The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

FORWARD AND WARNINGS: R for content. This story is an AU. With the exception of the first chapter it is set post-ROTK. It will contain heavy violence, the mention of rape though no actual depictions. and sexual content—again, no gory details. DISCLAIMER: This story was written solely for the purpose of non-profit entertainment. All canon characters and places therein are the property of Tolkien Estates and New Line Cinema.

 Chapter 1: The Widows of Rhunballa

The deafening explosion and the shower of multi-colored sparks, sand and rock that plumed upward in the shape of a giant mushroom could very probably be seen for leagues.

So much for secrecy, Eowyn thought irritably. Though, in a way, they would be in better straights when the privy, so to speak, finally hit the windmill. She had no talent for dissembling. Perhaps that was why every nightly session of Queen’s Council left her with a pounding headache afterward. And more, all these clandestine excursions to the high desert were taking time away from the more immediate concerns on her plate.

Fallah Nor’s-daughter cut her great almond-shaped black eyes at Eowyn and smiled slyly. "You are thinking Indassa will be displeased."

"That is a great understatement," Eowyn said blandly.

The other woman’s teeth flashed white against her ebony skin. "Not if we offer it to her as a full proof method of ridding herself of an unwanted husband." Fallah pushed her spectacles up off the bridge of her sweating nose. It was a very bookish gesture for someone holding a smoking fireworks launch tube as thick as her own torso balanced on one shoulder.

Eowyn frowned at that thought and the sudden gory mental image of what this new device could do to a score of armed men. "The new design is an improvement," she said, gazing at the burning crater thirty yards away from the little hillock where they stood. "It did not knock you backward though the air when you fired it this time."

Her friend laughed. "The parallel tube gives more thrust to the rocket, but we still need more distance." Fallah lay the spent fireworks tube down and began scribbling madly into her book of designs. Eowyn peered over her shoulder, staring down at the incomprehensible mathematical squiggles.

"There is an equation," Fallah told her, "that my forefathers in the far south used to wield their catapults with deadly accuracy when the sons of Harad attacked our northern borders. It factors force and angle of launch and the weight of the object in question to order where a projectile will fall within a few dozen spans. Our engineers of old knew exactly how many grains of burning powder to add to the catapult and how many degrees of---"

She caught Eowyn’s politely blank expression and grinned sheepishly. "It is like an archer with a bow. When we learn how to angle and draw the ‘bow string’ for the proper amount of force---"

"---We shall become marksmen," Eowyn finished. "That much I understand." She managed to keep a straight face for half a minute more before laughter bubbled out of her and infected the other woman as well.

Fallah stood, gathering the reigns of her spooked, trembling horse, shading her eyes toward the west. "It grows late," she said pointedly.

It was three hours ride back to the city. It did not do to be caught out after nightfall this close to the mountains.

"It would be best if we hide our plans in plain sight by offering this up to Indassa as a weapon against Haradoun," Fallah said as they set out at a hard clip. "She will be much more than simply displeased if she learns the truth of what we have been about out here among the saw grass and scorpions." She glanced over at the stubborn set of Eowyn’s jaw and added quietly. "So will a great many others. They will say it is biting the hand that feeds us."

"As opposed to biting the hand that feeds upon us?" Eowyn asked bluntly.

Her companion shook her head mildly. "Ah, my friend, you are such a Westron! All or nothing. Black and white. Absolute rights and absolute wrongs. In the lands where the Dark God held sway we have never had such luxuries of idealism---not even here in Rhunballa. We made the deals with the devils at hand that were necessary to keep breathing and, from that, we salvaged what little love and freedom we could."

Eowyn shifted in her saddle, feeling the all too familiar surge of frustrated anger whenever she was forced to beat her head against the pragmatic logic of Eastern rationalization. "I know this," she said. "But a new age of the world has dawned, Fallah! Men---or women---no longer have to make deals with devils to survive!"

"No?" Fallah eyed her like a long-suffering schoolmistress fretting over a slow pupil. "The Dark God is dead. Old Emperor Farosh of Harad is dead. But the young Emperor Haradoun is strong and cunning and, I assure you, thrice the villain his father was. It was, as you know, he who led the great band of warriors through the Eastern Pass four years ago to conscript the men of Rhunballa for the Dark God’s great war. It was he who slew our good King Udam and took the Princess Indassa to wife."

"’Taking to wife’ is not the word my people use for what he did to her," Eowyn whispered harshly.

"As you say," Fallah agreed, unperturbed. "He won great praise for having accomplished what no servant of Mordor had managed in ten centuries---the sack of the Defiant City." She shrugged. "His chieftains must have forgotten that the brave Prince of Harad had a Nazgul riding at his side to discourage the attentions of our friends in the mountains for they give him all the credit."

Eowyn drew reign and stared at her in open anger. "Our ‘friends’ ate that family at that farmstead in South Springs, Fallah!"

"But who were they?" Fallah murmured with cool indifference. "No one of name. A young tinker from Eastern Sabad and his wife and children who achieved safe passage through the Eastern Divide with a merchant caravan two years ago. Newcomers with no roots in Rhunballa, no family to mourn them. If someone must appease our protectors’ hunger on occasion, who better than they?"

Eowyn stopped the angry words poised at her lips when she saw the sad, slightly bitter smile on her friend’s face. "That is how we have lived free of Sauron’s yoke for a thousand years, my friend," Fallah said quietly. "That is how the majority of our people still think." She swept one arm upward and around her head, gesturing vaguely at the distant cloud-shrouded peaks of the harsh, reddish mountain range surrounding them. "Rhunballa, the Defiant City, stands today because of what haunts the mountains that ring this great valley. We have lived in a kind of symbiosis with the Nighthunters since time out of mind. Rhunballa lay within the realm of the Dark God, yet not of it. We refused Him worship and our tithe of young men and women. We refused Him any allegiance at all. And as this tiny kingdom of defectors and escaped slaves grew and prospered, we began to draw brave would-be conquerors like flies to honey. Every few years some Easterling Chieftain or Princelet or Khand or Harad would lead a valiant crusade through the Eastern Divide."

"And so, by your very existence, you reeled in a steady supply of victims for the---the Hunters," Eowyn finished. She had little sympathy for would-be Haradrim conquerors, but Fallah had failed to mention that the legend of the Defiant City, the hope of freedom and a better life, drew many, many simple folk from the East, Harad and the lands of the far south. These people came to the Passes of the Dhak-Ral Mountains willing to brave almost any danger to escape the whip hand of Mordor. Most of them did not make it to Rhunballa.

"Aye, we are worms dangling on the hook." Fallah gave her an almost pitying look. "You say a new day has dawned? Perhaps it has for the sons of Numenor and your yellow-haired Northmen. But Haradoun has taken Rhunballa once. He will come again. He must. He has laid waste to Khand and South Harad these last two years and made himself undisputed lord of all the East. His pride will not bear it if he fails to retake his defiant bride and her lands. And who will protect us, Eowyn? King Elessar?" She spat upon the ground. "He led the charge from his black Umbari ships to the fields of Pellenor, and rode down the sons of Rhunballa like wheat."

"If you believe all this," Eowyn asked softly, "why are you helping me?"

Fallah’s hands were gripping her reigns so tightly her knuckles were a bloodless gray. No other reaction showed in her face or voice as she spoke in her customary matter-of-fact manner. "Because Haradoun took every male in Rhunballa over the age of nine---eight thousand men and boys. Less than two score returned to tell the tale. My father was fifty-seven and nearly lame with rheumatism, an aging apothecary who never raised a hand in violence in all his life save to swat the backside of his only child when she misbehaved. He died beneath the hooves of Elessar’s cavalry because he could not run. But he should never have been there at all! And I think---no, I am sure---that the Hunters let Haradoun through the Divide."

Eowyn stared at her. Fallah’s head turned back toward the rust-colored mountains fearfully. Her pretty, slightly bookish face looked suddenly much younger than her twenty-two years. She looked like a little girl who fears she has been overheard speaking dreadful secrets aloud. "I have not heard that," Eowyn said slowly.

Fallah’s voice was almost a whisper. "Enshin the carpenter’s son on Bright Street told me something four months ago before he died of the wasting sickness he has fought these last two years. He said as the pressgang drove the men of Rhunballa beneath the Dhak-dir Crags, Haradoun halted the column for an hour’s rest. Enshin swore to me he saw Haradoun climb up into the Crags and vanish into the caverns there."

