Note: In comparing the Misty Mountains to similar 'young' fold ranges in our own world, and in judging the altitudes of our own 'high passes', as well as considering the topographical details in 'Over Hill and Under Hill' (The Hobbit), I have settled on a workable maximum trail altitude in the High Pass of around 13 000 feet above Sea level. 

Chapter LXXII: A Last Bitter Blow

From an indistinct cocoon of warmth and darkness Aragorn was dimly conscious of someone calling his name. Where ordinarily he would have awakened at once to full alertness and, if need be, battle-readiness, he found himself instead surfacing slowly as if from a vat of treacle. Calloused fingers patted his cheek and his name was spoken again, more urgently. His lips parted without a sound, and someone took hold of his shoulders and gave them a firm shake.

'Aragorn!' Gandalf exclaimed, still more sharply.

His eyes opened at last and he blinked to clear them of their fog. 'What is it?' he croaked hoarsely, thoughts muddled with memories both recent and distant. 'Is there danger? To arms?'

'No danger, save to my old heart,' the wizard sighed, sitting back on his heels. 'Seldom have I known you to be so slow to wake, especially in the Wild.'

Aragorn lifted his head from the satchel on which it had been pillowed and reached to push his hood back from his face. He was lying on the floor of the cave, with their two oilcloths beneath him and the thick Elven blanket over him, and his cloak snug about his body. The dying embers of their fire cast the grey morning light in a somewhat ruddier hue. As he got his elbows under him, he could see that the horses were already saddled, awaiting only the bedding and their burden of fuel. Gandalf had left him to slumber as long as he possibly could.

'I was weary from the day's journey,' he mumbled vaguely, rolling onto his side and pushing himself up onto his hip. 'I am better for my night's rest.'

In perfect truth he felt as if he had been fed a dose of nightshade. His mouth was dry and his eyes stung, and there was an ache in his legs that he thought he remembered from the night before. He scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand and tried to complete the task of waking himself up.

Gandalf passed him one of the bottles, and he drank. The water eased the worst of his discomfort, wetting his throat and clearing his head somewhat. His temples were still throbbing dimly, although deep sleep should have cured him of his headache. He sat up properly and swept off hood and cap so that he could rake his hair away from his face before replacing them more comfortably. 'You should have awakened me to help with the packing,' he sighed.

'There was no need,' said Gandalf. 'Fear not: I've kept out your breakfast. It should be pleasantly warm by now.'

He gave Aragorn a honey-cake and a generous handful of hulled chestnuts, and set about bundling up the blankets and oilskins while the Ranger ate. For the first time in days, Aragorn's stomach seemed uneasy at the prospect of food. He had to fight a low but persistent nausea to work through the simple meal, and even that would have been impossible without frequent swallows of water. In the end, however, he was fed and back in his boots. Recalling how stooping the night before had precipitated a painful coughing fit, he crouched instead of standing and moved out of the cave in that inelegant fashion once Gandalf had led the horses back onto the path.

When he got to his feet Aragorn was taken by a bout of dizziness, but he had anticipated that and was ready. He had a firm hold on the base of Moroch's dark mane even before he was quite upright. With his other hand he stroked her neck, leaning in with one shoulder until the danger passed. Gandalf, who had been occupied in strapping the bundle of firewood to the gelding's back, was mercifully unaware of the momentary weakness.

The air was bitingly cold, particularly after the warmth of a cosy cave heated by a healthy fire and four living bodies. Aragorn fished his mittens out of the woollen satchel hung across the front of his saddle, and tugged them on. Gandalf was doing the same with his own gloves.

'I think we ought to take it in hourly turns today,' the wizard said. 'Riding, then walking, then riding again. It will spare the horses, and it will keep us warm. Spring may have found the lowlands, but on the path we will be treading it never truly comes.'

Aragorn nodded, occupied with tying his muffler comfortably about his throat and mouth. He hoped it would not grow cold enough to need to cover his nose as well, for if it fell to bleeding again the tickle could swiftly become maddening. He guided Moroch as near to the rock wall as she could comfortably stand, and rounded her to mount. He did not in truth recall having left the narrow canyon the previous afternoon, but they must have done it: the path overlooked a deep gully that plunged for many hundreds of feet before the view became obscured in darkness. Perhaps it was a deeper gorge; perhaps a forested valley. Either way, it was a vicious fall.

