Chapter 27

Fatigue

May 16

Runda Garrison, Southern Gondor

It was technically morning, but the sky was still dark and the rain was still pouring down. Faramir had brought back his own men safely, but the fate of Erynbenn's company was heavy on his heart. For a long moment he stood outside the healer's rooms at the back of the barracks. He didn't want to go in.

Pushing aside his own feelings, he entered, going towards the far end of the row of cots to where a large man sat hunched at the side of a battered captain. Bartho's hand was resting on his friend's slowly rising and falling chest. The blood on his hands from where he had lifted Erynbenn's body was dried now, but he had long since forgotten its presence. His dark eyes were even darker than usual.

Faramir gazed sorrowfully down at the captain. Though Erynbenn, being partly Numenorean, was many years his senior, he had always been more lighthearted than Faramir and thus seemed younger. It felt strange to see him there, barely alive, his eyes closed and his body swathed almost completely in bandages. The fact that he was still breathing at all was a testament to his own strength and to Bartho's stubborn refusal to let him go.

For it was most certainly Bartho who had pulled his friend through. When Faramir had felt sure he would have to draw back without discovering what had become of Erynbenn after his last brave rush, Bartho had gone alone down the slope until he found him — just as the Southrons realized how Faramir had tricked them. When the healers were too occupied with other needs to finish their work on Erynbenn, Bartho had stepped in and taken over. He hadn't left since then.

"Bartho?" Faramir whispered. "Is he not awake after all, then?"

To his surprise, Erynbenn's eyes opened. "Define 'awake'," he whispered briefly. He was fighting to remain lucid.

"Impudent, isn't he?" Bartho scowled, causing Erynbenn to smile fondly up at him. It seemed about the only movement he could make while his weakened body struggled to replace the blood he had lost.

"Do you," Erynbenn asked haltingly, "need …my report?"

"Even if I did, I wouldn't ask for it now. I can't tell you how glad I am to see you alive," Faramir said. "Don't worry about it; Anto's told me most of it, and the rest can wait."

"Anto," Erynbenn breathed in relief. "Good. How many more?"

Faramir let out a silent breath. This was what he'd been dreading. He knew how responsible Erynbenn would feel. He had felt such sadness and guilt himself once before, realizing that a single charge had cost every soldier's life but his own. It wouldn't matter that this whole trap had probably been laid by Mavranor personally; wouldn't matter that, under the circumstances, any survivors at all were sheer miracles.

Noticing his expression, Bartho grimly took the task away from him. "Seventeen survived, counting you and Anto."

"Ah," Erynbenn said, his body seeming to deflate a bit. "Seventeen out of two hundred…"

"It would have been less," Bartho said, "if Faramir hadn't used the woods to such advantage. He took the northern ridge before the Southrons even knew he was there. If not for him it would have been no survivors out of two hundred, landing me in a particularly bad situation. Or what was I supposed to tell Melima if you were killed?"

It was a remonstrance, a jest, and a reminder at the same time. The mention of his wife seemed to strengthen the younger man a little. "My thanks, Lord Faramir."

"My pleasure, Captain Erynbenn. You'd best get some more sleep."

The Dúnadan obeyed promptly.

Bartho followed Faramir outside to talk for a few minutes.

"What do you plan to do now?" Bartho asked. "This was about as good a disaster as you could hope to define with the word."

"Though, of course, you won't be telling Erynbenn that," Faramir countered. All he got in response was a single headshake. "I'll agree, we were soundly defeated, but that happens, and always more frequently than I would like. Erynbenn won't be ready to take the field for several months."

"True. He should be up and limping in about a month, though."

Faramir stared. "A month?"

"He's just resilient enough and foolish enough to push himself to it, yes," Bartho grunted. "It doesn't really matter. I'll take on the few of his men who can still fight."

"Thank you. If Mavranor can now get her men out of the ravines in this direction, we'd best draw our line back and regroup. I want a solid position, even if I have to retreat to get it."

"That's wise," Bartho agreed, but he scowled blackly. "I don't like retreats."

"Believe me," Faramir assured him, setting off through the rain towards where Beregond was awaiting him, "no soldier does."

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May 18

Southern Gondor, Battle Line, Southron Side

It had rained that morning, turning the ground into muck. The sky hung low, dark and heavy with the promise of more rain soon. There was a distant rumble that vibrated the air.

The smell was horrible.

The sight was unutterably worse.

Halda looked about, his face as closed as a shuttered window. The Gondorian lines had been pushed far enough back over the past three days that it was safe for Queen Mavranor to come survey the remains of her clever scheme.

