. He was tall, and as his hood fell back, the firelight touched his hair to gold. “Are you going now?” the boy said, confused. “But how shall I find you when the time comes?” He smiled, a kindly smile, but his bright eyes twinkled in the dark. “Go to sleep. You will find me easily enough, never fear.” And then, he was gone. * * * “YOU WILL KNOW him by his fair hair and the scar on his face.” Fool that he was, not to have known! But outwardly at least, there was little enough to set the Captain apart from the others, save perhaps the sword with the dull gold chasing on its scabbard and the cool assurance that he had gathered to him in his years of commanding men. Yet here he was, drawing on his mask, laughing like one of them. Was he not the Steward’s son of the House of Hurin, descendant of the great lords of Númenor long ago? Where was the high nobility, the air of belonging to another world that Beleg had so often spoken of with such eagerness? He was only a man after all. And disappointment welled in his breast. Stay with me, he had said. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a jest. Why should the Captain care for him, the least among his men? And now he was miserable and more lonely than ever, the only stranger in this band of brothers. His sword sat loosely in its sheath, but the hilt was cold and heavy in his hand. Not a boy’s dirk anymore, but a man’s blade. And quite suddenly, he was afraid, very afraid, not of the dark but of death. He shut his eyes and saw Beleg’s face, not bright and full of life and laughter, but still and pale, drowning in darkness. A cold coiling fear in his belly, tightening; and for a moment, he thought he would be sick. And he was grateful then, that he was quite alone, in a shadowed corner of the great cave, away from the flickering torch lights and the muted laughter of milling men. Silently, he bent his face into his hands and drew a deep shuddering breath. A hand on his shoulder. With an effort, he looked up, trying to smile a little, so that the sickness in his belly would not show. He froze, and felt as though he had swallowed a stone. “Did I not tell you to stay with me?” There was a smile in the man’s eyes. “It will not do to get lost before we have even started.” “Yes, sir,” he nodded faintly, then looked down again, lest the Captain should know what a craven he was. “Every man is afraid. Do you not hear it in their laugher, in the foolish jests they make?” said the low voice in his ear. Startled, Edrahil raised his head and saw the deep line between the other man’s brows, and knew the Captain was not laughing now behind the dark mask and deep shadows of his hood. “They are brave men, but only men after all. Fear is nothing to be ashamed of.” “I know who you are now,” Edrahil said in a muffled rush. “You are the Captain, son of my Lord the Steward. Why did you not tell me? I thought I had a friend.” “Does it matter?” the Captain asked gently. “Here, we are not merely friends, Edrahil. We are brothers.” “Are you afraid?” For a while the keen eyes regarded him, but he gave the Captain back look for look. “The Captain, son of the Lord Steward of Gondor is only a man after all,” the other said evenly. Then the laughter came back into the Captain’s eyes, and Edrahil found himself shoved, friendly-wise towards the light. “Come now, little brother, the others are waiting. There is no time to lose.” * * * THEY FILED DOWN the slippery, winding way, wet from the waterfall’s misty spray; one long silent shadow in the moonless night. He could feel the chill damp air on his face where the mask did not cover it, and the water-drops, fine as mizzle settling on his lashes. All around them was the ceaseless roar of the falls and a dark pool far below, a pale blur bubbling faintly where water met water. Then they were away from the rushing falls and out into the night. Only the stars lit their way, and Edrahil, a little less sure-footed than the rest followed the slight figure of the Captain, who moved so swiftly and soundlessly that his passing seemed as the flitting of a mere shadow. Down and down they went, the forest leaves rustling faintly in the frosty air, and star-silvered drops splashed onto their dark hooded cloaks, beading and glistening on the hilts of their swords. Then they came to a tall stone under a lebethron tree, glimmering dimly in the faint starlight and he saw how the Captain touched its rain-wet surface and then his heart; a gesture that was both greeting and farewell, and how each man after him echoed it. Yet another custom of the men who were now his brothers. How odd it was that in the losing of one brother, he had gained so many. Had Beleg touched this stone too, on the day he set out from Henneth Annûn, never to return? For an instant, he raised his hand, then lowered it. No, he was not one of them yet; and so, he passed it by. On and on, and it seemed to Edrahil that even the pale stars faded and all was silent save for the faint whispering of leaves and the lonely night-time cries of small woodland animals. And the forest-darkness was to him the darkness inside a wolf’s belly. They had been walking for the best part of an hour before they came to the crest of a wooded knoll where the trees fell sharply away into starlight and grey clouded sky, and Edrahil saw, between the tall trunks and the black tracery of bare branches, the glittering watch-fires of Osgiliath, far to the south. In truth, he hardly needed to look so far for the Enemy, for barely two bow-shots downhill from where he stood, the red flickering flames of a campfire lit the bright ragged standards of the Easterlings, and the darker ones of the Master whom they served. Round the humps of sleeping men, the sentries walked, chafing their hands; and there, at the heart of the camp lay the dark wagon-loads of arms and provisions they had come to destroy. Staring with a horrified fascination, he missed the muted order to break ranks, and stood as though he had grown roots until a man hissed sharply into his ear, “Wake up sleepyhead, and look alive! The Captain calls.” He moved with a start and a sudden burning in his cheeks, then gathered round the Captain with the rest. Sixty men, their breath steaming in the frigid air, heard the orders already given at Henneth Annûn swiftly repeated in the low measured voice of their Captain; then silently, they broke up into their appointed groups and melted away into the night. Only Anborn’s troop of twenty men was left now on the knoll, and at the Captain’s sign, they rounded the hill-shoulder and crept noiselessly down the gentle slope, sheltered by scrub, till they were no more than a spear’s throw away from the Enemy. And there they waited, crouching in the brush, every heartbeat an eternity. The jar of oil in his hands trembled, and with an effort, Edrahil steadied them. Beside him, the Captain, down on one knee like the rest, drew his long hunting knife darkened with earth, watching with pale eyes the pacing sentries. Edrahil looked round at the others. How could they be so still, when his whole being thrummed with fear and his heart pounded as though it would leap into his throat? How could they bear so quietly the silence and the long waiting? Time crept by, and it seemed to him that the sentries had passed back and forth, and back and forth again a hundred times, their spear-tips gleaming in the half-dark before he heard, from far off, the faint hooting of an owl echoing among the trees. Quite suddenly the men about him stiffened. For a long while, nothing. Then the owl’s call came again, this time, much nearer. Edrahil drew a deep breath and held it. A man sidled up close to his side, winking - the one who had hissed in his ear - and a long dagger glinted in his hand. Not long now. All eyes were on the Captain, and they knew that in a moment he too would make the sign. And then, they heard it - the soft cry of a woodland creature in the night. Nine men and the Captain himself, peeling away into the dark, whilst Edrahil watched, dry-mouthed with the rest. From shadow to shadow they flitted in pairs, keeping as far as they could from the torches; then closer and closer to the Enemy, until they leapt, two to a man, upon the unsuspecting sentries. The work was done quickly and quietly, and then they saw in the red firelight, a man waving once before he slipped again into the dark. “Now!” hissed Anborn. Then they broke from the scrub, loping into the sleeping camp, each man bearing his jar of oil. In the brown dark, Edrahil passed a man starkly dead, his throat savagely slit, and another, little more than a boy staring open-eyed still, a long knife between his ribs. A man, tugging at his sleeve. “Move along, cub!” And so he ran on, feeling sick to his stomach, the dead dark eyes following him. He saw men waking, men with fear and fury on their faces, men rising and fumbling for their swords in the dark, men slain as they lay asleep. Choking, Edrahil stumbled on, half-blinded by the grey stinging smoke that seemed everywhere all at once, the precious jar still in the crook of his arm. And there, at the heart of the camp, was a struggling knot of men, and in the midst of it, the rising red blaze of wagons burning. He was almost there, so near that he could smell the battle-rage and terror of the swarthy men who still guarded the great wains with their lives. His sword was out now, and its bright blade bit twice almost before he knew it. And then, the jar left his hand, pitching through the air and crashing into the enemy in a star-burst of flame. All around him was the rush and crackle of fire and the death-cries of men running, glowing like torches in the night; then something struck him hard in the shoulder with the terrible suddenness of a thunderbolt. He could not breathe, and the world writhed and spun before his eyes. Then came agony unbearable, and in the leaping, roaring light, he saw blood on his hands. Stay with me, the Captain had said. Why have you left me alone? he cried, but there was no one to hear him. He fell, his sword spinning away from his hand. And he saw, by the pulsing battle-fires, the enemy fleeing before the dark waves of men who burst upon them from the woods, and heard in the ringing, crashing night, the cry of, “Gondor! Gondor!” taken up and echoed again and again. He saw too, an Easterling dragging a ranger with him to perish in flames, and another man thrusting his torch into an enemy’s swarthy face. The light wavered, then failed altogether. * * * THE BOY WOKE to soft golden light and a slow, pulsing pain in his shoulder. A ragged snatch of sky shone through the half-fallen roof; and here and there, rays of sun speared down in bright shafts through broken tiles, blackened by the fierce fires of another long-ago battle. Groaning, he shifted and turned his face to the comforting shadows. “Up now, are you? It’s about time, too. What cubs are made of these days, I really don’t know.” It was a friendly voice, but one he did not know. Warily, Edrahil opened his eyes and found a man in a ranger’s green and brown looking quizzically down at him; a thin, dark man sitting cross-legged like a tailor with his sword across his knees. Sharp grey eyes he had, and an even sharper nose. “How does the wound?” “It burns a little.” He swallowed, shivering. “What is this place?” “You, my cub, are in safe hands. We are on the other side of the Anduin, in a village men once called Oiolairë long ago, before our wolfish friends the Easterlings put the torch to it. This is where we’re keeping the wounded - almost the only house with a roof still left on it. Come now, will you have some broth? It‘s gone cold waiting for you, but it‘s broth nonetheless.” Gingerly, Edrahil propped himself against the wall and took the wooden bowl Mablung thrust into his hands. In the brown shadows, he counted nine other men on pallets of last year’s bracken, like his own; but his mind, spinning back to the night’s battle remembered only flame, smoke and darkness. “What happened?” he asked, awkwardly stirring the broth with his good hand. “Last night, I mean.” “It was a slaughter,” Mablung answered, with a fierce glint in his eye. He held up the sword he had been burnishing, and it gleamed, mirror-bright in the shadows. “We fired the whole accursed place and left none to tell the tale. Hot as the pits of Angband it was too - so hot that even the wet wood caught. And only five dead and ten wounded on our side.” Laying down the blade, he chuckled. “You have the Captain to thank for your life, cub. It was he who brought you off - and why he has made me your nurse-maid for the day I shall never know.” “Thank you,” Edrahil said stiffly, setting down the broth bowl. “A proud one, aren’t you?” Mablung smiled. “Just as your brother was - yes I knew him too. I see him in your face, and it is in my heart that the Captain does also.” My brother. Had he perished too on just such a night of smoke and blood and fire? He looked away until he was once again master of himself. He would not talk of Beleg to any man - not here, not now, for the grief was too near; and so he spoke of the first thing that came to mind. “I… I saw a great black stone outside Henneth Annûn. I saw the Captain and all who came after touch it, as though it were a thing of great power. Seeing that I am to be one of you, I would have you tell me what it is.” “What did you think it