Again Aragorn relied upon his hold on Moroch's mane, gripping a thick hank near to the roots so that he did not hurt her. His foot in its absurdly ornamental boot missed the stirrup on the first pass, but before he could try again Moroch was drawing back with one foreleg extended and the other bent beneath: bowing so that he could mount with ease.

'Thank you, fair one,' he murmured as he settled in the saddle and rocked with her as she rose. 'It is kind of you, but not necessary this time.'

Gandalf, who was already astride the Lórien-horse, looked back with a sharp question in his eyes. Rather than dwell upon the present, Aragorn shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head apologetically. 'It was Moroch who bore me the last few miles to Thranduil's halls,' he said. 'I could not mount her properly with my twisted foot.'

'No,' said Gandalf, settling back into a forward-facing position and gathering his reins. 'I do not suppose you could have. Come now, timid walker: onward!'

This last was addressed to the gelding, who shook his head with a convulsive whinny that was not quite a protest before starting along the stony path that wound crookedly on up into the heights.

lar

The first hour dismounted was not unpleasant. It did indeed warm the body to get one's limbs moving, and the way – though steep – was not too difficult. They crossed an uncertain-looking rock arch over a rushing rivulet, and soon enough found themselves approaching a fresh peak. This one was almost as sharp as a spire, shooting slenderly upward to vanish into the low-hanging clouds. But of course the clouds were not low-hanging in the least: the travellers were now thousands of feet above the vale of Anduin and climbing higher all the time. Aragorn half wished for rain, for his nose was bleeding again in the cold, dry air, and although not heavy the flow was tiresome. He swabbed at it with Una's handkerchief, now liberally marred with rusty stains and fresh scarlet blossoms, and he tried not to sniffle. When he did that he could taste the blood in the back of his throat, and it did nothing to ease his stomach.

His ankle was just beginning to pain him when it came time to resume their saddles. The wind was high and above them dislodged rocks kept breaking free of the snowpack and tumbling down. Gandalf rode hunched low over the gelding's neck, and Aragorn did the same. He tried to keep watch out of the corner of his eye for any debris that might threaten to strike Moroch's patient head. She walked on steadily, never faltering even when the stones beneath her hooves shifted or crumbled. When that happened, she merely lifted the offending limb daintily and tried again to find a foothold. Her southern cousin was much less patient: he would shudder or nicker unhappily, and once or twice he balked. Aragorn feared that the wizard was not having a gentle ride of it in the least.

Their second turn at walking came early, when they reached a grade too steep for the horses to manage with riders. It was indeed too steep for them to manage without guidance also, though fortunately the way was wider here. There was plenty of room to manoeuver, and they had need of it. In vain Gandalf tried to coax the gelding to follow him, which was as sure a measure of the poor beast's fear as any Aragorn could have imagined. For any animal to prove reluctant to trust the wizard, great terror must surely be in its heart.

'Let us go first,' he suggested, having to raise his voice to be heard above the wind. His throat stung as he did so, and the throbbing in his head rose in a sharp crescendo. 'Moroch is no stranger to stony roads: perhaps if he sees how she goes he will follow.'

Gandalf furrowed his brows into a frown, but it was one of frustration rather than defiance. 'We had best try something,' he said. 'It was a choice between two, or I might have fared better. Poor timorous thing: likely even the plains of Eastemnet were strange beneath his hooves.'

He drew his horse in near to the rock wall, and pressed his back against the creature's outer flank. It comforted the horse and kept him safely still while Aragorn and Moroch passed between him and the edge. The fall was not so precipitous here, for a sharply angled descent ended in a scree pit between three rock walls, but it would have meant broken limbs and no way out had either of them slipped. But Moroch was steady and courageous, and she had placed in her rider a loving trust that he knew he had done little to earn. Where he led her, she followed.

The same held true throughout that uncertain climb. Even with the thick-soled riding boots, Aragorn's feel for the earth beneath him was sound. He had not forgotten the ways of the wild during his few weeks' rest, and he picked his path with care. He might have clambered up at three times the speed at which he now moved, if sounding a safe path for two legs only. As it was he felt his way with care, ever on the lookout for unstable terrain. Where larger stones lay in the path, he kicked them aside: off the edge and out of the way of Moroch's hooves. She followed him calmly, placing her feet with the care of a young dancer first learning the steps. And seeing her go with such serene confidence, the gelding mastered his fright and consented to be led at last.

