Chapter 42

A Victory Worth Celebrating

June 24

Beyond the gorges, Southern Gondor

Twilight was falling. Fog rose up from the moist ground and swirled about the grass and between the trees, promising more mist in the night and full fog in the morning if the clouds did not change. Crouching in damp underbrush between the trees, Bartho and his men kept careful watch. On the one side, off in the fog, was Mavranor's army. Closer at hand lay the last wending remnants of the maze of ravines their allies would be exiting soon.

Or so Bartho hoped, at any rate. He had lost only a few men on his own trek. Some stiff fighting had come at the end of their journey when the Southrons who had triggered the avalanche finally came down to try and stop them, but Bartho had caught them by surprise and routed them quickly.

"Sir," one of the men whispered.

Bartho looked up quickly, his sharp eyes catching sight of a group emerging at last from the left-most of the large ravines. This would be Legolas' group, except the elf was not at the front; Lieutenant Anto seemed to be leading the men.

The general frowned deeply and rose from his hiding place. Anto recognized him and quickened his pace to meet Bartho halfway.

"General Bartho, thank the Valar! I'm glad to see you."

"Yes, yes, where's Legolas?" Bartho was surprised at his own anxiety. It was not only for the king's sake that he hoped the elf was well.

"He released a taerg—"

"He did what?"

"—released a taerg to distract the South—"

"Distract them?"

"—rons while we crossed the marsh, and then he wanted to stay—"

Bartho snorted. "Of course he did."

"—behind to fight the taerg himself so that it wouldn't pursue us," Anto finished, exhaling a little from the effort.

"Confound that stupid elf!" Bartho growled. He had seen a few taergs in his time and he didn't like to think of Legolas fighting one alone; who knew—?

"I'm sorry to hear you say that, Bartho," Legolas murmured dryly. The elf was smiling when Bartho spun round in surprise.

"Legolas!" The Dúnadan sighed heavily. "Well I'll say I'm glad to see you, and I won't be lying, but I'll also say you have a bad knack for undertaking tasks too big for you."

"Sir?" Bartho's lookout was back, pointing towards the ravines again. This time it was a smaller group, coming down from atop the ravine walls. Faramir and his men.

Faramir himself came limping up to them, his injuries tightly bandaged, but his face stark white in the dusky evening light. He paused, taking in Legolas' amused half-smile and Bartho's ferocious scowl.

"I'm sorry, am I interrupting?" he asked mildly.

"The half-witted immortal here fought a taerg on his own," Bartho muttered darkly. "He's lucky he survived."

Faramir looked with surprise at Legolas who turned the half-smile on him, displaying an absurdly unscathed face for inspection. There was blood staining the elf's side, but it had been bandaged and did not seem to be giving him trouble. "I have to admit, it would have been risky for most men, but Legolas is not a man, Bartho. I would hesitate to apply the same restrictions to him."

"Hannon le," Legolas murmured.

"All I mean to say is that large beasts are better left alone," the general sighed, by way of an ending argument.

It was then, with a rumbling tramp of heavy feet, that a mûmak emerged without warning from the centermost of the ravines and the glow of the rising moon revealed Aragorn perched atop its head.

"Of course, Bartho, you're quite right…" The elf's humorous comment stood alone, the others having lost the ability to speak.

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"I have to say, mellon nin, you have a knack for an entrance." Legolas could not hide his grin as he worked.

The Gondorians had all made camp amid the trees and low fires burned where shelter would keep the sight of them from the Southrons. It was in the light of one of these that the elf was bandaging his friend's injuries. Mostly it was some deep scratches from arrows, and his palms had been torn up by the reins.

"Thank you. I labored over it long and hard—" he hissed a little as Legolas dabbed at a cut on his scalp in amidst his hair.

"Hold still. This would work better if you washed your hair occasionally."

"I can always count on you for good advice, my friend."

"Is he causing trouble?" Faramir asked, catching the sarcastic tone.

"No more than usual."

