Chapter Three: An Oath Sworn 

Aragorn and Legolas carefully lifted Faramir between them, and carried him deeper into the woods. It was a futile effort to shield the Steward from the aftermath of the battle; Aragorn was quite sure Faramir had already been among his dead, in hopes that even one might live.

Warm trickles of new blood ran down Aragorn's hand as Faramir's gashes reopened and strained against the embedded arrow shafts, and the horribly sweet stench of a putrid wound hung over them. This scent, with that of the dead men, almost overcame Aragorn, who was already sickened enough by the sight of the massacre that he was fighting the bile rising in his throat.

Aragorn and Legolas brought him to a small clearing and let Faramir gently to the ground. Aragorn kneeled over Faramir as Legolas went in search of the herbs and bandages Aragorn would need without a word between them.

Weakly, Faramir resisted Aragorn's care, raising his hand to grip Aragorn's wrist so weakly that Aragorn could barely feel the touch upon him. Aragorn turned to look into Faramir's eyes, sunken deep into a face devoid of color. Again, Aragorn was struck by the old memory of Boromir as they had laid him in the boat and sent him over the falls.

"I could not--find her. She is gone. We must…must ride to her…"

He was bleeding heavily again and expending strength he could not spare, and Aragorn at last pushed him firmly to the ground and placed a hand on Faramir's fevered forehead to hold him still. "We will find her, Faramir. But first, you must be tended."

"Leave it!" Faramir gasped and tried to twist away and to raise his head. He gave up the fight almost immediately. The simple movement winded him and through wheezing breaths, he demanded, "can you not…hear me? They…took…her!"

"Who, Faramir? Who has taken her?" Aragorn asked, hoping to occupy the Steward's mind long enough to tend his body, as well as to learn any information that might help them. It would not be an easy task for a mind so tormented with frantic worry and memory of the night of the assault.

"The messenger. From Rohan. He was--there. He shot me."

At last, Faramir fell still, breathing painfully, an ominous gurgling sound coming from within him with every laborious rise and fall of his torn chest.

Aragorn half-turned back to his men and shouted, and all heard the note of panic in his voice, though he tried to master it. "Send a party of the fastest riders to Gondor. Double the guards at the gates! Give the Queen word that she is to answer no summons unless it be written in my hand or that of Legolas, no matter how urgent the message! Close the gates and allow entry to only those known to Gondor. Ride quickly! We do not yet understand this threat against Gondor, and the Lady Éowyn, but we must take no chances that the Queen might be attacked as well!"

"Why do you--prevent me…from finding--my wife? You must let me go to her." Faramir's voice pitched higher than normal in his fear, and he turned his head quickly to the side, refusing the water that Legolas had returned with and was trying to pour down his throat.

He was, however, so far beyond the boundaries of his own strength, that not even his worry for his wife could sustain him. Faramir at last fell still and silent. His eyes closed, and Aragorn found himself glad of that, for it was difficult to meet them. He was frightened by what he saw in Faramir's dull gray gaze.

Aragorn dared not ask how Faramir had survived the long days with none to care for his wounds and none but the dead and his own agony for his wife to keep him company.

"Turen!" Aragorn called sharply as he tended Faramir, preparing to remove the arrows and bind the wounds. The ministrations roused Faramir from his stupor, but he made no sound. Rather, he bore all stoically, only grimacing slightly when Aragorn caused him particular discomfort.

The young guard had been standing directly behind Aragorn, unknown to the King, with horror his face as he looked upon Faramir's injuries. Turen came forward immediately, looking nearly as pale as Faramir when the smell of the wounds touched him.

"What did the attackers look like? From where did they come?" Legolas interrogated.

"They came from the mists and the trees, Milord," Turen answered nervously, and his throat constricted as he swallowed hard. "Upon foot they walked out of the wood at the moment the storm broke, and none saw them until it was too late. They were clothed in black and most had smeared mud upon their faces so that all that we could see was the whites of their eyes and their bared teeth." He shivered at this and said no more.

"Is there nothing else? Nothing else you can tell us that might help the Lady Éowyn?"

"There was one man, if man he was. I saw him plainly in the moment before I fled. It was he who inspired such fear in me as to make me try for escape. He did not fight but stood and watched over all, and gave the order for none to be spared, not even those who made pleas for their lives." Turen closed his eyes and when he opened them again, they shone with tears that he was not altogether successful in holding back. "He was dressed in black, and his face was cruel and pale. I saw him for only a moment. He was looking at the Lady through it all."

Aragorn's hands faltered upon Faramir and his eyes swung upwards to clash with Legolas' surprised stare.

"The Lady. Was she hurt?" Legolas asked Turen.