It was not one hour's walking, but nearly three before they mastered that steep ascent and came at last to an easier slope where the horses could once more bear their riders. By that time Aragorn's chest was tight with the effort of holding back all but the very worst of the coughs, and his headache was an incandescent torment behind his eyes. His legs ached from the slow going and the unsuitable boots, and his hands were remembering their brush with frostbite by awakening in sharp tingling pain despite the mittens. He was almost wretchedly grateful to mount again and relieve at least his legs and feet, if nothing else.

From behind came a bellowed question, and Aragorn twisted in the saddle to look back. He shook his head and cupped his mittened hand near his well-buried ear. Behind him, Gandalf tried again.

'If we can find a place to shelter from the wind, we ought to stop and eat!' he roared. 'It's coming up on six hours since breakfast!'

The Ranger smiled at the fervour in his friend's voice. Six hours between meals was no hardship, but a luxury. Often on their joint travels they halted but twice a day. When pressed, a nightly morsel might be all there was time to take. And on Aragorn's most recent road, spans between sparse feedings had been measured in days instead of hours. Still, it was comforting to have the wizard so careful of his welfare: doubly so now, when he felt so miserable.

So when they came to a place where two great slabs of stone intersected to form a deep corner off the path, Aragorn guided Moroch in and eased himself into a careful dismount. He felt uncommonly lightheaded and had no wish to fall. He was giving the mare her nosebag with a judicious measure of grain when Gandalf and the gelding rounded the corner into the slender shelter. Once out of the wind the cold was much more bearable, and it was almost pleasant to find an obliging rock to sit upon and to stretch out stiffening legs.

Gandalf brought out a packet of smoked venison furnished by the kitchens of the Elven-king, and slices of apple that had been spiced and dried by Eira and her son's wives. Wordlessly he handed a share of each to the Ranger and took a smaller portion for himself. Just as wordlessly, Aragorn accepted the wisdom of this. He could not lose ground in his recovery by eating too frugally, and they were yet well-supplied. They had, by his estimate, food enough for eight comfortable days or twelve lean ones, and they were already almost halfway through the pass.

He unwrapped his muffler and moved to remove the mittens, but thought better of this last. His hands were still tingling in protest of the mountain chill, and flesh once frozen was vulnerable to such re-injury for many months after. He tore off a piece of the meat with his teeth and chewed it ponderously, fighting a stomach that had no interest in food.

'Shall we build a fire?' Gandalf asked.

Aragorn looked up from the pointed toes of his boots and frowned questioningly. 'A fire? Why? We shall not tarry long, surely.'

'You look cold,' said the wizard.

Trying to quell irritation at this coddling, Aragorn shook his head. 'I am not especially,' he said. 'My hands do not like it much, but my garments are more than adequate to keep the rest of me comfortable. Even this chill is nothing to the bitter bite of a blizzard in the lowlands.'

'Yes…' Gandalf muttered. He shook his head and made an effort to make his tone more cheerful. 'I have been thinking that when we reach Rivendell you really ought to have Bilbo compose one of his songs about your journey – since he seems to be the minstrel of your choice.'

'My journey? A fine song that would make!' Aragorn scoffed. Lilting his voice lyrically, he mocked; 'His ears he froze, his toes he froze. He froze his fingers and his nose!'

Gandalf laughed, deeply but not too loudly: large noises were never wise in the high places. 'There, you see?' he said. 'You've made a good start already.'

'There might be some poetic scope in the tale of crossing six rivers,' Aragorn said ruefully. 'I could not have chosen a wetter course if I had set out to do so apurpose. Yet in a choice between cold duckings and Ringwraiths I could have done no other. What do you know of Fangorn?'

The question came so readily to his lips that he recalled only after it was out his earlier qualms about uttering it. Yet what seemed a mark of impudence from an invalid's bed had more the cast of a traveller's rightful query in this high and lonely place.

Gandalf considered for a moment, then swallowed and spoke. 'It is an ancient place: as ancient perhaps as any yet left untouched in this world. With that agelessness there comes a certain feeling of knowing, as though the land itself could see and thing and judge. You have walked the Old Forest: you know of what I speak.'