was?” For a moment, the boy hesitated. “Is it a grave, then?” “So it is,” said Mablung, with a odd smile. “Did your brother not tell you? It is the grave of our Captain who died when I was a cub, like you.” And seeing the surprise in the boy’s eyes, he burst out laughing, “Yes, I was once a cub too. I was not always Mablung with the lines on my brow and as many scars as an old hound. Idly, his hands fell away from their work. “His sister lies there, too. A lady as valiant and beautiful as Morwen Eledhwen of old, she was.” “How - how did they die?” For a long while, Mablung made no answer, and carried on burnishing his sword. “It is a long story, cub and a sad one.” Then, lowering his voice so that only Edrahil could hear him, “Perhaps one day you shall have it from me or from another, but not now, not whilst the Captain Faramir is by.” A long shadow fell over them. “And what is it, Mablung that you will be telling him when I am not by?” Leaping to his feet, Mablung flushed to the very tips of his ears and made his obeisance. “Nothing, sir. Nothing of any consequence.” “You are a wretched liar, Mablung.” The Captain laughed, “Nay, then. I shall not ask.” Stooping, he regarded the boy with keen eyes. “You are looking well enough.” “I am, sir - I ...” There was a sudden flurry in the doorway, and a man, still streaked with soot and blood burst in. “There’s someone here to see you sir! Says he’s one of Captain Huor’s. Will you come now?” Faramir straightened, a smile lingering still on his lips. “I will be with you directly, Edrahil. Mablung, do you come with me.” And in the midst of the sun-lit place that was once the village square, now home to scattered knots of men laughing and mending their gear, he found an errand-rider, little more than a boy in a ranger’s green and brown, spattered with mud, and propped up by two of his own men. The smile faded. “My Lord…” Shaking himself free, the boy advanced unsteadily, then slid quietly to the ground. In a moment, Faramir had the boy in his arms and felt for the pulse at his throat. It was there, faint and uneven, but the child was stirring now, as though waking from a deep sleep. Not dead then, and there was no wound that he could see. “Mablung, fetch some wine, quickly.” A little ring of watchers gathered round, whispering and shaking their heads, until their Captain’s sharp glance dispersed them. Presently, Mablung returned, and together, they got the wine down. The boy sat up, spluttering and choking, the colour flooding back into his pale cheeks. “Getting younger and younger these days, aren’t they?” said Mablung drily, sitting on his heels. “You’re not so old yourself, my friend.” And to the boy, Faramir said gently, “Are you hurt?” A pair of dark eyes, wandering a little before they found and held his own. “No, my Lord,” he answered, “But I bear ill tidings from Captain Huor.” A pause. “Well then, speak. What is it now?” he demanded sharply. The boy did not answer. Instead, he stumbled to his feet and fumbling for the pack he had dropped a few steps away, drew from it with fear and reverence a thing that made the gathered men cease their work and fall silent. Slowly, Faramir rose. And they all saw how he flinched, as though he had been struck. For a long time, he stared and said nothing; once he reached out to touch it, then swiftly drew back his hand. But when he spoke at last, his voice was quite, quite steady. “Where did you find this?” Shaking his head, the boy said, “Not I, my Lord. The pieces came to us severally. One of our watchers found it in the reeds, northwards below the infalls of the Entwash. The other we found spinning on the flood-waters of the Anduin not two days ago. So they came to our Captain Huor, and knowing it for my Lord Boromir’s Horn, he bade me bring it to you in all haste.” “Did you see him - did you see my brother? Do you know what became of him?” “No… no,” the boy faltered, “Save that I thought I heard the Horn sounding three days ago, my brothers and I, as we lay up in the Nindalf Marshes, watching for the Enemy. Faint it was, as though it came from far away. But we did not see him pass our borders, and my Captain bids me say that our best scouts hunted far and wide for the Lord Boromir but all was in vain, for they found nothing else.” He held out the Horn in narrow hands grained with way-dirt, trembling a little. “Will you take it, my Lord?” he asked, dark eyes beseeching. Faramir did not take it at once. The great curves of it gleamed still, white in the winter sun, but the filigreed chasing along the edges were dulled and clotted with mud. He would remember always how the two hollowed-out halves of the Horn were brown inside, not with blood, he told himself, but with age and long use. He could not stand here forever, staring like a moon-struck calf, not with all his men looking on with horror and pity on their hard-bitten faces. And so, he reached for it slowly, seeing and hearing nothing, nothing but the rush of the running river. He took its weight from the boy’s hands. How cold and keen the edges were - the Horn had broken cleanly, as though cloven by axe or sword; he had only to put the two halves together, and it would be whole again. But no, here was a piece splintered away, and there, a silver of shattered chasing bent, standing dagger-wise from the edge. And he heard again with a sudden chill, the faint sounding of the Horn echoing and echoing in his heart. No, the Horn could never be whole again. Little by little, the strange numbness wore away, and looking down in astonishment, he saw blood, not Boromir’s but his own, where the sharp edges had bitten into the palms of his hands; runnels of it splashing darkly onto the grass at his feet. But he felt nothing yet, only a light tingling, like the nipping of a hound at one’s heels. Presently, pain would come. “You have ridden fast and far on this errand.” he heard himself saying. “Go now - eat and rest, and you may leave us when you are well again. Curufin, will you see to him?” “Aye, sir,” the man said, softly. And without another word, Faramir watched the two young men making their obeisance, then they were away, one leaning on the other, relieved that his unpleasant duty had been discharged at last. There was nothing more then, for him to do but find a place where he could be alone for a while and think; a place where he need not see the compassion in the eyes of his men, nor the unspoken grief in their carefully averted faces. They parted silently to let him through, and each slow step took him further and further away from them. It was all he could do not to run. But he was not alone yet; footsteps hurrying after. “Come sir, let me take this from you,” said Mablung quietly. “It means little, sir - you know that. Like enough, my Lord Boromir still lives.” He nodded, not trusting himself to speak again. “Shall I - shall I send it to your father, sir?” “No!” And seeing how Mablung fell back in surprise, he laid a hand on the other’s shoulder. “I am sorry, my friend, only that this - this is a task for me alone. I would not have you or any other bear such tidings to the Lord of Gondor in my stead. Do you understand me?” “I understand, sir,” Mablung said steadily, “It’s been a long day. Now, you’d best get your hands patched up, then sleep some, if you don‘t mind my saying so. Shall I get Galdor to keep the next watch with me?” He hesitated just a little before answering, then shook his head. “No, I think not Mablung. I shall do as you say, but we will keep the watch together nonetheless.” Then he drew a weary hand over his eyes, leaving a great smudge of blood on his cheek. “Wake me when the time comes.” Mablung took a deep breath, as though he meant to argue. But he only said, “That I will. Now, do you go to bed, sir. We cannot have you falling asleep on the watch.” And then he saw a shadow of grim laughter in the Captain‘s eyes. “Indeed. Whatever will the men say?” * * * HE ROSE SO easily and quickly that Mablung knew at once that he had not slept at all. The food someone had left on a small foldable table was almost untouched, and fatigue had left its mark beneath his eyes, but the blood at least was gone from his face, and his hands were swathed in fresh linen. Mablung stood fingering the hilt of his sword, half wondering if he should speak, then thought better of it, for what words of comfort could he offer at a time such as this? So he waited in silence as the other man drew on his boots, then the heavy gauntlets and last of all, his worn hooded cloak by the brown wavering light of a glim. Then, he caught up his sword, and they were away into the bitter night. Briskly they followed the River downstream, their breath steaming; and soon, they left the ruined village that was their camp far behind. A pale silver of moon hanging in a grey shifting sky lit their way, and darting from shadow to shadow, they came at last to the old hiding place in the reeds by the shallow ford - the only ford for miles across the Great River. And in the distance, they could see faint lights of Osgiliath winking dimly in the mist writhing in from the East Bank. “Damrod.” “Aye.” Silently, the man shifted and they slid down beside him, huddling close together for warmth. They were near enough the water to feel the river-mud sucking at their boots and to see, through the screen of waving stems, the sudden silver flash of fish flitting in the shallows. Within an hour, Mablung thought glumly, they would be quite sodden; already, his cloak was damp. “Anything to report?” “No sir - quiet, uneventful evening so far.” “We could do with more of those.” “Not the cold though,” said Mablung, shivering. “You should get the cubs into this, sir. I am grown too old for watching by the River on a night like this.” “Oh, do cease your grumbling,” said the Captain, laughing quietly. “Am I not on the watch with you? Damrod, my good man, pass the wine.” It was good strong stuff that went down like fire, hardly the standard issue that was little more than watered vinegar. But the Captain said nothing of it, and drank more than was usual with him. “Well equipped as always, Damrod. Now, tell us where did you get this? How like you it is to keep it all to yourself.” hissed Mablung. “Does it matter? Now hand it back, greedy one, before you finish it all!” “Peace, children. Will you bring the Enemy upon us?” With that, they fell silent, and none of them spoke again for a time; nor did they move save to stretch their cramped limbs. The night went slowly by; only the wind stirring in the reeds, and the moon rising, drifting in and out of thin grey clouds told them that time was passing. And the River sweeping from rock-strewn rapids upstream spent its force before it slid tamely down into the shallow ford that was almost a pool, then down again over black slippery stone, rushing on towards Osgiliath. It was colder now, and even the Captain himself shuddered and folded his arms to keep warm. The moon was high when Mablung felt the Captain stiffen beside him. A hand on his arm, tightening painfully. “Mablung, Damrod - do you see it?” “What, sir? What is it?” he hissed. “The boat, there - there, drifting past the rocks!” And Mablung, straining his eyes, saw nothing but the grey mist creeping in from the eastern shore and the silver ripple-rings of moonlight glimmering around the waving reed-stems. Turning to Damrod, Mablung saw the same puzzlement in the other‘s anxious gaze; and he felt a sudden chill growing between his shoulders. “No, sir,” he said slowly. “We see nothing. Unless my eyes are cheating me - ” But Faramir was no longer listening. Leaping to his feet, he waded out into the River, heedless of who saw him, and under the pale moon, they called his name as loudly as they dared. And when he made no answer, they would have followed him, for they would have gone with him to the ends of the world. But then, he turned, and with a gesture, bade them stay. In the faint moonlight, he looked for all in the world, like a man who had seen his own fetch. They saw too, how he spoke and put out his hand, as though he were reaching for a thing long lost. But his voice was borne away by the night wind, and they heard nothing of what he said. Then Damrod burst out from the reeds, and after a moment's hesitation, Mablung followed. "Sir, what do you see?" The Anduin flowed on, and there was no sound but of water running. The river-mist swirled about their knees, and somewhere, an owl hooted. Then Faramir turned to them, his eyes wide and black with grief, and they heard his voice, indistinctly, as though it came from a great distance. "I saw my brother." * * * Author’s note: Apologies for not having updated for a while - real life has been hectic lately. It’s only fair to say that I may have departed from canon a little (or a lot, depending on how you look at it) in this chapter. I’ve read and re-read both Faramir and Denethor’s account of the finding of the Horn and Faramir’s “vision” by the Anduin in TTT and RoTK and I can’t really pin-point which came first, unless I‘m seriously missing something. I think that on the whole it’s more likely that the vision came before the finding of the Horn - in which case I’m violating canon here for switching the order to create a more (hopefully) “dramatic” ending to this chapter. Feel free to contact me if you have any views on this. I’ll be most happy to hear them. : )