"To give thanks for safe passage?" Eowyn asked in a low voice.

"I think so," Fallah nodded. Her mouth set in a hard line. "You ask why I am helping you with this mad scheme when I know that Indassa would most likely behead the both of us with her father’s scimitar while all of Rhunballa cheered her on if she knew our true intent. I think it was not the Nazgul that deterred the Hunters. I think Haradoun struck some kind of bargain with them. And if they let him in once to ravage our city of its men, they may let him in a second time to enslave the women of Rhunballa."

Eowyn was silent, thinking how Indassa had blithely waved away her apprehensions about leaving the bulk of Rhunballa’s defense against human monsters in the hands of actual monsters. "Four years ago," Indassa had told her airily, "it seemed that the Dark God was only inches from completing his conquest of all the world. The Hunters feared His might and betrayed us to save themselves. Who would not do the same?"

Eowyn had wisely refrained from replying to that rhetoric question.

"My incendiary potions and fireworks will set the Hunters ablaze---" Fallah’s lips quirked. "In truth, they will blow them to bits. But it will do the same to a battalion of Haradrim warriors if need be. If we must tell anyone anything, we should say that we are working on a gift for the Queen. A method of defense that will rend Haradoun into a hundred small messy pieces should he be so foolish as to return to claim his bride."

"Agreed," Eowyn nodded. Indassa would definitely warm to that thought. "But let us say that and nothing more unless we are asked outright."

They rode on in companionable silence for a space of time. The earth beneath them changed slowly, the dry sawgrass and desert scrub giving way to a gentler grassland of low rolling hills. Eowyn never ceased to find it amazing how one could literally smell water in the air as they drew nearer the valley’s center. It was especially strong after a long afternoon in the Dustlands. Eowyn caught herself frowning with tension and smoothed her face out deliberately. She had a vague memory of her mother telling that she would develop and ugly wrinkle directly between her eyes if she did not learn to forbear from frowning so furiously. She would have to learn not display every thought and strong feeling so openly on her face, slow student though she was in this art. It ground against every sense of rightness she possessed to go behind Indassa’s back in this fashion, but---

But the foolish little Queen had given Eowyn the Captaincy of Rhunballa’s Watch, the only form of military the valley kingdom possessed. And now, Eowyn found herself charged with the defense of Rhunballa’s Queen and its people, and simultaneously hamstrung from protecting the small kingdom’s people by the command to let monsters walk among them unmolested.

Eight weeks ago, she had sworn an oath as she stood in the little kitchen of that empty farmhouse in South Springs, one hand clenched in impotent rage, the other holding a straw-stuffed doll stained on one side with the dried blood of the child who had loved it. The family’s nearest neighbors had heard what might have been screams the night before and seen no one leave the house all day. No one had followed Eowyn into the house. Not Suni or brave Shaeri. Not even Ikako. They had turned their faces away, unwilling to even look at the house unless forced. They did not want to look or know. They did not want to see the simple toys strewn around the floor, or the half-knitted woolen coat the mother had been laboring over, or anything that might make them see this murdered family as people no different from their own loved ones. The Hunters always made it easier for the Rhunballani to look the other way, taking new-comers, removing the bodies so there was nothing more gruesome to clean up in their wake than an empty cottage like this one. Only the empty house and one blood-splattered toy told the tale of what had happened here the night before. "She must have been holding you when they killed her, Dolly," Eowyn had whispered, rage rising inside her like a sand storm in the high desert, ready to strip the skin off of anything or anyone foolish enough to block her path.

She would end this, she had sworn. Somehow she would find a way to destroy the Hunters, who drank up the life’s blood of the few and dirtied good hearts of the many by forcing them into frightened complicity. Somehow she would find a way to accomplish this that did not leave Rhunballa open to conquest. Fallah’s weapons were a two-fold answer to both prayers, but the mere thought of using these devices on human beings was abhorrent.

"It would be a terrible thing to have to use these weapons against Men," she said aloud.

"It will be far more terrible if Haradoun returns without a Nazgul nipping at his heels," Fallah replied. "It is the only reason he did not sack the city."

They crested a hill and the sparse grassland and sage blended with deepest water-fed green for a hundred yards before disappearing completely. A gushing wellspring, one of hundreds that dotted the inner valley region, spouted upward in an arching font, curling downward to form the mouth of a small creek. Rolling out before them lay the heart of Rhunballa, the Hundred Springs Vale. In every square mile there lay one or two such streams, the life’s blood of Rhunballa, flooding green life to rice fields, orchards, wheat crops and live stock. At the center of this sprawling oasis that was more than twenty leagues from end to end stood Rhunballa City, the Defiant Jewel, wreathed in multi-hued flowers and water fronds, crowned with willows and fruit laden trees. Across the green plain of rice paddies and blooming vegetable fields, the city of wood, adobe and clay tile sat perched upon a great, gently sloping ridge.

Rhunballa City had no walls.

Eowyn felt a swell of terrible dread as she remembered Fallah’s tale of how Haradoun and his men had simply ridden up to King Udam’s villa four and a half years ago and strode into his dining room unmolested. The Prince of Harad had slain the old man at own his breakfast table. Two hundred Haradrim warriors had taken this peaceful, sun-washed city in an hour. Now, four years later, the city remained unfortified and the fields of Hundred Spring were tended solely by women. Haradoun had spent only half a day in Rhunballa. He had stayed only long enough to slay the King, ravish the Princess, and round up every male old enough to hold a sword without falling over. Time had been of the essence and the Nazgul would brook no delay for unproductive sacking and pillaging. If Haradoun came a second time, the second fall of Rhunballa would be far more terrible than the first. Cold logic said they should use Fallah’s weapons to give them an edge if battle were joined. But, if they lost---

"If we lose---" Eowyn raised a hand to wave absently at the two young girls who were calling out to them as they passed from the open laundries and wool dyers’. Were they new students? Eowyn could not place their faces, but the Watch’s Apprentice Cot had so many new girls in the past few months she was losing track of the newer ones. "If we lose," she repeated, "Haradoun will have this science. He would turn it upon the West and the Southlands."

"Then we must take great care not to lose," Fallah said in her most reasonable voice.

And to this, Eowyn could only nod. She could think of no other way to achieve both ends. Gandalf the Grey’s words echoed in her mind, an old memory she had tucked away in some back room of her mind until this moment. He had been counceling her to take the riskier strategy during a game of Thrones she had been steadily losing to Theodred on a long winter’s night a few months before her twelfth birthday.

Sometime, my dear, he had said, we must risk everything we have to win the day.

"It is a valid concern that this intelligence not be leaked to anyone who might bear rumor of it back to Harad, Most Favored One." Sharadi, Indassa’s Treasury Minister, had the rich rolling voice of a professional orator.

The old woman’s words bounded around the white-tiled walls of the Royal Villa, carrying easily to everyone in the room. It jarred Eowyn out of her own worried thoughts. So far, no one had made any mention of explosions in the Dustlands. That was an unlooked-for blessing. Her movements and actions were more closely watched than she liked to admit, Eowyn knew. Many of the women in Queen’s Council looked upon her with suspicion or outright antagonism for her closeness to the Queen, for the strange trust their monarch placed in this pale-skinned stranger from a land whose warriors had slain their husbands or sons on the Fields of Pellenor. In the year since Eowyn’s appointment to Queen’s Guard, this hostility had only grown greater.

That suited Eowyn well enough. She had little use for most of these wealthy widows of Rhunballa’s powerful men. They put on airs of acquired nobility and turned up their noses at honest work and poor, honest people. They were spoiled and petty. They looked down upon the folk whose fathers had come to Rhunballa from the South and Far East, people like Fallah and Ikako, simply because their Haradrim forefathers had conquered these nations. They called them slave races, natural subordinates to the children of Harad. How they could claim to be ruling class when they accepted no responsibility at all toward those they claimed to rule was beyond Eowyn. A king, Theoden had taught her, or a Queen, was the servant of the people, not the other way around.

All these things were only additions to the ever-growing list of reasons why these nightly Council meetings were something Eowyn dreaded like slow torture.

