Chapter 25 – The Journey North

Antheod propped his crutch against the stable wall and braced his wooden leg carefully for balance, second nature now after more than three years of practice. He needed both hands free to stow all his belongings carefully on Hearm’s back. They must be distributed comfortably for the horse, for his tools were heavy and their road would be long.

Hearm squealed in protest and jerked his head back to nip at Antheod, but was caught by the short tether rope Antheod had used to tie his head. He flattened his ears in displeasure, the wide, lopsided blaze that broke the dull brown of his coat giving him a look of sneering dislike. Antheod regarded him with much the same expression, and expertly punched the horse’s side, causing him to let out with a huff the breath that had inflated his ribs, so that Antheod could tighten the girth under his belly to its necessary tension. “Hearm,” the man who sold the beast to him had named him. Grief. “And grief is all he’ll give you!” the man had promised. But for all his muddy brown coloring, long neck, swayback, and foul temper, the animal was young, strong and healthy, and Antheod was sure of his ability to manage the creature. If anything, the beast’s faults made him more attractive to Antheod. This mount was as different as could be imagined from the ideal of Rohan’s finest breeding he had known before. Here was a horse he could not be expected to love.

Last to be fastened to the saddle was the bow he had made himself and his quiver of arrows. Many long hours of toil had gone into the crafting of it, guided by Hamm’s patient tutelage. It had been the first usable bow he had produced, and he still remembered the faint, astonishing glow of pride he had felt the first time he had drawn and shot it.

He had taken up the craft in the restless frustration of his idleness, those early days in the village. As his body healed and his strength returned, he needed activities to fill the empty days. For a while learning to walk again had consumed all his waking hours. He had driven himself, until his stump chafed and bled, and Haelan scolded him and sent him back to bed. At first shaky, often stumbling, bruised from many falls, still he fought on, pushing aside the arms that willingly reached out to steady him, until as the weeks passed he gradually, painfully, gained skill.

When finally he could get about all the little lanes of the village with reasonable speed and endurance, he had felt the emptiness looming again, and had sought, almost desperately, for some new challenge. Watching Hamm hard at work in his workshop, straddling the bench vise and drawing long, fragrant curls of wood from the carefully prepared stave, he had felt a stirring of interest, and cautiously inquired if Hamm might allow him to try. Only one leg was needed to brace the vise tight around the stave, and the pull of the drawknife was satisfying as he shaped the back of the bow, following the grain of the wood. He threw himself into the learning, limping along behind Hamm through all his tasks. Hamm taught him to shape the bows, to balance the limbs and to rasp the belly until the desired draw was achieved, to fashion and fletch arrows, and to twist a bowstring from tendon. When winter came he took Antheod down to the banks of the Isen and showed him how to find the trees whose wood would be strong and supple. Antheod had spent endless hours practicing the craft, honing his skills, surprising himself with how much pleasure he took in concentrating solely on the work of his hands, and in seeing something beautiful and functional take shape beneath them.

Hearm fully loaded, he took up his crutch, made his way out of the stable, and limped over to the cottage, where Haelan and Hamm waited at the door, shadows long before them in the early morning light.

“You’re all ready to go?” Hamm inquired, and Antheod nodded. He felt awkward and confused. How could he thank them, who had done so much for him? How could he say good-bye to these two who had become his family over the past three years?

Yet he had to go. He ran his hands nervously through his close-cropped hair. It was mostly grey now, a contrast from the shoulder length golden locks he had worn before. The changed helped conceal his identity, along with the short beard that obscured his previously clean-shaven face. But still he was afraid any time a stranger came to the village, and hid himself in the house until he was sure it was not someone who could have known him before.

He could never be truly at peace, in Rohan. Too many people who might recognize his face, too many memories, too many ghosts.

“Oh, come here, let me hug you.” Haelan pulled him toward her and embraced him roughly. Her voice was ragged. He knew she hated losing her dignity and emotional control, yet tears wet her eyes, and his own throat was tight and eyes wet in response.