As she picked her way between the corpses, her red dress stood out against the gray mud and dead faces like a sadistic laugh in an empty room. Indeed, she was smiling to herself. She was giddy and almost completely unguarded with delight. It was revolting.

"A masterpiece," Mavranor breathed, and Halda jerked to see her suddenly within speaking distance. "Imagine them cringing in the garrisons from the terror of the Southron Queen. I wonder if in their minds I am as young and deadly as I once was…"

"You are still deadly, milady," Halda said automatically, swallowing the hoarseness that wanted to come. "Such pitiless destruction hardly needs magnification."

He felt the slice of her eyes as she gazed at him. He knew he had been foolish. He had let a shade of his utter loathing for her creep into his voice.

Mustering every ounce of servility he could find, he added, "It was a unparalleled stroke of genius, milady. Such a total annihilation of an entire company like this — it is easy to see that the benefits you will reap in fear will far outstrip even the welcome extermination of these parasites. The skill and secrecy that you applied here are beyond the reach of such feeble minds as any of your humble servants." He bowed, grateful to escape eye-contact.

Mavranor smiled, satisfied. She turned again to survey the grassy floor of the cove and its gruesome carpet of bodies, tangled together in death. A cold wind blew. She lifted a veined hand to shield her eyes from a sun that wasn't shining.

They made a strange pair, standing together. One still youthful, dressed in sober black, his shoulder-length dark hair wound into his turban and his brown eyes veiled. The other old, clothed in painful scarlet, her gray-shocked midnight hair whipping about her. One strong, the other withered. One the mistress, the other the servant. One enraptured, the other sickened. Only their bronze skin matched.

"You are right, Halda, as always." She checked to make sure he was properly flattered by the rare compliment. "Only one aspect of this did not satisfy me. The unexpected arrival of their reinforcements. I wonder how Ingem failed to tell me that such a warrior had been placed at the head of these armies. Elessar is dead; who then is this replacement?"

"Faramir, second son of Denethor, heir to the Stewardship of Gondor until the reinstatement of the king, and now Prince of Ithilien," Halda rattled off. It was his duty to know such things.

"Ah, yes," the old queen whispered like a hiss. Her lips were stretched invisibly thin and Halda was parenthetically reminded that snakes do not have lips. Mavranor turned to look at him. "A lesson in power, Halda. Cut off the head, and the body will die. If Elessar was only a part of Gondor's head, the rest can be summarily removed as well. Perhaps this very night…" With a teasing chuckle, she moved away.

For a long minute Halda was left staring off towards the Gondorian lines, but then his reverie was broken as Mavranor called his name sharply and the company of Southrons and their queen left their brutal work behind.

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May 18

Southern Gondor, Battle Line, Gondorian Side

The oil lamp flickered ominously on Faramir's makeshift desk. There was increasing word of saboteurs loose in Gondor cutting off the army's supplies, including essentials like food and oil. If Kopairin had not somehow avoided such problems, he probably would have been using a candle and not a lamp at all.

Beregond let the tent's flap close with a soft slap as he entered. The sight of Faramir working in the lamplight seemed to be bothering him, but Faramir let him stew for a while before 'noticing' his presence.

"It's just a bridle, Beregond," he murmured humorously.

The guardsman gave a sigh like a moan. "Exactly, my lord."

"You take issue with me mending my own equipment?"

"I wish to point out how many other, more important and less…"

"Dirty?"

Beregond scowled, knowing Faramir was laughing at him behind those gray eyes. "Without disrespect, you know what I mean."

Faramir did laugh then, though quietly. "If it makes you feel better, I have disposed of my written work for the evening." He gestured towards a neat mound of letters, communiqués, books and scrolls sitting on the desk. "This I do for relaxation."

"Fixing bridles?" The disbelief was palpable.

The Steward nodded, his quick fingers still moving surely as he began to oil the leather with a soft cloth, shining the bit and buckles. "It requires little exertion and less thought. It reminds me some small things can be fixed without bloodshed or loss of life. It saves for me a fragment of the sanity common men enjoy."

"'Common' men? Making you 'uncommon'?"

"No," Faramir shook his head once, "but I hold an uncommon position."