The Queen’s Hall was not a throneroom so much as an audience hall, a meeting place for the rulers of Rhunballa to iron out law and policy. Eowyn found the chamber distinctly unnerving because it stood open to the night air. The high, shutterless arched windows that lined either side of the hall lengthwise were so large it was more apt to call the walls collumns. It would be child’s play for anyone, or anything, to come upon the Queen and all her ministers from either side and relieve themselves of both monarch and government in one fell swoop. She frowned and fidgeted uncomfortably, thinking Fallah would laugh and say she was thinking like a Queen’s Guard at every turn now.

There was not a chair in sight. Strewn about the great empty chamber, arranged in neat, receding semi-circles, were large down-filled silken pillows. Indassa had told Eowyn long ago that until her reign, both King and King’s Council had knelt upon the unpadded marbled floor. The old King Udam had confided to his only child on more than one occasion that it was a test of manhood to stand after any long session of government, provided a man still had any circulation in his legs at all. One of Indassa’s her first decisions as Queen had been the addition of the cushions. Eowyn knelt, her legs folded beneath her in Eastern fashion, upon one such pillow, as did every other women in the Queen’s Hall.

Before them, perched atop a cushion of red silk of the same color and material as her gown, sat the Queen of Rhunballa. Indassa was a small, beautiful, immaculately coifed and bejeweled doll of a girl. Tonight, she sat listening to the debate and occasional bickering of the most powerful women in her realm, saying little. She seemed to be lost in her own thoughts.

"Bah!" Said Obari the Wineseller’s wife. "It has been common knowledge among the tradesmen of Laketown that the Western Pass is open." She slanted her dark, coal-lined eyes at Eowyn. It was not a friendly look. Obari had spoken out passionately against the Watch on several occasions, saying its very existence was corrupting the young women of Rhunballa. Obari’s eldest daughter, Shaeri, was commander of the Deep Wells Watch House, and the older woman saw Eowyn as the very incarnation of evil because of this. "Our Lady of the Watch came to us with one of their merchant’s caravans two years ago. Your husband will surely know by now, my Queen."

A warm gust of night air breathed through the Hall, ruffling the crimson silks of Indassa’s gown. Otherwise, she sat immobile and pensive, showing no reaction at all to the older woman’s words. Even now, Eowyn thought sadly, after four years of ruling as unchallenged mistress of her own realm, she still bows to custom, the old Eastern laws of conquest.

Haradoun had lain with her and declared himself her husband. He had forced himself upon her while her aged father’s body was still warm to seal his claim to her lands. In the eyes of every woman present, save Eowyn, they were man and wife. The deed was done. Indassa’s consent, or lack thereof, mattered not at all. That thought always sent a queasy knot of slow burning rage shooting through Eowyn’s belly. Most of the ruling families of Rhunballa were of Haradrim stock. After twenty generations of defection and separation from Harad, many of the people of this land were still, in too many ways, slaves to the customs and laws of the land their fathers had fled.

The Queen of Rhunballa would be nineteen years old in another five months, but she looked much younger. From her Haradrim blood, she had a small-boned, delicate frame that was common in Eastern women. With her rouged lips and coal-lined eyes, Indassa looked like a girl of fourteen dressed up in her mother’s clothes.

"We have always known the Western Passes were not Hunted," Indassa said softly. Her voice, like her face, was a much younger than her years. "There is something there, something they fear. My grandfather told me it was some fearful secret tied to the many sulfur water springs and black oil pools in that area." She raised her eyes and met Eowyn’s gaze directly. Any false illusions that the Queen was a soft-voice girl-child vanished when one looked into Indassa’s eyes. They were clear and direct. At the moment they were burning with aninexplicable mix of purpose and terrible fear.

What is she up to? Eowyn wondered, her stomach clenching with anxiety. What has happened to frighten her so?

There would be no answer to this question until after the others were gone.

"But it is also perilous to mortal feel, as you know well, Eowyn of the North," the Queen continued. "The ground shakes and brings down the cliffsides upon unwary travelers. The earth belches up scalding black founts and acrid gases. My husband will not be so foolish as to attempt to pay us a visit by the Western Road. It is from the South Pass that he will attack. The Eastern Divide is well patrolled by the Hunters and by the Watch, as is the North. You routed out the five score men he sent this spring cramped into the wagons of a commandeered Trader’s Caravan."

"Aye, we did, Highness," Eowyn nodded. "Though I think that was more of a test than an attack. He sacrificed a hundred men to learn whether the way would be barred by mortals or monsters. Though it is beyond disturbing that their ruse made it past the Hunters. I would have thought they would have scented so many human bodies as the Caravan passed the Crags. I’m told they do not normally pass up such a feast."

The words hung there in the air. All the other women, the new Ministers of this tiny kingdom---most of whom had inherited their offices from their dead husbands---were silent. Eowyn’s comment was not a direct challenge to Indassa’s stubborn refusal to believe that the Haradrim would betray them a second time, but it was close enough that one could have cut the sudden tension in the Hall with a knife.

Indassa regarded Eowyn, her delicate olive face as inscrutable as a stone mask. That impassive visage was the one monarchial skill her father had taught the child he had expected give in marriage to the man he picked to succeed him on the throne. Then the Queen sighed artfully. It was an attitude and manner, a kind of off-hand mummery that Eowyn recognized as Indassa at her most insecure. It was Indassa acting the Queen, playing at the role of haughty monarch rather than using her own innate good sense. Masking the fact that Eowyn’s public question had left her feeling hurt and a little betrayed. Eowyn steeled herself inwardly. The girl was probably going to say something horridly sniping or condescending.

"You have only been with us two years, my friend," the little Queen said. "I know well that the idea of relying on the Hunters for protection is unnerving to those who have not had a lifetime to become accustomed to the idea. No one is infallible. Not even monsters." She smiled, making a show of her dimples. "Perhaps we have domesticated them over the centuries."

The room echoed with appreciative laughter, some false, some honestly amused. Eowyn cursed her fair skin that showed to all present what they surely took for red-faced shame. Inwardly, she was seething. Indassa was getting much better at the art of politics, she thought sourly. In the space of two breaths Indassa had effectively destroyed any credibility Eowyn could have ever hoped to achieve concerning her fears about the Hunters. The young Queen’s seemingly gentle reproof had made Eowyn seem like a skittish foreigner, a New-Comer who was still learning the ways of this land.

"But come, my sisters," Indassa went on in the chiding voice of an elder sibling. "We must not mock these fears. Everyone of our forefathers wrestled with the same terror. Our Lady Eowyn takes her Captaincy of the Watch and the protection of Rhunballa’s people to heart with a passion that I cannot fault." For one brief instant the Queen met her eyes again and this time Eowyn thought she saw a silent apology there.

Eowyn counted to ten, considering and discarding several possible replies. Whatever words she might have found were silenced as the warm night air about them dropped sharply as though a shivering blaster of untimely winter had shot through the open arches. The room went deathly silent. No one moved or spoke. The faces of one or two of the older women drained of blood. Eowyn glanced about the room at the blanched expressions of stark terror around her, finally coming to rest on Indassa. The Queen sat motionless upon her throne of satin pillows, still as a rabbit that is eye to eye with a wolf. Eowyn’s hand came to rest upon the hilt of her sword, a terrible suspicion taking shape in her mind.

"We have company, my ladies," said Indassa in a remarkably steady voice.

"Oh gods," said Matab the Weaver’s wife. "Oh gods of earth and sky, they have come to ask for a g-gift as they did once in my father’s day. T-they wish us to offer one of our number to them as proof of our friendship!"

One or two of the others began to whisper furtively. An instant later they were all on their feet, rising with small shrieks, poised to flee. Eowyn suddenly saw why.

There was something, some thing, standing upon the open sill of one of the Hall’s great windows. It was man-shaped, like a living shadow. He stepped off the window, out of the half-light, and his bare feet made no sound as they touched the white marble floor. He strode forward and the night hung about him. Like a Ring Wraith, he seemed to repel light, to push it before him as he advanced.

Eowyn was already on her feet, moving to stand between Indassa and the Hunter. How many were they? Or was he alone? Gazing at the night-spawned thing as he approached she could feel no fear, only a deep satisfaction that she would finally have a chance to slay one the of the creatures who had left that bloodied doll and a still, empty house in their wake. The ring of her sword clearing its scabbard was incongruously loud in the paralyzed silence. Eowyn met the dead thing’s eyes with cold, unflinching antipathy as he halted less than ten paces before her, returning her stare with a look of detached inhuman curiosity.

