Note: Title from "The Mewlips", The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter I: Wasted Years

The afternoon sun was not especially warm, but it was kind, bathing the dappled glade in a gentle golden glow. Huddled in a patch of sunlight, Aragorn son of Arathorn sat swathed in Gandalf's cloak. His own garments were scattered about, draped over stones and hanging from branches in the hope that they would dry sufficiently by morning that the mud could be beaten out of them. The wizard himself was gathering kindling, having declared, quite rightly, that the cloak and tunic had no chance of drying unassisted. He had added that the temperature would surely drop precipitously after sundown, and he did not fancy hauling a frozen corpse hundreds of miles to Rivendell.

Aragorn was tired of watching his friend work, and so he stared at his bare feet where they poked out from under the tent of grey wool. He wiggled the toes of his left, disturbing the dry dusting of fallen leaves. The cool air felt soothing around appendages ordinarily entombed in layer upon layer of cloth and leather. He stared with empty eyes at the blackened nail of his right great toe, wondering absently how and when he had managed to injure it thus. There was a thick, venerable callous at the base of the toe: he had had that for as long as he could recall. His eyes followed a long, curling scar that wrapped around the top of his foot. It was a memento of his last foray into the shadows of the East. Now, as their search wore on, it was growing increasingly probable that he would once more be walking into darkness and peril. At least this time he would not go alone.

'You ought to do something about your hair,' Gandalf remarked, depositing an armload of fuel on the ground and easing himself onto a nearby stone. 'You look like a drowned cat.'

'Thank you. You're very kind.' Aragorn rounded his shoulders as a tickling gust of wind sent a chill through his trunk. 'Perhaps next time you would prefer to search the wetlands whilst I take the high ground.'

'Next time...' Gandalf muttered dourly, busying himself with scraping out a hollow to vent the fire. 'Did you find anything at all?'

Aragorn shook his head, and the straggling tangles of grimy hair tugged at his neck. 'There was an island of shale in the midst of the mire, which struck me as a perfect hiding-place, but if ever he was there he abandoned it long ago. There were pits in the loam as if something had once rooted there for grubs, but they might just as easily have been the work of an animal: the rains of at least two seasons have worn them smooth. I saw nothing else: no sign of shelter, no bones or offal or any hint of habitation.'

'And for that you went crawling through miles of swamp muck?' said Gandalf. He picked up one of Aragorn's cast-off boots and studied the shower of grimy water that fell from it. The sight seemed to fill him with anger. He dropped the boot and set about wrathfully laying the framework of his fire.

'Were your efforts at all fruitful?' Aragorn asked warily, cautious of his friend's formidable temper, but needing a reply despite the knowledge that it would not be comforting.

'No!' Gandalf slammed his fist against his knee and his head bolted forward. His shoulders heaved in a sharp exhalation of fury. 'No,' he grunted, kneading his temple with the knuckles of his left hand. 'Nothing. I searched every cave and cranny that I could find: there are no signs of the hateful creature.'

Aragorn tugged the cloak more snugly about his shoulders. 'It was a thin hope,' he reasoned. 'We had only a rumour, a disjointed tale of some shadow in these hills. After all the false trails we have followed it was perhaps ridiculous to anticipate any other result.'

Gandalf snorted and set to work with his flint and steel. He worked with such vigour that the sparks flew in every direction.

'You will never catch a light like that,' said Aragorn, somewhat shocked at his own bravado. Ordinarily it was most unwise to press Gandalf when he was this enraged, but the frustration was only natural – and indeed Aragorn could not help but share it. It would be better for them both if the wizard released some of it now, and though Aragorn would have preferred to do the baiting when fully clad and well-armed, he reminded himself that he was not afraid of his friend. Not terribly afraid, anyhow.

'Very well: you do it!' Gandalf snapped, flinging the flint. Aragorn closed his eyes, flinching reflexively as it glanced sharply off of his shin. He favoured his friend with a long, level look. Gandalf ground his teeth and hoisted himself onto his feet, stomping over to collect his tool. 'Never mind. Sit there and try to dry out. And keep your arms covered. The last thing we need is for you to take sick from the chill.'

'I am not so cold as all that,' Aragron assured him. 'Now that I'm out of those wet things I feel like a new man.'

Gandalf scowled blackly at him. 'Are you truly so unaffected, or are you trying to anger me?' he demanded.

'Why should I be affected?' Aragorn asked, moving further into danger. 'It is only a little mud.'

'Only a little mud, bah!' the wizard grunted. 'Elrond himself would not have recognized you.'

Aragorn shrugged his shoulders and the borrowed cloak tugged at his knees. 'I have wallowed in worse,' he said simply.

Gandalf cast him another withering glare and turned his attention back to the fire, feeding his sparks first with dry grass, then with leaves, and at last with small sticks of kindling. When the first branch began to catch he sat back with a disgruntled huff. 'There,' he said grimly. 'If it brings goblin-hordes down upon us, then so be it.'

It seemed that the fit of choler had passed, and so Aragorn attempted to ease the last of the tension. 'Had I known you would insist upon a fire, I should have taken the time to snare us something fresh for supper,' he said by way of conversation. 'Our stores are running low.'

Gandalf reached for his pack and rummaged inside. 'Our stores are all but depleted,' he corrected heavily. 'Unless you are carrying some secret cache about which I know nothing.'

Aragorn shook his head. 'It seems, then, that I ought to hunt after all,' he said, shifting to get his legs under him. He was about to rise when Gandalf fixed him with a most imperious glower. The Ranger affected an expression of injured innocence. 'Unless you wish to starve,' he offered.

'If there is any hunting to be done, I will do it,' Gandalf told him.

'It would take you twice as long as it will take me,' Aragorn argued, trying for levity but falling short of the mark; 'and like as not you would return with inferior game.'

'So instead you will go charging off into the underbrush of Harondor – wearing what, precisely? Sodden body linen and an impudent grin? Sit still, keep near the fire—'

'And guard my clothes,' Aragorn said with a cynical curl of his lip. Any attempt to lighten the mood was forgotten, and he bit back irately in response to Gandalf's obdurate refusal to shake off his gloominess. His patience, too, was worn thin, and he could not endure this unwonted condescension. 'Shall I say meekly "yes, master", and do as I am told? I am not your pupil any longer, Gandalf the Grey, and it behoves you not to treat me as such.'

'And it behoves you to show some measure of common sense!' the wizard snapped. 'Swimming through a mire to explore a deserted isle in its midst, when in all probability the creature was never there—'

'We do not know that!' Aragorn exclaimed, his own anger mounting. 'All of our intelligence indicates that he dwelt long in these lands, and I have searched hundreds of such places these last years! We agreed to part company to look for him, and look I did. If you think me so inept then I suggest you find some other unfortunate to accompany you on your endless quest!'

'Do not forget that it was you, O mighty huntsman, who proposed this search in the first place!' barked Gandalf. 'Fifteen years we have laboured, and for naught! Where was the doughty captain of the Rangers when I had need of him? Where were his skills in tracking and in the chase where this quest is concerned? How came you to fail me in my hour of need? I am well-equipped to accomplish nothing, without any assistance from you!'

Aragorn's eyes widened and his jaw grew slack. One foot slipped against the leaves and his knee fell to earth as the ankle curled behind its mate. He stared at his friend, utterly unable to speak.

When the expected rebuttal did not come, Gandalf seemed to return to his senses. A look of profound weariness swelled forward to quench the fire in his eyes. 'I am sorry,' he murmured. 'Those words were undeserved.'

'Not entirely,' Aragorn said softly. 'I have felt keenly that failure. I admit that I had hoped that these last whispers might bear fruit. Now that it is plain they will not, it seems we are swiftly running out of places to look.'

'We will never find the creature,' Gandalf snarled bleakly. 'It has been too long; he has roamed too far. Mayhap he is deep in the South. Mayhap he is dead. Mayhap he was never here at all.'

'He was here,' Aragorn argued. His shoulders slumped wearily. 'Long ago.'

Gandalf bowed over his lap and buried his head in his hands. Silence enveloped the glade. Aragorn waited, but he could feel the despair oozing like a poison from his friend. The sunlight seemed to dim, and the air grew cold – too cold for these distant southern lands. He hitched the cloak around his arms and hugged the garment to his body as he rose. On bare feet he padded towards his friend and knelt, careful to keep the cloth secured around him. He pressed his shoulder bracingly against Gandalf's.

'We will find him,' he whispered. 'We must.'

A desolate sound issued from Gandalf's throat and he shook his head, rolling it from side to side against his palms. 'No. We will not. And we will never learn the truth.'

Aragorn closed his eyes. He did not wish to say it, but they were swiftly running out of options. 'We need to head into the mountains,' he ventured, glancing up. Though the trees obscured them from view, he could almost feel the dark oppression of the Ephel Dûath where they loomed behind the hills. 'He dwelt long beneath the Hithaeglir. We have already sought him in the wet places where food is plentiful. If he took shelter anywhere else, it would be in the mountains.'

Gandalf raised his head, leaning to his right as he turned to stare at Aragorn. His eyes were inscrutable. Slowly he shook his head from side to side. Then he launched himself to his feet and strode over to the tree from which the Ranger's cloak was hanging. He plucked it up between finger and thumb and moved to the next tree to collect his friend's cote. Aragorn watched as his friend spread the garments before the fire.

'I am going to find us something to eat,' Gandalf rumbled, glaring through slitted eyes. He wrested Aragorn's knife from its mud-caked sheath and cast it on the ground beside the Ranger. 'Stay by the fire and watch your back.'

Aragorn nodded wordlessly, watching as his friend disappeared amid the twisted trees. Left alone and freed at least for a little while of the burden of being the one who had not yet lost hope, he let his arms fall limply into his lap. The cloak slipped from his shoulders, but he did not care.

Gandalf was right. The trail was too cold. They had failed. He had failed. They would never learn how Gollum had come by Bilbo's ring, nor how long he had possessed it. They had no hope of discovering whether the trinket that the hobbit had brought home from his adventure was the Ring that Sauron sought, or whether it was merely some trifle; some simple ring of invisibility, perhaps, wrought by Celebrimbor's folk as a prelude to their greater works. For fifteen years, the Dúnedain had kept a double watch upon the borders of the Shire at the expense of the rest of Eriador. Now it would be impossible to say whether that watch was necessary or no – until it was too late.

Aragorn was weary of the hunt. All his talent seemed to avail him nothing against the wiles of this creature he sought, and the bitterness of failure galled him. Yet to admit defeat after fifteen years of intermittent labour, after suffering countless privations and indignities in the name of this search, was something he could not endure. When Gandalf returned, he would make his friend see reason. They could not abandon the trail now, having come so far. It was not pride that drove him: his pride had slowly been leeched away by stagnant waters and bogs choked with filth and lonely journeys over vast empty lands. He was driven now only by desperation. There was too much at stake. They had to know what the creature knew. They had to find him. They had to have answers. Answers, at last, after a lifetime of riddles.

His arms were rough with gooseflesh, and the muscles of his bare back were contracting in the cool air of the gathering evening. With a heavy sigh that had little to do with his state of undress, Aragorn tugged Gandalf's cloak back up onto his shoulders and crept a little nearer to the fire, feeding it carefully with a fresh branch. Grimly he warmed himself, waiting for his comrade to return.

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When Gandalf came back at last, an hour after dark, he had only half a dozen parsnips and a fistful of discoloured dandelion greens to show for his lengthy absence. Aragorn did not ask whether he had failed to catch anything, or if he had simply declined to try. He meekly heated stones to boil water, and after scraping the parsnips cooked the roots until they were soft enough to afford a little comfort to their stomachs despite their marked lack of flavour. It was growing rather late in the year for dandelions, and there was little he could do to make the sharp-tasting leaves and stalks more palatable, but they ate them nonetheless. Gandalf said little as he finished his meal and went to turn Aragorn's clothing so that it might better dry. Then he busied himself sorting through his pack, and finally sat down once more with his pipe sheltered in one wizened fist.

They had expended their store of pipeweed many weeks before, but Gandalf set to work cleaning the bowl with a scrap of cloth. He seemed intently focused upon the exercise, and Aragorn was reluctant to interrupt him. He knew that his words would not be welcome, and he sat in silence for a long while, trying to work up the courage to speak.

'We cannot turn back,' he said when he had finally determined that he could delay no longer. 'We must know if...' Even under the open skies of Eriador they had never spoken of Bilbo's little ring aloud. In this dark and debatable land, it would be the pinnacle of folly to do so. He prevaricated with care. '... if our friend's bauble is of any value. We must learn what the creature knows: we must find him.'

Gandalf did not look up from his pipe. 'I tell you, I cannot go on. My patience is spent. We have no hope of success – and there may be another way.'

'Another way?' Aragorn's brow furrowed. If there was another way, why had they wasted fifteen years scouring the Wilderland in search of a being that did not want to be found?

The wizard exhaled heavily. 'You likely do not remember, for you were only a young man at the time, but the Council met for a final time in the year that Turgon of Gondor perished.'

'I remember,' Aragorn said. 'I rode as far as the last spur of the Misty Mountains in the escort of Elrond. I should have ridden to Isengard with him, but he felt it would be wiser for me to keep well away.' He glanced over his shoulder, listening for noises in the night. Lowering his voice he added, 'We have spoken also of that which was discussed at that meeting, but you told me that little of use was said.'

'Little indeed,' Gandalf snorted; 'and so viciously did we squabble that in the end it was agreed that unless direst need forced us we would not gather again, for it seemed that we could do no more than argue. Yet I said little, not nothing, and as I walked tonight words half-forgotten returned to me. Saruman, well-versed in the lore of such trinkets, made mention of the humble appearance of the thing: simple, unadorned. "But its maker set marks upon it that the skilled, maybe, could still see and read," he said.'

'What manner of marks?' asked the Ranger, keen eyes fixed upon his friend.

'That he did not say. Yet his words came to me tonight as I was walking. If he had such knowledge, it must have a source. Long had the thing been lost by the time we came to these shores: he must have gained the information indirectly. The maker of course would know, but one other hand held the article; a hand that might have left written record of his observations.'

'Isildur.' It was less than a whisper, scarcely more than an unmistakable movement of the lips. Still, Gandalf heard him and nodded.

'And if such is the case, perhaps that account still exists in the vaults of lore in Minas Tirith, where he passed much of the last two years of his life,' he said. 'Saruman had easy access to those libraries in the years before a viper poisoned the Lord Ecthelion against him.'

