Chapter 29. Things that Go Bump... 

Suddenly Ferdi startled everyone, including himself, by jumping to his feet with a shout that mingled warning, alarm and fury. He gripped his bow with white-knuckled fingers and shook it at the sky, and then he pointed with the arrow in his other hand to something...

'Uncle Ferdi!' Robin hissed, still crouching in the heather. 'What is it?'

'Treachery!' came the answer, and then, 'Not even the Tooks would have set such traps for the ruffians who came at us under Lotho and then Sharkey!'

'Traps?' Farry whispered to Pip-lad.

'Traps to maim and kill!' Ferdi snapped. 'Our traps were set to harry, to discourage, to delay... but this...!' The pointing arrow shook in his hand. 'This...!'

'Aren't we supposed to be hiding in case this situation itself is a trap?' Pip-lad whispered to Farry in turn.

But a trick of the wind had just revealed the trap to young Faramir's eye, and the teen drew in a sharp breath in sudden understanding. 'How... how diabolical!' he gasped. 'Murder...'

'What?' Pip-lad said in confusion, looking wildly in the direction of his friend's pointing finger but still unable to see what had enflamed the two Tooks.

Oddly, Haldoron had neither moved nor looked up at Ferdi's outburst.

Robin Bolger made a sudden decision: he shifted bow and arrow to his left hand, rose abruptly and gestured with his free hand to the teens. 'Stay close to me,' he said, keeping his voice low. And then he began to pick his way down the slope, half an eye on his footing while devoting the rest of his wary attention to their surroundings.

'Come on!' Farry said with a poke for Pip-lad's arm. The young hobbits stood up from their place of concealment and followed Robin's example, keeping one hand free for balance and holding their weapons ready for quick action in the other.

Belatedly, Ferdi flew past them with a shower of stones and loose dirt. Thus, he was the first to approach the two Men on the Road, one crumpled in the dust and the other crouching over him. He reached his hand towards the Ranger-guide but stopped short. 'Haldor?' he whispered. At the Man's lack of response, he murmured, a little louder, 'Hal?'

Robin came next, but he stationed himself facing outward and shooed the teens to stand behind him, between himself and the small grouping of Ferdi and the two Kingsmen.

Having reached this uncertain shelter, the teens stood blinking and unsure for what felt like an eternity though it was probably only a few breaths of time. 

'Uncle Ferdi?' Farry ventured at last. 'What are we to do?' He did not ask what had happened, for he knew all too well.

But Pip-lad was staring at the fallen Messenger. 'Is he—?' he gulped. 'Is he—dead?' he forced out at last.

Ferdi leaned forward and took hold of the Ranger-guide's shoulder. 'Hal?' he said again, his voice gentle.

The Man raised his head at last. Stunned to silence at the sight of his countenance, the two teens moved backwards a step or two until they bumped against Robin's back.

The Bolger briefly glanced behind him and then resumed his watchful attitude though he was obviously listening to the scene playing out behind him.

Haldoron's face was ravaged with grief; tears wetted his cheeks, and more welled in his eyes and then spilled over, seemingly beyond his control or caring. His breath came raggedly as he stared into the far distance, unseeing, and then he sat down heavily, bowed his head once more over the body, and then pulled the limp Messenger into his lap and began to sob.

Somehow this turn of events frightened Pip-lad more than anything that had come before. 'What do we do?' he whispered to Farry, trembling and wide-eyed.

The young Took merely shook his head, tears spilling from his own eyes. 'Calendil,' he whispered in reply. 'It's... it's Cal...' 

For in pulling the Messenger into his embrace, Haldoron had turned the body over, revealing the youthful face of the guardsman who had laboured over the Ranger-guide after the crisis at Weathertop.

Faramir took a deep breath, scrubbed at his face with his free hand and then took hold of himself once more, standing straighter as he fitted his arrow to his bow and scanned their surroundings with as much self-possession as a Tookish archer a dozen or two years older.

Meanwhile, the young Gamgee covered his face, fell to his knees, and rocked back and forth as he mourned the young guardsman whose quick laughter, eager curiosity and easy friendship had drawn the young hobbits in and made them welcome. 'No...' he moaned. 'Please, no.'

Ferdi reached further, connecting at last with the fallen Messenger's jaw and sliding his hand down to find the pulse-point in the young Man's throat. He froze almost immediately, then withdrew his hand to grasp the Ranger-guide's arm. 'Haldor!' he said. 'He's alive, still!'

When the Man did not seem to hear, Ferdi gave the arm a fierce shake. 'Haldor!' he repeated sharply. 'Heed me, Man! He's still alive! We've got to get him aid, and without another moment's delay!'

Haldor raised his head slowly. 'How...?' he said thickly.

'I see the what and how of it now,' Ferdi said. 'We're safe enough at the moment, perhaps...' He gestured to the sky above them—

—perhaps not to the sky itself, Robin Bolger thought as his uncle continued. Startled, he had turned back at Ferdi's pronouncement that the Messenger lived; now he lifted his face to the sky and finally saw what had eluded him: a line of slim, light-coloured rope, blending with the sky so as to be almost invisible, that stretched from one side of the Road to the other, taking advantage of the holloway. As he'd galloped along, Calendil had been swept from the saddle, probably never knowing what had doomed him in the split second between galloping along and hitting the ground.