He was, or he had once been, an Elf, she realized with horror. The image of Legolas’ face leapt into her mind. The memory, four years old now, of his kindness to the broken girl-child she had been, of how he had shone like a candle of comfort and hope as the daylight died around him, had stayed with her. It was a treasured memory of the beauty and magic that seemed to be slowly fading from the world in the wake of Sauron’s fall. The mere thought of the ageless peace of spirit and beauty of an Elf corrupted and blackened into the undead specter before her filled her with rage and pity.

"So fearless." His voice crawled over her skin and seemed to reverberate inside her head. The sensation was too close to the slithering whisper of Grima’s invasive presence in her mind. A wave of nauseous paralytic terror

froze her sword hand and cemented her feet where she stood.

Something---something was shoving itself into her mind, pressing at her will, telling her to stop, to behave, to obey like a good girl. She gasped, high and shrill, uttering a little shriek of blind panic.

A breath of cold, beautiful laughter. "Or are you?" His voice hissed inside her head.

She pushed with all her might, with every ounce of will her spirit possessed, and the sound of that sweet laughter was gone from her head.

She could move again. He had moved forward, his mocking smile turning to honest wide-eyed surprise when she raised her sword, the tip poised at his throat. She stared him down, cold and unshaking.

"What do you think?" She asked softly.

He was beautiful beyond the reach of mere words, even fallen into darkness as he was. He was naked from the waste up, clad in only billowing black trousers, his flawless ivory skin gleaming bloodlessly in the torchlight. And again, she thought of Legolas. The idea of what the one before her had been, of just how far he had been dragged down into shadow, made her heart twist with sorrow even as she held her blade ready to strike him down. Had he screamed when they made him one of them, she wondered. Had he begged them to simply kill him and let him keep his light, his Elven soul untainted?

He threw back his head of hip-length midnight hair and laughed. The bell-like sound was sweet as cold, poisoned wine. "Is that pity I see behind you pretty eyes, sweet one?"

"I pity the Elf you once were," she replied. "But that does not mean I will not put you out of your misery!" She swung her sword.

The stroke sliced through empty air.

He moved faster than her eyes could track the motion. Before her blow had even finished its arc he was behind her. One cold arm snaked around her, pinning both arms to her sides, numbing them with the inhuman strength of his grip. Still she did not drop her sword. A hand like living ice clamped over her sword hand, slowly crushing. The sword clattering on the marble tiles of the floor was as loud as a scream.

"You are immune to influence," he murmured against her hair. "Interesting."

She could not move or twist free. His arm around her might have been wrought of pure mithril for all she could dislodge it. She settled for stomping his feet. It was a pitiful tactic, but it was all she had left. The arm around her body tightened again, almost casually, pressing the air from her lungs.

Soft, cruel laughter in her ear. "Do no fret over me, sweet elanor." His breath stank of blood and butchery. It was the smell of charnel houses. She hitched a tiny gulp of air by straining against him with every ounce of strength in her body. She could not breathe! He was going to slowly squeeze the life out of her and laugh as he did it. It she could have drawn in a chest full of wind she would have shrieked like a mad thing. She was not sure whether she would have been screaming with rage or terror. His cold body was at her back, his ice-hewn hand threading through her hair, coming to rest upon the pulse at her throat. She knew he could feel her heart slamming against her breastbone. The smell of her fear was probably as heady a scent to him as her blood. That thought nearly sent her mad again with rage. I will kill him! I must kill him!

"I chose this doom of my own free will, love," he breathed against her throat. "This darkness is pleasure beyond the ken of your sweetest, blushing virgin’s dreams. Shall I share it with you?" The prick of sharp, feral teeth trailing across that thin skin of her throat drew a strangled moan from her. She could not breathe. The world was going gray. She was about to faint.

"Morsul!" Indassa’s shrill, frightened voice rang out like a whip crack. "Your mistress did not give you leave to spill blood in my Hall!"

The crushing weight around her chest vanished magically. She sagged to the floor at his feet, gasping for breath, one hand already fumbling for her fallen sword.

"I did but test her courage, Highness," the Hunter said. A bare, bone-white foot swept beneath the blade of Eowyn’s sword, sending it skidding across the Hall toward Indassa. "You Captain of the Watch tenacious in her duty. And there is precious little fear in her." His dark, honeyed baritone was both amused and admiring.

Eowyn tried to rise to her knees but the floor seemed to wobble beneath her. She fell forward on her face, still struggling for breath. Had he broken all of her ribs?

"You overstep the bounds of hospitality to presume to test my servants!" Indassa said in cold anger. "Give me your message!"

Morsul bowed ironically. Eowyn raised her head, trying to see Indassa. The nails of the Hunter’s bare feet were encrusted with brown. As though he had waded barefoot in a river of gore…

"My mistress sends word that the day is at hand," Morsul said. "Our scouts have brought word that Haradoun is marching upon the Defiant City with a company of two thousand."

The other women---all of whom were at the moment cowering behind their child Queen like frightened sheep---uttered a collective gasp.

"He will reach the Southern Pass just before dawn," Morsul went on. "He has offered us many lovely gifts in exchange for safe passage. We excepted the sweet morsels he gave us and agreed that he might enter the Vale of Hundred Springs unmolested. They are many, O Queen, and they will arrive at an hour when our power grows weakest. But we will greet them for you. Have your lovely Captain and the brave Watch guard the mouth of the Pass to mop up strays. A thousand strong Haradrim soldiers and a another thousand of their foreign allies is beyond riches to us and will keep the Vales of Rhunballa safe from our hunger for many a year."

"They will betray you, Indassa!" Eowyn choked out the words.

"Nay, sweetling!" The Hunter laughed. "We are creatures of habit. The old alliance with Rhunballa has kept both my people and the Rhunballani free, fat and happy for a millennium. It shall be as it has ever been. They shall have their safety. We shall have game to hunt. There are two who travel among the foreign soldiers with whom my mistress is most anxious to make an acquaintance. The others shall fill our larders."

"And Haradoun?" Indassa asked softly.

"Your eager bridegroom?" Morsul smiled, baring his teeth. "Him we shall bring to you bound and alive, little Queen. You may widow yourself at your leisure."

A tiny sigh escaped the Queen’s lips. "Until dawn, then."

"Until then," Morsul agreed. He knelt beside Eowyn and lifted her gently, helping her sit even as she struggled in vain to shake off his hand. He peered into her face. It was like being eye to eye with a cobra. "I have never met a mortal with the will to refuse my thirst once I touched their mind. But I saw much that was interesting therein before you thrust me out."

"Liar," Eowyn croaked.

"Am I?" He smiled slyly. "Who is the pretty Silvan youth, the golden-haired archer whose memory fills your heart with such comfort?"

Eowyn spat out an unprintable phrase she had learned from Forodwaith troll hunters in the Far North three years before.

"Such dainty words from a daughter of kings," he laughed delightedly.

She leveled a gaze with all the warmth of chipped ice at him. "If you know so very much about me, shadow Elf," she replied, "then you know that I have slain far greater demons that you. I will slay you as well, I swear it!"

"We shall see," he said amiably.

The next instant he was gone. A burst of dark wind stirred Eowyn’s sweat-soaked hair. She sat on her backside, one arm shielding her bruised ribcage, not trying to rise. She inhaled slowly, relishing the sensation of unrestricted breath, barely hearing Indassa’s soft voice commanding the others to leave.

When they were gone, the Queen extended one delicate, ruby-ringed hand. Eowyn did not take the hand. She stared into Indassa’s frightened young face, trying to find some trace of shame or indecision. There was none. The girl was resolute, utterly sure of her present course. The only thing that was giving Indassa pause at all was the terrible worry that she had alienated Eowyn in a permanent fashion by her actions.

"Why did you keep this from me?" Eowyn asked.

"Because it was only a possibility until tonight," Indassa replied. "I received correspondence from the Queen of the Hunters weeks ago, a letter on my bedchamber pillow."

Eowyn blanched, picturing Morsul in Indassa’s bedchamber. Indassa knelt beside her, biting her bottom lip, watching Eowyn’s face. "She told me Haradoun was trying to woo them with bribes. She has a personal grudge against him as well, I think. Her pride was injured when she was forced to bow to his desires four years ago, fearing the wrath of Mordor if she did not. And I did not tell you, also, because you would have thrown the fit of fits."