'As I understand it, the Captain Thorongil did not so much counsel against Saruman as he advocated for you,' Aragorn said, covering with a wry smile the old ache that ignited in his breast at the mention of his liege-lord's name. Nearly forty years had passed since he had removed himself from the service of the Steward, and still he looked back with longing upon days as happy as any of his adult life, save only a few. 'And in his time in the Citadel Thorongil never came across any scrolls so ancient as that.'

'Ah, but Thorongil's leisure was limited, or so he gave me to understand,' Gandalf said, and his eyes glinted with something that was almost like amusement. 'And his access was curtailed by one perhaps jealous of his grasp of ancient tongues, and certainly suspicious of his interest in ancient history.'

'So it was,' murmured Aragorn, remembering. 'Then do you mean to abandon the hunt and travel to the White City to seek out this hypothetical account?'

'I have better hope of finding that than we have of finding Gollum in the mountains,' said Gandalf. 'Denethor will not deny me so easily as he denied Thorongil. And as a last resort I might yet travel to Orthanc and question Saruman, though with the danger to the Shire I am loath to trust anyone but you.'

'I am touched,' Aragorn said. 'Yet as Thorongil counselled Ecthelion, so I must counsel you: be wary of friendship with the White Wizard. He has less care for his allies than he has for himself, or he would never have taken Isengard for his own. He betrayed a dead friend: shall he consider living ones more sacred?'

Gandalf chuckled. 'That is an old song, my friend. Can it be that you resent the seneschals carving up the estate before the master's return?'

'The master is far afield, grubbing in the dirt for his night's sustenance and wading through mud nigh up to his neck,' Aragorn said sourly. 'He has forfeited the right to complain how his proxies discharge duties he has so long neglected.' He faltered a moment and then said softly, 'When you are in Minas Tirith, raise your head from the books occasionally to observe how her folk fare. I would be glad of tidings.'

'Come with me and see for yourself,' Gandalf said.

'You know that is impossible,' muttered Aragorn, casting his eyes away. He had not meant to give voice to his secret yearning. 'If I were recognized...'

'You have changed more than you think from the fair young captain who inspired love in the hearts of all who beheld him, and swayed the affections of the daughters of the lords of Gondor,' Gandalf said, smiling sadly to take the sting out of the cruel words. 'No one would know you now.'

'Denethor would know,' Aragorn said bleakly.

'I did not say "come with me to the Citadel",' Gandalf told him. 'I shall have enough difficulty with Denethor without antagonizing him openly. But there is no reason you could not find lodgings in the lower city and rest for a time while I laboured. There you might gather all the tidings you wished.'

The temptation was terrible. To walk in Gondor once more, to mingle with the people he loved little less than his folk in the North, to see the sunrise staining the White Tower in brilliant hues of carmine and orange... 'It is impossible,' Aragorn said with resolve that went no further than the surface. 'It is not my fate to take that road yet.'

'Then I free you from your promise,' Gandalf said gravely. 'Return to the North, my friend, where your kinsmen are waiting. Go to Rivendell, and walk beneath the beeches with your beloved. Bring tidings to Elrond of my failure, and tell him that I shall come when I may.'

Aragorn shook his head. He could not afford to think upon that enticement. His longing for the land of his lineage was nothing to the ache in his breast brought on by the merest mention of the land of his heart. How many countless months since he had turned upon the threshold of the Last Homely House to bid a chaste farewell to she in whom his spirit found its only rest? How many more before he might be free to return again?

'No,' he said. The denial was meant for himself, and not for Gandalf. 'No,' he repeated as he consciously laid by that desire. It was an unworthy thought. He had given his word to find the creature, and find him he would – or else while he had strength of will and breath in his body he would continue the search. He was not ready to admit his defeat. He was not yet so craven that he would cast away his oath, released or no. 'I shall continue the hunt for a time,' he said, trying to sound nonchalant and confident though he felt anything but. 'I want to go into the mountains. Perhaps I can find the trail again.'

Gandalf looked on him in wonder. 'Have you still hope?' he asked. 'After all this time, when my heart is filled with despair, can it be that you still believe success possible?'

Aragorn forced a wry smile to his lips. 'I can do nothing but hope,' he said. 'It is the name with which I was afflicted when still a toddling babe. It seems I cannot lightly lay it aside. It is more a curse than a blessing, I assure you. Besides, the days grow ever shorter. I do not relish the thought of walking North into winter lands wearing only my light summer garb. I will hunt for another season, at least. Who can say? Perhaps I shall find some success at last.'

'Perhaps,' Gandalf muttered bleakly. His voice held only bitterness.    

Chapter II: Separate Roads

It was Aragorn's turn to take the first watch. There was a brief debate on the topic of Gandalf's cloak, and whether it ought to go with the sleeper or remain on the sentry, but in the end Aragorn had to admit that the only logical conclusion was that he should keep it for a while. Gandalf at least had his other garments to keep him warm, and settled as he was with his back to the glowing embers of the fire, he would be comfortable enough.

Once he deemed that his friend was asleep, Aragorn went to collect his linen and donned it swiftly, drawing the cloak on once more atop it. Both shirt and braies were still damp, but he did not fancy warding off the nightly hazards wearing naught but a wizard's mantle. He walked the perimeter of the glade for a while, working out some of the stiffness in legs unaccustomed to an afternoon of sitting idle, but his bare feet grew swiftly cold, and he made his way back to the fire. He snagged his pack as he went, and settled cross-legged opposite Gandalf's slumbering form.

He had taken the chance of losing his possessions when he had concealed them in a bramble-thicket before venturing into the mire, and the gamble had paid off. No living thing had tampered with his pack, and now it and the few useful things within were clean and dry when everything else he owned was wet and choked with muck. With his wooden mug and bowl there was a little food: dried fruit and a few strips of flavourless meat wrapped in a greasy square of linen. Several other strips of cloth that had once been white were all that remained of his spare shirt, worn until it began to disintegrate. He had a small coil of wire, a whetstone, his flint and steel, an old wooden comb missing most of its teeth, and a little penknife with an ornately carved handle. He set the blade and a small leather pouch aside, and from the very bottom of the pack he withdrew a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. He unwrapped it and removed one of three short rushlights. A candle was a precious thing in the wilds, and he had hoarded these carefully. He knew he would need them if he ventured into the mountains, but there was an equally important task to see to tonight, and he had need of light.

He lit the brittle wick from the fire and let a little of the tallow drip onto a stone. It was poor-quality fat, and it smelled and sputtered, but soon the rushlight was standing melded to the rock, and he was able to set to work. The little pouch held a lump of beeswax and a spool of linen thread. Tucked carefully into the leather were three sewing needles. Selecting the largest, Aragorn cut a piece of thread and waxed it with care. Then he hauled his wet cote into his lap and began to inspect the damage.

He had scraped his back along the roots of a twisted old willow, and though he had only a long, stinging scratch on his flesh there was a large rent across the shoulders of his tunic. He had hoped that it would prove a simple repair, but luck was not with him: the cloth had torn against the grain, and the edges were fraying. He had no spare wool with which to make a patch, and so he carefully turned the garment inside out and set about brushing flakes of mud away from the tear.

Mending the damage was slow work, for he had to be careful not to fold more cloth into the join than was absolutely necessary. It was a fine line. Too little, and the repair would not hold. Too much, and the fit of the garment would be altered, perhaps to the point of impairing his shoulder motion and impeding his ability to climb, to reach, and to defend himself.

He had some skill with a needle, having learned quickly in his younger days that Rangers who did not wish to be dressed perpetually in rags had to learn how to preserve and refurbish their garments. His long, nimble fingers were well suited to such work, and over the years he had become adept enough for his purposes. A few lessons in cut and fit served him well, especially at times such as this, and for the most part his repairs held up to the rigours of his daily life. Still, this was a difficult tear, and the rushlight was almost burned away by the time he tied off the last thread.

There were several snags and smaller holes in the back of his shirt along the same path of damage, but those were not as concerning. If his outer garments remained whole and largely weatherproof, it did not matter if his underclothes were tattered. Anxious to conserve the last inches of candle, Aragorn snuffed the light and packed away his tools by the glow of the fire. He laid out his cote once more to dry, and turned his cloak again. As soon as he stopped moving, the claws of exhaustion sank deep into his heart and his head began to nod. By then, fortunately, it was well past the agreed-upon hour, and so he woke Gandalf and lay down for himself, still swathed in his friend's cloak.

'Sleep well,' Gandalf said grimly as he stretched his legs and ran a hand through his hair. 'It is quite likely that this will be your last chance to rest in safety for many weeks.'

Aragorn made no reply, for slumber had found him already.

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When Aragorn awoke with the dawn, he found Gandalf beating his cote with a heavy stick. Clods of dirt that the day before had been mud flew in every direction. The garment was draped over a convenient tree-branch, and the wizard seemed to be spending all of his frustration upon it. Aragorn watched in some amusement until at last the dust ceased to fly and Gandalf cast away the branch with a cathartic huff of breath. He turned, and scowled as he realized his efforts had not gone unnoticed.

Aragorn curled his lip. 'Do you feel better?' he asked dryly.

'As a matter of fact, I do,' the wizard grunted, stumping over to the fading fire and stirring it to hasten its death. 'The lower half of your cloak is still wet, but at least the hood and shoulders are dry. All the rest seems wearable.'

'I am pleased to hear it,' Aragorn said. He climbed to his feet and arched his back to banish the stiffness of sleeping on the hard earth. He removed his friend's cloak and held it out. 'Thank you for the loan of warmth.'

'Humph. Well, remember that if you get into such a state again I shan't be here to scare up food and fire for you,' grumbled Gandalf. 'You'll have to look out for yourself.'

'I will try to be more particular where I hunt,' Aragorn said, but fondly. He understood his friend's cantankerous over-protectiveness to be an apology, of sorts, for yesterday's harsh words. 'And you take care as well: you are strolling off into a danger that I dare not face. As I recall Denethor is uniquely unpleasant when disgruntled.'

'Then I shall be careful to keep him in a favourable mood.' Gandalf bent to pick up Aragorn's boots, now stiff and rigid after their wetting.

The Ranger sat to draw on his hose, then took the boots and wrestled them on. After a few minutes of good, hard walking they would be supple again, but at the moment they pinched rather unpleasantly. He stood and tied the points to his hose, then crossed the clearing to collect his cote. As he loosed the lacing and drew it over his head he held his breath, for a moment anxious, but it settled onto his shoulders with the familiar comfort of an old, well-worn garment. His darning had been successful.

'You're beginning to look almost respectable again,' Gandalf observed. 'Or what amongst your sort passes for respectable. Though there is still the matter of your hair...'

'There is little point in tending to it until I have an opportunity to wash,' Aragorn said. 'If you give me leave I will walk with you as far as the bridge, and attend to it there.'

'Gladly,' Gandalf said. He watched as Aragorn buckled his belt to the third-from-last notch, tucking the tail into a loose knot. He sheathed his long knife and adjusted the folds of his cote with care. 'Yes, almost respectable,' the wizard observed pensively.

Aragorn shook out his cloak, swung it around his shoulders and clasped it at the left shoulder with the silver star of the Dúnedain. Then with a practiced flick of his wrists he drew his hood over his filthy hair. It shadowed his face, leaving only the tip of his nose in the light.

'I take back what I said,' Gandalf remarked sardonically. 'There is nothing respectable about you: you're a rogue if ever I saw one.'

'Then you would be well-advised not to cross me,' said Aragorn, grinning as lazily as he could. He picked up his pack, which felt dishearteningly light, and then set about kicking away the last traces of their fire.

They set out as soon as the camp was concealed, walking in silence through the trees. Gandalf's despondency seemed to be leaching back, for his head was bowed and he leaned heavily upon his staff. Aragorn, determined not to show any signs of frustration or despair, walked on ahead, carefully picking a route that left as little sign of their passage as was possible.

After a couple of hours they halted and broke their fast. They ate sparingly and did not rest for long. It was past midday when they reached the crest of the river valley and descended towards the broad, coiling Poros.

Aragorn could not help staring to his right, where the high, craggy faces of the Mountains of Shadow loomed against a sordid grey sky. A chill settled upon his heart and dread clenched his innards. Once before he had ventured that way, passing over the ramparts of the Ephel Dûath into the poisoned wastes beyond. Memories assailed him, fast and thick. Orc-voices laughing. A cruel smile on a once-noble face made gaunt with hatred and malice. Slaves bent low beneath dancing black whips. Ash and stone and poisoned wells. And above it all, a fiery blight against the perpetual gloom that enveloped the Black Land, the burning heights of Orodrûin, belching filth and odious malevolence into the stagnant air...

Gentle fingers touched his elbow, and Aragorn turned, startled out of his reverie to find kind eyes upon him.

'It is not too late to reconsider,' Gandalf said softly. 'What is the chance that you will find him by venturing into the mountains?'

'Greater than the chance of finding him if I do not,' Aragorn answered, setting his jaw and sternly banishing his fear. 'I have chosen my course and I shall not waver. Now come: the river is calling to me, and I am aching to bathe.'

They made their way further into the valley, overgrown with wild, tangled trees and thick undergrowth. When at last they came near the water, it was plain that they had struck a true course: less than half a mile downstream they could see the old stone bridge at the Crossing of Poros. The two friends stood motionless for a moment, side by side with their backs to the Land of Shadow and their faces turned Westward, away from this empty and debatable land where they had hunted so long.

It was Aragorn who broke the silence this time.

'Many leagues lie between this place and the archives of Lord Denethor. You will accomplish nothing standing here and staring at the road you must take,' he said.

Gandalf exhaled in a heavy breath that was not quite a sigh. 'I would go with greater comfort if I did not feel that I was abandoning you to go into the darkness alone,' he confessed.

A small, cynical smile touched Aragorn's lips. 'I have done it before, and lived to make light of it. Fear not for me: I am too obstinate by far to perish in the mountains.'

'There are things far worse than death,' the wizard murmured blackly.

'And I count inaction among them,' rebutted the Ranger. 'Go. Seek the evidence of which you have spoken. I shall try to complete our other errand.'

Gandalf nodded, but still he hesitated. 'Do you wish me to linger a while, and stand guard while you bathe?'

'Lest I should drink the hot bathwater or spoil the towels or waste the fine perfumes?' Aragorn laughed. 'Nay, I am quite capable of washing myself without an attendant. Quickly, now: the daylight is wasting.'

The wizard took two steps in the direction of the bridge. Then he turned, and came back, gripping Aragorn's shoulders briefly before embracing him. 'Be careful,' he said as he drew back. 'I should hate to have to explain to your foster-brothers how I lost you.'

