A booted foot landed somewhere in Aragorn’s middle, jolting him awake. A brief, sudden bout of nausea shot through him, and he curled in around himself with a groan, his heart still beating rapidly from the dream. His eyes focused to take in the soft, mud-encrusted leather still a hair’s breadth from his face, and he groaned once more.

“Valar’s sake, can you wake a man more gently?”

The owner of the boot was less than sympathetic. “You’ll sleep through the day otherwise, son of Arathorn. Rest will keep until we reach Cardolan.”

Aragorn groaned again and sat up to glare at Gandalf the Grey. A hint of amusement shone beneath bushy eyebrows, ruining an otherwise stern countenance that would have struck fear into the hearts of lesser Men. He’d traveled with the wizard for nearly six weeks now, and only recently felt he’d retained a grasp on the old man’s moods and riddles. Certainly he understood why his grandmother Adanel acted like she wanted to kill him half the time.

Satisfied Aragorn was awake, Gandalf let out a soft “hrmph” and turned his attention to the smoldering embers of last night’s fire. A small kettle sat among the hot coals, steam spurting out in pale gasps amongst the smoke. Aragorn inhaled the deep, pungent scent of burning kindling. Across the fire, he made out the broad figure of Halbarad packing their gear onto his horse, his long hair blowing in the wind. He turned and smirked at the sight of Aragorn.

“You’ll get no sympathy from me,” Halbarad remarked. “I should be on my way back to the Swanfleet now, in the arms of my beloved, rather than chasing ghosts with you two.”

“Think of the Halbarad that was,” Aragorn said with a wry smile. Goading his kinsman was almost too easy, and it never failed to bring him morning cheer. “The one who wanted nothing more than to adventure alongside a wizard and dwarves, as your mother tells it. Who would not stop until he’d made fireworks of his own…”

“Yes, and the Aragorn-that-was wanted to eat berry cakes made from mud. We all grew out of our fancies.”

“The business of wizards is more than pipe-weed and fireworks, young Dúnadan,” Gandalf grumbled. “Do you think the wights of the barrow-downs will scatter before clever party tricks?”

“Worth a try.” Halbarad shrugged.

Aragorn chuckled at the look on Gandalf’s face and busied himself with packing up his own gear.

The late autumn wind blew strands of hair across his face, and he pushed the dank locks aside impatiently before he wrapped his bedroll tight and strapped it to his pack. A small stream ran beside their camp, and he knelt before it to splash water on his sweat-soaked face, shivering a bit at the shock of cold. A great oak tree stood beside the stream, its bare branches spindling up towards the grey sky. Waiting for the others, Aragorn sat back against the trunk, still half in the world of his dreams. Sleep had not proven restful, these past days.

Halbarad came and knelt beside him, a friendly, concerned hand upon his shoulder.

“Dreams again?” Halbarad asked.

Aragorn sighed and nodded. “Since we left Tharbad. A white tower, its banners caught high in the wind. First I thought it was an echo of the city as it was, but now…”

“Minas Tirith,” Gandalf said. He’d put out the last of the fire and now carried a large covered mug of bright red wood, steam escaping through a small hole in the top. “And the banners of Gondor. Perhaps your dreams are trying to tell you something, Master Ranger.”

Halbarad glanced at Gandalf before he turned back to Aragorn, his expression thoughtful. “You should talk with our grandmother, when we return to the Angle. She understands the nature of foresight.”

“It is a simple enough message, is it not?” Gandalf asked. “The city of kings calls to our young heir. But one quest at a time, I should think. We have a long road ahead before any of us can turn east.”

Halbarad snorted in consternation, but Aragorn only sat back with a faint smile. He found speaking with Gandalf to be much like the Elves he’d known in childhood, who often answered his questions with riddles so complex that, by the time he’d sorted them out, he’d quite forgotten what he first asked. The memories came with a sorrowful tinge now, the long years he’d gone not knowing his true identity. But experience had long taught him silence was the best option. Better to listen and wait, and trust that the wizard’s intentions would reveal themselves in time.

Unfortunately, Halbarad had no such patience.

“I still do not understand why you would track the wights to Cardolan. The threat to the Angle is ended, hasn’t it? You didn’t even need Aragorn or me to banish the ones from Tharbad.”

“Hmph,” Gandalf snorted. “It is a poor warrior who overestimates his own strength. I am bound to guide, Halbarad, not lead. I cannot seek out houseless Maia without your swords bent towards them. Sauron gathers power in his fortress and Angmar rebuilds. It is past time the Dúnedain flushed out ancient evils before new ones descend upon us all.”

“Past ti—“ Halbarad sputtered in indignation and sprang to his feet. “What else do you think we Rangers do in the Wild but guard against evil, on little rest and pipe—“

“Peace, Master Ranger! You have more than fulfilled your charge. But you did not have me. Let us see if the three of us can help each other in this task.”

Gandalf took a long sip from his mug and let out a satisfied huff. He reached up to pat Halbarad’s shoulder as he passed, and Aragorn chuckled a bit at his cousin’s glower.

“You’re enjoying this far too much,” Halbarad grumbled.

Aragorn hauled himself up to his feet, groaning a bit as he did so, and met Halbarad’s frank, skeptical gaze. When Aragorn asked him to abandon his winter furlough to join him and Gandalf on the hunt for barrow-wights he had not hesitated, only declared himself the Chieftain’s man and prepared his horse to ride. They’d grown as brothers together, in the years since Aragorn returned to the Dúnedain, and there was no one’s judgement he trusted more.

Under ordinary circumstances, Halbarad’s doubts would be more than enough to give him pause. But he could not banish the image of the wights that had risen from the Chieftains’ barrows, of his grandmother kneeling over the abandoned, wasted corpse that had once been Arathorn. Halbarad had been on patrol when the attack on the Angle happened, and the wights they’d fought at Tharbad threatened nothing but crumbling stone and scattered game. He had not seen the horror in Adanel’s eyes or the desecration of their people’s graves. Aragorn owed it to them to end the threat once and for all.

“You’ve said yourself, Halbarad. It is no good for our people to be constantly looking over our shoulders for fear of ruin—and these creatures have already caused enough. Why not press the advantage while we have it?”

Halbarad grunted and clapped him on the back. “I’ll hear it better from our Chieftain than from a wizard who cannot give a straight answer. I suppose you’ll be considering this nonsense about Gondor too?”

Aragorn frowned. He did not like to think of Gondor, of the heirlooms from that land that weighed heavy upon him. He placed a hand briefly over his jerkin, where the ring of Barahir lay tucked beneath on a chain around his neck, and cast his thoughts north to the Angle, where Narsil lay locked in the Chieftain’s house. So many years had passed since the day Elrond presented him with his birthright, and yet there were days he still felt barely worthy of it.

“Let us see what Cardolan holds.”

“Indeed.” Gandalf had already mounted his horse and pulled up beside them, his wide-brimmed hat hiding bushy eyebrows and a knowing smirk. “Be in good spirits, my friends. We will have the luxury of the Greenway for awhile longer.”