"I do not believe so. They would not face her sword, but they meant to drag her from her horse. She was trying to make her way through the battle to the side of her husband. When she could not find him, she wheeled her horse and I think she meant to ride for help. But before the horse got far, an arrow was sunk into it, and the animal went down.

"The Lady was thrown hard, and I did not think she would be able to rise, but she regained her own feet quickly. It was too late, for the men were then upon her, though she killed many before they restrained her. I saw no more, for it was then that the pale man emerged from the cover of the trees and started forward, and I crawled away. There was nothing I could have done to save her."

It was grim news indeed and at his sides, Faramir's agitation increased as the words cut through the pain and the haze of fever. Again, he struggled beneath Aragorn's hands, and his fingers curled into the dirt below him in an agony that had nothing to do with arrows.

Faramir neared the end of his endurance as Legolas raised him to a sitting position and supported his weight while Aragorn fastened dressings and bandages around his bloodstained chest and abdomen. He would need much care, and mending the damage the arrows had done to chest, lungs, and shoulder, as well as to his belly would be a long process.

Legolas spoke the inevitable at last to Aragorn, in quiet tones. "We must send him to Gondor for healing. My sister studied the arts of healing with Elrond long ago. I'll have one of the riders send for her when they reach Gondor. He needs much care."

Faramir bowed his head, and weakened in defeat and grief, tears spilled down a face gone blank and hard as stone.

"She is lost," he whispered to Aragorn, who took Faramir's shoulders gently in his grasp and squeezed them in comfort. The Steward sounded as a broken man, and Aragorn suspected that the realization he could not join the search for his wife further bowed him.

"Nay. She will never be lost so long as you light the way home to her, Faramir." Legolas assured Faramir from above, and put a hand upon his shoulder, adding his reassuring touch to Aragorn's.

When Aragorn rose slowly before Faramir, the Steward's hollowed, haunted eyes followed his every move, watching almost as if he could not fully comprehend what Aragorn was doing.

Aragorn drew his sword and dropped upon one knee before it, bowing his head before the blade and Faramir.

"I pledge an oath to you that I will find out what has become of Éowyn, Faramir."

He wanted desperately to promise more. Even knowing he could not guarantee the promise he wanted to make, he began to do so in the hope that it would give Faramir the courage to survive his wounds. The oath to return her, to return her whole, undamaged in spirit and heart, surged forth.

But the words broke against his clenched teeth and he said nothing more to Faramir. He could make no such promises, and had he, the Steward would have known better than to put his faith into them.

Aragorn raised his head, wishing and failing to see his own determination mirrored in Faramir's empty gray eyes as he climbed to his feet and turned back toward the road of the fallen.

To them, he also proclaimed that justice would be done.

"And here I lay my oath before those whose lives were taken in this malicious and cowardly attack, that I will avenge you and bring justice to those whose hands have slain you!"

Aragorn's brow lowered as he pushed his sword back into its sheath. It was supposed to be a time of peace. They had all earned it with much strife and toil. They had fought and bled for peace, they had suffered for it.

Many, many had died for it.

But as he strode back toward the dead, he couldn't deny that there were still enemies left who would give them war, whether they wished it or not.

And for a moment his fury was replaced by a great weariness and a sense of loss of something he'd just begun to appreciate. And all he desired in the world was to return to the afternoon where he had held Arwen and his unborn child in the garden and had dared to enjoy the peace.

A stretcher of sorts was made for Faramir until a wagon could be brought forth from an outlying settlement, and Aragorn sent most of his guard, in protection of Faramir, to the south toward Gondor after the solemn burials were finished.

The attack had been strategically planned at the farthest point from both cities, so that aid would be long in coming. The road was mostly an untraversed one; only occasional messengers traveling from Rohan to Gondor rode this path. The escape of Éowyn's horse was fortunate, or it might have been many, many more days before they knew anything was amiss.

Aragorn remained in a state of disbelief that such a well-planned attack had been carried out against his royal guard.

Faramir's life remained in peril, but there was little else Aragorn could do for him in the wild. Aeliné and the Warden of the Healing Houses would be hard pressed to save him, and more so in the state of mind into which Faramir had fallen. Arwen, he hoped, would be some comfort to him in the days ahead.

It worried Aragorn, perhaps more than the puncture wounds, that Faramir seemed to already mourn Éowyn, and nothing seemed to give him much hope. Aragorn could not blame him, having seen the aftermath of what his attackers were capable of.

Aragorn found it hard to consider Éowyn's circumstance, for fury and disgust and grief rose up and choked him whenever he thought of the men who had wrought such destruction putting their bloody hands upon the brave young woman. He feared, more than anything, that Éowyn would give them no choice but to hurt her, and that they would delight in doing so.