'Fear not for me,' said Aragorn. 'If I were you, I should spend these next days working out the words with which to woo Denethor.'

'Woo him?' Gandalf raised his eyebrows. 'I have no intention of wooing him. I shall merely storm the Citadel demanding access to his records. He may not like it, but he can hardly deny me courtesies extended to my colleagues.'

'I shall have to remember that the next time I do Saruman a favour,' Aragorn said. He squared his shoulders and dredged up a smile. 'Goodbye, my friend. May we both find that which we seek.'

'Ever the optimist,' Gandalf observed. 'How I admire the dauntless spirit of the young.'

'I am not so young anymore,' Aragorn said softly.

Their words were spent. They stood unmoving, looking into one another's eyes as if by doing so they could delay a little longer this parting. At last Aragorn cast his gaze away and Gandalf, thus freed, turned and strode down through the wild grasses towards the road. Aragorn lingered in the shelter of the trees, watching the grey figure grow smaller, hat and cloak melding into a single nebulous form as even colour grew indistinct with distance. Gandalf reached the riverbank and strode onto the bridge. In its middle he paused, turning once more to look back toward the Ranger, though from that distance it was doubtful that he could distinguish the cloaked figure from his woodland surroundings. He raised his hand in a final gesture of farewell, and then resumed his journey. He vanished swiftly into the undergrowth on the far side of Poros.

lar

Aragorn hung back in the shadows, scanning the sky and the river for any sign of watchers. Harondor was not precisely under the Enemy's influence, but his servants were at times seen in this land. At length, sensing no danger, he made his own way down to the water, walking along the pebbly shore in search of a suitably slow-running place where he might bathe without riskof being washed away. He found such a spot in the lee of a sandbar, and swiftly stripped off his clothes, spreading his cloak over a gorse bush in the hope that the sun might serve to dry it a little more completely. Then he walked quickly to the water's edge and waded out waist-deep.

The river was cool, and the clean water felt wonderful on his mud-stiffened skin. He drew a deep breath and ducked his head beneath the surface. The gentle current tugged at his hair, pulling it about his face like some strange water-weed. When his breath was spent, Aragorn stood, breaking through into the air with a great spray.

Grimy rivulets streamed down his face and chest and back as the first layer of mud ran out of his hair. He slipped beneath the water again, this time working his hands against the matted mass. He had no soap, so he waded back into the shallows to gather a fistful of coarse sand from the river's edge. With this he scrubbed his scalp, working loose the grime. He rinsed, and scrubbed again. Then he used the sand to rub down the rest of his body, chafing away dirt and odour and flakes of unshed skin. Again he washed his head, and this time clumps of snarled hair came away in his hands. He cast them into the water and watched the current draw them away.

Satisfied at last that he was as clean as he was likely to get, he hauled himself out of the water and shook his head to dry it as much as he could. After his cool ducking his skin shrivelled in the autumn air, but he donned his clothing quickly. The linen wicked the water away from his skin, and he was soon sitting comfortably on a broad stone next to the gorse bush that still held his cloak. He rummaged in his pack and brought out his comb, setting himself to the challenging task of restoring some semblance of order to his long, unruly hair.

After a great deal of tugging and a couple of sharp oaths, he was satisfied that Gandalf would have approved of his efforts. He put away the comb, gathered up the rest of his belongings, and drew on his cloak once more.

There were preparations to be made before he turned towards the mountains. Though he was a skilled woodsman and a gifted hunter, he could not charm roots from the bare rock, nor summon animals on the lifeless slopes. He had to gather food while he was still in fertile lands, and that would take up most, if not all, of the remaining daylight hours. Yet every hour spent seeking sustenance was one hour more to delay the dreaded journey, so he gladly set to work.

At this time of the year, the Wild was as bountiful as a traveller could wish. Aragorn quickly filled his bowl with fat raspberries, which he laid out upon stones to dry a little in the sun. There was a walnut tree close by the water, its black fruit scattered about its roots. He spent an hour shelling the nuts and laying aside the meat within. Though tubers and taproots were plentiful, these foods offered little nourishment in proportion to their weight, and so he took only a few for the sake of variety. Herbs he gathered; parsley, dandelion, purslane and sorrel for their value as foods, and nailwort to drive back hunger when his provisions grew scarce – as he knew they eventually would. He stumbled upon a wild apple tree, and filled what space remained in his pack with the hard little fruit.

By this time it was growing dark, so he returned to the place where his berries were drying. Some kind of bird had picked them over, but had evidently decided that the fresh ones on the bushes were preferable to those that had started to shrivel in the heat. For the most part the fruits of his labours were untouched. He wrapped the raspberries in a scrap of cloth and tucked them away with the rest.

Though night had fallen he was not yet ready to rest. The moon had yet to rise, but the river provided a path to guide him through the starlit night. Keeping the rushing water on his left hand, Aragorn moved swiftly but cautiously forward, listening warily to the nightly noises about him. Far away a scops-owl called, and Aragorn held his breath, waiting. Its mate answered, and he exhaled in relief. Owls crying for owls were nothing more than innocent birds going about their business in the dark. Owls that called with no answer might be shouting tidings to servants of the Enemy.

The hours crept by and his limbs grew heavy, but still he walked. Each sound in the darkness plucked at his ears, and he knew that he would not sleep this night. He was uneasy on his own after so long in Gandalf's company, and cold fingers of apprehension seemed to creep about his heart. If he stopped, and laid aside the distracting challenge of moving without proper light, he would begin to brood on the dangers that lay ahead. He could ill afford that. He had long ago learned that imagined horrors were more terrible by far than most misfortunes that could meet a wanderer.

Most misfortunes.

'That is quite enough,' he told himself sternly. 'There is no reason to believe the trail will lead that way. The creature has evaded capture for this long: clearly he is intelligent enough to steer well away from such places.'

Yet his heart felt heavy and the darkness was suddenly oppressive. Though the clean smells of the wilderness were all around him, a thin sulphurous reek clawed at his mind and seemed to sting his nostrils. Shuddering convulsively against unwanted memories, Aragorn focused his attention upon the rushing noises of Poros. The sound that a few moments ago had brought him comfort now seemed a reminder of the vastness of these empty lands and the countless leagues that lay between him and any friendly haven. He thought of Gandalf hastening northwards, while he moved ever further into the East, and it seemed that he could feel the miles between them spread and lengthen with each long stride. A cold shiver ran up his spine as the loneliness of his position struck home for the first time today. He had staved off acceptance through industry, but now in the empty night he could not ignore the truth any longer.

He was alone.

Note: excerpt from 'The Lay of Leithian', The Lays of Beleriand, The History of Middle-Earth, Part III; J.R.R. Tolkien; edited by Christopher Tolkien.

Chapter III: Into the Shadows

It was the ninth day since he had left Gandalf at the Crossing of Poros, and Aragorn was already struggling to keep up hope. He had encountered no enemy, nor had he experienced any particularly extraordinary hardships, and yet he was tired, cross and discouraged. The one consolation was that there was no need to appear valiant or unaffected: there was no one to witness his black moods.

He was high amid the Ephel Dûath, scrambling along a scree slope ascending out of a barren valley where he had passed an uneasy night. The heels of his hands were raw from scraping along the rough rocks, and the strips of linen in which he had wrapped his palms and wrists were filthy and shredding swiftly away. His laden pack was heavy upon his back, and though he tried to convince himself that this was a factor in his favour, at the moment all that he cared for was the ache in his shoulders. He was further burdened by four long branches lashed across his back: two nights ago he had halted in a pine copse, and there he had tapped a tree for pitch and set about the smelly and unpleasant task of making torches. He would be glad of them when it came time to venture into caves or tunnels, but at present they were an unwanted load. The torches had further depleted his dwindling supply of spare cloth, and Aragorn was frantically hoping that he would not soon have need of bandages.

Nine days, and in all that time he had found nothing. He had had little chance of picking up a trail by striking a random point in the mountains, and yet he had stumbled upon signs by luck before now. There was no more that could be done: a lone man could not make a systematic search of a vast mountain range. All that he could do was to seek out likely places and hold out hope that his efforts might bear fruit.

As he slipped again, sliding back down the slope and losing several hard-won steps before he managed to dig in his right heel and arrest his descent, he reflected that it was the last part of that equation that was proving the most problematic. He looked up towards the cliff face and the narrow cleft that looked like a passageway of some sort, and gritted his teeth against the effort that it took to convince his heart that this goal was worth pursuing.

In the end he resumed his inelegant climb, less out of hope for what he might find and more out of the knowledge that to turn back now would mean spending another night in the gorge below. It was a barren place, with neither game nor any plant that he trusted as edible. Fortunately he was still well-provisioned. In the lower lands he had had some success with his hunting, catching rabbits or fat southern fowl by day and drying the leftover meat over his nightly fire on a grate made of green branches. It was only in the last few days that he had found himself pressed to eating from the stores he carried. He guessed that even bereft of other sources of sustenance he would have enough to bear him on for three healthy weeks or five frugal, provided that he ate the crabapples before they rotted.

Of greater concern was water. It took a great deal of water to maintain a decent pace on an incline, and in these mountains streams were few. Since he had been obliged to abandon the sources of Poros where they cut a treacherous cleft in the land, he had struggled to find clean sources. In the gully behind him there was only a stagnant mere that might have been the memory of a creek. Now it was shallow and foul-smelling, and it had provided him with murky, bitter water with which to slake his thirst and fill his bottles. He could only hope that it was not riddled with disease. If he pressed on, there was at least the chance of finding a fresh spring that might furnish him with safer drink.

The scree grew steeper: he was near the base of the cliffs now. Gravel slipped beneath his boots and his arms worked furiously to maintain his forward progress. He anchored himself against an outcropping of limestone and halted to catch his breath. His hands throbbed and he was beginning to feel rather overwhelmed. Aragorn stretched his fingers and rounded his back against the weight he carried. He groped for the bottle that hung at his hip, and took three mouthfuls of the unpleasant fluid within. His tongue protested, but his throat was glad of the wetness, and after a minute or two his head grew clearer. He cast his eyes towards his destination. He had only a few rangar more to travel, but here the scree was steep and loose. There were no fixed footholds that he could see, and if he kicked away too much of the debris, the floor of the cleft would prove beyond his reach in a second attempt.

Speed might serve him where careful planning could not. As a child he had taken it as a challenge to move as swiftly and as lightly as an Elf, and though he had never mastered the art of running over unbroken snow or dancing across a single line slung across a river, he could move with greater agility and speed than any other Man he had known. He marshalled his energies and steeled his nerve, then stood up with his feet still braced against the outcropping.

He launched forward, running five paces at a sharp angle before he pitched forward and his hands once more bit into the small, sharp stones. He clambered on, blindly groping ahead, moving too quickly to consider his actions. Suddenly the knuckles of his left hand were barked and torn against solid rock, and he reached up, fumbling for an even surface. He found it, and flung his right arm over its edge, then hauled himself forward as the support slipped from under his feet. He slithered onto the ledge, dragging torso and legs after his wildly working arms. For a moment he was afraid that he would slide back and tumble down the inconstant slope, but then his knee struck solid rock and he knew that he was safe.

He lay there for a minute, panting with exertion and relief. Then he picked himself up and rolled onto his side, leaning back against the rock wall to his left. He looked down at his arms, at the bits of shale imbedded in the cloth of his sleeves and the bright red gems of blood dotting the greyish grime that coated his hands and his wrists.

Closing his eyes, he drew in deep, bracing breaths. He was exhausted. This last was only one in a series of unwelcome exertions as he made his way to ever higher altitudes. Furthermore, he had not slept for more than a couple of hours at a stretch since leaving Gandalf. With the relative safety of Harondor behind him he could not afford to let down his guard and the smallest sound in the night awoke him with a start. Furthermore, dark dreams lingered on the edge of remembrance as his unconscious protested each step that brought him further into the sway of the Shadow. More than once he had roused himself drenched in perspiration and shaking with half-forgotten horrors.

Even the thought of such things was disheartening. Aragorn opened his eyes and began to unwind the ruined bands of linen about his hands. They were fit for nothing but tinder now: he shook them out and stowed them in the pouch at his belt. He took another mouthful of the unpleasant water, and surveyed his surroundings.

He was sitting in a narrow passage between two lofty cliffs. Far above he could see the sky, a gloomy gash of grey against the dark rock. The passage itself turned sharply a few feet away, and vanished around a corner. It was not a safe place to rest, for if something were to come around the bend he would find himself trapped with an enemy before and a nasty fall behind. Aragorn hauled himself to his feet, brushing grime from his legs and sleeves with hands made sticky by gently oozing blood. The scrapes wanted careful cleaning, but he was not sure that he trusted the water he carried. He would press on a little ways and hope for something better.

He drew his long knife. He regretted now his decision, made months before when he and Gandalf had departed from the North, not to carry a sword. Had he but thought, in his wildest imaginings, that he would be returning once more to these lands, he would have carried with him the keenest weapon the armouries of Imladris could provide. He put his back to the rock wall on the concave side of the turn, shuffling slowly to his left and ready at any moment to pivot to meet danger head-on. He braced himself as the next leg of the path came into view, his carefully shifting position revealing...

Nothing.

A breath he had not realized he was holding came out in a puff of heat. He shook his head in quiet disbelief. He was too skittish. In nine days, he had seen no sign of foes. He had spied no likely watchers. It was absurd to be so anxious. He would wear himself out with such vigilance.

Making a conscious effort to remain calm, Aragorn continued down the path. He remained wary, but strove to keep his circumspection within the bounds of sensible caution. His imagination was more highly developed than that of the average knight-errant, and he could not let it rule him. As his eyes shifted constantly to the left, to the right, skyward, forward, down, he tried to occupy his mind by running through the lays of old. He did not dare to sing aloud, but he played the words in his head. Unfortunately, all that sprung to mind was a snippet of the Lay of Leithian:

A devil's laugh they ringing heard
within their pit: 'True, true the word
I hear you speak!' a voice then said.
'T'were little loss if he were dead,
the outlaw mortal, but the king,
the Elf undying, many a thing
no Man could suffer may endure.
Perchance when what these walls immure
of dreadful anguish thy folk learn,
their king to ransom they will yearn,
with gold and gems and high hearts cowed;
or maybe Celegorm the proud
would deem a rival's prison cheap,
and crown and gold himself will keep.
Perchance the errand I shall know,
ere all is done, that ye did go.
The wolf is hungry, the hour is nigh;
no more need Beren wait to die...