"It is a trap, Indassa!"

"Aye," the Queen said softly. "On that we are agreed. Eowyn, in less than one day I will be a widow and my kingdom will be free of the threat---"

"Did you not listen?!" Eowyn shouted, losing all semblance of control. "Haradoun will arrive at the Pass ‘just before dawn’, the monster said. Before first light?! When even full daylight is no real protection against the Hunters in the mountain passes?! They will deliver you into Haradoun’s hands a second time and enslave all those who look to you to protect them!"

"They will deliver Haradoun to me alive!" Indassa screamed back at her. "Their Queen promised me. She promised! I have had four years to decide how best to kill him, Princess of Rohan! I will not let him live another year with the stain of Rhunballa’s blood on his hands! I will not! I will not!" Her voice broke at the end of that strident shout. Her heart-shaped face crumbled. And with it, most of Eowyn’s anger. Black tears were rolling down the girl’s young face leaving her cheeks streaked with coal eye-makeup. The Indassa weeping before her now was not a Queen. She was a wounded child who had lain down every night for four years with the nightmares wrought by Haradoun and awakened every day to the dread that he would come again. The images that conjured in Eowyn’s mind swept away any anger she had left at the suicidally risky alliance the Queen had just forged with the Hunters.

The plight of the frightened, unsure sixteen-year-old Indassa had been two years ago had torn at Eowyn’s heart on their first meeting, laying the framework for a love that was more that of an older sister than a loyal soldier and subject. It had bound Eowyn to this land in a way that even the looming danger of invasion and slaughter of its people could not have achieved. She had seen too much of her younger self in the child Queen---the only father she had ever known slain before her eyes, the sweet and precious first act of love ruined forever by the mauling, greedy hands of a human monster.

"I must kill him, Eowyn!" Indassa sobbed. "Do you not see that I must!?"

"More than you know," Eowyn said. She raised one hand and took the kerchief Indassa was wringing in one of her small hands, using it to wipe away the black tears streaks. She did this in gentle silence, thinking very carefully about what she would say next. Sharadi, Obari and the other women in Queen’s Council were the covert authors of a malicious lie that had begun to surface just after Eowyn’s appointment to Queen’s Guard---the rumor that Eowyn, not Indassa, now ruled Rhunballa. They feared Eowyn had too much influenced their young Queen, these women told their friends and family. The plainest truth was that Eowyn had come to Rhunballa to find the Queen’s Council ruling in the Queen’s stead, berating and badgering the girl into agreeing to their every suggestion at every turn. The Indassa Eowyn had befriended two years ago had been firmly convinced that any decision she made on her own would be dangerous to her kingdom, childishly incompetent. Eowyn’s ‘influence’ upon the Queen had been a slow campaign of encouragement and support that led to Indassa ruling her kingdom and Council in truth rather than in name only. To try now and strong-arm the Queen into changing her mind would make all of Obari’s lies true. At the end of the day, however strongly Eowyn disagreed with the girl’s policies, Indassa must be mistress here.

"Two years ago, my Queen, " Eowyn said finally, "you asked me to build you a standing army to defend your kingdom, and I agreed. One year ago, you gave me the honor of also declaring me Queen’s Guard. I accepted this duty with joy. Part of that duty is that I must always tell you the truth as I see it. I must always be on the lookout for threats against yourself and your people. I cannot approve of feeding mortal men---even evil men---to these creatures of darkness and blood. But you are ruler here, not I. By your command the Watch will form a gauntlet at the mouth of the Southern Pass. But I would ask you, implore you, to grant me one concession in this. We must guard against the bandit before us, but also against the wolf in our fold. A queen must always be wary of treachery, especially when circumstances force her to make deals with murderous beasts such as the Hunters. If the Hunters slay Haradoun’s warriors, well and good. But if they are in league with him---if, I say---we must be prepared to slay both man and beast. Give me leave to guard my warriors and your people against this possibility."

Indassa was silent her face a strained mask of indecision. "What---what will you do?"

"If they keep faith with you? Nothing. But a Captain of soldiers---or a Queen---should prepare for any possibility. We must always have a secondary plan if our initial designs go awry."

Indassa sniffled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "After Poppa---after Poppa died, I read his journals. He wrote in them every day of his reign. Do you know what he wrote only two days before he died? He said that he wished kingship came with a book to study, a manual of sorts like the carpenter’s guild uses. He said after nearly thirty-five years on the throne he still felt as though he were just fuddling along with no idea at all what he was doing most of the time." A last solitary tear slip down one cheek. "I feel like that every day. I---I thought I was being so clever, but---but I had never seen one of the Hunters in the flesh until two nights ago. He—he was charming at first. He did not show himself for what he truly is until tonight. They---they are terrible, Eowyn!"

"Yes," Eowyn agreed heartily, rubbing at her throat where the night thing’s teeth had touched her. She felt dirty all over, but that was nothing compared to the sickened shame of having been helpless and at the mercy of such a creature. By Eorl’s bones, she would kill him for that if it cost her life!

"Do not attack them unless they attack or betray us openly," Indassa said slowly. "If they prove false---do whatever is necessary to save my people."

Eowyn breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She took the other woman’s smaller hands in hers and gripping them reassuringly. "As you command, my Queen."

Eowyn tore open the doors of the Queen’s Guard Watch House, her head whirling with fear and the dark elation that always lay coiled in the pit of her stomach before battle. All conversation halted as she entered the large common room. Seeing the faces arrayed before her, she suddenly remembered that she had called a meeting of the Commanders of every Watch House tonight. She did not stop to wonder at this serendipitous coincidence.

"Gather your Houses, my ladies," she said in a carrying voice. "I am sending a call to arms to every Watch House. Haradoun marches upon Rhunballa. He will reach the South Pass by dawn. All of you, gird yourselves and see to your duties. You each know what they are---we have all drilled for this many times."

There was a moment of complete silence, then the room erupted into an excited babble of voices, everyone tearing in opposite directions toward their preassigned emergency tasks.

"So, it has come at last," Ikako said coolly. The small weapons wright, Eowyn’s second in Queen’s Guard House, was more than a full head shorter than Eowyn but the strength in her powerful smith’s arms could outmatch a man thrice her size. "It is almost a relief."

"It is much better than waiting," Shaeri agreed. The bright-eyed commander of Deep Wells Watch House was grinning openly in anticipation.

"It is wonderful!" Said Somal, Fallah’s young cousin. He was seventeen, and one of the few men of Rhunballa to return from the Battle of Pellennor Fields. "Tonight we will finally have our revenge."

"Or a sword in the belly," Ikako said dryly.

"They are two thousand strong," Eowyn said softly. "The Hunters will do most of the slaying. Or so they say." She lowered her voice further, telling them everything she knew or suspected of the Hunters’ plans. "We must ride for the South Pass in two hours to be in position before dawn. Let me know when the Watch Houses are mustered and have the Commanders of each House decide which apprentices are ready for true battle. Somal, go find your cousin. She will be at her shop in Physician’s Street. Tell Fallah that her hour may have come. Tell her to bring everything she has!"

Eowyn spent another few moments giving out a round of curt organizational commands, sending nearly everyone in the main barracks scattering to opposite ends of the Vale. When they were gone, she passed through the commons hall and moved like a sleepwalker to her own rooms. She untapped the faucet that ran from the Watch House’s water tower to her bath. She stripped gingerly, taking stock of the bruises on her arms and ribs. Nothing felt broken. There was no time for this, but as she stepped naked into the cool water she knew she would fly into a hysterical fit very soon if she did not wash the filth of the Hunter'’ touch from her body now.

She concentrated on bathing methodically, trying hard to think of nothing as she scrubbed the skin raw at the base of her throat where the Hunter’s lips had touched her. It did not remove the twisting horror of being held immobilized in the dead thing’s arms. It had been a very long time since anyone or anything had made her feel so helpless, so defeated. A mad, irrational part of her hoped that her worst suspicions were right---that she and the Watch were walking into a trap. It would mean an end to this parody of an alliance and she would be able to exterminate Morsul and all his brood unhindered. Her fist clenched in reactive rejection of the compromise she had just made with Indassa. Mankind did not fight beside monsters, they slew them!

