Strange Stars

The land boiled in the high heat of summer – the dog days indeed, but the dogs would not have been able to tolerate the heat.

It seemed to radiate off the sand, rising upwards in shimmering columns, and the sands – sands in which an inexperienced traveller could so easily lose their path – blew over the little patches of scrub fiercely.

But they entered not into a tiny cave, one set deep in the rock-face, and it was in this cave that a weary traveller sat, listening intently to the sounds of the desert in a fierce bid to seek out anything unnatural.

Not that he would recognise a strange sound. He was not experienced enough in the ways of the desert, and he knew that even if there were intruders about to come upon him from the sands without, he would very likely not be able to tell the sound of their footfall from the sounds of the small burrowing animals that survived the fierce heat.

A month, he thought. Only a month it is since I left Gondor.

It feels like an Age.

But it was only a month, after all, since Thorongil had given up his post, his rank, everything that he had done for fifteen years, and headed East.

The East stood for barbarism; for evil and for darkness. That was what those in Gondor said, and they turned their faces and minds from Harad and Rhûn, and all that might lie beyond them.

But Harad was not only filled with liars and with slaves, reflected Aragorn. They were here, true; but liars were present everywhere, in some measure or another, and the average man was not as the portrayals in the North said; perhaps distrustful of strangers, yes, but equally distrustful of the Shadow in the East, unwilling to go to war for no just cause, and ever proud, stressing the importance of rank and of honour.

Rank and honour.

The Corsairs had not cared for honour; nay, only for vengeance, whether by fair or foul means, and yet they were descended from the supposedly 'civilized' men of Gondor.

And Aragorn had slain the four that followed him, and left them to be covered by the shifting dunes.

Perhaps, after all, there was more in the Haradrim than he had first thought, and not all of it bad.

Or perhaps not all in Gondor was good.

Perhaps.

-----

The desert was a place for contemplation, for quiet solitude and eloquent remembrance. A man could love it, hate it, or be driven to insanity by it; it was a place where despondency was quick to fall, but yet it was beloved of some.

It was easy to die in the desert. Oh, yes, it was all too easy to give up hope, and let the sands claim your water.

And even those who did not give up could yet die; for what is the point in hoping, when you have no water to make your hopes believable?

-----

Andir bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, and stumbled slightly in the shifting sand.

His dark hair was in wild disarray, and fell over his brow; his fierce black eyes glinted behind it, like the shimmer of jewels through a curtain.

Well he remembered the day the Overlord's messenger had ridden up, proud and imperious on a fine black horse, and demanded service, service for Sauron the Great and Terrible.

He remembered everything - the way his friends had willingly gone, proud to be a part of 'our Lord's great cause', the way his sister had wept, because her betrothed was leaving her, and the look his father had given him, the proud, trusting look of a parent who knows that his son will live up to his expectations.

And Andir had defied that look, and refused to go, and he had run away. 

Without honour, without care.

He did not even know whether he had been wise or not. Sometimes he thought he had been, not to enter the service of one who would only bring more pain; but sometimes he remembered his father’s face, and wished that he had gone, if only to see his father’s joy.

And now he thought that it might have been better than starving to death in the desert.

Nobody survived alone in the desert. Nobody at all, save the quick lizards and the night-foxes, creatures that hid in sand by day, and had more sense than the foolish Men who walked, and burnt their feet, and died for want of water.

Andir struggled, and slipped again, and he thought of the messenger’s eyes. They haunted him, fierce black hawk-eyes that coerced, and beguiled, and finally demanded and forced, when coercion had outlived its purpose.

It was the eyes that had convinced him, told him that to offer his service would be wrong.

The black-stone eyes.