He brought himself up sharply, horrified by his lack of self-control. He tried to dredge up some more cheerful scrap of verse: a song in praise of Elbereth, a ballad of love, a fragment of hobbit doggerel, even, but his mind brought forth only chords of darkness and death: the dramatic climax of The Fall of Gil-galad; snatches of the Noldolantë; a lament for the fallen of the Gladden Fields...

'I know what is the matter with me,' he muttered, shuffling forward through the mounting dread in his heart. 'I need sleep.'

A man could only endure so long without submitting to a period of rest, and he had had none the night before, pacing to and fro in the bare valley and listening for spies. He quickened his pace, and as he walked he watched now not only for threats, but for some crevice in the rock where he might conceal himself and attempt to find some semblance of peaceful slumber.

He walked for an hour, or perhaps two. Time was difficult to measure in the indistinct gloom that hung low over the Ephel Dûath. On and on the path wound, turning now east, now south, but most often in a north-easterly direction that brought Aragorn little comfort. That the walls in places seemed strangely uniform, as if hewn long ago by pick and chisel, added to his mounting anxiety. If this had once been an orc-road, who was he to say it was not still in use? To be sure he had seen no signs of other travellers, and orcs of all creatures left clear tokens of their passage, but his mistrustful mind could not disallow the possibility. His hand upon the hilt of his knife was slick with perspiration, the dirty abrasions stinging under the pressure, and his heart was hammering in his temples.

He had walked in these hills before, but then he had not been so haunted by darkness. Perhaps it was only his foreknowledge of what awaited him if he continued in this direction, but he half imagined that there was more to it than that. He had felt the malice of the Enemy in his heart before this, and now it almost seemed as if the ill will of Sauron was washing over this place, surging forth to dishearten any that dared to trespass on his fences.

With this thought came the irrepressible desire to hide, but there was nowhere to secret himself. Cowering under an outcropping of rock would not ease the shadow in his heart anyhow, Aragorn reasoned pragmatically. It was far better to press on, and to hope that he stumbled soon upon some place where he could stretch out his long body and rest.

Another mile slipped past, and he came to a place where the path broadened into a bowl, ringed about with boulders and bordered by sloping walls of rock. He hesitated cautiously before entering the open space, and even once he did he kept to the margins, scanning the scattered stones for signs of motion. He climbed upon a boulder, shoulder-high and flat-topped, and surveyed his surroundings from a greater height. Satisfied that there was no one hiding here, he set about exploring the perimeter of the broad space with greater vigour.

On the far side, close by the place where the path narrowed once more, he found a cave. The entrance was low, vanishing swiftly into darkness. Aragorn leaned an ear to the opening, listening with care. He heard nothing; no echo of movement, no whisper of breath. He picked up a small stone from next to his boot, and tossed it in. Almost immediately he heard it glancing off of a rock-face, but he was not satisfied. He eased his pack off of his shoulders and pulled out his flint and steel and the spent rushlight by which he had darned his cote so many nights ago. Using the torn linen in his pouch for tinder, he lit the candle and held it in his left hand while with his right he kept his knife at the ready.

He had only a few minutes of light, and so he moved forward quickly, bowing his head to allow entrance to the cave. Even past the mouth he could not stand upright. The cave was narrow, and not very deep: ten paces brought him to its back. There were no hidden niches or unseen corners, and he sought swiftly behind the few scattered stones for signs of habitation. Then he inspected the walls for any hint of a hidden door, laying aside his knife to knock upon the walls with a round, smooth rock. No echo answered wherever he struck, and the ceiling was unmarked save for a few small dripstones. Just as he was beginning to feel that this would be a safe place to hide, his rushlight dripped the last of its hot tallow over his fingers and he dropped it with a hiss, shaking his hand to cool the fat before it could burn too deeply.

There was no helping the cleanness of his water now. Hastily he opened his bottle and poured the tepid fluid over the burn, cursing himself for his carelessness. He could not see where the stub of the candle had fallen, and he did not dare to grope about now, for fear of doing further damage to his hand. He moved to the entrance of the cave to collect his pack and the torches, and then retreated to the back of the shelter.

His hand was throbbing in a most annoying manner, but the pain had sharpened his senses and distracted him from the burden on his heart. He ignored the discomfort as he cleared a patch of ground with his foot, scraping aside stones and debris. Then he stretched out on the floor of the cave, drawing his cloak about him. With his back to the wall and his blade in his hand, he was as safe here as he could expect to be anywhere in these lands. His weariness was a dreadful burden. It was with a small thrill of gratitude that he laid it by for a while and slipped into cautious slumber.

lar

He awoke to the unexpected noise of voices, near at hand but oddly hollow-sounding.

'There's trouble down below,' the first voice said. 'I 'ear there won't be enough bread to go 'round, what with all the new boys coming up from the South, and the bother with the maggot-folk and all.'

'If they can't work so as they can feed us proper, I say we eat them instead, and have done!' a second voice put in.

'Just you try it, and see how quick we all starve. Sick slaves work harder'n dead slaves. 'Specially with a little tickle from a nice, nippy whip,' said a third.

Aragorn held his breath, not daring to stir even a hair's breadth from the position in which he lay. Slowly, warily, he opened his eyes, but he saw only blackness. Even the mouth of the cave was obscured in shadow. Night had fallen.

There was a sound of an iron-shod foot glancing off stone, and the pitter-patter of scattered pebbles. 'Whipping 'em won't put food in our bellies, and you know they'll give preference to the regular regiments when it comes to rations. Have to keep 'em happy,' groused the first voice. 'Fighters sittin' idle are more dangerous than a little border-patrol.'

'So?' said Second Voice. 'We'll go down into the hills, catch us something tasty. There's Men in those lands. They make good eating.'

If there had been any doubt before, there was none now. Orcs. At least three, and from the sound of their voices they were outside the cave. Aragorn dared to raise himself on his left elbow, ignoring the protests from his burned hand. He flexed the fingers of his right around the hilt of his knife, and tried to pick out the mouth of the cave.

'Pah! Only if you can catch 'em,' said a deep, scornful fourth voice. 'Tarks aren't so easy to kill as ordinary men. They've got long swords and quick wits.'

Well, quick wits, anyhow, Aragorn thought. Though at the moment he would have given a great deal for a long sword as well.

'You know they won't stand for us making trouble with the tarks.' Third Voice was the cautious one, probably smaller than the others and certainly cleverer. A captive would have to be careful of Third Voice, for he had his race's love of inflicting suffering, coupled with a malice and creativity beyond the scope of an average Uruk.

Aragorn chastised himself. He had no intention of being taken captive. If there were only four, then even armed only with a knife he stood a fighting chance – particularly as they did not know that he was here. With a little luck, he could come out of this unscathed.

Luck was not with him. A fifth voice cut in. 'They don't like this. They won't stand for that. I'm sick of hearing what they want. Don't you City filth have any backbone?'

Aragorn nearly hissed with the other orcs at this show of temerity. Clearly Fifth Voice had no conception of what he was saying. When Third Voice had ventured his remark about conflict with the Rangers of Ithilien – for what other tarks with long swords and quick wits were to be found anywhere near the Mountains of Shadow? – a cold dread had settled upon Aragorn's heart. He had not realized that he had strayed already so far North that he might hear tidings of 'them'. The revelation filled him with terror that a band of five discontented orcs could never hope to match.

'Shut yer mouth, you fool!' hissed Second Voice, no longer quite so brazen. 'Even the stones have ears...'

With no concept of the time, and no idea how long he had slept, Aragorn could not accurately gauge his danger. If it was early in the night, the orcs would most likely move on, resuming their patrol. If dawn was near then they would need shelter, and he had seen no other hiding-place in the miles that he had covered.

Carefully, silently, he got his feet under him, and crept, hands grazing the ground, along the wall of the cave. He found the entrance, and retreated half a yard. He could see light now: the sickly glow of a dirty lantern. It illuminated the knobbly claw that held it, and its faint light made several pairs of red eyes shine like embers in the night. Aragorn counted. Two, four, six, eight... ten eyes. Five orcs: all had spoken. Their sizes and sorts could not be discerned, nor did he dare challenge five in the dark, in an open place, armed only with a knife.

They were a good distance away, near the far end of the open space. Their voices sounded hollow because of the way they reverberated off of the stone walls – not quite an echo, but a curious resonance in the cold mountain air.

They were quarrelling now, as orcs were wont to do. The topic of debate appeared to be the supremacy of those who answered to the guardians of the City over those who served only the Eye. It was an old argument, and not only among orcs. Aragorn had heard many variations upon it, and he knew – even if they did not – that they would not settle the question. It remained to be seen, however, whether they would grow incensed enough to draw blade against each other and thus solve his problem for him.

'Tower rats; what do you know? When war comes, you'll be the first to die. Our masters will see to it that we're kept for the important work, not thrust on the spears of the tarks like a pig on a pike!' Second Voice baited.

'We'll be sent first because the Eye trusts us to make a proper job of it!' snapped Fifth Voice. The tension was palpable. Any moment now they would come to blows. Fifth Voice was outnumbered, but if he could take out even one of his rivals before the others cut him down, only three would remain to be dispatched with the Ranger's knife. 'You cowards would only—'

'That's enough talk! We've got miles to cover 'til we reach the edge, and then we'll need to get back here before sunup! Quit yer squabbling and let's go!'

Silently Aragorn cursed Third Voice and his level-headedness. The others seemed to pause, considering the wily orc's words. First Voice grunted appreciatively. 'Let's go, lads,' he said. 'No sense arguing while there's work to be done.'

The lantern disappeared behind a burly body and the noise of iron-shod feet moved off towards the passageway that led back in the direction from whence Aragorn had come. The Ranger's mind raced.

If they were going all the way back to the edge – which he presumed was a reference to the mouth of the path where he had scrambled up off of the scree – then there must be some hours left until dawn. He could fly from this place, up the other path, and be far away before sunlight stopped these orcs. Yet he knew not what lay ahead, and if these five were a patrol then there surely was a camp from which they had come, and quite likely a captain and other Uruks as well. To run blind into a crowd of foes was the height of folly. Yet if he lingered here and they returned, he had little hope of slaying them all where they might so easily surround him.

If he followed them, on the other hand... He remembered the bend in the path. If they were foolish enough to wander together to the edge, which seemed not unlikely, then he would have them trapped. In that narrow corridor no more than two could stand abreast, and surely he could manage two at a time. Caught between his knife and the long tumble down the slope, he would have them in an excellent position. Of course, it would mean losing all of the distance he had covered today, but he would be able to press on into the unfamiliar territory in the safety of daylight.

It seemed the most logical course of action. Hastily Aragorn caught up his pack, but he left the torches behind. They were unnecessarily cumbersome, and if all went well he could return for them. If all did not go well, a dead man had no need of light.

As silent as the shadows he ran across the bowl. It took a little fumbling against the rock wall to find the place where the path narrowed, but soon he was striding noiselessly through the dark, his quick ears catching the noise of orc-feet and the continued squabbling. Keeping a judicious distance lest they pick up his scent, he followed his quarry.    

Note: Special thanks to the good folks at Geobra Brandstätter, whose handiwork proved indispensible in the blocking of this chapter.

Chapter IV: Mercy in Mordor

Aragorn moved swiftly, his left shoulder brushing against the rock wall at intervals to keep him oriented. This was the worst part of the manoeuvre, or at least he sincerely hoped that it was: the mounting anticipation, the way that the mind ran through every possible scenario and lighted upon all the bleakest outcomes. He focused his attention on the moment, on the sound of the orcs far ahead, on the feel of his blade – his woefully inadequate blade – in his hand. In battle there was no time to dwell upon possibilities, or even probabilities. One had to exist in and for the moment, with the senses and the mind focused only upon what was happening in the immediate present.

The orcs kept up a great pace, and Aragorn followed, fleet and sure. He had been about such business for three score years and ten, but somehow he never quite lost the thrill of primal fear that preceded such conflict. Over the long years he had learned how to master it and to channel its energy into his sword-arm.

He halted his pursuit as he realized that he was gaining on the orcs. He stood unmoving, head cocked to one side as he listened. Over their grating voices he could hear the whistling of free air against the stone, and the orcs' words did not reverberate as they had before. They had reached the end of the passageway.

'There: I told you we wouldn't find anything,' Fifth Voice snarled. 'Waste of time.'

'Can't trust nobody these days,' grumbled First Voice. 'Watchers ain't what they once was.'

Aragorn's teeth gritted involuntarily against one another. So his passage had been marked after all. He had seen no strange birds, nor any sign of spies, since leaving the fertile lands behind. Could it be that in his weariness he had missed them, or was the Enemy now using some unseen sentry to guard his borders?

'Here, bring that light closer!' snapped Third Voice. Apparently his compatriot did not reply, for he repeated again, more viciously; 'Bring it closer!'

'What, fancy yerself a tracker?' Second Voice sneered. 'P'raps they're wastin' your talents, setting you to prowl in the hills with the likes of us. P'raps you ought to be back in the valley, hunting tark. P'raps they ought to send you to Nûrnen to chase down runaways.'

'Don't take a tracker to see this,' said Third Voice. 'Look: blood. Something climbed up here, all right.'

The surge of vindication that his judgments on the third orc were correct was swiftly overridden by self-castigation. How had he been so careless as to leave behind such obvious traces? His abraded hands must have left all manner of residue upon the stones as he scrambled up onto the path. Aragorn shook his head grimly. The stakes of the impending assault were higher now. He could ill-afford to alert the whole of Sauron's border-watch to his presence in these mountains. Until a moment ago, a silent withdrawal had at least been one of his options. Now, he had no choice but to fight.

'So the thievin' water-rat's back, then,' groused Fifth Voice. 'That's just what we need.'

'No,' Fourth Voice argued. 'Gimme that rock.' There was an unpleasant slurping sound, and the orc smacked his lips. 'It's man-blood. Whatever climbed up here, it wasn't the little sneak.'

'Man-blood, eh?' Suddenly Second Voice sounded quite gleeful. 'Well, well. That might solve our bread problem nicely. Who needs maggot-food when you can taste a nice, tender bit of man-flesh?'

Aragorn quite fancied stepping forward to offer the opinion that it would in fact be a lean and stringy bit of man-flesh, supposing they could get past the man's teeth and claws, but however perfect the opportunity, he could not strike yet. He wanted to hear what the orcs might say next. Thieving water rat? Little sneak? Could it be that fortune had at last smiled upon him, and offered him news of his quarry?