She rose trembling, toweling her skin and hair dry, trying to think of a better way to rid Rhunballa of Haradoun, a way that did not involve the Hunters. A way that did not leave three quarters of the Watch dead even in victory. There was not one. Even Fallah’s fireworks were untried in battle, a gamble at best. She did not rebraid her hair in the Eastern manner, but instead, bound it up and back in the high horse’s tail the Riders of her homeland wore. She stared at herself in the full-length mirror, her face pensive.

Jabri the Glassblower had given her the mirror in thanks for ejecting a gaggle of brawling Laketown and Sabadi Tradesmen from her shop before they destroyed it. No one born in Rhunballa gave it any thought at all, but to Eowyn’s mind, it was diabolically practical that the Hunters allowed Trade Caravans to come and go as they would, always ferreting out the imposters. Until that incident six months ago. Had the Hunters been curious about the Watch, Eowyn wondered? Had they let that small band of Haradrim through, pretending to be fooled by their stolen Caravan wagons, in order to test the effectiveness of the Watch in true battle?

The men of Sabad, Laketown and the cities south of the Rhun Sea came twice a year to buy and sell. Sometimes these visits would overlap and then the occasional fistfight would break out. Eowyn smiled wryly. Almost all of these fights were centered around who thought himself the biggest cock in the hen house, so to speak. The Tradesmen always came to Rhunballa, a city bereft of its men, thinking to find themselves surrounded by desperate, love-starved women who would leap upon them the instant they alighted from their wagons and drag them off the bedchamber.

Actually, in truth, a fair amount of that sort of thing did happen. In the two years she had dwelt in the Vale of Hundred Springs Eowyn had noticed many of these caravaners found the climate so hospitable that they settled in to stay, having their pick of literally hundreds of eager widows and maids when they chose to wed. The men of the East and the Rhun Sea did well here, but Eowyn privately suspected that within one generation the mixing pot of ethnicity and skin-tones of the common folk of Rhunballa would receive a strong infusion of Laketown blood. The fair-skinned sons of Laketown had never heard of veils or latticed harem windows. They did not wish their women to walk a pace behind them on the way to market. They took only one wife. All these things had made them very, very popular with the younger women of Rhunballa.

In the first bitter year that followed the War of the Ring, the women of the Defiant City had mourned their men with unnumbered tears. But as the deepest grief of that first terrible year began to ease with the passage of time, a strange thing had happened. They put away their veils and donned their husband’s trades and offices. They yoked the oxen themselves and plowed their own fields, bought and sold with the copper and silver they had earned with their own hands. They managed their homes and little shops without asking advice or permission from the men they had loved so dearly. And slowly, they had come to the collective realization that every facet of their lives was now in their own hands. Their fortunes no longer turned on the whim of father, husband or brother. A few of the older women, especially those of the ruling classes---families of pure Haradrim descent all---mourned this state of affairs. They spoke eloquently in Queen’s Council of how this would lead to the destruction of the natural family unit and common decency in general. But for the most part, in the hearts and minds of the young women of Rhunballa, a new day had dawned.

There was so much good in this little kingdom, so much potential for greatness. Eowyn could not, would not, let it be destroyed by Haradoun or the Hunters.

She shivered, standing naked before the mirror, as she drew a roll of bandage rags from a cupboard beside the bath and began binding her bruised ribs. The feel of the cold creature shoving himself inside her mind was going to bring on a fresh spate of dreams, she was sure. It had been nearly two years now that she had been sleeping every night through, her rest untroubled by nightmares of the past. The thought of lying down to dream again of Grima Wormtongue after so long made her eyes burn as though she had rubbed soap in them.

It was the closest she could come to tears. She had not been able to weep at all in more than four years.

She finished wrapping up her ribs, eyeing herself critically as she pulled on clean, wide-legged cotton trousers, reaching for her jerkin and black tunic, wondering what she had done with her knee guards. The rest of her leathers and light mail was somewhere at the foot of her bed.

She was still willow-slim, though perhaps her breasts had filled out a bit.

She knew that the last four years had given her the weight of added strength. Her arms, back and thighs hid the cut of muscle until she flexed. She was tall, and so, had not been forced to sacrifice what most men deemed a feminine frame for strength as tiny Ikako had. But then Eowyn was not a weapons wright either. Eowyn’s face had altered little, though perhaps baby roundness had faded away to reveal her cheekbones more prominently. If anything, she looked younger now at seven and twenty than she had before her flight from Minas Tirith as everything she had ever known. Her face was more relaxed. There were no lines and shadows beneath her eyes born of sleeplessness.

She drew one finger across the two angry red marks at her jugular where the Hunter’s teeth had scraped the skin. Eomer and Theoden had kissed her cheek and forehead, both embracing her with loving words as they left to ride to war, not knowing that she would be riding with them. Her father, a gruff, kind-faced, distant memory, had kissed her and told her to be good before he had left to meet his end in Emyn Muil. The only other time in all her life she had felt the touch of a man’s lips had been the night of Grima’s dreamspell. Wormtongue and now this night creature---the only two men not of her own blood to have kissed her. Merciful Eru, she did not want to die never having known anything else! Never having taken joy in a man’s arms.

She stood straight before the mirror, fully clothed and girded for battle, hardening her face. The sad, vulnerable expression she had worn a moment before would not do at all. She could hear Fallah’s voice in the outer barracks room, telling her cousin to keep his torch away from the contents of the two drums he was carrying unless he wanted to be blown half a league into the air. Whatever she had brought stank of sulfur and burning coal.

It was time to go out and organize the Watch House muster. Win or lose, she had the chill premonition that everything in her world was about to change. Again. She took a slow, deep breath and turned away from her reflection, striding forward to face her future headon.

"---and he was tall and pale white as a young sycamore tree!" Shaeri was saying audibly somewhere in the darkness nearby. "Though not nearly as wide."

Suni Gau’s daughter, commander of the Bent Bow Watch House, chuckled from where she knelt a few feet to Eowyn’s right. "Was that the one you likened to a spring stallion, saying he was want to buck?"

Rude snickers from all around. Somal’s cream-in-carob complexion was flaming red with embarrassment. It was sometimes hard on the youngster to be one of only five men in all the Watch. Eowyn had been raised around fighting men. She had grown up hearing, if only peripherally, the kind of unseemly stories men tell one another as they wait to kill or die on their lord’s command. The Watch of Rhunballa put them all to shame.

Beside Somal, Fallah continued industriously adding heaping spoonfuls of black burning powder to the rocket her cousin was holding, muttering to herself about increased blast radius’.

They were nearly nine hundred strong, now. Still far too few to turn back a full out assault from Harad, Eowyn knew. But Fallah’s contraptions might be effective equalizers if the worst happened. Eowyn only hoped it would be enough. The entrance to the Pass was only thirty yards across and the cliffs were high and sheer on either side. The Watch was fanned out before the bottleneck, dug in behind thick man-high metal shields the apprentice cots used for sword practice and every large rock they could find. This close the red clay and granite mountains of Dhak-Ral large rocks were plentiful.

On Eowyn’s left, Fallah was giving Somal explicit instructions on what to do, and more importantly, what not to do if he did not wish to burn both his hands off should there be need of the fireworks tube she had given him.

"I heard you the first time!" He said grumpily. "I am a man now, you know. You should not treat your only living kinsman with so little respect. I am not stupid!"

"No," she said firmly. "You are not stupid, Sommi---you are precious to me. And what you hold in your hands could kill you as easily as our enemies if you do not respect how dangerous it is."

"Humph!" He grunted something unhappy about uppity women, before glancing around to see if anyone else had heard that comment. It would go ill for him at the next training session if they had. "I have always wondered what a skylighter would do if you aimed it at the ground rather than the heavens," he said after a moment’s thought.

"It makes a very large hole," Eowyn told him.

"Sommi has the last of them," Fallah told her, sitting beside Eowyn, in the shelter of a great shale rock. "I think everyone who has a tube knows more or less how to use them. On your command they will fire if it becomes necessary."

"Let us hope that it does not," Eowyn said fervently. "Let everyone be silent!" she commanded. "First light draws nigh."

They waited.