Captain of the White Tower “But one that was my comfort and my joy,
Hector, the very pride and prop of Troy,
One that the bulwark of his brethren was,
Him thou has slain, and I am left alone!”

~The Iliad~
Homer: Translated by Andrew Lang

Minas Tirith, 30 February 3019

ALL NIGHT HE rode as though the very hosts of Mordor were on his trail, and when grey dawn came at last, he stood alone in his father’s study, damp, weary and liberally splashed with mud. A servant had set a fire going. Gratefully he warmed his hands over the brazier, swaying a little with hunger and fatigue, yet not daring to sit, filthy and reeking as he was.

Little by little, the pale silvered light came slanting in through the clouded window-glass, creeping over the neat ordered desk with eagles’ talons for feet and the tall familiar shelves that rose from floor to ceiling. Light it was, yet it brought no warmth with it; and he shivered in spite of himself. So little had changed since that long-ago night that he and his brother… Instinctively, his mind flinched away from the thought. He must neither think nor feel, he told himself. Not now, when each memory was a dagger-thrust to the heart. There would be time enough later. Yet how could he, when he saw always before him the writhing mist, the spectre of that strange high-prowed boat drifting on dark water, and the face of the man within?

What would his father say? That other men slew with sword and bow, whilst he - he had killed his brother with… No, it was not so. Yet in his heart he knew the truth.

Suddenly the fire swam before his eyes, and he heard the high thin wailing in his ears that was the herald of darkness; and desperately, flung out his hands hoping to clutch at anything - anything at all before he fell. It would not do, to be found thus on the study-floor by the Lord Steward himself, who disdained weakness of all things.

He would have fallen into the flames, had someone not caught him. Strong hands lifted him into the Steward’s own chair, and far away, he heard a bell ringing, low urgent whispers and footsteps fading. Then he woke to fire streaking down his throat, and a quiet voice calling his name; a voice he remembered only in half-forgotten dreams - there, it spoke always with love - in life, only with anger and contempt.

And well did he deserve it.

Choking, he opened his eyes at last and met his father’s gaze. And for an instant, he saw in the grey eyes, so like his brother’s, neither fury nor scorn, only sorrow and care.

“You are hurt,” the Steward said, setting aside the wine cup. And looking down at down at his hands, his son saw that the soiled linen bindings had fallen away, and in the early morning light a deep angry wound across each palm stared up at him.

“It is nothing,” he said, folding his hands. “I have come with ill news, father.”

The Steward rose from his seat and strode swiftly to the window. Without turning, he said, “If it is about your brother, I know it. I heard his Horn but four days ago in the afternoon. It bodes ill indeed. You must have heard it too. But surely you have not come all this way, through the night to tell me of this thing?”

“No, father. I have not.” With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and said evenly, “There is other news of Boromir, though it grieves me much to bear it.”

“Well, what is it then? Speak!”

“Look, my Lord.” Slowly, he drew the two pieces of the Horn from the pack he had brought with him from Ithilien. He never forgot the way his father came and took the shards in his hands. Like one stricken, the Steward sank into the low seat beside his own, the stern lines of his face dissolving into grief, no longer inscrutable, no longer invulnerable. And for a long time the shards, so carefully burnished by Mablung, lay untouched in his lap.

“Tell me, how came you by your brother’s Horn?”

And so he told the tale exactly as he had heard it, without breaking, in a voice that was not his own.

“But there is more, is there not? I see it in your eyes.”

“Yes,” Faramir said, and stilled the tremor in his voice. “I - I saw him last night - whilst I and two others kept watch by the River. He lay in a small boat with a high prow, drifting on the water, and there was no man to row or steer it. I waded out into the water; it turned to me, lingering a little, and I saw him…”

The words died in his throat, and quietly, he bent his face into his hands.

“Why do you stop? Speak, for your father is listening.” Hard fingers, seizing his hands, tore them away from his face. “Speak! What did you see?” His father’s eyes were black - with hatred perhaps, or anguish, he could not tell. It did not matter, he thought dully - not any more.

“I saw that he was pierced with many wounds, and a broken sword was on his knee. There was a belt too, about his waist, whose make I knew not, yet his Horn was not by his side; and all about him was clear water glimmering with light. It came close to me, that strange boat, but I dared not touch it, then it passed away into the dark, and I saw it no more.”

“It was only a dream! Boromir is not dead. It cannot be! And yet… Tell me, Faramir, tell me that it was only a dream!”

“Oh, father, it was no dream, for there was no waking. Would that it was!”

His father turned away and Faramir heard the great broken sobs that was the voice of grief without words. And the merciless light showed him how his own hands, twisting in his lap, were smeared with blood. Neither spoke, but when the Steward looked up again, there were no tears; it was as though they were shed long ago for another, and there were no more now, not even for his son.

His old warrior’s fingers traced the lines of ancient script worked in silver, glittering coldly in the cruel morning. Long ago, in the high and far-off days of Vorondil, a man wise in the ways of lore had set the marks for protection upon the Horn to ward danger from its wearer. What good were they now, these words that rang so hollow in his heart?

Then the Steward remembered that he had another son. How weary he seemed, and how sorrowful. What other ties had bound them, these children of his? Love and kinship there had always been; yet he knew there was more. And he felt a strange and sudden pity stirring within him.

“So you too have done your grieving for Boromir.” And slowly, he reached out to brush the wetness from his son’s face.

Faramir did not flinch, but only said, “I knew it in my heart, father. I knew that he was dead when I saw the Horn.” Clumsily he rose, and taking courage, tried to reach his father in the only way he knew how. Dropping to his knees, he laid a hand on his father’s arm. “Boromir was a dear friend to me, and even dearer brother. “I will stay a while and ease your grief a little, if you wish. Sorrows’ burden may be borne more lightly if there are two to bear it. O father, do not turn me away!”

I will stay a while and ease your grief a little, if you wish.

No, there would never be grief such as this - this anguish that burned like a white flame in his breast. There would be no easing, no comfort, for hope had perished at last, leaving only the grey ashes of despair. And across the years, he heard a woman’s fading voice, whispering like the sea-wind, “Heart of my heart, I shall wait for you beyond the circles of the world.”

Boromir, Boromir, why have you gone before me?

Suddenly, Denethor came to his feet and shook off the hand of his son and clutched the horn of Boromir to his breast, as though he would not be parted from it again. “Leave me. My woes are my own. What do you know of sorrow? You could not have loved him as I did. You and your dreams - have they brought anything but ill to us all? Alas, alas for Boromir. My one true son is dead!”

Faramir made a small movement toward his father, then violently checked himself. After a time, he said in a voice made hoarse and toneless with grief, “How wrong you are. I loved him and I would gladly have gone in his place - to whatever end. Why, why did you not send me in his stead?”

“And do you think that you would have fared any better than your brother?”

“No,” he said bitterly. “But you would have had my brother to comfort you now, if there was any need of it.”

“Say no more, I beg you.” And he moved to the window and flung it wide, so that the pale daylight came flooding in. Far to the east, the brown hills of Ithilien loomed against a hard grey sky, and his gaze followed the black wavering line of the Anduin north and north until the gathering mist swallowed it. Snow… the first fine drifts came eddying down, melting on the window-sill and settling on the harsh hairs of his bear-skin cloak, yet he did not feel the cold. Soon, there would be more, and the very fields and forests would be white. Did the snow fall too, on the stilled breast of Boromir as he passed down the Great River to the sea? Odd, how the world went on, even when one’s beloved son was dead.