Third Voice cut in. 'If it's a man, where did it go? We haven't seen any signs of men about, not 'til this minute. Can't have loose men running 'round.'

Abruptly they were all squabbling again, debating whether they could have loose men running around after all, or how old the blood was and were they sure it was man-blood, or whether they oughtn't just turn around and go back. Not a word was uttered that Aragorn wanted to hear.

Then Fourth Voice growled, 'I've 'ad enough of this. There ain't many hours left 'til sunup. It's time to start back.'

The Ranger swiftly slipped his pack from his back, setting it silently upon the ground. It would not do to be hampered with such a weight: he had little enough in his favour as it was. He flattened himself against the left-hand wall in the convex of the turn – the very place where he had expected a foe to be lurking when he had taken this path himself.

The orc did not look for danger. He came stumping around the bend, out of sight of his fellows. Quick as a stinging insect Aragorn struck. His knife found its home between chin and coarse mail, severing the vocal chords before the orc could cry out, and cutting a clean path to the jugular vein and the thick, ropey carotid beneath. Hot blood flooded forth, running over the knife and down onto Aragorn's hands. With a shudder of revulsion he withdrew his blade and thrust his shoulder against the weight of the dying orc, bending his knees to ease the carcass to the ground as the heart sent its last spurting fountains of gore from the severed artery. Despite his best efforts the orc's mail rasped as it struck the ground.

'Eh, what's that?' demanded First Voice harshly. 'Did you 'ear something?'

'Nothing,' Fifth Voice growled. 'Let's go.'

'Wait—' said Third Voice, but the others did not listen. Aragorn leapt nimbly backward over the body of the fallen orc as lumbering footsteps drew nearer. His eyes strained into the gloom – an effort that proved unnecessary as the sickly lantern-light glinted off the rock wall, casting an immense orc-shadow high above his head. He withdrew another pace into the darkness behind.

Fifth Voice was drawing nearer. 'That's the trouble with you City filth: you're cowards. Why, I wouldn't trust you in a tight place if I had orders straight from Lugbûrz to—'

He cut off his tirade with a sharp oath as he rounded the corner, a looming black mass in the approaching glow of the lamp behind him. There was a rasping noise as he moved to draw his scimitar, but before he could complete the motion Aragorn lurched forward and tried to intercept the clawlike hand with his knife. Steel met bone, and red eyes locked with grey.

'Tark!' the Uruk shrieked, raising the alarm. His left hand flew up behind his head, and a long blade appeared. Aragorn thrust up his knife, his off-hand flying up to brace his right as it bore the full force of the orc's blow. The shock of impact radiated down into his elbows. As his opponent recovered, he was obliged to dance to his left to avoid an eviscerating swipe from the saw-toothed blade.

He could not lose his ground. For one there was the cliff, his one tactical advantage. If he drew back too far, he would forfeit any benefit. For another, he realized as he almost stumbled over a leaden leg, there was the corpse beneath his feet. He could not mind his hands, his head, his legs, and a fallen body all at once, in the dark with the lantern-light blinding him. Screwing his eyelids into slits against the sudden onset of brightness, he dropped his left shoulder and launched himself against the orc's broad barrel of a chest.

Fifth Voice let out an enormous expulsion of foul air as he overbalanced, crashing against the orc behind him. For a moment there was chaos, and in that moment Aragorn pressed forward, regaining the distance he had forfeited. He tried again to strike, but this time the orc deflected his blow, even as the hob-nailed boots scrabbled to regain their footing.

The orc behind had dropped the lantern, and it was lying on its side now, sputtering and wavering. Aragorn ducked under another swipe of the serrated blade and kicked the lantern. It shattered against the stone, and the sour-smelling fuel spilled out, flaming briefly across the ground before plunging them all into darkness.

It took only a moment for Aragorn's squinting eyes to relax and readjust, but the orcs had been in the light longer than he, and despite their naturally superior vision in the darkness, they were briefly stricken blind. In that moment his knife found another throat, and the large orc from the Barad-dûr tumbled to earth.

The one who had been holding the lantern had his sabre drawn, and Aragorn was obliged to drop to one knee to avoid decapitation. He scuttled forward as the orc drew back and struck again. Steel rang against stone where his left ankle had been a moment before.

A booted foot caught him on the left flank. He rolled into the pain instead of away, tripping up the driving boot and thrusting upward against his assailant. The knife sunk deep into something soft and fleshy, and the orc roared in pain. Aragorn scrambled to his feet, swaying a little as he tried to regain his bearings. The orc with the sabre was behind him now, and the wounded one before him. He could hear the whistle of a blade in the air, and he crouched instinctively. There was a noise of rending bone and the scimitar sunk into the rock wall, having smitten off the head of the other orc.

Three were dead and therefore two remained, but Aragorn was only aware of the erstwhile lantern-bearer who had wrenched his sword free from the stone. Any effort to parry the heavy blade with his knife would likely break the Ranger's arm, and so he dropped his Elven-wrought steel and groped frenetically for some longer and weightier weapon amid the strewn bodies. His hands closed on a hilt wrapped in hair, but though he tugged with all his strength it would not come free. The weight of its fallen owner had pinned the scimitar in its sheath.

A half-demented bellow of rage gave warning that the orc was going to strike again. Aragorn flung himself backward, a loose stone driving painfully against his right kidney as he landed flat upon his back. A spray of blood misted his garments and his face as the sabre sank into the body he had been attempting to loot. Heart hammering in his breast, Aragorn somehow managed to roll onto his knees and launch to his feet. All hope of finding his knife again seemed lost, and he cursed his stupidity for casting away his only weapon without surety of gaining another. Unarmed and alone in the darkness, with an enraged assailant swinging blindly for him, he did the one thing that he still could.

He ran.

Hoping frantically that he was moving in the right direction, Aragorn fled. He had not gone more than six strides when he struck something hard and heavy that drove the wind momentarily from his chest. There was a howl of rage and alarm as Aragorn's momentum drove both himself and the object into which he had collided to earth. He landed atop the heavy mass, and long, nimble claws began to paw at the tender flesh under his arm and to tear at his hair. He had found the fifth orc.

The lantern-bearer was fast approaching, his hob-nails ringing against the stone. Aragorn threw both of his arms around the writhing orc beneath him in a frantic parody of an embrace, and with all the force in his long legs he rolled the both of them to the right, shifting so that their bodies fell almost perpendicular to the walls of the passage. His knees were bent at an excruciating angle in order to achieve this position, and it took every shred of strength to keep the orc from bucking him off.

Then a foot blasted into his ribs, and all memory of breath was driven forth. For an instant he was in another place, in another time, and he tried to prepare himself, waiting for the boot to be withdrawn so that it might strike again.

Instead, the other foot drove deep against the unprotected flesh of his abdomen, and the orc lurched forward. In his haste and his rage he had not reacted swiftly enough to the fallen bodies in his path. He tripped over them now, falling with arms outstretched to break his descent.

But Aragorn had judged the distance well. When the orc's knees struck earth, arms and torso did not. The edge of the path struck him in the midst of his great, knotted thighs, and his body pitched down, over the edge. There was a sound of impact as he hit the scree slope below, and the last ululation of shock and fury echoed in the valley as the body tumbled down, down, down onto the unforgiving rocks below.

Aragorn had no time to enjoy his moment of success. There was one orc alive yet, and it was trying to tear the very scalp from his skull. Claws scrabbled at his temple, and sharp pain shot through his head. Aragorn bore down with his legs upon the struggling body while his right hand seized and twisted the assaulting wrist. There was a noise of tendons straining, and the orc let out a howl of anguish.

'Let go! Let go!' he wailed. It was Third Voice.

Aragorn's left hand found the creature's wart-crusted throat and he squeezed. 'Be still!' he hissed, his voice hoarse from exertion and want of air. He got his knee under him, pressing down on the orc's abdomen. Still the goblin struggled. He was indeed smaller than an average Uruk; wiry and lean. There was a hump on his back, and even supine as he was Aragorn could tell that he walked with a pronounced stoop – possibly a mark of his breed, but more likely a sign that he had not always been a patrolling soldier. Orcs who rose through the ranks were not unheard of, but it was rare to find one who had won his way out of the mines or the slag-pits. He was clever indeed, then, and resolute – and perhaps determined to live.

'Be still,' he repeated, reefing more violently upon the wrist. 'Be still or I will break your arm.'

The flailing legs went limp. 'Let it go! Let it go!' the orc choked, forcing the words out through the painful pressure on his vocal chords.

'No.' Aragorn's voice was stronger now, and hard as the rock-face before him. 'I will loose my hold on your throat if you do not attempt to move, but I will not release your hand.'

The orc tried to nod, but the motion made the pressure on his neck unbearable. 'Yes,' he breathed instead. 'Yes. I ain't going to move.'

Aragorn relaxed his fingers, which were beginning to cramp beneath the blistered skin, and let his hand rest across the goblin's clavicle, where it might resume its vise-like hold at the least provocation. 'Put your other hand against your breast,' he ordered. 'Just below mine. Do it.' To emphasize his point, he twisted the pinned arm a fraction of a degree further.

Panting in pain, the orc obeyed. He had not survived whatever it was that he had survived by defying those with a clear advantage. 'What do you want?' Third Voice growled.

'I heard you speaking,' Aragorn said. 'You and your fellows were speaking about the blood on the rocks.'

'Yer blood, from the look of things,' the orc grunted, something like defeat in his voice.

'That's right,' the Ranger hissed. 'My blood. They also made mention—'

'Tarks don't understand our speech,' the orc said shrewdly. 'What sort of man are you?'

'A man who wants answers,' Aragorn said curtly. A falsehood would have served him better, perhaps, for even the orcs feared the Black Númenóreans who served as captains and executioners in Sauron's legions, but that price he was not willing to pay. 'They made mention of a "water-rat" and a sneak. Of what were they speaking?'

The orc barred his teeth, and the stench of rottenness exuded by his body intensified. Aragorn clamped his lips over the rising bile. 'Why should I tell you? You'll only kill me like you did the others,' Third Voice snarled.

'I will kill you if you do not answer,' Aragorn argued; 'and it will not be pleasant.' He twisted again upon the orc's wrist, bracing himself more firmly upon his captive's abdomen.

'Set me free, and I will answer your questions,' the orc said, malicious eyes glinting.

'Answer my questions, and I will consider your terms,' countered the Ranger. His fingers brushed threateningly over the orc's windpipe. 'What is this "water-rat" of which they spoke?'

For a moment there was silence, and Aragorn realized with sickening dread that he might have to make good his threat. The thought of killing any creature, even an orc, that was so utterly in his power repulsed him – and yet he could not risk having the goblin run back to its masters with news of a rebel tark who understood the Black Speech hunting in these hills.

But Third Voice did not wish to die. He had survived too much to cast it all away keeping worthless information secret. 'There were a thief in these hills,' he said. 'We never saw it, but it were stealin' things. Food and things. Supplies. Liked the pools under the mountains, it did. Water-rat.'

Aragorn's pulse quickened. 'When?' he demanded. 'When was this? How long ago?'

The orc tried to shrug his deformed shoulder. 'Two year, maybe three,' he said.

'Where did it go? Which way did it go?' There was desperation in his voice, but Aragorn would have been unable to mask it even if he had possessed the presence of mind at that moment to care. Without realizing it, he twisted upon the orc's wrist. 'Tell me where it went!'

Third Voice let out a thin, sharp yowl of anguish. 'I don't know!' he wailed. 'I don't know! The thievin' stopped one day, that's all! We thought maybe it'd come back when the watchers brought news of a climber! I tell you I don't know where it went!'

Remorse bit into Aragorn's soul and he let go of the orc's arm as if it had changed into a fiery brand. He straightened his back, withdrawing the threatening hand from the goblin's neck. 'Where was it hiding?' he said, his voice low. It took all of his resolve to force an imperious note into it now. 'Where are the pools that it liked to frequent?'

'Seven-eight day march,' the orc snivelled. 'Take the left fork, northward. I don't know any more.' He cringed wretchedly. 'I promise I don't know any more.'

Orc-promises were not worth the breath it took to utter them, but Aragorn had the information he needed. Trying to retain his dignity even through the rending shame born of his lack of self-control, he lifted his knee from the orc's abdomen and climbed slowly to his feet. A sharp pain lanced up his left side and he clutched his ribs, inhaling harshly over the discomfort.

'Very well,' he panted. 'We had an agreement. I will spare your life, but I cannot have you following me. If you lower yourself carefully over the edge, you will not fall to your death. Go. Begone.'

The orc stared at him, dumbfounded. Even in the darkness Aragorn could make out the faint signs of disbelief upon the misshapen face. The wretched creature had not expected to be set free.

'Over the edge,' he repeated wearily. 'Go.'

'Aye,' the orc yipped, scrambling to his feet, long arms dragging against the stones. Though the Ranger did not know it, there was a light in his eyes that could not be disobeyed. Fear and awe drove the goblin as he lumbered to the place where his compatriot had fallen. 'Aye, I'm going...'

Aragorn watched as the orc first knelt, then lay down on his belly, lowering his legs carefully into the black abyss behind. For a moment the clawed hands gripped the stone. Then they released their hold. There was a sound of shifting debris and a sharp yelp, then a low noise of shuffling and scrambling as the goblin navigated the long slide down into the valley. For a moment there was silence, and then Aragorn thought he could hear gleeful laughter far away below.

His blood ran cold. Mercy in Mordor brought only ill ends, and he did not doubt that he would one day be haunted by the fruits of his unadvisable clemency, but what else could he have done? To slay the helpless wretch would have cost him his decency, and that was a sacrifice he was not yet willing to make, not even for his life.

He sank slowly to his knees, keening softly as the pain of his as yet unknown injuries began to throb in a discordant symphony of suffering. There was foul black blood congealing on his hands and his clothes, in his hair, on his face. He had spent his strength in battle and in the impromptu interrogation. He had none left now to go pawing in the dark, looting the corpses for useful gear. He would wait a while, he told himself, and the claw-wounds on his scalp throbbed with the thrumming of his heart. Then he would see to that chore and resume his hunt. In a little while. Only a little while.    

Chapter V: The Empty Pass

The first grey light of dawn was filtering through the low cloud cover when Aragorn at last picked himself up, bracing his body against the rock wall with his off-hand while his right clutched his side where the orc's left boot had struck. His head swam, but a moment's stern focus drove back the dizziness. Having no desire to return to this spot ever again, he looked about at once for anything of use. The sabre of the orc who had so injured his chest lay near the edge. He used the toe of his boot to push it off of the path, watching as it tumbled away. There was blood – man and orc both, now – on the stones, but as he could not dispose of the bodies lying just around the corner there seemed little enough point in disguising what had happened here.