Aragorn had not thought of the Old Forest while he walked beneath the strange eaves of Fangorn, but now he saw precisely what his friend meant. There was a timelessness to both places that left a wanderer with the distinct impression that he was not alone to reason in the wilds. Yet the Old Forest had a more homey feel to it, like an old grandfather dozing by the fire at the end of his day. Fangorn had felt differently: like a slumbering warrior ready to awaken at the least touch.

Or perhaps those were only the musings of a swordsman who had himself proved rather too hard to rouse this morning, and who felt as if he could stretch out on the stony ground and sleep right here, cold air or no. He was exhausted. The steep climb had drained him and he dreaded the thought of stepping back out into the pass. His weakness shamed him, though it was only to be expected. He could not have hoped to return to his full vigour so quickly. He had known from the moment it had been proposed that this journey would be a trying one.

'If we are to go on, let us do it,' he said suddenly, thrusting the remains of his meal unceremoniously into his pouch and launching to his feet. For a moment he was taken with a terrible lightheadedness, but his body knew its equilibrium even without his mind and he did not sway. 'There is no sense in squandering daylight hiding from the wind.'

'No one is as stubborn as a man with his eye upon home,' Gandalf grumbled, but he too rose and went to unfasten the feedbag from his mount. 'If you grow too cold in the saddle, we will stop and build a fire, daylight or not. I do not want to be responsible for freezing those feet afresh, when they have only just stopped flaking. Think of how uncomely that would be before your beloved!'

Aragorn laughed. 'You will not rule me with appeals to my vanity, for I have little left,' he said as he hoisted himself back into the saddle. Moroch tilted her head as if to look back to him, and he patted her neck. 'My interest in keeping my feet unfrozen lies more in avoiding the chastisement of Master Elrond.'

'A still greater incentive,' Gandalf said, but he seemed satisfied. He wheeled the horse carefully about and urged him back out onto the path.

lar

For nearly four hours they made good progress, but Aragorn was finding the spells of walking to be more and more onerous. His boots were ill-suited to any prolonged perambulation, and the steady climbing over changeable terrain was more difficult than most. Soon the soreness in his feet extended to knees and calves as well, and his thighs of course had been aching steadily for the last couple of days. During the second stretch after their brief luncheon, he found himself frequently short of breath even though the wind had died down as the cloud cover thickened. He plodded on beside Moroch, grimly determined but wheezing deeply in lungs that rattled with fluid. When he did succumb to the urge to cough, it left him breathless and dizzy. The hour was not yet spent when he at last stopped at a wide place in the road and called ahead to Gandalf.

'I must halt!' he gasped, dropping Moroch's reins and stumbling to lean against the cliff face. He bent his knees as if sitting and clutched them, the small of his back against the very slight slope to keep him upright. His breath was very shallow in his chest, and he could not seem to draw it any deeper. Black spots danced in his vision in a way that reminded him of nothing so much as fireflies on a moonless night. The nausea that had been plaguing him since morning now crested dangerously towards his clavicles.

Gandalf had dismounted and successfully turned the gelding. Now both were coming back with as much haste as the downward grade allowed. 'What is it?' the wizard cried as he came. 'What has happened? Are you harmed? Were you struck from above?'

He motioned upward, from whence stones of many sizes had been raining all day. Aragorn shook his head, still trying to force a deep breath. His muffler was smothering him, and he raked it away from his face with a clumsy mittened hand. Instead of returning to his knee, it clutched his burning side. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on his breathing. In slowly through the nose, out smoothly through pursed lips… but although the first he managed, the second brought on a wet cough that left him more winded than before.

'What is it?' Gandalf asked again, this time far more softly. He was at hand now, gripping Aragorn's shoulder and leaning near. 'You're panting. Have we been moving too rapidly? Pressing too hard? Is it your lungs? Can you speak?'

If he did not speak, Aragorn realized, this litany of questions would continue endlessly until they both were driven mad. 'I need… I must… must catch… my breath…' he puffed, managing despite the high twitching of his chest to impart some recognizable rhythm to his words.