“Leave me,” he said at last. “I wish to be alone.”

Faramir rose, leaning a little on his father’s chair before he stepped over to the door. Quietly, he said, “You have another son, my Lord Steward, unworthy though he is. And whilst he has life in him, he will do his duty to Gondor and his father, as once Boromir had done.”

Denethor turned on him like a serpent. “Do not seek to take your brother’s place! There is none now living that is his equal.” Then his gaze dropped to the horn of Boromir in his hands. “This was once mine, before it ever was his. It will never be yours now - and I am glad of it!”

Leaning against the door, Faramir only shook his head, for what answer was there to words such as these? He was ashen, and his hand trembled on the latch. “I have always known Boromir’s place in your heart.” A pause. “You kept me from the flames - it only remains that I should thank you.”

Silence answered.

“I will leave now, father, for I see that I am not needed here. Have I your blessing?”

For a long while Denethor said nothing; so long that his son despaired at last and would have turned away. Then at the last moment the Steward said as coldly, “You are my heir now, such as you are. Go forth and do your duty.”

Then it seemed that there was no more to be said. Faramir touched his hand to his forehead, and then to his heart in obeisance. The door swung open.

“Faramir!”

Slowly, he turned. “Yes, my Lord?”

The Steward had not moved. “Shame not your brother’s memory.”

Without another word, Faramir, Captain of Gondor, now Captain of the White Tower closed the door on his father.

* * *

“To sleep, perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause…”

~Hamlet, Act III Scene 1~
William Shakespeare

Osgiliath, 30 February 3019

SNOW.

It fell in grey drifts across the open window, onto hard broken flagstones to be trampled into brown churned ice. But snow did not wash away sorrow, nor did it numb the agony of grief. Seven times the moon had waxed and waned since he had made himself a guest in this room, this room that was his brother’s. Now it was his own in truth.

He knew every nook and cranny of it; he remembered the battered kist Boromir once used as a window seat - there it was still, glistening with melted snow; he remembered too the loose flag under the writing desk where they had laughingly hidden a bottle of Umbar wine, long ago; and now he touched with a trembling hand the brightly burnished armour on its stand in the corner patiently awaiting its owner’s return. He felt its burning chill creeping through his fingers, spreading with his heart’s blood. Was this the chill of death?

Slowly, he withdrew his hand.

His room, his desk, burdened with a dozen despatches to be read and answered. And so many other things, so many duties were now his that were not before. The fire was sinking, and soon, the light would go too - but there would be no stars tonight, only snow. Carefully, he set an apple log on the brazier, then made his way back to the desk and took up his pen again.

Two he opened and read, frowning. For a long while, there was no sound but the soft dry scratching of quill on paper, and he stopped once only, to seal a letter before he reached for the next. It was a familiar hand, the small careful script not unlike his own. With trepidation, he broke the seal and read its sparse contents twice, before he flung it into the fire. Curling, glowing amidst tongues of flame, the words wavered, leapt, and then, they were no more than grey ash.

Yet reply he must. And he sat staring into the brazier’s red heart until the answer came to him. “To my Lord Steward, greetings -”

A knock on the door. With a sigh, he laid down his pen.

“Come in!”

The door opened on a slight young man, snow-damp and shivering with cold. With awkward grace, the boy made his obeisance. “Sir.”

With an effort, Faramir rose, smiling. “Cub. What brings you here? Surely it is foul weather to be abroad.”

“I - I would speak with you, sir for a moment, if you please.”

Had it been any other day, he would have laughed, for the cub was pale and solemn and there was an odd uneasiness on his face - the look of a boy caught stealing sweetmeats. But he did not feel like laughing today, and only said, “Come and sit by the fire then - you may help yourself to the wine - there, on that chest - whilst I shut the window. Bregolas will have my head if you catch a chill. He has enough fevers and chilblains on his hands already, or so he tells me. I hope the journey from Oiolairë was not over-tiring? And how does the wound?”

“The journey was well enough, sir, and the wound itches now and then, but Bregolas says that it is mending.”

He felt the dark eyes following him in silence, and when the window had been made fast and he was back in his own seat by the brazier, the boy drew a deep breath and said in a rush, “I wanted to thank you, sir - for bringing me away - I should be dead, else. I would have come before, only I could not find you.” A deep flush, rising in his cheeks. “You - you have my sword and my life at your service.”

In spite of himself, Faramir smiled. For the first time that day, the cold receded a little and he felt a warmth that came not from the wine nor the brazier flames. “Are you not pledged to my father the Lord Steward already? No - sit, Edrahil - it was only a jest.” Gently, he added, “I only did for you as I would for any of my men - did I not say that we are brothers?” And reaching for the wine, he drank deeply. “It is to Gondor that you owe fealty and service, cub. I am only one of her Captains, a servant of the Steward whom I serve as faithfully I may. Yet, your loyalty does you honour, and I shall remember it.”

“But sir -”

“No more now, cub. Come - let us drink to the Steward’s health, and to your own.”

Quietly, the boy lowered his dark eyes. “And to yours, sir.” It was sweet, with the taste of heather honey in it. For a time, they did not speak, and thrice Faramir filled the wine cups with a steady hand, still bound with linen. Yet, it seemed to Edrahil that the Captain’s gaze was turned inwards, and in the yellow pooled light of the candle he had lit, he had the weary look of a man labouring under the burden of many cares. And he, Edrahil knew well the leaden weight of grief, for had it not lain heavy in his heart these many moons past?

At last, he could bear the silence no more. “You do not look well, sir.”

With a start, the Captain looked up. “No - no, I am very well indeed.” A pause. “You told me, not two nights ago that your father sent you away, to take your brother’s place.”

“Aye,” the boy said, a frown growing between his brows.

“I will release you from your oath of service - you may return to Belfalas if you wish it.”

“Are… are you sending me away?”

“No,” Faramir said wearily. “It is for you to go - or stay as your heart bids you. I would not have your father lose another son; nor, I think, should I keep you here if you did not come to us of your own will. You may go home, cub and keep your father company in his old age.”

For a long while, Edrahil gazed into the flames. Free - free to go, or stay, as he chose. But he was bound now to them as surely as they were to him, by ties forged in the blood and fire of battle. All his life he would remember his own village by the sea, and the father who waited there for one who would not return. But he could no more go back to it and become again the child he was before, than a man could rise from the dead. When he met the Captain’s eyes, he understood at last the thing that Beleg had spoken of so long ago. Nobility there was, sadness also - and an air of belonging to another time, another place.

“But why, sir - why are you doing this?”

“Edrahil, my cub,” Faramir said gently, “Do you not understand my purpose in this thing?”

“No.”

“Think, cub,” he said, watching the boy with shadowed eyes.

“I - I think that you are giving us back to each other. To make amends while we may.”

“So, you do understand after all.”

Boldly, Edrahil answered, “I swore my oath to the Lord of Gondor - is it not for the Steward himself to release me?”

“You are under my command, for am I not Captain of Ithilien and of the White Tower?” How strangely the words sounded in his ears; painfully his heart skipped a beat. “And so, as your Captain it is within my power to unbind you from your oath if I wished it. As for the rest, that is between the Lord Steward and myself. You need only remember that it was by my order that you took the coast-road home; and that it was your part to obey without question.”

“It is very kind of you, sir. But I will stay. My place is here now, with you - with my brothers, and if ever I had one by my father’s hearth, I have left it, and there is no going back now. My father is a proud man, sir and I know that he would not have me return to him in this fashion- not when so many others fight on, spending their heart’s blood to turn back the dark. He told me to do my duty as my brother had; but I knew that it was his grief speaking. I knew too, though he did not say it, that he would fain have me stay.”

What do you know of sorrow? You could not have loved him as I did. You and your dreams - have they brought anything but ill to us all? It was, after all, the kindest thing to think.

It was his grief speaking.

He looked long into the boy’s shadowed face - black eyes he had, and narrow hands; eyes that had beheld death, hands that had spilt blood. He had a child’s face, a child’s hands no longer, for something had been lost beyond all calling back. Courage, kindness, nobility he had too. One day, perhaps, the cub would be a captain worth the following.

“I have chosen, sir,” Edrahil said, very softly. “There is nothing you can say that will turn me from my purpose.”

“You are a son to make any father proud,” Faramir answered, smiling.

Flushing, the boy looked down at his feet. “I’ve done no more than is my duty, sir.”

“Well, now that your future is settled, you’d best be getting back. Bregolas must be beside himself by now.”

Grinning, Edrahil bowed low. “He’s always beside himself, sir - fusses like a hen, he does.”

“So. Now, on your way out, be a good cub and pass this to Anborn. It is a despatch from the White City - we leave tomorrow for Ithilien. Anborn will know what to do.”

“Ithilien? But we’ve hardly -”

He laid a hand on the boy‘s shoulder. “Ithilien. But not you - not the wounded.”

“Sir -”

“There will be other times, Edrahil. There are upward of two hundred of us here - give the others their chance at glory,” he said lightly. It was a tone that brooked no argument.

“Aye, sir.”

The boy’s light footsteps faded away, and before the door closed on the outside world, he heard a man’s cheerful whistling and another’s laughter. Then he was alone again with the letter he must now write.

“To my Lord Steward, greetings -”

Four lines of small careful script followed; another three. Then he saw what he had written, and very deliberately, scored through each. Turning the sheet over, he started again. And at the end of it, he counted twenty lines, written close - one for each of the years he had lived and fought in Ithilien. What a pity it was that his hand was so unlike Boromir’s generous, open one - Boromir who could fill three sheets where he filled only one. But he could no more write in Boromir’s hand than he could become Boromir himself.

The lines were beginning to run and blur before him, and he closed his weary eyes, cradling his aching head in his hands. How long could a man go without sleep? Two days? Three? He was tired, so very tired - yet he must not sleep. To sleep was to dream - and now, his dreams were of death. Odd, that a man grown should be so afraid of dreams… and he laughed, a soft rasping sound that was strange to his ears; more he thought, like a child coughing…

He never knew how long he sat there, his head in his arms, a great blot on the paper where he had let drop the quill in his sleep. And Damrod, bursting in three hours later, stopped short at the door.