With leaden feet he shuffled around the dangerous corner, almost tripping over the first carcass. Slowly he knelt, and was then obliged to release his aching ribs as he went about the unpleasant task of despoiling his fallen foes. At the best of times orcs stank of rottenness and unspeakably foul secretions, but these three were already beginning to reek with the first gaseous emissions of decay. More than once Aragorn had to stop, turning his head away as he fought the urge to vomit. In the end, however, he had a heap of goods assembled, and he crawled away from the last of the corpses to sort through it.

There was an assortment of belts and straps and buckles, and he chose the broadest of these and two narrow lengths of leather that might be of use should he need a tourniquet or some other slender binding. He had recovered his own knife from amid the carnage, and he wiped it carefully on a length of cloth torn from the tunic of the Tower-orc. Orc-clothing was of no use for bandages, but at least it was clean enough for this. One of them had carried a little pot of grease in a belt-pouch, and with this he carefully oiled his Elven blade. Of the orc-weapons, the scimitars were too large and unwieldy for his purposes, and consoling though it would have been to have a longer blade he knew it was counterproductive to exhaust himself hauling about a sword that he could not properly use. There was a wide variety of smaller daggers to choose from, indeed far too many for three soldiers to carry, but his own knife was still the best of the lot. He took three slender blades little more than a handspan in length, obviously meant for throwing, and he left the rest.

Then there were the packs to search. Orcs travelled light, and apart from a few crude trinkets of questionable provenance there was little of interest in their bags. Each had a parcel of greasy, vile-smelling meat, and knowing as he did what orcs liked best to eat, Aragorn cast it away with convulsive distaste. There were also a few hunks of dense, black bread. These he kept. In one bag, to his horror, he found a little leather sack filled with bleached bones that he recognized as human phalanges. He cast these away also, but he did take two copper bangles carved with unsightly figures: one never knew when a piece of malleable metal might prove useful.

His plundering was finished then save for the water-skins, of which there were seven that had not been wrung dry or burst when their bearers fell upon them. By this time he was acutely aware of a tormenting thirst, and he realized that he had not taken the time to drink since before lying down to sleep the previous afternoon. A moment of desperate dehydration was no time to attempt to assess the safety of orc liquids, and so he moved to where he had stowed his own pack, thankfully well away from the fighting, and retrieved his bottles. The first held only silt and the last dregs of the murky water he had gathered in the valley, but from the second he took several unpleasant mouthfuls. The taste was more foul now than it had been, but in his thirst he cared little for that.

Faced with the reality of his dwindling store of water, he returned to the orcs' skins nourishing the desperate hope that one of them at least might contain something fit for consumption. He had seen no sign of a stream yesterday, and in this dry air he could not long sustain his pace or his life on a single bottle of stale, dirty water.

The first two skins contained a loathesome-smelling liquor. Aragorn wrinkled his nose. He had had the misfortune of sampling this unholy brew before under great duress, and he had no intention of doing so voluntarily, but it might be of use in cleaning his wounds. He cast one sack aside, but kept the other. The next skin was almost empty, and the fourth, though gorged with liquid, smelled strongly of sulphur. In the fifth he found a clear fluid only faintly redolent of tannins and burned hair. Gingerly he tipped a little into his lip and held it there. When it did not burn or sting, he rolled it around his mouth. Though it was bitter, it seemed to be water. Regretfully, that skin was little more than half-full, but he bunged with care and laid it gently to the side. The sixth also held the goblin-cordial, and the last was filled with water so vile that he wondered that even an orc might find it palatable.

He kept that last sack, too, however, for he was crusted with black cruor and he could not spare potable water for washing. Dragging the three skins with him he returned to his pack. His left side was searing with pain now, and he knew he could no longer delay an assessment of his injuries. His arms and shoulders were stiff from exertion followed by prolonged inaction, and it was no mean feat to wrestle out of his cote and shirt. Bare to the waist he next untied his hose, rolling them down over the tops of his boots. The cloth at the knees was shredded, and the flesh beneath was skinned raw, but otherwise his legs were unscathed. That was a blessing, for they had many countless leagues to cover.

He turned his attention now to his left flank. There was an ugly purple bruise spreading across his abdomen, but though it ached upon palpation he did not think that any of the soft organs beneath had been damaged. His ribs were gloriously black, and it was from there that the worst of his pain was radiating. Gritting his teeth, he pressed upon the battered ridges. Hot anguish shot through his torso, but the bones did not yield under the pressure of his hand. Tears of pain and relief sprang unshed into his eyes: the ribs were not broken.

Aragorn closed his eyes, trying to discern where else he was hurting. His back was sore, and with a little creative contortion and considerable craning of his neck he contrived to catch sight of the wicked contusion on his right side, where he had hurled the full weight of his body upon an ill-placed stone. He spared a moment to hope that he had not done serious damage to his kidney, but there was nothing that he could do if he had, and so there was no sense fretting about it. All the same, he did not dare to ration his water too frugally now; he had to find a fresh source, and soon.

He felt each arm and shoulder with care, but found nothing save the odd scratch or bruise. His left underarm was scored in several places, and upon examining his garments he found identical rents in tunic and shirt: the work of the small orc's claws.

That reminded him of the wounds to his scalp, but he dared not touch those with such filthy hands. With neither soap nor sand there was little he could do save lave them in the foul water from the last skin, but that he did, and then doused them with a dram or two of the orc-liquor. Carefully, wary lest his untrimmed nails inflict further harm, he felt his temple, following the deep scratches up into the hair. So thickly were his tresses matted with blood that it was impossible to gauge the extent of the damage, but he took some consolation from the knowledge that not all the gore was his own.

He could not risk an infected wound, so he did not use the foul water to wash his head. Instead he rummaged in his pack for his last clean rags, and drenched them with the orcs' cordial. The alcohol burned in the wounds and ran down his face. He screwed his eyes shut to protect them from the stinging fluid and locked his jaw against what might have become a harsh shriek of pain as the fire began in earnest. His hands fell into his lap and he bowed over them, bent double in agony as the liquor bit deep, smouldering in the open gashes and purging away the filth of the orc's claws.

At last the searing anguish abated a little and Aragorn groped for the water-skin, rinsing his hands blindly and splashing the vile fluid on his face to wash away the blood and the liquor and the traitorous tears that he could not entirely contain. When at last he dared to open his eyes he was quivering with enervation.

He used the rags once more, to clean the grit from his chafed knees. Then he washed his hands again. The wounds to his scalp were bleeding copiously now, thin red fluid trickling down his face and onto his shoulder. He had to bandage the wound, but his stock of spare cloth was depleted. Cursing silently, Aragorn set his mouth and steeled his will against unfortunate necessity. He would be courting death if he applied the orcs' foul cloth to his head: he would have to cannibalize his own garments.

In northern lands he might have been less reluctant: there was often some other Ranger willing to offer his spare shirt to a comrade who had been pressed to destroy his own linens, and at direst need (for he was loath to burden his folk with his upkeep) the women of the Dúnedain would no more deny him than they would their own husbands and sons. Such simple garments could even be purchased ready-made, at admittedly exorbitant prices, in Bree-land. Indeed, Aragorn was even able to return to Rivendell to replace lost clothing. But here, on the fences of Sauron's domain, cloth – clean cloth – was as unattainable as fine wine or athelas. If he shredded his shirt, he would have to go without until such a time as he had leisure to return to less inclement lands.

For reasons of comfort, health and hygiene, he was reluctant to make that sacrifice. Who could say how many months he might wander here, seeking the elusive Gollum? Yet a shirt would avail him nothing if he bled to death, or grew so giddy from the trickling wounds that he lost his footing on some mountain path and plunged to his death. So he picked up the stained and malodorous garment, which though hardly clean at least did not reek of decay and orcish filth, and with his long knife cut a small rent next to the left shoulder seam. Digging his fingers into the hole, he tore. There was a sharp whistle of ripping linen as the sleeve came away.

In the same way he removed the cuff, which he folded into a pad to be pressed over the worst of the wounds. The rest of the sleeve he reduced swiftly to narrow strips. It was as well that he had long arms: the pieces of cloth wrapped neatly around his head, with plenty of room for careful knotting. Keeping his hair out of the way proved a challenge, but in the end he deemed that the bandages would stand up to workaday abuses. He imagined he looked quite the fool, with one strap beneath his chin and another around his crown and a third running behind his head, but the pressure soothed the stinging ache, and he felt less faint now.

His jaw ached from the clenching, and he reflected grimly that he was fortunate he had not broken any teeth. If he did not begin to take greater care, this adventure might well be his last. With a disgusted sigh, Aragorn donned his one-sleeved shirt. Taking the broad belt that he had appropriated from his dead foe, he fastened it about his chest, drawing it snug so that it pressed soothingly upon his bruised ribs. With one of the smaller straps he fashioned a halter, so that his shoulder would support the belt and keep it from slipping down to his waist. Satisfied with this makeshift dressing, he set about replacing the rest of his clothing.

He unlaced his cote so that he did not have to tug it over his bandaged head. Lacing was clumsy work, for his burned left hand was stiff and his chape had at some point been lost, but in the end he was clothed again. His hose would have to wait to be mended, for he was growing increasingly uncomfortable here with his kills piled at his feet. Carrion would soon begin to gather, and then there would be danger of discovery. He got unsteadily to his feet and gathered up his possessions. As his pack settled into place the pressure on his bruises gave him pause, but he snugged up the right strap a little, which helped considerably. Arranging the two water-skins – for he had decided to keep the one filled with orc-cordial – so that they did not aggravate his hurts took more wrangling, but in the end he was ready to march.

He walked more slowly than was his wont, for he could not breathe deeply without pain and his limbs were stiff. When at last he reached the place where the path broadened he returned to the cave. He attempted to stoop, but the act of bending sent knives of anguish from his bruised chest into his viscera, and so Aragorn got down on hands and knees to navigate the low entrance. His torches lay untouched where he had left them.

He hesitated, eyeing the cleared ground at the back of the shallow alcove with a transient longing. His body was begging softly for rest, and weary as he was he doubted that he would be visited by dark dreams. Yet he dared not linger here. He cursed his short-sighted failure to interrogate the orc more thoroughly. He might have demanded the numbers and location of other patrols in the mountains, and more importantly, how long it would be before the five he had encountered would be missed by their fellows. Without this information he had to press blindly on, unsure of what dangers lurked around the next corner.

He could not bear the added weight of the torches upon his back, and so he carried them before him, mindful not to worry his ribs. Soon his arms began to ache with the unaccustomed burden, but he dared not cast them aside. Onward he walked, as quickly as his battered body would allow. The path turned and twisted, but ever it carried him northwards.

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That night he sheltered for a few short hours between a boulder and the rock wall. He dared not steal more than a couple hours of sleep, for he knew that he had been fortunate to escape detection once and had no hope that his luck would hold. Before dawn he rose and continued on his way. All that day and the next he saw no sign of spies, nor did he hear any echo of orcs. His mind settled into the new rhythm, and he no longer started like a frightened rabbit at the faintest echo, but ever he remained alert, eyes searching the path and the rocks and the bleak grey sky.

On the third day, he halted at what he supposed was midday. He used his penknife to cut four squares of wool from the disintegrating hem of his cloak, each a little longer than the palm of his hand. With these he mended the knees of his hose, backing each patch with another. The missing cloth was scarcely noticable amid the yards of fabric that comprised his outermost garment, but upon his knees the scraps provided protection from injury and the elements alike. Feeling rather smug, he opened his pack and selected a frugal dinner from his still-generous cache of food.

It was when he had eaten that he discovered he had come to the end of his water. Since clambering out of the gully he had seen no sign of rill or stream. Fresh fear gripped his heart. Hardy though he was he could not survive long without water, and high in these desolate hills there was neither vegetation nor wildlife to guide him towards any source of drink. Fortunately he had still a good supply of wild apples, and those would furnish him with fluid for a time, but if he did not soon find some mountain spring, or standing pool, or puddle amid the rocks, he would not long survive.

That day he ate half a dozen apples at intervals throughout his march, but though they offered water their sour flesh filled his mouth with an unpleasant taste and sat uneasily in his otherwise empty belly. He did not dare to eat his strips of dried meat or the hard orc-bread, for that would only parch him further, but without ballast he grew swiftly nauseated and he did not sleep at all that night. The following day he ate nothing, but chewed on the fruit until all the moisture was gone and then spat out the waxy remains. In this way he drove off thirst for a few more miles.

By the sixth day since his skirmish with the orcs, Aragorn was plagued with an aching head that had nothing to do with the wounds he had sustained. His temples throbbed and his vision pulsed in time to the beating of his heart. His mouth was raw and sore from endless ruminating upon the now-hated apples. Worse, all that he could think of was water; clear, cool water free from silt and contaminants, untainted with pectin and sharp acidic juice, fresh water drawn from a well or lapped up from a stream or caught on the tongue in the midst of a clean spring downpour.

He tried to distract himself with thoughts of the hunt. He had been walking for six days, and he had yet to find the fork in the path where Third Voice had instructed him to turn to the left. Since he had said that the mountain pools (pools of cold runoff, wet and silent and deep...) where the "sneak" had liked to hide were seven or eight days from the root of the path, Aragorn surmised that he was moving more slowly than the wont of the orcs. This was not encouraging. Though he was weary, he pushed on through the night, striving to make up for lost time.

Before dawn, he spat out the residue of his last crab-apple.

The seventh day slipped vaguely by, and the eighth passed in a torment of thirst. He scarcely felt the ache in his side now, so all-consuming was the dryness in his mouth and his throat. Onward he stumbled, for he knew not what else to do. His tongue was swollen in his mouth, and the skin of liquor hanging at his side tortured him with its sloshing. It enticed him, and he longed to drink the vile concoction, but he knew that this would not slake his thirst, and might well quicken his death from dehydration. Ever his ears strained for the sound of a mountain stream. Ever his eyes searched for any darkening of the stones that might indicate the presence of moisture. Ever his heart hoped desperately for rain.

Still he walked, his head reeling and his hand gripping the rock wall beside him to support his unsteady body. His bruised kidney was burning, throbbing against his back. His knees shook. His lips were cracked and parched. Though the air was cold his flesh seemed to burn with an inner fire. Seldom had he felt such thirst, and never had he endured so long without water. He knew he was no longer alert enough to scent danger, and if an enemy came upon him now it would take him virtually unaware, and yet he could focus on nothing but vague thoughts of water...