She had saved his life so many times over. First by the surgery on his leg, of course, and often again in the days after. After Donaldo’s departure he had lain in bleak despair, and been overtaken by fever. For days he had been lost in delirium as infection fought to overwhelm his weakened body. Haelan had battled unceasingly at his side, and her medicines, but even more her unquenchable will, had slowly and painfully brought him back from the edge of death.

He had been too feverish to understand when they told him, four full days after he had released Donaldo, that Saruman’s forces had finally come forth from Isengard and swept past the defenses at the Fords. Fearful, the villagers had withdrawn, preparing to make what little resistance they could, so it was only by confused rumors many days later that news of the victory at Helm’s Deep reached them. Eventually, Antheod was lucid enough to understand, and learned how Gandalf had come to Edoras, with companions out of legend, and had woken Theoden from his enthrallment and cast out Wormtongue. He marveled to think his father was himself again, and longed to go to him. He would have repented his choice then, and taken up again the name of Theodred, and returned to Edoras, to be reunited with the father he remembered. But by that time Theoden was gone, answering Gondor’s summons to the south, and Theodred was far too weak to travel. Still for a brief time he hoped.

Then the messenger came reporting the events of the battle at Minas Tirith. Antheod wept unashamed as Haelan repeated the tale to him. Theoden slain. Eowyn – Eowyn! – grievously wounded in his defense. Eomer assuming the kingship and leading the Rohirrim to glorious victory. He mourned for his father with grief made achingly bitter by lost chances and shattered hopes. He could never go back now. Eomer had earned his place on the throne. Antheod could never tarnish his cousin’s glory with his own ruined and broken presence.

He released Haelan and stepped back, his manner as clumsy as his shuffling gait. He wanted to be done with this awkward farewell, off to the solitude of the road.

Hamm clasped his hands briefly. “You have the names I gave you, and the letters?” Names of bowyers and weaponsmiths across Middle-earth, along with letters of introduction, that Antheod might seek them out and hone his skills under their tutelage.

“Of course. In my saddlebag.” He used the words as an excuse to turn toward the stable.

“Here, let me help you.” Hamm accompanied Antheod back to where Hearm waited. Antheod hated the way Hamm was forced to shorten his usual long strides to keep pace with Antheod’s slow progress, but he turned away and suppressed his frustration. Just this once, he could endure the humiliation of aid. Soon he would be free of it.

He suffered Hamm to hold Hearm’s head, controlling the beast’s restless movement, while he mounted. Hands braced on the saddle, he balanced for an unsteady moment on wooden leg alone as his right leg reached up for the stirrup, then swung the stiff, unresponsive thing over the horse’s rump and settled it in the specially designed stirrup the leatherworker had fashioned for him. Hearm put his ears back and pranced, but Antheod was in firm control. He made his way out of the stable, Hamm following, and back to where Haelan waited to make one final farewell.

Haelan smiled at him. He thought he could read both pride and sorrow in her gaze. “Farewell, Antheod.” She had never once slipped and called him by his old name. “May your road be blessed, and may you find what you seek.”

What he sought? What did he seek, besides escape? He hid his confusion in a flurry of good-byes, and then he was off, down the road to the Fords.

Haelan’s words continued to trouble him. What he truly longed for, he could not seek, for it was nowhere to be found. His former life, his unmarred body, Theoden, Elana, Deore, even Silverfoot – all were gone beyond any possibility of recall. He wrenched his thoughts away from that track, for he knew all to well that it could lead only to black despair.

He came to the top of a rise, and breathed deep of the fresh wind that rippled the green grasses on the long slopes down to the river. Ahead lay the Fords, undefended now, for no enemies remained. Saruman was gone, and Sauron himself, and Rohan had thrived in the rich green years since their downfall.