“Sir, have you heard -”

There was no one to see the compassion and relief on his face. With the silence that the years in Ithilien had taught him, Damrod gathered up a cloak from the hard narrow cot by the wall and draped it over the other’s shoulders. And with infinite care, he set a new log on the fire, and watched as the flames caught, waking to blue and gold. He was about to pinch out the dying candle when he checked - no, let him have the light but a little longer.

Outside, a guard stood shivering and stamping his feet in the shelter of the broad lintel stone. Their eyes met, briefly. "He is asleep at last. For the love of the Valar, let no man disturb him till morning."

And Damrod, striding out into the night, stopped and turned his face to the lightless sky. Pale as apple blossoms, snow swirled around him - a chill, soundless dance. And he saw again the last straggling line of the letter that would later find its way into the brazier’s red heart.

You are alive - so live.

* * *

Author’s note:

It is only fair to the reader to say that I’ve departed from canon here. In Appendix B to Return of the King, it is said that Faramir departs from Minas Tirith on 1 March 3019 on an errand to Ithilien. Here, I’ve made him set off from Osgiliath instead - it wouldn‘t of course make sense to have him ride back to Minas Tirith on 1 March and then set off for Ithilien.

This only happened because I very much wanted to slip in here the conversation that he had with Edrahil. It is of course Faramir’s chance to “make amends” of his own and to do for Edrahil and his father what he could not do for himself and Denethor. It was also a tempting opportunity to develop the parallels between the two father/son relationships in this story, and to examine a little the effects of war on a personal level. And since it would have been too much of a stretch to bring Edrahil to Minas Tirith, I’ve made poor Faramir dash back to Osgiliath.

I chose Osgiliath as a setting for that very long conversation for several reasons. Faramir’s troops were unlikely to remain at the ruined village for more than a day. I’d imagine that guerilla fighters move fast and far, and Oiolairë, being unfortified was not the most secure of places. The west bank of Osgiliath would most likely be their base camp, apart from Henneth Annûn (and possibly a few other hidden places) in Ithilien. Osgiliath would also be the nearest place for the wounded to recuperate, and for the rangers to pick up supplies.

The last line I admit, was ripped off Dream’s speech to Orpheus in Neil Gaiman’s Fables and Reflections, the relevant extract of which follows:

“You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times, the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead.

You are alive. So live.”

The Crossroads

He embraced the hobbits then, after the manner of his people, stooping, and placing his hands upon their shoulders, and kissing their foreheads. ‘Go with the goodwill of all men!’ he said.

~Journey to the Crossroads~

The Two Towers

Henneth Annûn, 8 March 3019

They were only children to his eyes. Lulled to sleep by weariness and the soft ceaseless murmuring of falling water, they breathed easily, huddling close for warmth and comfort. They never knew how long he stood there watching them, a tall slight figure unmoving, shrouded in shadow. In the brown pooling light of a taper, he saw the faint glimmer of a thin silver chain, and in a small grubby fist, half-closed in slumber, a thing that shone far more brightly. It burned in the dark, as though with a flame of its own.

            Isildur’s Bane. Here it was at last, the thing that brought Boromir to his doom. In the dark, it called to himwith a thousand voices, all alluring, all promising everything he had ever desired. He saw in its golden gleam a world made whole again, the Enemy’s power broken, a world without fear or evil. And in that world was the White City gleaming blue and gold in the morning light, whole and unravaged by time, as it once did in its glory-days. And at the foot of Ecthelion’s Tower stood a man crowned as a king, a man tall and valiant as Elendil of old, and when the man turned, he saw under the great winged crown, his brother’s smiling face, kind and kingly and full of light.  

            Then came the voices, beloved and achingly familiar, voices from memory and dream, voices dead and living. By and by you shall learn to wake the singing magic, little one. We will make of you a harper yet! …We will fight them, you and I, and none shall stand against us!… You are my own true son…And suddenly a great hunger rose within him.

            All this could be yours. All this, and more.   

            You have only to reach out and take it.

            It would be so easy. Weak as they were, how could they resist him?

            Take it.

            Unbidden, his hand crept forward.

            What are these but empty promises? He checked, gasping. We are truth-speakers, we men of Gondor. We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt. Not if I found it on the highway would I take it.

            Not if I found it on the highway would I take it. So he had spoken in a moment of rashness and pride. Slowly, he drew back his hand. No, it was neither pride nor rashness that had bidden him to speak so, but something else that sprang from the depths of his spirit. Turning away, he closed his eyes and laid his cheek against the cold stone wall. 

            No, it was not too late after all.

            He could take the Ring and be forsworn – or he could trust to chance and the hearts of two Halflings. How weak they were, and how weary; but there was strength to be found in weakness, and weakness in strength. And hope in places unlooked for. Grimly he smiled, for had not Boromir too, loved truth, honour and virtue as he did? Yet had he not fallen at the end?

            On this night, the fate of the world lay on his shoulders, and he felt the burden of it in his heart. He knew too, that from the path he chose now, there would be no turning back.

What would his father say? Words of love and praise and tenderness? And he heard in the quiet dark his father’s voice: A great weapon, you have brought me, my son, and one to be used for the succour of Gondor; a mighty gift in a time of great need. And Faramir saw again, in his mind’s eye, the face of the one made king, and on his brow, the great winged crown of Gondor. Yet a short while ago, had he not spoken to Halflings of his own hopes, so long held in the fastness of his heart? For myself, I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace; Minas Arnor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens.  

            Not Boromir; never Boromir but the true King. What darkness in his heart had turned a vision of hope into one of glory and greatness of one he had loved and lost, and the fulfilment of his own desires? No. A great weapon it was; too great perhaps for the hands and hearts of mortal men.

            He opened his eyes and turning, saw again the gleam of gold in the dark. All was silent, save for the whisper of falling water. Very softly, he said, “Not your will father, but my own. Let your doom and the doom of the world be upon me, if I have chosen ill this night.” 

            Stooping, he laid a gentle hand on the brow of the sleeping Halfling. “Go then, Frodo; and may the grace of the Valar go with you.”

*          *          *

Minas Tirith, 11 March 3019

Do you wish then that our places had been exchanged?

            Yes, I wish that indeed, for Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard’s pupil. He would have remembered his father’s need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift.

            The words haunted him in these, the last hours of his life. He had sent the armour bearer away, for he longed desperately to be alone, and to see and hear nothing but the light of the sun rising, and the silence of his own heart. But there was no dawn today, nor peace any more in his soul.

            No sanctuary, no peace but death for Faramir, Captain of Gondor.

            So he sat alone on the hard narrow cot that had been his brother’s as a child. The room, whose windows looked east on Ithilien had changed little with the years. It was empty save for the low bed, an ancient chest by the window, and a small, ornate lamp in the shape of a swan that she had brought long ago out of Dol Amroth. And here, beside him was the tall winged helm of the Captain of the White Tower lovingly burnished to the brightness of silver, and his own battered ranger’s blade. They were waiting for him, the men who would come with him on this last riding; he had only to don sword and helm, and make a beginning to the end. Yet he was afraid.

            Afraid.

            He rose, and the unfamiliar burden of his brother’s armour weighed on him; he who had worn only a ranger’s light leather garb for so long. Was this the weight of his brother’s command? The burden of his death? Once, as a child, Faramir had longed for the armour of the Tower Guard, and to bide with his brother in the City whose music and lore he held so dear; yet in manhood, Ithilien and her austere rangers had claimed him for their own. And so he was now, theirs and theirs alone, for where was his home if not there? Slowly, Faramir drew his worn sword belt over the heavy cuirass and fastened it, and the cold fleeting gleam of seven stars and a White Tree woke in the gloom.

            But he would not have worn any other on this day, for he drew a strange comfort from it, knowing that some part of his brother would be with him at the last, and that he would fight the better for it. Knowing also that under the bright arms of the Captain of the White Tower, he was a ranger of Ithilien still, and that he had kept faith with himself.

            But what if he had been wrong after all? What if, by his own hand he had sent hope beyond recall, and brought dark everlasting upon the world of men? He shivered, and breath caught in his throat. Fear, greater than any he had ever known. No time now for regrets, no time now to wonder at the power he had within his grasp, and let go. No chance now for Faramir, Captain of Gondor to show his quality. And he laughed, a little unsteadily, before he stilled himself. There was one thing more to do.   

            Since you are robbed of Boromir, I will go and do what I can in his stead - if you command it.

            I do so.

            Other regrets, other memories he had too, and other words spoken and unspoken, too painful to recall. No more, then. No more.

            From far below, came the clatter of hooves and of armoured feet. Men, vaulting into their saddles, and at the head of the shining company, the white standard of the Lords of Gondor fluttered in the dawn wind. His hands, in gauntlets made for another man, took up the gleaming helm. He saw his own face in it, drawn and tired, yet very like his brother’s. Only, his eyes were his own, blue as the sea in the Bay of Belfalas.   

            Perhaps even the Steward, looking out from his high tower, would believe for a fleeting moment, that his beloved son had returned; and that it was his other child who had died far away in the shadows of Amon Hen…

            Suddenly, he woke from his reverie; He raised his head, listening. Wisps of song came to him, borne on wind; a man’s voice it was, chanting softly. Yet, he knew the words well: 

Gil-galad was an Elven-king.

            Of him the harpers sadly sing:

            the last whose realm was fair and free

            between the Mountains and the Sea.

            His sword was long, his lance was keen,

            his shining helm afar was seen;

            the countless stars of heaven’s field

            were mirrored in his silver shield.

            A chill grew in his heart. Leaping to his feet, he made his way to the window. Those were his men, their waiting faces pale in the gloom; and others hurrying on errands of their own. But of the singer, there was no sign. Yet on it went, the singer’s voice growing fainter and fainter before it died away:

But long ago he rode away,

            and where he dwelleth none can say;

            for into darkness fell his star

            in Mordor where the shadows are.