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Hours before sunset he fell to his knees, unable to move any farther. His head drooped low over his lap, bowed in desolation. Aragorn had seen the tributaries that flowed down from these hills, westward into Poros in the south and the Morgulduin in the north, and eastward into the streams that fed the Sea of Nûrn. The Ephel Dûath were not without their springs and falls, and yet it seemed that in this place there was nothing. He wondered what devilry this was, that the mountains brought forth no runoff and the skies held no clouds low enough to wet the stones. In his fever of privation, he half believed that it was an artifice of the Enemy, aimed solely at such trespassers as he.

He knelt there long in the middle of the path, panting through lips that he could no longer force closed. His torches, borne these many miles without any hint of a subterranean way to light, slipped from his aching hands and clattered on the stones, scattering chips of dried pitch as they fell. His chest rose and fell with a habitual rhythm, clinging infuriatingly to life despite the dryness that coated his throat with dust and made his lungs ache.

Aragorn wanted to cry out to Ulmo, of all the Valar most friendly towards Men, to beg him to reveal his bounty in this high and desolate place. He longed to call on Manwë to send winds to blow heavy-laden rain clouds that might anoint these barren mountains. He ached to shout for Aulë, to charge him to open up the stones that water might pour forth, but he had no voice. He had no strength. He had no will.

His hands and feet were tingling, and the muscles in his legs began to cramp and twitch. It was this pain at last that forced him to move, and he slipped to one side, drawing his feet out from under his body. Numb hands kneaded his calves, and he blinked stupidly, trying to clear the mist from his vision. Frustrated at the failure of that attempt, he scrubbed at his eyes with a wayward fist. Still, his sight was obscured by a thickening curtain of grey.

Irrationally angry, he rubbed more vigorously, like a petulant child incapable of understanding the source of his frustration. Only when the first cool droplets began to condense on his brow and his cheeks and his sluggishly bleeding lips did he realize that the mists were not some vision conjured up by his weary eyes or his failing mind. The path was obscured in a thick vapour that settled upon his skin and his garments and the stones beneath him. He drew in a deep, gasping breath that pulled the heavy haze into his mouth and down through his aching chest. Droplets began to form over the surface of his face and bead his lashes and wet his hair. A harsh barking sound tore loose from his raw throat, and though it grated unpleasantly upon his ears it wakened a spark of joy in his weary spirit. Hoarsely and discordantly, but with delight unlooked-for, Aragorn laughed.

The fog was rolling in.    

Chapter VI: A Spot of Luck

Mist in the mountains was very different from mist on the plains. In the low places it was an ethereal creature, retreating before one's eyes and melting away at the first hint of sun. But high amid the crags and pinnacles of the lofty peaks, a fog bank was nothing less than a low-hanging storm-cloud, brought near enough to rock to weep rain upon whatever surface it touched. Two days ago Aragorn might have wished for a raging downpour that would fill his bottles and wash the filth from his garments, but now, brought low by thirst, this vapour was an unhoped-for blessing.

Thus had he laughed, in joy and relief – and in appreciation of the wit of the Valar. In his heart he had evoked the names of Ulmo, of Manwë and of Aulë, and it seemed that all three had sent him succour like the answer to a riddle: water borne upon the air and gathered from a stone. Hastily he dug his bowl from his pack and set about the painstaking task of collecting the fluid where it condensed upon the cold rock wall. Each brush of his hand yielded only a few drops while his parched tongue strained to catch the rivulets trickling down his face, but slowly he gleaned a dram, and then an ounce, and then enough to cover the bottom of the wooden dish. He drank then, in short frantic mouthfuls, and resumed his efforts with fresh vigour.

In the end, he managed to harvest enough to slake his thirst and to fill one of his bottles past the three-quarter mark. By this time, however, many hours had passed and the dark was thick around him. The clouds faded away, blown off, perhaps, to happier climes, and the night was cold. Aragorn's garments were damp, and had it not been for the orc-blood ingrained into the cloth he would have wrung them out until his hands bled, hoarding that water too. As it was he let them be, but the wet cloth chilled him and he shivered in the bleak night air.

It would serve him poorly to remain here, exhausting himself in a fruitless struggle against the elements. If once he got moving, he would quickly warm himself. So Aragorn hung his bottle of treasured fluid from his belt, gathered up his bundle of unlit brands, and climbed carefully to his feet. Keeping his left side near the rock wall so that he would be sure to take the correct path if he passed the fork in the darkness, he set out once more.

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Aragorn moved more quickly now than he had in days. The water had done much to banish the malaise that clung to him, and despite his privations his bruises were mending. More importantly, he felt more hopeful now than he had at any time since leaving Gandalf's company. Whether the coming of the mists had been a mere stroke of providence or a sign from the Valar, he could not say, but he preferred to think it was the latter. He had forsaken the lands of light and freedom for these dark, barren hills, but even here he was not forgotten. If they could not send him good fortune in his hunt, at least they had offered him life. Having seized it with both hands he would not lightly let go.

The sun rose somewhere beyond the gloom, and the bleak grey day greeted him. He sipped but sparingly from his bottle, husbanding his meagre supply of water and praying that he might find some other source before it was expended.

He came upon a place where the path widened a little. There was a niche scooped out of the rock-wall, sheltered on one side by an outcropping of stone. It was as good a place as any to rest, and Aragorn was by this time very weary. He settled down, sitting with his back pressed into the alcove, and leaned his head against the cool mountain wall. Sleep found him swiftly even through the latent tension that demanded he never entirely relinquish his wary watchfulness, and his tired body rested for a time.

He awoke before nightfall and carried on his way. There was nowhere to go but forward, and he could not say how much time he had lost in his half-demented stumbling of bygone days. As darkness gathered once more, Aragorn became aware of an oppressive force, oozing and eddying around him, broken only by the low, steady noise of his boots upon the hard rock. It pressed against his limbs and seemed to steal the breath from his breast, and his head pulsed and ached as his mind struggled against it. At first he could not discern what was amiss; what was preying so mercilessly upon his spirit. It seemed as though this thing, whatever it was, had been hounding him for days – though only now, when it began to trouble his sanity, did he take any notice of it.

For several miles this puzzle gnawed at him, as his pulse raced and his eyes darted furtively through the night. He was frightened by the encroaching sense of madness that was clawing away at his courage. The night seemed at once empty of all signs of life, and teeming with some malicious power bent upon cracking his fragile façade of control and plunging him into panic. It pressed behind him, egging him onward at a great pace, though before him it stood like an impenetrable wall that ever retreated a handspan ahead of his advancing feet.

At last, unable to endure it longer, he stopped, panting and groping for the rock-wall. Instinctively he pressed his back against it. His whole body was trembling and he was all but overcome with fear. He let the torches fall from his arms, and they landed with a clatter upon the ground. Instantly the oppression eased, only to surge swiftly back.

Aragorn let out a thin, nervous chuckle as he understood what was so preying upon his reason. It was the hazard that dogged the lonely traveller wheresoever he wandered, particularly in barren mountains bereft of wildlife or insects or whispering trees, bereft even of the music of the stars.

Silence.

In living lands, a Ranger was surrounded by the noises of the wild. Though alone and often lonely, a wanderer was at least reminded that his isolation was not absolute. Here there might be a cricket, singing in the night. Here the snap of a twig as a badger lumbered past. There a babbling brook; there a rustling of wind in the briars. The call of an owl, the beating of a bat's wings. Yet in this place, high in the Mountains of Shadow, there was not even the whistling of the wind to break the tyrannical silence of the thick, starless night.

'You're a fool, Strider,' he said aloud. His voice was rusty from disuse and recent dehydration, but the stark syllables of Westron reverberated in the hush and eased the pressure on his lungs. 'After all the long leagues you have walked alone, and all the years you have wandered, you should be accustomed to this by now.'

Yet how did one grow accustomed to such isolation, he wondered bitterly. How did one cope, year after year and decade after decade, with spending more time by oneself in dark and dangerous places than one passed in fellowship with comrades and beloved kin? Mortals were social creatures who thrived in the company of others, and yet more often than not Aragorn found himself far from any friendly face, wandering without purpose and fighting without hope in the long defeat. Each lonesome journey wore away at his soul, and it was only the occasional visit to Rivendell, the odd night in the company of his men in the North, or the rare journey in Gandalf's company that kept the madness at bay. Now here he was, walking aimlessly towards an uncertain end. Rivendell was a thousand miles away, and his men walked roads even more remote, guarding the Shire against a danger that had not yet been confirmed, and Gandalf...

He had likely reached Minas Tirith by now, Aragorn reflected. How long would he search in the annals of the Kings before he found what he sought, or despaired of that, too, and went to beg aid from Saruman? Vast were the vaults of lore in the White City built by the sons of Elendil. He recalled well the sight of those libraries; the great rooms filled with venerable records and scrolls so ancient that they were crumbling to dust. Only a fraction of the tomes were catalogued, and no man now living could say with impunity what was contained within that collection, second only to the libraries of Elrond and not so well-kept by half. Gandalf might search for days, or weeks, before he found what he sought – and longer still if it was not there to find.

Trying to tell himself that he did not envy his friend his task, the Ranger moved onward. He wanted distraction, and so he resorted again to an old strategy and plumbed the depths of his mind for some song to bear his spirit away from the emptiness that surrounded him. He had better luck this time, and lighted upon a less dolorous canto of The Lay of Leithian, though his most favoured lines eluded him.

Day came and still he walked, rationing his water as strictly as he could bear to and striving to keep his mind from the dwindling supply in his bottle, and his unbearable isolation, and the uncounted perils that lay ahead.

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Just ere dusk he came at last to a place where the path diverged; one leg arcing left, striking as true a northward path as Aragorn could gauge without a clear sky, and the other vanishing away to the southeast. The second path led most likely down the spur of the Ephel Dûath that thrust towards the very heart of the Black Land and marked the division between the plateau of Gorgoroth and the arid plains of Lithlad. The first – Aragorn could not bear to think where it would take him, but that was the road he was bound to choose.

Yet he did not turn, for his eyes were drawn to the southern path and the way he could not take. Even here, the descent began, and carven between the path and the rock wall there was a gutter, crafted doubtless by whatever wretched picks had fashioned these winding fissures into useable avenues. Yet Aragorn did not trouble to reflect upon the history of this place or the slaves who had been driven to their deaths here during one of Sauron's past ascents to power. He was only aware of the purpose of the narrow trough, for at the crux of the path where the two roads met there was a gully in the wall itself, carved not by the hands of man or orc but by the water that sprang from some unseen source high overhead, trickling and cascading down to fill a small pool. The excess ran down into the gutter, carried away along the path to supply those who marched that road.

Aragorn stared, transfixed by this glad sight. Then suddenly the mastery over his limbs returned and he bolted forward, falling to his knees by the edge of the pool.

Though no more than an arm's length across, it was deep, for the fluid had worn away the very rock itself. The water within was cold and more fresh by far than any Aragorn had found since leaving Harondor. Downstream doubtless it became befouled, smirched with the filth of orc-camps and soured with brimstone and lime, but here it was sweet and as clean as the rills of the Hithaeglir – or nearly. Aragorn cupped his hands and bent low to drink, banishing the thirst of a day of self-denial. He bathed his face, and pushed up his sleeves that he might lave his hands and his arms. He took a handful and drizzled it upon the back of his aching neck. He gathered his bottles and the orc's water-skin, rinsing each thrice before laying them out upon the ground to air. He drank again.

The bandages on his head were long gone, lost at some point during the vague days of suffering when he had thought himself likely to perish from thirst. Moving down the southeast path a short ways, he knelt again and washed the blood and grime and oil away from the crusted wounds. Then, for it might be his last chance to do so for many weeks, he stripped off his garments and bathed himself as best he could. He rinsed his body linens, beating them upon the stones and wringing them again and again until at last the water from them ran clear. Then he shook them out and spread them to dry. His other garments he gathered together, and he pulled on cote and cloak and sat by the pool, bathing his weary feet in the runoff until they grew too cold to bear further soaking. After that he settled with his back to the rock wall and the pool to his left.

He rested there all night, drinking whenever he felt able. He ate thrice in the hours of darkness, gingerly nibbling at increasing portions as he tried to reintroduce nourishment to a shrunken stomach. When at last daylight came, he filled his drinking-vessels from the stream. He hesitated over the skin that held the orc-liquor. He might pour out its contents and rinse it thoroughly before filling it, too, with water, but he was unsure of the wisdom of that course. Who was to say whether the water would be palatable, or what noxious fumes might leech out of the skin to render it unfit for consumption? Furthermore, though he was loath to touch it he knew that the cordial might serve a purpose should he find himself wounded beyond his strength. He remembered its properties well.

In the end he decided that it might prove too precious to waste, even for water. He had his bottles and the other skin, and refreshed as he was he might easily endure for eight days or even ten before the last of this supply was spent. It was enough. It would have to be.

He dressed himself and collected his possessions, then turned and took the northern path, though with each step that bore him nearer to the Morgai the dread settled more inexorably upon his heart.

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His progress was rapid now, for his strength was returning to him. Once more he took long, steady strides that bore him swiftly up the steepening path. His ribs no longer ached, and the straps with which he had bound them were stowed in his pack with the remainder of his food.

His meals were growing increasingly unpleasant. Some of his meat, so carefully dried over campfires in lands now far behind, was beginning to smell faintly, and it had a sour taste that his cache of crumbling herbs could not entirely disguise. Still he deemed it to be edible and with no foreseeable means of replenishing his commons he could ill afford to waste supplies. The orc-bread was hard and dry, and would most likely last for weeks before it spoiled: he left that alone. The nuts he had gathered in South Gondor were buried at the bottom of his pack untouched, for he knew that they would endure longest. He tried not to fret over thought of privation: there was nothing he could do to replenish his stores in this desolate place, and it would serve no purpose to agonize over what could not be helped.

On his second day since finding the fork in the path, he spied a strange outcropping perhaps five rangar overhead. He had been on the lookout for any signs of a cave or passageway since taking this road, and here at last he had found something unusual. He attempted to move further up the path in the hope that he could see what lay above the shelf, but the stone obscured his view.