The stars overhead began to fade slowly. The sky lightened ever-so-slightly, heralding dawn. The night had cooled off considerably, and with the cool air had come the fog that seemed to cling to the mountains around this valley like a second skin. It was thick, effectively obscuring their view of the Pass even from fifty yards away. Everything echoed eerily. Sound carried too well here, rebounding to the Pass walls and back again, making it difficult to discerned who was where. Oh, Eru, this was a recipe for disaster if anything at all went amiss!

When the noise began, it was very like the distant cry of a flock of birds, singing to greet the coming morn. The sound grew steadily louder, more distinct. It was not the sound of birds or anything that remotely resembled song. It was the noise of dozens---no, hundreds---of men and horses screaming in mortal terror. And it was coming closer.

"Stand ready!" Eowyn snapped, feeling rather than hearing fear gathering around her, infecting the others.

The sound went on and on. Eowyn felt her mouth run dry of spit as she listened, envisioning what must be happening to the men in those dark granite corridors. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she thought she could hear the kindling wood snap of cracking bones and the wet tearing noise of rent flesh.

"Suni!" She shouted. "Ready your archers! They are getting closer. Some of them may reach the bottleneck!"

A light was approaching, brilliant even around the bend of the inner pass’s corridor. The rumbling sound of many hooves tearing toward them.

"Stay in the light!" A man’s voice was shrieking, his terrified voice thick with the guttural accents of Far Harad. "Follow it out of this death maze! They fear the light!"

"Swords!" Eowyn shouted. "Everyone except the fireworks brigade!"

Eowyn drew her own blade. They were many by the sound of their hooves. Too many! Suni’s archers bent their bows.

The light-bearer’s horse rounded the last bend of the inner Pass’s twisting path and came galloping toward them. He rode out of the black maw of the South Pass, holding something aloft in one hand that was bright and blazing like a star fallen to earth. Perhaps three score men were gathered close around him, huddled inside the protective light. Another hundred surrounded them, but they---

Oh, Elbereth! The men not directly inside the light were being plucked off their horses even after they cleared the pass. Black streaks of movement, the blurring impression of batlike wings, fell upon them from above. Hooked talons sank into human flesh, dragging them shrieking into the darkness.

"Form a ring inside the halo, lads!" A gruff man’s voice bellowed. Eowyn had one instant of shock to realize that this speaker was not Haradrim. Was his accent Westron? It sounded strange, almost familiar.

Then a man came tearing toward her, sword drawn, and she met him with the point of her blade. A second man dodged around her and kept running. The Haradrim were not interested in fighting, not even expecting to meet mortal warriors as they scrambled blindly away from the maw of the Pass. They were thinking of nothing more than saving their own skins. From all sides now Eowyn could hear the deadly song of steel against steel.

Another soldier leapt forward, his dark hair matted, his bloody face blanched. She parried his wild swing and their blades clashed. She stared into his face. His eyes were as blue as her own. An instant later, something whipped out of the dark fog and swept him upward into the air, screaming. She stared at the space where he had stood, horrified. He was gone. His broken buckler lay on the ground, the only evidence that he had been there at all.

It bore the crest of the White Tree of Gondor.

Oh, Lady of Light---

In the same instant, Eowyn heard Suni’s voice cry the command to her archers to fire.

Horses screamed, and the men sheltering inside the candle of light screamed also as the arrows struck home. The burning torch of silver light fell to earth, but it did not go gutter or dim.

"Stand firm!" A young man’s clear voice, like a ringing bell, called out. "Do not fear! The sun is rising!"

"Shaeri! Shaeri!" Somal screamed suddenly. "She is gone! Eowyn, something---something took her from right beside me!"

"Shushila! Matta!" A girl’s voice was crying. "Where are you?!"

"They are killing the Watch!" Ikako shouted, her voice disembodied in the soup-thick fog. "Eowyn! The Hunters are taking the Watch! We are betrayed!"

"Fireworks!" Eowyn called. "Pass the command down the line! Fire! Fire straight into the air!"

Another man came at her, this one a son of Harad. He threw his sword at her feet, sobbing like a small boy. "Kill me! Kill me, woman! Do not let the Dhak-dir take me!"

She struck him with the hilt of her sword, knocking him senseless, cursing Haradoun of Harad, the Hunters, Indassa and her own foolishness. Gondorian soldiers! What in the names of all the Valar where Gondorian soldiers doing riding with---?!

The first of the fireworks rockets went soaring upward in a blazing arc. It exploded in a shower of heat and light that scalded the skin on Eowyn’s face even from a hundred feet above. The airburst sent burning debris downward in a black, charred shower. In spite of the screams and smoke and death all around her Eowyn smiled grimly when she saw what fell back to earth. The flame-wreathed shapes of Hunters, shrieking like damned souls trapped in the endless night outside of creation, spun downward, writhing and clawing at thin air. The old legends Fallah’s fathers told about the Hunters were right. They burned like rice paper when set afire. Everywhere Fallah’s rocket tubes were firing, setting the sky alight.

"Take the survivors alive!" Eowyn shouted to Suni and Ikako. "Pass the command along!"

She turned and saw Somal, who was still kneeling beside his skylighter tube, holding his flint in shaking hands. He lit the wick fuse an instant before a running man stumbled over him, knocking the tube from his hands. As it fell forward, it launched, straight into the knot of men fifty yards away who were crowded back to back within the lighthouse blaze of whatever holy thing they bore that was glowing so fiercely, warding off the Hunters. It struck dead center of their band, and it showed them as little mercy as the other rockets had shown the Hunters.

Eowyn began running across the open expanse of ground toward the group of men. Bright shafts of morning light were shooting over the Eastern peaks behind them, falling on her face like salvation. Above her, Eowyn could see open pools of brightening blue where Fallah’s skylighters had literally blown away the fog, letting the morning shine through. And just like that, the surviving Hunters were gone, retreating for the moment into the shadowed corridors of the Pass. On all sides of her she could see the Haradrim falling on their faces before the Watch in thanks for rescue, surrendering. The handful of Gondorian warriors, whom she could distinguish clearly now in the waxing light, had sheathed their weapons. They were all running toward the smoking clump of men and horses where Somal’s rocket had struck. She knew, somehow just knew, that the majority of those who had been sheltering in the light of that brilliant protective halo had been men of Gondor, not Haradrim.

She stumbled to a stop, staring around at what was left of them. A man in the arms of Gondor halted at her shoulder. He stood dazedly beating out the smoke from his smoldering cloak. Had he been thrown clear by the blast. They stood side by side a moment in silent horror. Eowyn remembered again the fearful image she had conjured only yesterday of what one of Fallah’s weapons would do to a company of men and horses. No imagined horror could have prepared her for the reality. She pressed one hand to her mouth to keep from retching.

"We did this," she whispered. "I did this."

"I saw that running Haradrim bowl the lad over just before he fired his---his fire arrow, boy," the tall, gray-eyed man beside her said grimly. It was so strange how trousers and light armor could make most men think they were looking at a boy rather than a woman. "This was an accident. But your soldiers have attacked and slain mine. That was not an accident."

"It was not," Eowyn agreed. She clenched her fists at her sides to stop her hands from shaking. "I am---" Eowyn paused, her eyes stinging. What could she possibly say to this man, this Captain of Gondor by his garments, as he stood gazing around him in numb shock at the—the pieces that were left of his men? "I am Captain of the Rhunballani Watch, defenders of this kingdom. We came here today to kill an invasion force of Haradrim."

He did not seem surprised by her words. Or perhaps he was beyond anything as prosaic of surprise at the moment.

"I am Hurin son of Magron of Gondor," he said quietly, carefully. "I do not yet fully understand what has happened here this morn, but I do know that if not for your fire weapons we would all be dead now."

She had been a fool! A criminally incompetent fool to style herself a general, fit to lead soldiers into full-out battle. All that passes in battle, Theoden had taught her---victory and defeat, accidents and good fortune---is the pride of fault of the one who commands the field. And here stood this honorable man, ready to grant her absolution over the bodies of his own when her hands were stained red with their blood.

A weak moan rose up from somewhere amid the rubble of charred earth and human remains. They tracked the sound, finding its source, and pulled away the burning body of a large Haradrim warrior to reveal a man who appeared to be dazed but, otherwise, nearly untouched.

"There will be others alive underneath the topmost bodies," the gray-eyed man said.

"Here is another!" A voice called. "Nay---here are two more, Lord Hurin!"

