AN:

The song is, of course, Tolkien's - as are the characters and the universe.

They say you can hear the truth on the lips of the wind when the dry grass rustles.  I ride over the high plain where the dry brown hay stands as tall as my mare’s withers and words whisper past me.

Théodred is dead.

I smooth the pale gold of Glæterung’s mane where it rebelliously flops to the wrong side, and remember his golden hair blowing like a bright pennant as we rode to battle. 

We were young then, young and reckless.  We rode where he led, rode bent low in the saddle, knees clinging to the blowing flanks of our horses, hands gripping spears.  Crazily, we were happy – flooded with a wild, roaring happiness that burst forth in eldritch battle cries as we crested the hill and crashed down into the turmoil below. We learnt of death that day – of death, sacrifice, pain that goes beyond agony, fear and bravery.  We saw what the songs are sung about, and we saw the parts of war that no one speaks about. We saw what is only known in silence.

We were old when we rode back that night. Old and diminished – from thirty-two there were now only nineteen - and five lay with the injured.  At my knee, Théodred rode.  His voice was hoarse from shouting, blood stained one shoulder and was smeared across his face and he swayed in the saddle with tiredness.  All day he had been everywhere, pressing again and again into the thickest of the battle.  He had killed for the first time and wept for his fallen men.  He had carried bodies from the field and stayed the hand of one who, maddened by grief, would have killed a fallen foe.  He had wheeled his horse again and again to cut off advances and ridden them both to exhaustion.  He grinned at me through the dirt and the pain.

“They make songs, already, you know. We’ll sing them to our sons.”

I saw the grim bravery behind the words and smiled back, knowing each death was scored as deeply in his heart as my own.  I reached out to steady him for a moment.

“We’ll sing forever of our brothers and remember the triumph of their deaths.”

He nodded and then rode ahead to where a lad barely reached manhood slumped in his saddle.  I watched him as he, only a year or two older, lent again of his energy and strength.  I knew I would follow him forever, through all the years until he was king -and then beyond.

Now Théodred is dead and I ride across the high plain with that beating in my heart.  The cold wind whips my hair about my face and tears sting my eyes.  Théodred is dead and I ride to raise the Mark. Dark shadows gather and our foes seem ever numerous – and we, we are leaderless.  Théodred is dead and his father, our king, seems lost.  There is truth in the whisper of the high dead grass, but no comfort. 

Tiredness claws at me and my wounds burn with a deadly heat.  I see Théodred riding to battle again and again with bright-tipped spear, song and bold heart.  I see Théodred dead at the Ford.  My tongue fumbles for words until finally I find a song of our ancestors and a trace of comfort. Shamelessly, I hold a twist of Glæterung’s mane and she lends me her strength as once he lent his. I raise my voice in the ancient words of loss as I ride on into the crimson light of the setting sun.

“Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?

Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow”.