            A waking dream, then. Grimly, his hands tightened on the window-sill. So many dreams, all of them ill – and now, they came to him, not only in the witching hours of the night, but even in the light of day. Truly, he was accursed. Drawing a deep breath, he stood for a time, composing himself.    

Footsteps on stone.

Slowly, he closed his eyes, and his lashes lay like thorn-shadows against the pallor of  his cheeks.

            “Faramir.” A familiar voice, warm and kindly.

            Hope died within him.

            But still, he turned and smiled to greet an old friend. “Mithrandir. It gladdens my heart to see you.” Glowing in his white robes, the shadows seemed to fade a little, and in the wizard’s face was the wisdom and compassion of his age. Yet his old eyes were grave and sad.

            “I see, Faramir that you were looking for another.”

            “It matters little. He will not come.” Quietly, he came to the wizard and said, “He sends me to my death, Mithrandir, with neither blessing nor farewell.” Then the iron mask, long worn, slipped at last, and in the early morning light, his face was no longer calm and proud, only wretched. “Will you let me have yours?” He smiled again, wryly. “A wizard’s pupil to the last.”

            Gently, the wizard laid his hands on either side of the young captain’s face. “And an able one too. My blessing you shall have, and gladly. But speak not of death, Faramir. Never that. Do not despair; do not throw away your life recklessly and in bitterness. You will be needed here for other things than war. Your father loves you, Faramir, and will remember it ere the end.”

            For a long moment, Faramir was silent, and his eyes grew dark, as though the life within him had been quenched at last. Your father loves you, Faramir, and will remember it ere the end. Boromir he had loved, and she in her quiet grave by the sea.

            My mother, my brother, why have you taken all and left none for me? 

            Then he looked to the east. He would never see the sun again. Perhaps dusk and the long night would come to other men; green spring, summer, the falling of leaves and winter’s snow, but there would be nothing for the Steward’s son but long sleep, and forgetfulness.   

            “Mithrandir,” he said softly, “I do not wish to live.”

            Then he was gone. And long after the ringing of his spurs had faded away, the old man stared into the darkening east, where the sun did not rise, and remembered words spoken many months and many miles away.

            I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

            So do I. And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given to us.

            They rode through the seven circles of the White City, a shining company of men; but no songs, and no joy greeted them, only silence and tears, and pale flowers that fell like snow. As the great gate opened, the company halted, and their Captain, dimly glittering in the grey dawn, for the last time, turned his dark eyes to the high tower. Then, grimly, he swung his horse round, and without looking back again, they passed under the tall arch, like a stream of stars in the gloom, their long white standards flying.           

            Then the great gate shut, and the all the Pelennor lay before them.

            Across the green they thundered, and at the rumour of their coming, the hearts of men along the Rammas lifted, and it seemed that among the riders far away, was one whose helm was taller, and whose arms were brighter than the rest. It was Boromir, returned from the dead, in their time of great need, men said. But the keen-eyed rangers among them cried, “Faramir! Faramir!” and all around, the cry was taken up, and became a roar, and in the distance, the shining figure raised his bright blade in answer.    

            In the murk across the river, the hosts of Morgul launched their boats, and for an instant, the white waters of the Anduin grew black with the shadow of dark wings.

            The end. The end was come at last.

                                                             *         *          *

Note:

This is probably the most AU of all the chapters in this story, being neither movie-verse nor book-verse, but something I’ve more or less made up on my own by combining elements of both. In neither did Faramir have second thoughts about letting Frodo and Sam destroy the Ring. I have quoted extensively from Tolkien, and the poem in the latter half of this chapter comes from “The Fall of Gil-galad” read by Sam in “The Fellowship of the Ring.”   

A Grey Dawn

“Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

            Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said:

Into the valley of Death

            Rode the six hundred.”

~The Charge of the Light Brigade~

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

            But if I should return, think better of me.

            That depends on the manner of your return.

            The words had become a thorn in his heart; it grew like a poison-tree, spreading its sharp barbed branches in his soul. Stung by sudden pain, the Steward opened his hand. A branch of the White Tree fell from his nerveless grasp, and three dark drops of blood splashed on the grey stone.

            Three drops, for the three loves he had lost.

            He stood alone in the courtyard, a tall forbidding figure in sable fur, and above him was the pale glimmer of the Tree’s bare branches against the lightless sky. Denethor no longer looked to the north for the coming of Theoden and his Rohirrim, for what hope lay there? What hope now, that the red arrow had gone and not returned? His gaze, straying east saw only night and the growing storm. And beyond the storm, a great and nameless terror.

            “Why do we fight still? Why do we not lie down and let the dark close over us?” And he did not know that he had spoken aloud, until a voice came to him out of the brown dusk.

            “For a dream. For the Light that burns still in the Uttermost West.”

            With the swiftness of a warrior, Denethor swung round; surprise and anger kindled in his eyes. “I have not summoned you Mithrandir. Why do you come to me thus unbidden and unannounced, like a thief in the night?”

            “Because I would speak with you.”

            “Then let you say what you must before the Council!”

            “It is a thing that need not be said before other men,” said Mithrandir. “I came to speak of your son, Denethor.” He stood, a tall, pale figure in the dark, glowing faintly as though a light burned within him.

            “My son is dead.”

            “I speak of the one who yet lives.”

             And the Steward answered, his eyes were black and bitter. “So, what of him? He has merely gone to do his duty. After all, is it not his part to protect his people, now that Boromir is dead?”

            “So he did. And so it is.” His long fingers ran over the broken bough above, with the same gentleness he had given to all living things. But this was a hurt that even Olorin of the Maiar could not mend, for who but the One could bestow the gift of life? A flicker of pain crossed his face. “Yet, he is your son. Could you not have spared a kind word for him ere he rode away?”

            “I have said to him all that is needful. He is my son, my own! And I will deal with him as I deem fit! Always, Mithrandir, always you come between us! Has it not been so since he was a child?”

            Denethor’s sword leapt out of its sheath, a bright tongue of flame in the dark. Quivering with edge-hate, it shattered the grey stone and cleaved deep into the earth between them. Sparks of fire-gold woke and died in the gloom.

            But the wizard was still. The wind rose, and his long white hair streamed out behind him, and it seemed to Denethor in his rage, that it was as the web-threads of a great spider.

            “There was no need for that, Denethor, son of Ecthelion. A Steward you are, and Lord of Gondor, yet you are a fool! A hard head you have, and a harder heart. Faramir would not have come to me, had you ever been more than half a father to him! But let you know this, Lord Steward, Faramir’s heart has never turned from you. Why else would he have gone forth at such a hazard, save for love and obedience to your will?”   

            “So, the wrong is now my own?” Denethor’s voice came quietly, as though from a great distance, but his hands in their deep sleeves trembled. “Half a father you say, yet tell me this, Mithrandir the wise, has he ever been more than half a son to me? Always he follows his own will; oath breaker, I name him, for he speaks when I bid him be silent; he comes not when I summon; and he lets go the one thing that I would have for the succour of this realm!”

            For a long time, Mithrandir made no answer. Slowly, his fury faded. Perhaps, in another time, another place, another life, the Steward and his son might have loved each other as father and son should. Perhaps death and a shared grief should have united them at last, but he saw now that it was not to be; for such were the hearts of men.

            “Does the fault lie with Faramir then, that he lives and Boromir is dead? That it was he who had the Ring of Power within his grasp, and found the grace to surrender it?”

            “Yes!” cried Denethor. “Was it not his dream that drew my Boromir away to his death? I would that it had never come to him. A false son he is, and a false brother!” His voice rose in the dark, harsh and plaintive as a seagull’s cry. “And you, Mithrandir, bringer of ill fortune, an ill guide you were, to lead your charges to death and ruin. A plague, a plague upon you both!”

            “Why have you come to this City at this dark hour? My Boromir is dead; must you rob me of Faramir also?”

            For a moment, Mithrandir closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, there was sorrow in them, and a deep pity. “That was never my intent. Boromir is dead, but Faramir lives, and it is not I who have stolen him from you. It was your blessing that he desired ere he went into the dark; yet it was I, and not his father who gave it to him.”  

            “Denethor,” he said with great gentleness, “It is not by my will that men of nobility and honour should pass from this world with despair in their hearts. It is you, who have sent your son, unthanked and unblessed into needless peril. It is you, who have taken him from yourself.”  

            For a long while, the Steward was silent; his gaze turned to the east, where the sky was now the colour of blood, and slowly, lowered his face into trembling hands. Then, suddenly he threw up his head and laughed long and hard, as a man laughs when his heart is full of grief. And when he met the wizard‘s gaze, he said, very softly into the gloom:

             “So. If I cannot have him, no man shall!”

*          *          *

All that long day, the longer night, and the grey dawn after, men fought and died on the shores of the Anduin. The river ran red, and the fire of many burnings lit the dusky sky. It was in Osgiliath that the battle raged now, and within its crumbling walls, the men of Gondor grimly held the hosts of Morgul at bay. But still the Enemy came in their boats - orcs of Mordor, tall Easterlings and men of Harad with their sharp curved swords.

            More and more often, men began to look with hope and desperation across the Pelennor to the White City for the succour that did not come. But the great gates remained closed, and even the faint light that lingered still in the west seemed to dim in their eyes. But there was one among them who turned no longer to the west. He alone among the men of Gondor seemed to glow with a pale flame, and in the thickest of the fighting, he drove the Enemy before him, back and back towards the river with the heedless courage of his brother.  

            Dawn came at last, and Osgiliath blazed like a jewel of fire, the defenders fleeing before Enemy back into the Causeway Forts; and scarcely had the gates swung shut, that the loud war-cries of the men of Harad echoed before the Rammas wall, and the pounding of their arms shivered the grey stone. So the battle raged without respite, and in the high places of Osgiliath, above the flames, the black standards of Morgul fluttered in the wind. 

            But the time came that the Rammas was itself breached and the Enemy poured through in many places, yelling and crushing the green grass beneath their fouled feet. Fire and more fire, and in the smoke and struggle, a hunting horn sang, clear and high above the battle-din. And voices of the Captains of Gondor, crying, “Fall back! Fall back!”