Suddenly there were groans from all around, muffled and full of pain. But alive! Eowyn knelt and shifted a dead man’s body off a pair of moving legs. Her throat tightened, her breath caught in her throat, as she saw he was not burned at all. But he had an arrow with the green fletching of Bent Bow Watch House buried in his belly.

"Unhand me, you giant ox!" Fallah was shouting angrily at the tall soldier blocking her path to the smoking pile of wounded men. Her pretty face was filthy, her spectacles broken and askew. She eyes as she surveyed the damage her handiwork had carved in human flesh were as horrorstruck and guilt ridden as Eowyn’s.

"My Lord!" The soldier said. "This Southron woman says she is a Healer."

"Bring her quickly then!" Hurin said.

Together, the three of them eased the man with the arrow wound away from the burning epicenter of the blast. Fallah began rummaging inside her physician’s bag, issuing orders to the young soldier who had barred her way a moment before in the same elder sister’s tone she used with Somal.

Eowyn followed Hurin back to search for more survivors. The Gondorian Lord’s face was drawn, hard as expressionless stone. It was a look Eowyn recognized, the face of a fighting man who is struggling not to break down and sob for the loss of men he loved like brothers. Eowyn wondered how many women of the Watch the Hunters had taken, how many had fallen to the sword tonight. She wondered if the expression on her face matched Hurin’s.

"Halt!" Cried one of the Hurin’s men.

Eowyn saw now that the Watch was approaching them from all sides now. Some were rallying by instinct to this place simply because Eowyn was here. Others were carrying their own wounded. The soldier who had called halt rose stood from where he had been kneeling beside the dying man with the stomach wound, his young face terrible with grief. The handful of other Gondorian warriors gathered at his side, their hands on their sword hilts. Hurin was regarding the Watch with the grim intensity of a man who wonders how many of the enemy he can kill before they pull him down.

Eowyn touched his arm in a wordless warning as she saw Suni and Ikako warily advancing upon the makeshift little field surgery. They were flanked by the full complement of both their Watch Houses. Eowyn sent up a silent prayer of thanks for Ikako’s cool head, seeing their swords were sheathed, their bows lowered.

"Let them come," she told Hurin quietly. "They are under my command." He stared at her a moment, his face searching hers. "We have slain your men with sword, fire and arrow thinking them Haradrim invaders. Let there be no more bloodshed between us until we have spoken and understand better what happened here today."

He held her eyes a moment longer. Then he nodded curtly. "Let them come!" He called out to the dozen soldiers of Gondor who risen dazed and blistered from the blast, but otherwise unharmed.

"Girls," one of Hurin’s men said as the Watch drew closer. "They are all women!"

Hurin frowned at her in surprise, his mind finally accepting what his eyes had been telling him all along.

"Four years ago," Eowyn said loud enough for the other men to hear, "Haradoun of Harad conscripted every man of Rhunballa old enough to hold a sword. Almost all of them fell at Pellennor Fields. He has tried repeatedly since the fall of Mordor to retake this country for his own. Because of him, there are none left but women to defend this land."

She heard rather than saw the words strike home. However these men had come to ride with the Emperor of Harad’s little army of conquerors, this was not the story they had been told.

"My Captain," Ikako said formally, laying one hand over her heart in salute. She was eyeing Hurin distrustfully, her gaze like flint. "We took a dozen of the Haradrim alive and another four of the Westrons. What shall be done with them?"

"Bind the Haradrim," Eowyn said. "Indassa will decide their fates. How many are fallen?"

"Eighteen are wounded," Ikako replied. "None were killed outright,

but---there are nearly twenty who are simply missing."

"Twenty," Eowyn repeated thickly.

"It would have been much, much worse without Fallah’s fireworks," Suni said. She eyed Hurin pointedly. "What shall be done with the Westrons?"

"My Lord," Eowyn turned back to Hurin. "The Queen of Rhunballa will have many questions for you---not the least of which is what lie Haradoun could have spun to have beguiled soldiers of King Elessar to march at his side a hundred and fifty leagues from the borders of Gondor."

"Beguiled is an apt word, my Lady," Hurin answered grimly. He bowed formally and unbuckled his sword, laying it in her hands. "I will answer your Queen’s questions. Until that time, I commit myself and my men into your custody. But I would ask you to allow my men to care for their wounded."

"Of course," Eowyn replied. "Do not bind the men of Gondor," she commanded. "We have the oath of their captain that they will not attempt for escape. For the moment, let us all work together to care for the wounded."

A little ways away, Fallah was already barking orders at two tall sons of Numenor, arranging the growing count of survivors by severity of their hurts.

"Eowyn!" Somal came pelted up, his young face strained but full of joy. "Shaeri is alive! Her leg is broken, though. Insis’ rocket knocked the Hunter who took her out of the air. But she lives!"

"Eowyn?" Hurin repeated softly.

"Eowyn, sister to the King of Rohan?" Exclaimed one of Hurin’s men. "The Eowyn who slew the Lord of the---?!"

"Marsil!" Hurin said sharply, though he seemed as amazed and the young soldier in his own quiet way. "This is not the time."

"Bring all the wounded here to Fallah and Somal," Eowyn told Suni and Ikako. "We must treat everyone as quickly as we may and get them ready to move." She caught the veiled fear in their eyes and saw they had read her thought before she spoke it aloud. "Daylight will not last forever."

Out of duty and guilty sorrow, Eowyn stayed with Hurin’s men, picking through the Gondorian victims of the errant rocket for living men. It was not as bad as it could have been. Only the outer ring of the soldiers facing the rocket had been---Eowyn swallowed, tasting ashes---had been blown to pieces. The men on the edge of the circle had sheltered the others from the blast. For every burning body they overturned, a live man lay beneath. Thanks be to the Valar for small favors.

"I am not injured, boy!" A deep, rolling voice bellowed suddenly. "Do not bid me lay down again! If you want to help me, help find my friend. He was in the center of the circle, holding the light, so he’s very likely squashed at the bottom of the pile!"

An icy hand of recognition shivered down Eowyn’s spine.

She knew who she would see before her eyes found him. Like a sleepwalker, she moved forward, feeling curiously out of sync with time. It was the sense of her first life about to overlap with her second. The past she had outrun for four years come to call at last.

"Master Gimli!" She said in a remarkably normal voice.

The Dwarf batted away the hand of the earnest young soldier who was trying to help him stand, and squinted furiously. Eowyn bent and used the tail of her own cloak to wipe the blood from his eyes. It was streaming from a deep, ugly gash on his forehead.

He peered up at her in abject shock, not rejecting her gentle hand as she pressed the folded hem of her cloak to his brow to stem the bloodflow.

"Lass?" He asked softly. "Eowyn of Rohan?" Then his bloody face split into a broad, full grin and he gripped her hands and roared, "What in the name of Aule’s Bronze Breechcloth are you doing here, girl?!"

"I---" She had no idea where to begin if she meant to frame a coherent answer. "I am defending this kingdom against the Haradrim," she said stupidly.

"You are---!?

"My Lord Gimli!" Hurin cried urgently. The Gondorian captain was lifting another limp form from the ashes of the human wreckage around them. The entire back half of the man’s body was scorched black and smoking.

"Lay him face-down," Fallah said urgently. "We must cut those leathers from him before they melt against his skin! And the mail shirt also! It is blistering hot!"

Gimli gave a wordless moan of dread and ran to help them ease the smoking figure gently to the ground. Marsil eased off the mail link shirt and Fallah began cutting through the clothing on his back, peeling it away. Eowyn watched and her chest cinched up as she saw there was also a Rhunballani arrow protruding from his thigh.

"Don’t you die on me, lad!" Gimli was saying fiercely. "Don’t you dare!"

As Fallah cut him out of his leather jerkin, the fallen warrior’s hair fell off with it, singed off below the nape of his neck. It was burnt, too, still smoldering, like a handful of gold strands new from the smithy. Even ruined, it was still beautiful, Eowyn though numbly as she sank down beside Gimli. The Dwarf reached out and took his friend’s arm, gently removing the large crystal orb clenched in the limp hand. The orb was still glowing faintly, dimming in the waxing daylight, as though a tiny flame was guttering out at its center.

Eowyn took a swath of one of Fallah’s bandage rolls and wiped the soot from the bloody, unconscious face of Legolas of Mirkwood with shaking hands.

My fault, my fault, the terrible litany sang through her mind. All my fault!