'...they could set their trap on a relatively lonely stretch and only have to check on it from time to time,' Ferdi was saying, his tone bitter. 'We are well past the turning for messages passing between Minas Tirith or New Annúminas and the Angle; fewer and farther between are the messages going to or from Rivendell... and wandering companies of Elves travel afoot, or so I understand, and might pass below the trap without seeing it...'

'That hardly seems possible,' Robin threw over his shoulder. 'Why, Elves are said to be keener-eyed than...'

'That is no ordinary rope, Robbie,' Ferdi interrupted. 'Only a trick of the wind revealed it to me, and that only briefly. Now that I know it's there, I can see it; but one travelling the path on horseback at any pace faster than a walk, unsuspecting...'

To Haldoron, he said, 'Pick him up, as gently as you can, and carry him off the Road. We'll take cover once more – for we've no idea how often these "spiders" may check their trap for flies... and then you can go for the horse, ride to the closest outpost and bring back help whilst we guard our poor Cal... But bend low over his neck so as to avoid any other traps that may be waiting along the way...'

'Spiders?' Farry said, confused. Somehow he had the idea that Ferdi had not used the term lightly.

'That's no ordinary rope,' Ferdi repeated. 'It may be elven rope, or it may have come from one of the great spiders still lurking in the Wood of Greenleaves – Legolas sent word that one had been discovered and killed not long after the turning of the year, as a matter of fact. There's a certain kind of webbing they spin that can be almost invisible to the casual eye... until one stumbles into it... Not all the strands are sticky; some are spun for strength, to keep the prey from breaking free of the trap.'

'Spiders, here?' Farry said.

But Ferdi had already returned to the matter at hand. 'There's no time for this,' he snapped. With a sharp push against the motionless Ranger, he rapped out an order. 'Haldor! Now!'

As if only now awakened by the Took's biting tone, the Man nodded slowly. Gathering the injured Messenger closer, he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled to the verge.

'Come along,' Ferdi said to the others. 'Follow Hal... Don't just stand there nattering! Get back under cover and guard young Cal as well as yourselves.'

'What are you going to do?' Robin said, pausing a moment longer, even as the teens fell in behind Haldoron and his burden.

'I'll hide myself on the other side of the Road, the better to watch for arriving ruffians from all directions. As for you... Take charge of the children, Robbie, and make sure they are well-hid from unfriendly eyes.'

'Aye,' Robin answered, and turned away to follow orders.

Thus, after Haldoron laid Calendil down gently and covered him with vegetation, then departed, mixing stealth and haste as he went back to reclaim the horse from where they'd secreted the beast, the Hobbit-Travellers settled down to wait for his return and watch over the injured Messenger in the meantime.

'D'you think they'll come in search of us?' Pip-lad whispered to Farry as the minutes crawled by.

'Who, ruffians?' Farry said. 'That's just what we're worried about!'

'No, Kingsmen!' Pip-lad said. 'Even as Cal and the others came to Weathertop when we didn't show up at breakfast that day!'

'Frankly, that would be a happier outcome than any I've been imagining for the past hour,' Farry reflected after a moment's thought.

Though they kept their voices low, Ferdi evidently heard them from where he'd gone to ground on the other side of the Road. 'Hush!' he scolded, somehow managing to keep his tone so low as to make the rebuke resemble a puff of wind hissing through the heather.

The young hobbits hushed. As quietly as he could, Farry unstoppered his water flask and wetted his handkerchief, then laid the cloth over the Messenger's forehead, for all the good it would do.

I hope it's better than nothing, he thought to himself. But I feel so useless... so helpless to do anything to help our friend... 

If he had to devote the rest of his life to learning, that he might avoid ever entertaining this feeling of impotence again, then so be it.

Young Faramir Took had often been called "too old for his years" – for he'd always been burdened by cares beyond a child's typical understanding due to his circumstances, including his father's precarious health until recently, as well as his parents' high positions and the demands that went along with their standing.

Though the teen didn't know it, over the past year, Pippin, along with Merry and Ferdi, had conspired together to throw Faramir often into the company of the Gamgees and their children, especially Merry-lad, Pip-lad and Goldilocks who were all close in age to Farry. With a little encouragement from Sam, the young Gamgees had welcomed the son of the Thain into their scrapes and pranks, larks and downright tomfoolery, immersing him in the joys and (relatively mild) trials of childhood in ways that had never been possible within the context of the Great Smials. As a result, and a few well-earned scoldings aside, Farry had blossomed.

But now, in this desperate moment, the young son of the Thain put childish things behind him once more, quite deliberately and intentionally, with the feeling he must leave childhood behind if he was to move forward from this point.

Tears stung his eyes as he wetted the handkerchief again, but he blinked them away. No more, he scolded himself. No more of that nonsense. There's no time for that now.

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Author's note: On a personal note, I find language infinitely fascinating. For example, "holloway" is an interesting term I found when searching for the right term to describe a sunken road. More specifically, according to Wikipedia, "A holloway (Middle English: hol(g)h 'hollow' and weie) is a path or trail that is considerably below the level of the surrounding land. They are not natural features, they are the remains of human foot paths or animal routes that have been slowly carved into sunken lanes by countless footsteps over thousands of years." For more, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunken_lane

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