Beregond reached over to lift the pile of courier messages he'd come to retrieve, and for a moment Faramir thought he heard him mutter under his breath, "I beg to contradict", but felt he must have misheard. The guardsman straightened again and gave him the Beregond facsimile of what he'd begun to term 'The Eowyn Look'. He'd been so young when his mother had died, and Boromir's care of him had been a brother's and a fellow soldier's care, so it had not been until he had wed Eowyn that he had suddenly discovered the effects of mothering on one's behavior. Gone were the days of skipped meals, late hours, and overwork — or rather not 'gone', but protested loudly by a voice who truly desired his own health and happiness even more than he did.

In this case, he knew what Beregond was about to say.

"I'll finish this and then go to bed."

"Good."

"You'd best do the same."

"I thank you for the advice and concern, my lord, but I'd prefer to take the night watch myself."

Faramir sighed, polishing a little harder. "First of all, I don't think I need a round-the-clock personal sentry in the middle of camp like this, and secondly, you've had less sleep than I have. Do I have to order you to bed?"

"Do you, my lord?" Beregond countered.

For a moment they stared at each other. When it came to Faramir's well-being, Beregond's ability to disobey orders was legendary.

"No," Faramir sighed, giving up. "If you feel you must. But promise me you won't stay awake the whole night."

Grudgingly, Beregond gave in.

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Nulla waited until only the torches of the Gondorian sentries were glowing in the camp before he so much as blinked. Such an important assignment as this would normally have been reserved for the queen's Shadow. But the Shadow was absent. It was Nulla's chance to prove that Southron muscle and cunning were ultimately better than some death wraith of unknown origin, and of all the tests, this was one worthy of him. The Gondorians may have been engaged in a retreat, but it was a carefully calculated and organized retreat, and it seemed whoever was responsible for the sentry line and camp watches was doing his work well. The torches that marked the sentries were spaced at intervals of sixty feet all the way around the perimeter.

On the one hand the amount of killing that would have to occur to even get into the camp, let alone to the Steward's tent, would have demanded more men, but Nulla was an assassin worthy of his knife. Extra men meant extra noise, and killing brought attention of the worst kind.

In one hand he carried a stout seven-foot stake, like a staff, and a three foot stake, both carved to attach to each other. In his other hand he held the end of a length of black cord. Carefully he felt the old tree beside him and found one of the lowest branches was brittle to the touch. Tying the cord to it, he threaded the invisible line behind him as he slipped forward, never rustling a leaf in passing, the stakes held clear from dragging on the ground. Occasionally he would guide the cord around another tree trunk to keep the line taut and untangled. When Nulla settled at last into a light crouch not ten feet off to the right one of the sentries, he smiled grimly to himself. It was time to see just how skilled these Gondorians were in their duties.

He gave the cord a sharp jerk and from the opposite side of the sentry's line of vision, the branch parted from the tree with a loud crack. The sentry, completely startled, swung to face the noise, putting his back completely to the spot where Nulla was sitting. Surging to his feet like a springing taerg, Nulla's hand shot out once, catching the hapless sentry on the side of the neck. The man went soundlessly limp, but was caught under his arms by the Southron before he could fall.

Taking the long stake, Nulla slid one end of it up inside the back of the sentry's mail shirt and inside the back of his helmet, bracing his neck. Sliding the smaller stake in through the short sleeves, he attached it inside the mail, crosspiece-like, to the middle of the first stake and let the man's weight drive the long stake into the ground. Within a single minute, the unconscious sentry was propped like a macabre scarecrow at his post, presenting a convincing enough picture to the other sentries or to anyone who might have observed the line from a distance.

Nulla was already gone, melding with the friendly shadows of night, using sheer stealth to evade the next three sentries within the outer circle. His eyes were alert for clues. No one had been able to say what manner of tent would be used for an important Steward. He had assumed that it would be something ostentatious, but as he looked between the rows of tents, they all appeared exactly the same.

He forced himself to think. Was there nothing to be told between them? The answer came suddenly and simply. Of all the tents, only one had a sentry standing on guard right outside the entrance. The Gondorians' cleverness may have disguised the tent itself, but their ingenuity had ultimately failed.

For several minutes he waited, biding his time, as several soldiers passed on patrol, and then as a dangerous looking, stern-faced general nearly twice Nulla's size strode by, casting suspicious looks about him. For a moment the general paused outside the door of the tent Nulla had identified.

"Beregond?" he rumbled, keeping his voice down. Good. So the Steward must be asleep inside.

"Yes?" the sentry seemed to start awake from a half doze.

"Didn't Faramir say last night he didn't want to be coddled like an infant? 'Hang up your sword and go sleep like a normal mortal' were, I think, his words."

"I don't like it."

"Of course you don't."

With that the general moved on, leaving the sentry still trying to keep awake at his post.