"Faramir, what are you doing walking around?" Aragorn's eyes flicked toward his Steward, noting the sheen of sweat on Faramir's face and the glassy look in his eyes. "I wasn't jesting when I said it was dangerous for you to move about too much. You've lost entirely too much blood."

"I'll be fine by tomorrow."

Legolas cast his friend a sharp look, but it was clear Aragorn already shared his thoughts on that statement. The king sighed softly.

"Faramir?"

The Steward looked up, and his eyes held a worried expression that turned them the color of the fog. "Yes, my lord?" He could not explain the sudden formality.

"I'm sorry, Faramir, but no. Not tomorrow; not even for a few weeks. We're going to make a camp within the mouth of the far gorge for the wounded. You're going to stay there with them."

Faramir looked upset. With Legolas still needing him to hold still, Aragorn could do little in the way of comfort except to lay his hand briefly on the other man's arm.

"My lord…" Faramir started, "I assure you—"

The king interrupted gently, "I assure you, Faramir, that you have already done more than enough."

Faramir's hands opened and then closed in his lap, trying to grasp something that wasn't there. "My father," Faramir murmured as if to himself, "would have bade me to fight."

Aragorn made a frustrated noise in his throat. "Faramir, I dislike speaking ill of your father, for I know you loved him. He did many good things as Steward, and he had been granted the capacity for much wisdom. But it was always his way to demand too much of his men, and what he demanded from you went far beyond inappropriate. I do not mean because he was your father and you his son, but because he was your Steward and you his soldier." He quelled his anger and held Faramir's intent gaze. "Understand: my responsibility as your king is to prevent you from throwing your life away needlessly, and that responsibility holds the greater weight here. I will not be moved."

Faramir smiled a little, and bowed his head. "You're right, though I do not like letting my men go without me. But Beregond at least will need a lot of looking after if he's not to bolt again, and I am tired."

"I admire you for admitting that, unlike some people," Legolas said pointedly, giving a last dab to Aragorn's scalp. "There, Estel, that is the limit of my skill."

"Many thanks as always."

A quiet tramping in the leaves announced Duurben and Bartho's arrival, Anto trailing a bit behind.

"I don't like sounding too hopeful," Bartho began as he joined them, earning a snort from the others, "but though fraught with possible disasters, this route has served us well. Mavranor cannot expect so many of us to have survived."

"He's right," Duurben agreed, extending his hands toward the fire. "Our plan, my lord?"

"We move at first light," Aragorn said promptly. "We shall use this fog to our advantage. Since Mavranor is expecting a small army, that is what we will give her. Bartho, you will take the front as the rest of us hold farther back under cover of the trees and the fog. We will draw the Southrons out — if there are so few of us, they will not wait for us to come to them, they will charge. When they do, you will fall back as if dismayed—"

"Retreat?" Bartho scowled.

Aragorn was surprised, "I didn't think it would trouble you."

The general looked uncomfortable. "Word travels, you know…"

"To whom does it travel?" The king's eyes were narrowing shrewdly, and then just a little too casually he said, "Don't be absurd; do you honestly think she'd care that you engaged in a mock-retreat?"

"Likely she wouldn't, but that's not—" Bartho broke off, disgusted with himself. Too late he realized that he should have feigned ignorance and said, 'She who?' Now Aragorn was looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. Fortunately, they had a battle to discuss.

"When Bartho falls back, Legolas will bring his men in on the left flank, and Duurben will bring his men in on the right flank. Bartho will join Faramir's men in the center and we will all press forward at once. I do not want them given time to react. We are about equally matched now. Ilúvatar willing, we will prevail."

The men all nodded soberly. Silence fell as they gazed at the fire. Aragorn's hair was hanging about his face, shadowing his expression and hiding his thoughts. Faramir's face was composed as his chin rested lightly on his cupped hand. Bartho was frowning, his broad shoulders leaning against a near tree. Duurben was still rubbing his cold hands together, contemplating the plan and hunting for flaws. Anto was crouched on his toes, stoking the fire absently with a long stick. And then Legolas' golden hair reflected the firelight as he cocked his head to the side prior to speaking.