Gandalf bent nearer, wrapping his arm about Aragorn's shoulders. It took the Ranger a moment to realize he had carried the corner of his cloak with it. 'My dear boy, you must be half frozen,' Gandalf murmured, drawing him close. It was a mark of the depth of his concern that there was no scolding left in his voice. 'You should have said something long ago: a fire is no hardship to light.'

Aragorn tried to shake his head, but the first swing filled him with such terrible dizziness that he did not dare pursue it. 'I am not… cold…' he panted. 'Scarcely… cold at all…'

He did not know how to make Gandalf believe him. He had known cold: such cold that he had believed he could never be warm again. He had known the cold that lay beyond shivering, when the stuporous lure of sleep in a pillowing snowbank seemed a welcome release from life's petty and wearisome efforts such as fire-lighting. He was not cold now. Well, the tip of his nose was, a little, and he supposed his fingertips must be, for they tingled. But his head was warm and his chest was warm, as were his legs even below the skirts of the cote where they had only the tightly-woven wool of his hose to cover them. His feet were warm. He was notcold.

Gandalf made a fond, humouring sound deep in his throat. To call it clucking would have been beneath the dignity of both of them, but it was a very near thing. 'Aragorn, if you truly believe that then you have gone beyond feeling it and must be warmed at once. Your lips are blue.'

Something deep and startled stirred in Aragorn's breast, though it took a moment for it to penetrate the fog of a brain still trying to take command of the body's most automatic of reflexes. He turned in towards the wizard and the warmth of his body where his cloak was open – warmth that touched Aragorn's face with neither relief nor pain and confirmed once and for all that he was not, was not, cold. He looked up and found his friend's anxious, kindly face.

'My lips?' he mouthed around two more shallow pants.

Gandalf nodded. 'Blue as those Gladden irises you found so fascinating. Let me fetch the blankets, and then I'll lay a fire.'

He reached to unclasp his cloak, that he might leave it around the Ranger's shoulders. But Aragorn was already clawing off his mittens. He spread his hands, palms outward, and stared at the tips of his outstretched fingers. There were his nailbeds: so vividly blue that they might almost have been dipped in cobalt paste. He touched his lips, as though he could feel the difference there, and he knew with a terrible, sickening dread what was wrong with him.

He had blamed his exhaustion on his diminished state and his continuing convalescence. On the same he had pinned the aches in his limbs. He had ignored the grinding headache as an irritant, and dismissed the bleeding nose as a mere continuation of a long pattern. But now he could not slow his breathing, and his lips and fingertips were blue. They were far above the treeline, almost at the very apex of the High Pass. And although such things had never before plagued him in any of his many crossings, he had come hither this time with his lungs already flooded and their capacity diminished.

'It is the mountain sickness,' he sighed, trying to restrain the urge to howl aloud at the unfeeling skies. Instead he bent low over his lap and dug his fingers into his hair, pushing aside the wool cap as he did so. 'We have ascended swiftly, and the air is thin. My lungs… my head… I cannot breathe…'

The grip upon his shoulder tightened as Gandalf grew rigid with dismay. 'It has never troubled you before,' he said.

'It is troubling me now!' Aragorn snapped, unable to bite down upon his frustration after all.

For a few moments the wizard was silent. Now that he was no longer moving, Aragorn found that his breathing was beginning to slow and to deepen. The dizziness abated a little and he felt some measure of strength return to his knees. Yet still he burned with wrath at this last betrayal by a body that had always before borne up under every trial. For the only remedy for mountain sickness was time: the one thing he was most bitterly loath to spare.

'We must retreat apace,' Gandalf said decisively. 'We can return to the alcove where we ate, and pass the night there—'

'And squander half a day!' Aragorn spat. He was seething with rage and helpless discouragement. Mountain sickness, of all accursed things, and it had to strike now, when they were so near the summit of the pass and yet not near enough to argue that it would be better to be over it first and descend the other side. Withdrawing to a lesser height and allowing the body to rest was all that could be done.

'Better to squander half a day than to have you taken with brain fever,' the wizard said, his tone patient and perfectly reasonable and utterly infuriating. 'Or to have you swoon away and fall from the saddle and down the mountainside. That alcove is the best shelter we have seen all day. Your lips were bluing even there: do you recall how I asked if you were cold?'