Nulla waited again until the sound of footsteps faded, then he slid his way carefully around towards the rear of the tent. It was not wise to attack even a sleep-deprived sentry from the front, and Nulla was determined to misjudge no one at this stage. The risk was too high.

He circled unnoticed, sliding into place with cold satisfaction. Giving one last look around the corner at the back of the sentry's head, Nulla sprinted forward in a silent and deadly strike.

A knife blade flashed, the sentry turned at the last possible second, and the weapon missed the jugular vein entirely, digging in lower towards the chest instead. For a moment the sentry gasped, his hand reaching reflexively for a weapon, and then Nulla withdrew his knife with a jerk from the wound and struck the man across the throat with the side of his other hand. A second blow, the body went limp, and again Nulla caught his unconscious victim in a strong grip, not wanting the impact of the body falling to give him away. Nothing in the camp stirred.

With a quick move, Nulla slid the sentry into the concealing shadows in the lee of the tent. His bloody knife slit the leather ties that kept the tent flaps closed and he entered, waiting inside for his eyes to adjust to the full darkness.

There was only one occupant in the tent, sleeping on an ordinary light military cot, a single blanket pulled up to his chin. A table and chair stood off to the side holding papers, ink, and an extinguished lamp. There were a couple chests of different sizes, a set of sleep-clothes laid on the lid of one, a bow and quiver and a bridle rested on the lid of another. A sword was laid across the foot of the cot.

For the briefest moment something seemed wrong with the picture Nulla was observing, but once so close to his goal his ambitious thoughts began at last to cloud his view; at this moment hesitation was for weaklings. Walking across the room at a low crouch, he came up beside the sleeping man and whipped his knife around and down in one swift, heavy killing stroke.

A glint of light from the waning moon at the tent's open flap reflected off something just above the edge of the blanket. Even as the knife came down, Nulla realized what had been wrong with the room.

The Steward's weapons had been laid aside for the night, but not his armor.

Nulla's knife struck chain-mail through the blanket and glanced off, and faster than even Nulla could move, the Steward jerked awake and rolled reflexively away, off the opposite side of the cot.

The assassin leapt after his prey, driving the knife into the retreating man's leg twice in quick succession, but knowing the blows had not penetrated far. He would have to work fast to still make the night a success.

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Faramir was a light sleeper, but even he could not instantly pinpoint a single unknown attacker in the dead of night without a second's worth of searching. His reflexes had carried him off the cot the instant he'd felt the blow to his chest, but distracting agony came as a knife cut him twice on his unprotected thigh before he was fully out of reach.

Gray eyes flickered back and forth, trying to cut through the darkness, and then suddenly he closed his eyes completely. Keen senses came fully alert as the distraction of trying to see was removed, and there came clearly to him the sound of quick breathing, the subtle changes in the air as a body moved to avoid the cot, the scuff of a foot in the earth, and then the warmth as his own breath rebounded like an echo off something that was far too close to his face for safety. His eyes flew open and his hand shot out, grabbing the thing most immediately to hand: his cleaned bridle. Swinging it out by the reigns, he heard the iron bit strike the assassin's wrist with a crack, followed by the knife clattering away as the assassin hissed a curse.

But almost immediately a second blade was pulled from the man's dark clothes and Faramir felt another stab of pain as the knife glanced off the back of his skull. Again he side-stepped and this time remembered his own dagger, thrusting it towards the center of where his ear had said a man was standing. There was a low grunt of pain in response. For the first time he saw the dark face of his attacker, but the wound would not be fatal.

Seeing the blade coming towards him again, Faramir dropped bodily out of the way, landing painfully on the far end of the cot and causing it to tip upwards at the other end like a see-saw. With a clattering tumble, Faramir's sword slid from the foot of the cot, down the length of it, and into his lap. For a precious moment he struggled to untangle the sword from its sheath, moving his feet to tip the cot over in the process, tripping his assassin up.

Then a face was flying from the gloom, a blood covered knife was inches from his throat, a feral snarl was filling his ears. Faramir jerked his blade upright in the rapidly closing space, and felt instantly a stab of pain — first as the pommel of his own sword was driven bruisingly into his abdomen by the force of the assassin impaling himself on it, and then as the assassin's knife stabbed into his shoulder in a last reflexive attempt to take his life.

For a moment the assassin stared dumbly at him, his face working horribly. Then he drew back from Faramir, pushing himself off the blade that had mortally wounded him. Staggering already in weakness, the assassin rushed out of the tent.