            Obedient to their command, the defenders streamed out in good order, and company by company, they began the long, perilous march across the Pelennor to the safety of the White City. Behind them, only the rearguard was left to hold back the Enemy. Again and again, the yelling Haradrim on their swift horses scythed by; dark arrows thrummed into the long retreating column, and men fell. Again and again, valiant rearguard swept up to meet them, and warriors of red and gold went down into the dust. But for each fallen enemy there lay too, a man in the green-brown of a ranger, or one clad in the livery of the White Tower.        

            They were not far from the City, when a black shadow swung out of the stormy east. A terrible cry, high and piercing shattered their courage, and the orderly column broke, as men wide eyed with horror, flung down their weapons and fled.

            Yet the rearguard turning at bay, and fewer now, fought on. Still, the Enemy swept in, swarming darkly; red and black standards billowing in the wind of their charging; and orcs and swarthy Southland men, and Easterlings came crashing like a river over the fleeing defenders.

            The ground shook, and in the desperate struggle, orcs and swarthy men fell before Faramir’s blade. Then out of the tempest-dark, a giant, tall and reeking with the blood of many, bore down upon him, and the meeting of their swords was as the flashing of lightning in the gloom. A red sword rose, and his shield shivered on his arm. The long curved blade came swooping down again, and in the instant that Faramir swerved away, the wind of black wings passed over him; a crash, like a hammer blow in his shoulder sent him reeling.

            Then, a red haze rising, and the fire of agony unbearable.  

            So, he had come to the end at last. To perish as his brother had done, hewn down by many foes. Yet for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, there would be no slow journey out into the western sea under the stars, only the butchery of Southland swords, red churned earth and the ravens circling.

            Shame not your brother’s memory.

            He knew no fear, only a great quietness; the silence in the eye of a storm. And he could lay down at last, without shame the burden of his life.

            Then strength left him, and his blade fell from his hand. Not long more.  

            His horse, maddened with fear, reared, legs flailing. Then above the thundering dark and the beating of blood in his ears came a faint cry in the distance, like the call of a silver trumpet “Amroth for Gondor! Amroth to Faramir!” In the moment before he fell, he saw a light shining out of the west, and the black clouds fleeing; and in its wake, the bright swan banners of Dol Amroth rippling in the wind.            

            Then he fell, down and down, but not into the dark.

*          *          *

The Pyre of Denethor

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light,

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

~Dylan Thomas~

            He burns. Yet his hands are cold, as though Death herself had begun to claim him for her own. He lies on a narrow cot, straight and still as a young tree touched with winter’s frost; he does not hear the distant clash of arms, nor the soft, harsh weeping of the man who watches over him.         

            The tears fall, splashing soundlessly on the flushed cheek of the Steward’s son. If he could taste them, they would be bitter as gall, for distilled in each clear drop, was a lifetime of grief and love unspoken. A hand, gnarled yet gentle wipes them away; and tremulous fingers trace a small, deep scar under one eye, the contours of a countenance both familiar and beloved. With trepidation, they pause over the heart that beats faintly, then the wound that bleeds still, through its linen bindings.

Speak to me, my child.

But only silence answered him. The Steward remembered then, the blessing unsaid, and the parting words of his son. He remembered the fury of Mithrandir and the hasty words he too had spoken in rage and anguish. Denethor closed his eyes, rocking with the pain of what seemed like a physical blow.  

If I should return, think better of me.

            What did he think now, of this child who had gone so faithfully do his father’s bidding?

It was then that a dreadful thought struck him, and he shivered under his heavy robe of sable fur. No, no, it could not be. Surely Faramir could not have ridden to Osgiliath, thinking that his own father had sent him to his death? He could glean nothing now from the closed eyes and silent lips of his child. Yet, no son of his could be such a fool; for what cause had he given Faramir to believe such a thing? What cause indeed, save the lies of Mithrandir? He smiled grimly. If I should return, think better of me. No, those had been naught but a young man’s words of pride and anger. And for a while, Denethor’s breathing eased, and he was comforted.  

“Your son has returned, lord, after great deeds,” Imrahil had said to him, in sorrow and reproach. Yet, Imrahil had not known; nor had he seen what the Seeing Stone had revealed to him in the fastness of the secret room in Ecthelion’s Tower: a nameless horror that crushed all hope in his breast, an Enemy against whose might no man, however valiant and noble, however great his deeds, could prevail. Yet, he, Denethor had dared resist Him – and the death and ruin of all he held dear were to be his punishment.

The end was near. He felt it in the shuddering of the stones beneath his feet, the faint cries of the dying; and in the draught, stealing through chinks in the high shuttered window that brought the acrid smoke of many burnings. Soon, this study with its tall shelves of books, the accumulated wisdom of ages, the ancient desk with eagle’s talons for feet that had so fascinated Faramir as a child would be no more. He remembered the Withered Tree – the Enemy would put it to the axe, just as He would put the people of the City to fire and sword. For a thousand years, the men of his line had guarded the Kingdom of Gondor, at first, hoping against hope that the King might one day return; and in later years, when the coming of the King had become little more than a story from the high and far-off days of long ago, held the South Kingdom as though it were their own. Did the Lords of Gondor know then, in their days of wisdom and power that he, Denethor would be last Steward of the Realm; that in his hands, all their long years of careful stewardship would come to naught?

He smiled – a twist of the mouth that was all bitterness. He had been blind – so blind! But now, his sight was true. Let that Ranger from the North come and do what he would! Let fire and ruin be his Kingdom; let the feathers of carrion birds be his mantle, and their bones his crown!   

 And so, in the howling darkness in his heart, Despair at last strangled Hope.  

For a long moment, he looked down at the son he had loved less than another. “Once, long ago, I sent you away from me. And now, you have returned.” Slowly, he reached out to touch the fevered brow. “There are many things that I would tell you, my son, but there is so little time – so little…” His voice faded to a breath, and had Faramir woken then, he would have seen a look in his father’s eyes that none had seen before, nor would any see again. “Though I fear that you will not hear me now, for it is too late. Too late!” 

The walls of the chamber closed in about him as though it were a tomb. His servants would have brought light, and a brazier to warm himself by, for the chill of early spring lingered still in the White City, but Denethor had forbidden it. What need had he of fire, when his son burned with a flame that no water could quench; what need of light when it was powerless to banish darkness?  

“Forgive me, my child,” he said fiercely. “We shall not be parted at the last – that I promise you. I, your father.”

*          *          *

            They passed down the Silent Street like a procession of ghosts, and only the swaying lanterns they bore marked them as living men. It was a story that those who lived told to their children, and their children’s children long afterwards – the dark tale of a grieving Steward and his dying son. Many years later, a venerable old hobbit – no less than the Took and the Thain himself, was to tell his eager listeners of how a frightened young Halfling in the livery of the Tower Guard had followed the Steward Denethor on his last journey past the high pale domes and the empty echoing halls of Rath Dínen. By the cosy hearth-fire of his own house-place, the Thain spoke of the shadowed images of noble lords long dead carved in stone, and how the footsteps of the living broke the dreadful silence as they passed into the House of the Stewards.

The tale grew with each telling, just as a tapestry is embellished by the hand of a nimble needlewoman; a dark tapestry, but a grand one, for all its sorrow and darkness. Yet, it was not a story that the Thain told often, for, like most other hobbits, he liked to talk of joyful things and stories with happy endings. This one, he told only when a certain mood came upon him, and when he remembered with longing and not a little sadness, the days of the Fellowship. Not even little Marigold, his favourite grandchild could persuade him to tell it, when he did not want to; for Peregrin Took knew, as did most master storytellers, that some stories should only be told when the time was ripe, lest they lose their power in the telling.

“Were you afraid, grandfather?” A child piped up.

“Terrified, Daisy, I was terrified.” He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, and a small cloud of blue smoke escaped him. “I was a young hobbit then, only a mite older than your cousin Fortinbras.”

“Oh, but Fortinbras is old! He is already twenty-five!”

“Hush, Daisy!” cried Marigold impatiently, thumping her small fists on the kitchen table. “Grandfather, tell us of how you saved the Prince!”

Pippin settled back in his chair, grinning. “He wasn’t the Prince then, my lass – for he only became Prince after the War, when our King gave Ithilien to him and the Lady Éowyn. But that is another story! Faramir was only Captain of the White Tower, but a great and noble lord nonetheless. Many men loved him, and those doughty rangers of his would have followed him to the very pits of Angband and back if he bade them.”

“But the rangers were not with Faramir that day, for they were all at the lower levels of the City, fighting the Enemy.” Pippin’s voice became grave. “And so, he was alone, with his father and the few of us in the House of the Stewards. We came to a wide-vaulted chamber, you know, the sort that would echo if you shouted in it; only of course, none of us made a sound – we were too afraid for that, for the Lord Denethor had such a fey look upon him. So we crept in, quiet as mice. There were rows and rows of tables, each as high as the mantelpiece yonder, carved of marble; and on each table was the likeness of a dead lord of long ago.” Here, Pippin paused, and noted with satisfaction, the round eyes of his young audience. “The men laid Faramir and his father on an empty table, and Denethor spoke in a great voice (such a voice he had, my children!) ‘Bring us wood quick to burn - ’”            

            “Poor Faramir! The Lord Denethor must have been an evil man.”

            Pippin removed his pipe and began filling it. The light of the hearth-fire rose and sank, and it seemed to young Marigold that a shadow crossed his face. He was silent a while, before he spoke again. “No, Merry,” he said sadly. “He was not a bad man, only one overthrown with grief. He loved Faramir –”

            Stubbornly, the hobbit lass shook her head. “I would not kill a thing I loved, grandfather.”

            “Ah, but would you save a thing you loved?”

            “Yes.”

            Pippin lit his pipe, and the sharp scent of Longbottom Leaf filled the kitchen. “Well, the Lord Denethor tried to save his son in his own way. You see, Merry, if the Enemy had won through, the orcs would have enslaved or tormented all who yet lived; it’d give you nightmares if I told you what the orcs did to their captives. So, the Lord Denethor did the only thing he could to spare his son. It was a terrible love, but love nonetheless.”