"Estel, with which group are you fighting?"

Aragorn laughed suddenly, "My, yes, I'd forgotten — I shall be riding the mûmak and accompany the centermost group. I shall take the best archers from each company with me, and we will do our best to confound the enemy completely. To my knowledge, that has never been tried before."

"No, I don't think it has," Faramir muttered. "But then your reign thus far has been marked by singular unconventionality and I see no reason for you to stop now."

Duurben's laugh turned into a choke as the wind changed and the smoke Anto was stoking up blew into his face. When he had finished coughing, and the low chuckle had died down, his face grew more serious.

"I see no flaws, my lord. We have it in us to win this battle, and that without too many casualties — but not if we are weary before the battle even begins. I think we should all retire for the night."

Though he was not the oldest of them, he had all the appearance of it, and his advice was promptly taken. In a few minutes, only Aragorn and Legolas remained, busily laying out their bedrolls.

Legolas could not bring himself to rest yet, so he sat cross-legged on his side of the fire and watched as his friend's breathing slowly deepened into the steady rhythm of sleep.

"Ah, my friend," he murmured softly, slipping into his own tongue. "Here we are again. To think I could ever have assumed that our wishes for a peaceful life would be granted, this side of Valinor. 'Prince of Mirkwood', 'King of Gondor' — such restless titles. I hope now only that you will survive the morrow, as you have done so many times in the past. I have nearly lost you once in this year of madness, and I could not bear to lose you now, on the heels of such astonishing victory. I want you to be with me when I tell Eldarion the tale of his father appearing like a wizard on the back of a mûmak so that you can object and claim your insanity was more mild than I am telling. I am heartened that you will be courageous, and frightened because of how little you esteem your own life. Your people need you; you are their king, the first in far too long. To lose you now… I do not like to think what might become of Gondor, or Arwen, or your son and daughters… or me." He trailed off, watching his sleeping friend in silence for a moment — a silence that was more urgent than words. "Just… be careful, my brother."

Aragorn's voice was barely above a breath, but Legolas heard it all the same: "Likewise."

Satisfied, the elf laid down and found he had the peace to sleep after all.

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Generations later, when the long reign of King Elessar had come to an end, the Battle of the Border was still being retold amongst the people of Gondor. Some historians marveled at its popularity, especially when the king's crowning had come in the midst of much more startling events. After the destruction of the One Ring, the downfall of Sauron, the slaughter of the orcs at Pelennor and the Black Gate, and the marshalling of the Dead, a battle of equally matched armies of men along a Haradic/Gondorian border struck some as far too mundane to be worth telling. Certainly, the Gondorian victory had been decisive, but little else. What they had failed to grasp was the scope of the daring actions that the King, his generals and captains, and the Prince of Mirkwood attempted, and the individual heroism that was displayed.

Before that day, the mûmakil of the Haradrim had never before been captured and used against them. When King Elessar rode such a beast from the fog and charged the center of the Southron ranks, it is said that for a time they were so startled that not a single shot was fired until the king had reached their lines and trampled through the front row of archers and infantry. Only when he stood in their very midst and raised the horn cry of Gondor did the Haradic General Ingem realize what had happened. Tirelessly Elessar fought, riding up and down the lines and keeping his captured war beast always in between the other Southron mûmakil and his troops. And when General Ingem made as if to retreat with his officers, it was Elessar, with Prince Legolas, who pursued them. After the escape was cut off, Ingem sent his captains on a suicidal charge against the king in hopes of fleeing with his own life. So incredulous was Elessar at the General's madness that he shouted aloud, and at the tug of the reins the mûmak beneath him reared up, trumpeting madly. General Ingem was seized with such terror at the sight that his cowardly heart failed him and he died, leaving it to his captains to surrender and save the remnants of the Haradic army.