Aragorn did, and now it made perfect sense: not coddling after all, but an earnest question prompted by a clear observation. But he could not bring himself to repent of that irritation while still grappling for his sanity with this one. His fingertips dug deeper into his scalp and his shoulders shook. 'Never, never before,' he snarled under his gradually levelling breath. 'And now, when most…'

His voice cracked ominously and he did not dare to continue, but Gandalf had an arm around his back again, holding him more firmly than before. 'Now, when most you long to be home,' he murmured. 'It is a bitter blow to bear, Dúnadan, and yet I must be grateful that it is something for which there can be some help. Come. I will turn your horse, and we shall go back down. After a night in a lower place, you can climb again.'

'Aye, and retreat again when I have,' Aragorn said bitterly. 'And climb, and retreat, and climb, and retreat. And so what should have been a journey of twelve days from beginning to end shall last for twenty or more, while we grow ever shorter of provisions, patience and civility. No. This is not how this quest shall end: with a miserable limping homeward and bitter quarrels all the way. Scout ahead a little and see if you can find any better place than this to rest, and we shall make camp here. By morning I will at least breathe a little easier, and we can go on.'

'For one so anxious to avoid bitter quarrels, son of Arathorn, you are sowing a mighty one now,' Gandalf said, the warning rumbling as deep in his voice as the first tremors of an avalanche upon the peaks.

'My hands are not swollen,' Aragorn said, looking again at those almost comically blue fingertips and trying to convince himself that he was undaunted either by the wizard's incipient wrath or by the consequences of dealing too lightly with his ailment. 'What of my face?'

'Your face is as gaunt as a skull,' said Gandalf curtly. 'Or as gaunt as that of the prisoner we left behind, if nowhere near as unlovely. You are the very picture of affliction and want.'

'If my face is not swollen, it has not progressed far,' argued the Ranger. 'The discolouration is alarming, I grant you, and the breathing…' He shook his head very slightly, not daring to swing too far. He might long for speed. He might wish in vain that this misfortune had not seen fit to fall upon him. And yet he could not be hasty: could not give in to his craving to press on with all swiftness. He had to do the prudent thing, the wise and the sensible thing. Much as it galled him, he had to turn back.

'We are so near the tipping-place,' he said. 'If we push on as fiercely as prudence allows, we can descend as rapidly as you wish once we have passed it. For tonight, we can retreat one hour's walk and find the best shelter we may. I cannot countenance the wasting of eight.'

The ache of his yearning to be once more in Rivendell was greater than any pain of the body. The need for that hallowed, healing place was, if not greater than his need for air, at least not incomparable. At this moment, faced with the prospect of days of sawing senselessly up and down the same section of the pass and gaining only a mile or two each day, he felt closer to true despair than he had at any time since the terrible moment in the Dead Marshes when he had given up his hunt. Then he had been delivered by fresh footprints in the mud. What rescue would come to him now?

'An hour and a half,' said Gandalf quietly. 'The horses will have to descend more slowly than they have climbed, particularly your young mare. Descending with a rider is delicate work.'

Of course he would have to ride, though Aragorn had not paused to think of it. The mountain sickness was much aggravated by physical exertions. Perhaps if it had not been for their policy of resting the horses it might not have smote him at all. He repented at once of that thought, long before it could crystalize into a wish. To wear so heavily upon their animals would have been heartless and unkind, for they could not have suspected this. In his addled state he could not now recall how many times he had taken this pass, but it was enough that he could have had no reasonable expectation of this malady. Had his body only been stronger, or his lungs only been hale: either, not both, and he would have made a clean crossing. Again the temptation to quail utterly before his fortunes rocked him.

But he was not alone, and these last short weeks had been replete with blessings great and small. This latest misfortune was maddening, and further delay would claw at his heart, but it was not grave. They would lose time, yes, but there was nothing pressing upon the hours of their journey but his own selfish longing for home. A few hours' delay today, a few more tomorrow and the next day and perhaps even the next, and that would be an end of it. Aragorn gathered his resolve about him like a garment. He would not flail bitterly against the fetters of his hard-worn body, but take courage instead in what he had been spared. He would withdraw tonight, but not in retreat. In the morning he would do battle again, from more advantageous ground. Determined but too weary to quite muster the resolve to lift his head, he rose. Gandalf stood close beside him, lest he should stumble. He did not.