            “But he was wrong, wasn’t he grandfather, for you saved the Prince,” asked Daisy, looking up from her bowl of milk.

            Laughing, Pippin said, “So he was wrong, little ones, and it was not I alone that saved Faramir. But back to the story. I ran like the wind, knowing only that I must find Gandalf, for he alone could stop Denethor in his madness. That was when I met Beregond; I have told you Beregond’s story before now, and I won’t tell it today – but on I ran, coughing and choking into the fire and smoke of outer City until I found Gandalf. He was quite grey by then, I tell you!” Pippin chuckled, remembering. “He snatched me up and set me on Shadowfax, and we were away, plunging up the cobbled streets of the White City, and all the while, the clangour of war rose and deafened us. A hunting horn sang in the gloom; then someone cried, “Rohan has come!” and everywhere, men were running to the Gate, snatching up the arms they had thrown down in despair.”

            “Up and up we went, until we came to the Citadel; and there, my heart lifted a little, for a light was growing in the southern sky, and it seemed that the long night was ending. Beregond was gone by then, of course, and the poor porter slain.”

            Pippin stopped a while to warm his hands by the fire. “Gandalf sent Shadowfax away – you can’t tell how sorry I was to see him go! – but we hurried down Rath Dínen and came to the House of the Stewards in no time at all. There, we found a great pyre, ready for the burning, and the Prince lying upon it, dreaming in his fever. The smell of oil was in the air, and smoke from the torches. I shall never forget it,” Pippin said, shuddering in spite of himself.

With lowered voice, he told the children of the courage and treachery of Beregond, and how Gandalf sprang onto the pyre, nimbler than the quickest hobbit lad, taking Faramir in his arms, and out of danger. “He called for his father in his sleep, his voice harsh and broken by fever. Denethor heard it, and for the space of a single heartbeat, the madness died in his eyes, and he wept like a man whose heart is breaking. He cried, ‘Do not take my son from me! He calls for me.’” Gravely, Pippin turned to Marigold and took her small hand in his own. “It was then, Merry, that I learned that the Steward loved his son.” 

Marigold nodded, squeezing her grandfather’s hand in turn. “I know.”

And at last, Pippin spoke of the end of the last Ruling Steward of Gondor. “Denethor’s eyes kindled again, and he leapt onto the pyre thrusting a flaming brand amidst the dripping wood. It caught at once, and before the fire roared up to take him, he broke the staff of his stewardship across his knee and flung shattered pieces into the blaze. But before he laid himself down to die, he took up the Stone and cradled it to his breast as though it were a child. He uttered a great cry, and after that, we heard no more.”              

“So passed the Lord Denethor, son of Ecthelion.” For a long time, Peregrin Took bowed his head and was silent. The children heard the crackling of the merry little hearth-fire that had seemed almost a friend to them, and shivered. “I wept then, for though I did not love the Lord Denethor, I pitied him, and for a while, he had after all, been my liege lord.” The Thain looked up, opening his arms to the children. They ran to him at once, and he bent to kiss Daisy’s brow as she sniffed through her tears. But Marigold stood tall and straight in the crook of his arm, her eyes bright. Dear brave Merry, he thought, smiling. Softly, he whispered, “And for ever afterwards, it was said that if any man looked into that Seeing Stone, he would see only two aged hands withering in flame.” 

Author’s note:

This Chapter is largely based on the book, though I’ve made Pippin abridge the account of Denethor’s death and Faramir’s rescue by Gandalf for the children’s sake. With thanks to Raksha who suggested writing the Pyre scene from Pippin’s eyes!

I don’t have a genealogy of Pippin’s family with me, save for the family tree in Appendix C of Return of the King, which unfortunately stops at Faramir I. So, I have taken the liberty of inventing the two little granddaughters Marigold and Daisy.

A Morning of Pale Spring – Part 1            

Slender and tall she was in her white robe girt with silver; but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, and thought her fair, fair and cold as a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womanhood.

The King of the Golden Hall

~The TwoTowers~

Dreams hunted him. Try as he would, he could not wake; ever they pursued him, creatures with talons of fire and eyes blazing red as coals. And all around him was a whirling storm of darkness, deeper than the night. Once, he saw his brother drifting in a high-prowed boat, storm-tossed on an ocean of flame; another time, he lay on a great pyre of wood, writhing, burning. In his agony, he cried, “Father! Father!” and held out his hands, living torches, for succour, but Denethor did not come.

            Yet, there were times that Faramir rose gasping, out of that sea of horror; he saw then, the stranger faces of men and women, and among them, one he knew well – a man with hair the colour of a raven’s wing, on whose narrow hand glimmered a signet ring graven with a swan in flight. He felt cool linen on his fevered brow, water on his parched lips, and heard his name ringing faintly in his ears, like the sound of bells tolling far away. But always, the cool hands slipped away and each time, it seemed to him that he was falling down and down, into a deep, lightless void from which he would never rise again. 

One day, there came another voice, kind and weary, calling him out of the night, and the scent of herbs, at once sweet and bitter. And when Faramir opened his eyes at last, he saw a face that was both strange and familiar; radiant and full of light. Then his heart rejoiced, for he knew now the one who had come to him in dreams long ago as a child; he knew its grace and wisdom, its valour and majesty, for here stood the king who had come at last to his kingdom.

Softly, Faramir spoke, “My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?”          

            Smiling, the king laid a gentle hand on his brow. “Walk no more in the shadows, but awake!”

            He remembered little thereafter, for he fell into a light, dreamless sleep; and all who saw him knew that peace had come to the Steward’s son.

*       *       *

Faramir woke to a dawn like no other - a morning of pale spring and golden skies; the chill of winter lingered still, but he thought he could smell the promise of summer in it. He raised a hand, its slender fingers wasted by illness, to catch the long yellow shafts of sunlight.

            It was hardly a day to be staying abed.

Like an old, old man, he rose and drew an old furred cloak about his shoulders. He came unsteadily to his feet, almost like a child learning to walk; and for a moment, the world reeled wildly about him, and he would have fallen had he not found and caught by blind instinct alone, the tall back of a chair. By and by, the chamber stopped spinning and his heart ceased its mad drumming. What would his men say, to see their Captain as weak as a yearling lamb? He smiled, the odd, ironic half-smile that his men knew so well. Quite suddenly, his heart longed for them; they belonged to him, and he to them – for there was no other now, who could claim him for his own.

            No. He checked, and found his hands clenched amidst the folds of fur. There were other duties, other loyalties, and other bonds laid upon him now that his father was dead.

He was the king’s Steward.  

            Till that moment, he had not known that a man could drink of such joy and sorrow mingled in a single cup. It was a draught both bitter and sweet.

            “Your father is dead,” Imrahil had said in his kindly way. “The old Steward is at peace, and Gondor greets the new. Faramir, my sister’s son, you will be a greater Steward than Denethor, son of Ecthelion. Greater, and yet lesser, for the king has returned.” Stooping, the Prince kissed his brow. “You are alive, Faramir, but not alone. Lay your grief aside, for the living need you yet!” He had bowed his head and said nothing then, for his uncle’s gaze, full of sorrow and gentleness was upon him. Then, another voice rang out of the gloom; a clear, young voice, trembling with joy.

“Sir! My lord Steward.”

“Cub.” He met the boy’s eyes – but Edrahil was a boy no longer. There was a swathe of filthy linen on his arm and a sureness about the way he carried himself – the swagger of a warrior. “How –“

“Cub? A quaint name for one so valiant. I shall never quite understand the ways of your Rangers,” Imrahil smiled, shaking his head. “He stood over you with his teeth bared, like a she-wolf guarding her litter. If not for Edrahil, you would have been naught but red rags by the time we broke through.” 

            “My lord, I only did my duty,” the boy had said, flushing.

            He heard himself saying, “Then it was well done, my brother,” and was absurdly pleased when he saw the tears in the boy’s eyes. 

            When they had gone, Faramir turned his face to the wall and wept, for he was glad, so glad that he was not alone.   

Faramir shook his head. I am a maudlin fool, he told himself, and came slowly to his feet. He was not to rise from his bed, the Warden said, for a long while yet – not until the wound closed. But today, his yearning for the sun and sweet air of the garden would not be denied.    

            Walking was more painful than he had imagined; the even the simple task of putting one foot beyond the other was quite beyond his strength. Twice he paused to rest, trembling by the foot path; once he sank to his knees on the grass, almost too tired to rise again, and only the gross indignity of being found thus and carried back to his cot like a child spurred him to his feet.

            He found his way, without meaning to, to the bench under the shadow of the old oak tree his mother had once loved. There, Faramir slipped, exhausted onto the cool stone, closed his eyes and laid his cheek against the rough bark. For a long while, he was still – so still that any man who saw him would have thought him asleep.

            So it was that he did not see the girl when she stepped silently from the colonnades. She made no sound, for she was a warrior and warrior’s daughter. Tall she was; her long fair hair braided with ribbands, and her white gown burnished to gold in the glowing dawn.

She stopped, just beyond the oak tree’s shade so that the sun shone full upon her.

He was no more than a shadow in the green shade, the pale young man in a dark cloak, snowdrops like tears glistening at his feet. But what she thought of him, no man knew, for the unspoken grief in her gaze did not fade, nor did she say a word. Then the wind rose, and an oak leaf fell, brushing the young man’s cheek.

He woke then; and their eyes met.

With infinite grace, the girl inclined her head and turned away. She left as silently as she had come, and for a single heartbeat, it seemed to Faramir that she was a golden vision, lost forever beyond all catching back.

But she was no dream, for there, in the grass among the snowdrops and dark oak-leaves lay a single white ribband.

*       *       *

Author’s note:

In The Steward and the King, Faramir and Éowyn meet for the first time in the Houses of Healing. I’ve always been reluctant to re-write scenes that the good Professor has done so well; so, here’s my rather AU version of their first meeting, which would have taken place not long before they were formally introduced by the Warden.