Before that day, an elf had never been granted the same freedoms and responsibilities of command as those of a native Gondorian captain. The maneuvers that his contingent performed on the field have never since been used to such great affect. That in the heat of battle Prince Legolas lost only six of his men bordered on the supernatural, and of course the rescue of the king is a tale unto itself. Prince Legolas had killed a mûmak once before on the Pelennor fields, and at the Battle of the Border he sorely wounded two more. The beasts, unmanned, were then lured into impaling each other when the bright-headed elf they had been frenziedly chasing suddenly threaded his way between them. In doing so the Prince was nearly crushed by their stumbling feet and saved only by Captain Duurben's company whose loud approach startled the wounded beasts into fleeing back amidst the Southrons' own line.

Before that day, so small a force as Captain Duurben's had seldom departed its main host to launch a charge of its own. Though a man supposedly slowed by age, Captain Duurben conducted himself with speed and cunning. Seeing that the Haradrim were drawing to either side of a swath of thicker grasses, he guessed that the ground there was too marshy to support their march. Too, he saw that the marching order was incorrect and the armor fitted haphazardly, showing that the whole left flank was made of newly trained recruits. On these observations alone, he drove his much smaller force into the gap to separate the Southrons' left flank from their main army. Surrounding them, he took many of them prisoner, and the rest were drowned in the bog when they tried to escape. This bold maneuver was accomplished so swiftly that when General Bartho's men made their second charge with the rest of the Gondorian army, right on Captain Duurben's heels, it was to discover the left side of the Southron army was completely exposed.

Before that day, it was said that a Gondorian general might be able to overpower a Haradic general with wits, but that he would never be able to overpower him with fear. The initial attack of General Bartho's small force was meant only to lure the Southrons out, and in this they almost failed in an astonishing way. When General Bartho's men pounded from the fog, the General at their head, yelling their war cry, the Southrons —instead of charging out to destroy them— balked in their lines. A Southron captain, taken prisoner, tremblingly described the source of his fear later. "Flame licked his eyes, his hair flew out in the wind of his passing, his great feet pounded the earth with delight, a strange ribbon of blue 'round his arm whipped the air behind him, and when he shouted his battle cry the fog seemed to roil away at his command. And all the while, he was laughing." Finally the Southrons advanced and were surprised when the fierce general retreated almost at once. Then the call sounded and the rest of Gondor's army appeared. At the close of the battle, General Bartho informed Steward Faramir that he felt the maneuver had, for once, been entirely too easy.

Before that day, the best that could be hoped for from the wounded was that they remain in safety. In this Steward Faramir was not remiss; under orders he stayed with the wounded while the battle proceeded without him. However, as in all things, he had taken pains to perform his task well, and when a remnant of the Southron army slipped past the Gondorian front lines, intent on attacking a group of Southern Dúnedain from behind, Faramir rallied those of the injured who could still stand and ambushed the ambushers. The skirmish, though seemingly unworthy of the name due to its brevity, was nevertheless an important one in that it left the Southern Dúnedain unmolested and ready to press forward and precipitate the Southron retreat. It also came close to costing Steward Faramir his life, a feat which he had managed almost as many times as the king in the course of this short war.

There were many other men who conducted themselves with great valor during the deciding battle, and in the few following skirmishes that were needed to completely secure the borders. Captain Beregond of Steward Faramir's personal guard took part in the ambush in spite of his injuries and protected his lord from scimitar blow that, it is said, felled a sapling rather than the Steward. General Anto, at that time merely a young lieutenant, fought at the side of Prince Legolas and won renown early in his military career by his refusal to flinch aside in the face of the mûmakil. Perhaps the vividness of the many accounts of the battle can be traced back to him, for he ranged as far amidst the battle as the Prince himself, and the elf's method of fighting was not stationary like the battle marches of men.

Regardless of comparison to other, more pivotal, moments in history, the Battle of the Borders had earned itself a place in legend and a worthy victory of which Gondor could well be proud.

Not so for Queen Mavranor…