Boromir’s Eyes

Pippin ran. "Frodo! Hoy, Frodo!" His and Merry’s voices rang out clearly in the woods.

Pippin’s mind was racing faster than his feet. Something was wrong, quite wrong, with Boromir and, he reasoned, with Frodo as well. Boromir had come back to the group with an odd feeling about him. Frodo, even more oddly, hadn’t come back at all.

"Frodo! Frodo!"

"Frodo, . . . it’s Merry and Pippin! . . . Don’t run . . . from us. Frodo!" The words Merry yelled were as choppy as his breathing. They both kept running.

Sam said he thought Frodo would try to leave them, go to Mordor alone as he thought he would when he left the Shire. Pippin snorted a bit. "And they call me a fool, " he thought to himself. "What could be more foolish, at this point in the Quest, than to run off alone?"

"Frodo! Bull-headed Baggins! Get back here!" Pippin hollered, but not as loudly as before. He was beginning to get winded.

Pippin was thinking, "What if Frodo runs into Orcs?" just as he and Merry collided with a group of those very creatures.

He and Merry drew their swords. Pippin was too stunned to do much, his arms and legs felt heavy, his movements felt slow. But Merry was doing well, lopping off several orc hands and arms. "Odd," Pippin’s thoughts were flying through his brain, seeming to be working better than his body, "they aren’t using their weapons on us." With a crash Boromir came upon the scene. Orc heads flew in several directions before the surviving orcs ran off in a panic. Boromir nodded to Merry and Pippin. In silence they started back towards the camp.

"Why? What? Where?" The words chased each other around in Pippin’s head. "Why did you come back alone, Boromir? What happened, Boromir? Where is Frodo?" Pippin said nothing aloud. There would be time to ask later. Later when they were away from this place and safe from the orcs.

Something whizzed past Pippin’s right ear. Another flew past his left ear. Arrows. Black arrows. Orc arrows. But as before, they didn’t seem to want to harm the hobbits. Every arrow was aimed at Boromir. A sudden blast hit Pippin’s ears and his hands flew up to cover them. The sound of Boromir’s horn shook the woods with it’s urgent cry. Again, the orcs fell back.

The blasts ceased. The echos floated back to the man and the hobbits. In those few moments, Boromir’s and Pippin’s eyes met. A sharp gasp escaped the young hobbit as the orcs, seeing no army responding to the horn blasts, renewed their attack. In that brief moment Pippin saw many things in his friend’s eyes. Sorrow, deep pain, guilt. But what had brought him up sharp, caused him to gasp, was the pleading. Boromir was begging his forgiveness. "Why? What? Where?" Pippin now knew the answers, then suddenly, Pippin knew no more.