We are coming

Aragorn looked long for what signs he could find of the direction the party had taken, and discovered from both the land and Turen, that likely they had fled North, though it was the only help he gleaned from the forest or the young soldier.

"We must ride to Edoras for help," Legolas suggested. "We have sent much of our guard with Faramir and to challenge such a force as the one that descended here will require more men."

Aragorn agreed, partially because Legolas was clearly right, and partially because there was no hint as to exactly where the raiders had retreated and he did not know where else to go. Heavy rain had washed away trails and tracks, and winds had broken branches and limbs, so that there was no sure way of telling what had been disturbed by man and what had been disturbed by nature.

"To Edoras, then," Aragorn sighed, and new dread curled in his stomach at the thought that he must now tell Éomer that his sister had fallen into enemy hands, and that he had no idea who that enemy was, nor where they had gone.

Anger and remorse rose ever higher in him as they rode hard into Rohan. Anger at himself for not heeding the warning he'd felt, anger for the ordeal that they would not be in time to save Éowyn from, and guilt because he'd neglected to protect those that were his responsibility.

It was a mighty failure on his part and he could not abide the cost of it.

They were admitted into the gates of the windswept city without hesitation, though the surprised looks of the guard told them that visitors from Gondor had not been expected.

When Éomer hurried down the steps of Meduseld, Lothíriel only a stride behind him, Aragorn and Legolas were not surprised to find his leg quite unbroken.

"You did not fall from your horse?" were Aragorn's first words to the King of Rohan, before those of any greeting or warning.

Even through his confusion at seeing the King of Gondor arrive unheralded at his doorstep, Éomer looked indignant at such a suggestion. "I have never fallen from my horse, Elessar. Greetings, Legolas," he added, before asking, "what manner of news have you?"

"Ill news," Aragorn replied and glanced briefly to Éomer's lovely wife, who was also kin to Faramir.

Seeing the strain upon Aragorn and Legolas' faces, Éomer's brow lowered. "Is it my sister? Is she unwell?"

Aragorn would have liked to ease the thing that had first and most worried his old friend and ally, wished that it was anything else that he must tell Éomer. "It is Éowyn. She was taken captive in an ambush on the road to Rohan."

"Taken in an ambush?" Lothíriel asked in confusion.

Éomer said nothing, but his ruddy skin turned several shades lighter as his eyes moved from Legolas to Aragorn, and then behind them, as if in frantic search of his missing sister.

Legolas quickly added. "A messenger of Rohan arrived to ask both Éowyn and Faramir to come to your aid, for he said you'd been injured in a fall from your horse. The same messenger shot Faramir on the road a few nights later as a force came out of the forest there. It was a massacre, the night of the great storm. Many men of Gondor were slain. Faramir was left for dead and your sister taken. Faramir lives, but his life is in danger."

At the small gasp of dismay from Lothíriel, a gasp of concern for both Faramir and her husband's sister, Aragorn quietly added, "Faramir is being taken to Arwen for care. He is gravely injured but there are many with fine hands of healing in the city. Of Éowyn, there is no sign, and we shall need your help in finding her."

Éomer staggered back a step, and seemed not to feel the comforting touch Lothíriel lay upon his rigid arm. Denial was the first road he chose. "Nay, she would not be captured. Perhaps she simply rode for help, and is hiding along the--"

Aragorn could not let the false hope take hold of his friend, and interrupted him with the grim truth. "One of the guards saw that she was taken. But they did not harm her, Éomer. They took care not to, from the account of this young soldier."

Aragorn gestured behind him to Turen, who had insisted and then begged to ride with the King. Aragorn had thought it wise to let him, simply because the young man would have followed them at the first opportunity out of a need to reclaim his honor.

Éomer was clearly still so stunned by the news, still so shocked, that he could not yet speak. Aragorn saw the lines of his expression changing from confusion to fury, as denial left him, and Éomer's fingers curled into fists at his sides and his eyes narrowed.

Where that building fury would be directed, not even Éomer seemed to know.

At last, breaking the horrible silence, Lothíriel, the only one of them with an idea of what to do next, said in a tightly worried voice, "King Elessar, Master Legolas, you and your horses are weary. Let our men care for the horses and come inside until we can gather our men and devise a plan of how we will find Éowyn."

And she quickly turned and started to climb the stairway to the Golden Hall, but not so quickly that Aragorn missed the silver flash of the tears swelling in her eyes.

Éowyn. He threw out the thought towards her, and hoped by sheer will and magic he did not possess that she would know they were already riding to her aid.