Antheod remembered that day, a month after the battle at the Fords. He had just been beginning to recover his strength, and his newfound energy had turned inward. Lying confined day after day in Haelan’s bed, he had played the memories over and over in his mind, berating himself mercilessly for each error of judgment, pondering obsessively how he might have chosen differently. He despised his own weakness, and longed again for the mercy of death.

Then in the midst of his black thoughts, he paused, and though he neither heard nor saw anything, suddenly the room seemed brighter, the air fresher, and he remembered something they had told him, something he had ignored as unimportant when first he heard it. Four days, they had said, had passed between the day he had released Donaldo to carry his message to Saruman, and the day Saruman’s armies had poured forth out of Isengard. And when those armies crushed the defenses at the Fords and marched on to Helm’s Deep, they had found there a force stronger than anyone could have anticipated, which had arrived only barely in time. And they had been defeated, and that very day creatures from the trees had appeared and cast Isengard down, and so Rohan was saved.

Four whole days. That was what he had hoped, when he spoke the words to release Donaldo, was it not? Perhaps Saruman’s long delay in sending out his forces was unrelated to his own actions, but perhaps, just perhaps, the message had been the deciding factor.

If that were true, than his presence in the village had saved Rohan from destruction. And that was worth any price, even his leg, even Elana and Deore’s lives, even his own betrayal of all he held dear. If that were true, he could live, he had to live, even with the leaden weight of grief he bore. He pushed back the covers, and called for Haelan, and from that moment he bent all his strength to healing.

Only later, after messengers on the fleetest horses spread throughout the land the news of the destruction of the Ring and Sauron’s defeat, did he work out the times and realize that his change of heart must have happened in that very hour. By then he was well into the hard work of learning to live again.

Antheod guided Hearm down the steep bank that led down to the river’s floodplain. What did he seek? Not the past returned, for though the price had been high almost beyond bearing, what it had bought was dear enough to justify the cost. A new life, then, he supposed. To be a man again, living by his own efforts, performing a useful service.

There it was, ahead of him. The water burbled and chattered, shimmering in the sun as it bounced and splashed shallow over the rocks. The road led down, across the narrower arm of the river, to the island in the middle. That had changed since he saw it last. A mound rose at its northern end, taking up most of the area of the island, taller than he was. At its peak a banner fluttered in the wind, white horse on green. Lush green grass carpeted its flanks. Someone had planted simbelmynë, he saw as he drew nearer, for white stars winked among the grass, as they did on the mounds of his ancestors outside Edoras.

Hearm’s hooves splashed through the glimmering water and thudded on the sand of the island’s shore. Even the horse seemed subdued as Antheod halted him, and sat gazing upon his own burial place.

No, not mine, he thought. Theodred lies buried there, but I live.

He bowed his head, the burden of that life heavy on him. A mound like this stood outside the gates of Edoras, an eighth added to the seven he had known all his life, over his father. It would be the last, for with him the line was broken. Other mounds covered many of the Mark slain on the fields outside Mundberg, Grimbold among them. And somewhere, in some unmarked grave, lay a mother and child, slaughtered for no other reason than that he had loved them. He bore their lives along with his own.

Farewell, Elana. Forgive me for failing you. I will never forget you. He turned and looked out, to the western horizon, and beyond. Then he turned Hearm’s head that way, and urged him into a rough canter, across the little island and into the deeper water of the west arm of the Isen.

One of Hamm’s letters was addressed to a bowyer in Tharbad. He would follow the road there, learn from him what he could, then venture wherever his whim took him. Middle-earth was vast, and he had seen little of it in his life. He found himself for the first time anticipating his future with interest, even hope. Perhaps someday he would find whatever it was he sought.

Across the river, he slowed Hearm to a walk. The day was young, and many miles lay before them. At the bend in the road, he paused Hearm and took one last look back at the banner atop the mound, dancing in the wind. Then his one good leg kicked the horse into motion, and he set out on the journey north.

THE END