He halted for a moment, attempting to weigh his options, but he knew even before he began how he would decide. He had come too far and sought too long for Gollum to move on now, and take the chance that this might be an entrance to the underground pools of which the wily orc had spoken. He removed his cloak and his pack and set about securing his belongings so that they would not hamper his climb. He put the skins and bottles into the pack, then rolled his cloak around the torches and used the narrow strips of orc-leather to affix the bundle to the bottom of his pack. He heaved on the weighty burden, adjusting the straps so that it was snug against his back.

Scuffing his boots in the dust, he bent to coat his hands in powder. Then, more nimbly than a lesser man, he sprung upward, his fingers finding firm holds and the toes of his boots choosing crevices in the rock. He began to climb, making his way slowly but skilfully up the steep rock face.

It was hard work and dangerous. Though a fall from this small height would not kill him, he did not fancy dragging a broken leg onward into danger. He focused all of his will on finding the next handhold and pushing his body up another inch, another foot.

At last his shoulder brushed against stone, and he looked up to assure himself that he had reached his goal. A final exertion saw him up onto the ledge, where he pressed himself firmly to the root of the shelf lest it prove inadequate to hold his weight. When his breath returned and his hands ceased their throbbing, he looked around.

He was sitting on a plateau of rock that sloped upward to its edge. At its root it was overhung by the cliff, for there was a low grotto that bit into the rock face, and at the back of it a fissure led down into darkness.

A small smile softened the weather-beaten lines of the Ranger's face. 'Well, well,' he said aloud in a passable impression of a certain (rather small) adventurer whose tales of valour had inspired the Man in his youth; 'it seems we have a spot of luck at last.'

Suddenly thoughts of Bilbo Baggins swirled to the forefront of Aragorn's mind; the courageous little hobbit whose own grand adventure had given rise to this hopeless errand in the first place. Had Bilbo not left the Shire at Gandalf's goading, had the wizard not failed to make a thorough search of a cave one night, had Burglar Baggins not been separated from his dwarven companions deep beneath the city of the goblins, Aragorn would not be sitting here now. Bilbo's serendipitous discovery, the magic ring that had so aided him in his quest to overthrow the dragon and restore the King Under the Mountain to his seat in Erebor, was responsible for this. All the years of hardship and toil, every wound sustained upon this road, every hungry day and every bitter night, all these he owed to a little trinket stumbled upon quite by chance in the darkness beneath the Hithaeglir.

Embittered though he was by the long years of frustration, he begrudged Bilbo nothing. With a fond smile, Aragorn remembered the consternation upon the hobbit's face when he had drawn him aside in the corridors of the Last Homely House to question him about his encounter with Gollum.

'Why, Dúnadan, whatever would you want to know about him?' he had yelped, looking suddenly far less dignified than was his wont. 'He's a nasty, unpleasant creature, and I don't like to think on him!'

'I know,' Aragorn had said gravely, guiding his friend into the gallery and taking up a seat in one of the alcoves. He remembered leaning forward over his knees so that he might – almost – meet Bilbo eye-to-eye. 'I would not ask you to recall such unpleasant things except in direst need, but I must hear all that you have to tell.'

'You could ask Gandalf,' Bilbo had protested unhappily. 'I've told him everything.' He had coloured deeply then, and added with a hint of shame; 'That is to say, he wrung it all out of me in the end.'

'Well, now you have a chance to tell it of your own accord, and to help me in my search,' Aragorn had said pleasantly. 'Even the smallest detail might prove useful, my friend, so I pray you do not abandon your customarily zealous narrative style. Spare not your words, but tell me all.'

But Bilbo, ever eager to share a tale and most particularly those in which he had played some part, had shuddered, eyes wide with horror. 'Your search? You don't mean to say that you're looking for him? Oh, no, no, why would you do a thing like that? He's no good at all, Aragorn: you don't want to look for him, and especially you don't want to find him!'

'What I want is of little import,' Aragorn told him then. A grim light had ignited in his eyes, such as he had rarely unmasked in the presence of his pleasant, bucolic and gentle-hearted friend. 'But this is what I must do, and it shall be done with or without the aid of your council.'

'I'll help you, of course I shall help you,' Bilbo had said, looking quite miserable. 'But oh, Dúnadan, are you quite sure you mean to do this? I mean, looking for Gollum...'

Many years had passed since that conversation, and Aragorn's resolve had faltered and flagged and at times almost broken. Yet now, thinking of Bilbo Baggins and his innocence and his goodness, thinking of a whole land filled with simple, happy hobbits living simple, happy lives unaware of the potential threat to their merry little homes, he knew he could not forsake the hunt. If Gollum could tell him something, anything, that might better equip him to guard these blameless folk from the merciless hand of the Enemy, then Aragorn had to find him. Whether he wished to or not.

With fresh determination he shook out his cloak and affixed it in place. Digging about for his flint and steel, he lit one of the torches that he had borne for so many miles without use. Setting his jaw and ducking his head, he thrust the burning brand before him and took the first resolute steps into the darkness of the cave.    

Chapter VII: Beneath the Ephel Dûath

In the dark places of the earth, time had no meaning. Aragorn had burned away his first torch, and was well on his way to exhausting the second, and he was no nearer to finding anything in this hive of caverns. His progress was slower than he would have liked, for he had to pause every three steps to mark the ground. His sign was a deep groove gouged with a sharp piece of shale, and in the end of the groove that marked the way he had come he wedged a pebble. At turnings and intersections he left a cross, again with one corner marked by a stone. In this way, he might find his way out with his hands alone, for if he found nothing in the next hour or so he would be beyond the point of returning in torchlight.

Aragorn did not particularly like caves. He had lived so much of his life under the open sky that he found the closeness oppressive. At least while he yet had light he could advance with only a little unease, but the light would not last. Deeper and deeper he went, wending his way through the undulating passages – here as broad as a chamber, there so narrow that he was hard-pressed to move forward without turning his body and removing his pack.

When at last his second torch fizzled and went out, Aragorn sat down upon the floor of the low corridor through which he had been shuffling. He set his back against the wall and fumbled in his pack for a little food. His water he took but sparingly: subterranean wells and springs could not be trusted. He had almost met his end once when the madness of thirst had driven him to partake of such waters, and he would not put himself in that position again. When he had eaten he tugged his cloak more snugly round him and wrapped his arms about his chest. He intended to rest a little, but he found sleep slow to come. The blackness seemed to press in upon him from every side, and his breath grew laboured. Though he strove to master himself he could not entirely banish his discomfort, and the more he tried the less inclined he became to sit in idleness.

At last, setting his teeth for he knew that by doing so he was condemning himself to a long and wretched journey groping back towards the surface, he lit his third torch and pressed onward again. For another hour or so he walked, until a sound reached his ears and made him halt. It was a strange, whispering noise, like a chorus of distant voices chanting upon the very border of audible sound. Aragorn held his breath, listening. It did not sound like the squall of bats, nor indeed like the noise of any other underground creature. The strange sound reverberated off of the walls, echoing through the passages and niches.

Acknowledging the irony, he closed his eyes so that he might better focus his hearing. He was not convinced of the wisdom of following such a sound, but follow it he did. Carefully divining its true direction he shuffled along blind, acutely aware of each second that the torch in his hand burned uselessly. But then the sound grew stronger, its source more discernable, and he opened his eyes, hurrying forward as swiftly as he could but still halting every three steps to mark the ground.

He came at last to the mouth of some larger chamber: a vast void of darkness filled with the strange sound. Aragorn recognized it now: it was the echo of hundreds of gravid drops of water falling together upon stone and pool. Together they formed a percussion, a strange pattern of sounds that echoed and was amplified in the cavern beyond. Shifting the torch into his left hand he drew his long knife. Then, wary of what he might find in an open place where there was water, he stepped forward into it.

It was a large cave indeed: perhaps as large as the Hall of Fire in the Last Homely House far away. Aragorn's torch offered naught but a paltry globe of light in its spreading gloom. The floor was riddled with pools fed by the dripstones above, and great stalagmites sprung up from the earth to meet them. There were columns of limestone, wrought through the long years, and around these Aragorn navigated with care. Though he glanced occasionally upward to the menacing teeth of rock that hung from the roof above, he kept his eyes most often upon the ground, his keen eyes searching the dust for some sign.

He remembered a place not unlike this, far to the North beneath the snow-capped peaks of the Misty Mountains. In place of the pools that cave had housed a vast subterranean lake; cold and menacing and glutted with emptiness. And in its centre a little island, where some wretched creature had dwelt for an unknowable age, hoarding the bones of fish and rodent, and building heaps of ore-bearing stone for amusement, and breeding malice in a place where even goblins dared not tread. Aragorn shivered at the memory, at the thought of what had dwelt in that place, and the haunting image of a well-meaning hobbit unwittingly stumbling upon the lair of the cave-dweller.

He walked the whole perimeter of the cave, one eye flicking from time to time towards the glowing head of his torch. If he did not find some sign before the flame was spent, he pledged himself, he would turn around and go back. He had no desire to linger long in incapable darkness.

Aragorn picked his way between the pools towards the centre of the cave. There was a great boulder there, by a cleft dug deep by the water within. It was an enormous rock, greater in height than the Ranger and more broad by half than it was tall. And there, at last, he found what he sought.

In the silt by the edge of the pool there were tracks. Very faint and muddled were they, and blurred by the inroads of moisture over many months – even years – but after so long searching without any physical sign Aragorn felt as if he had stumbled upon a great treasure. Careful to avoid besmirching the marks he knelt, holding the torch low as he let fall his knife. His fingers traced the air above the tracks, following the confused contours and picking out useful information. Bare feet had made these marks: he could see the indentations of long, prehensile toes. The feet themselves were broad and flat, but smaller than those of man or orc. A slow smile of triumph spread across the Ranger's face. There was only one thing that could have left such tracks here. He had found some sign of Gollum at last.

The moment of vindication ebbed swiftly. There was no telling how long it had been since the creature had inhabited this place. The marks were old, the trail was cold, and there seemed little hope of ever coming to its end. It was not the first time in the long years of hunting that Aragorn had come across signs of his quarry, but always it was the same: if once Gollum had been here, he was long since gone.

Yet obdurate hope endured. Each time such signs were found they were more fresh. Those first remnants in the cave beneath the Hithaeglir had been half a century old by Gandalf's guess. In Rhovanion they had found a place where the creature had dwelt for a time in a grim little swamp, two or three decades before. The rumours that had led them to Harondor were five years old or more. Yet here, by the orc's guess, the creature had lived as little as two years ago. Though in two years Gollum might have fled to the far corners of the world, Aragorn could not quite quell the hope that he was closing upon his prey at last.

He picked himself up and moved again, bent low to the ground with the torch thrust before him. His hunter's eyes followed the markings. Some led back towards the passage down which he had come, vanishing as the softer silt gave way to hard ground. Others moved in the opposite direction, and where they vanished the sets of advancing and retreating tracks were pointed to a low passageway leading off of the large cavern.

Aragorn approached, crouching to peer down the corridor. The floor sloped downward, gouging more deeply into the mountains. What had Gollum sought in that direction? Food, perhaps, and finding none he had returned to this place? Or was it a path that led to some other way out, to an avenue that the creature had taken when at last it abandoned its refuge and sought some new home? If the former, the hunter would return on hands and knees, clawing his way wretchedly through miles of black tunnel. If the latter, Aragorn might find himself once more on the trail.

He could not waste such a chance. Bending his back and bowing his head he entered the low passage.

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The path did not branch or divide. When his torch died, Aragorn continued on in darkness, his hands groping along the walls. He walked bent double, his chin tucked to his chest. The passage was narrow and scarcely more than four and a half feet from floor to ceiling. A man much less in height than Aragorn would have found the passage difficult. For the tall Ranger each step was a challenge, and before long his back and his shoulders and his calves began to ache. Steeling his will against the discomfort, he pressed on.

The air grew more stagnant, and his breath came in shallow huffs. The heat was mounting, too, and soon rivulets of perspiration were trickling down his temples and over the bridge of his nose and through his brows into his eyes. Aragorn wiped it away with the back of his hand. He could feel the darkness like a menacing presence behind him, and the blackness before was an endless sea through which he had to struggle. He tried to fix his thoughts solely upon the task at hand, but the closeness of the passage and the completeness of the darkness and the hammering of his heart in his chest were soon too much to bear. He stumbled upon a loose stone and fell to his knees, thrusting out his palms to break his fall.

Aragorn bowed low over his lap, panting laboriously as he fought for mastery over himself. Grim memories were clawing their way to the surface from places where they had long lay dormant. That for once they were not recollections of Mordor brought him little comfort. Evil, intangible evil in the darkness; and thirst and narrow passages scarcely broad enough for a man to slither through upon his belly. An endless maze of tunnels, over, under and through; and always that sense that something was lurking far below and yet near at hand, a shadow of the mind, a horror of the past, an unplumbed well of terror in the endless night...

With shaking hands he pulled his pack from his back and dug deep within it. He drew out his oilcloth bundle and plucked out a long shaft of cool tallow. His fingers fumbled and he dropped the flint several times before igniting his rag. As the rush caught alight and the glow of the candle suffused the narrow passage, Aragorn's eyes screwed themselves tightly closed against the sudden light, stinging after so long in the darkness, but his breathing eased. He cupped his hand around the dancing flame as though by doing so he could direct its light into his heart and drive away the scattered memories.

'That is quite enough,' he said, attempting to school himself sternly. 'That is quite enough.' The words came out thin and tremulous, and he clamped his lips closed against any more traitorous sounds.

He blinked several times, rapidly, as he adjusted to the brightness. Though he did not wish to venture forward, he could not justify wasting the rushlight. He worked his pack onto his back again – a difficult task with only one hand free at any given moment – and got to his feet once more, continuing his awkward journey.

A part of his mind wanted to scold him for behaving like a spoilt child and wasting light when he had no real need, but there was another part, a more merciful part, that argued that this need was real after all. The failing of courage could undermine his safety as much as any other threat, and more than most. If it was slightly ridiculous for a hardened warrior to find himself afraid of the darkness, it was also uncommon for such a person, raised beneath the Sun and the stars, to be delving ever more deeply into the pits beneath the mountains of Sauron. So pernicious was his fear that it seemed almost unnatural, as if some malicious will was bent upon destroying his resolve and driving him to despair. He could not submit, and if light aided him in his struggle then the candle was well wasted. Refusing to upbraid himself despite the niggling shame, Aragorn pressed forward.

The passage grew narrower and ever more low. At last, Aragorn could no longer stand and he was forced to his knees. Glad now of the patches so carefully applied to his hose, he crawled forward, using one hand whilst the other held the dwindling rushlight before him. After only a few yards, however, his palm was beginning to sting. He halted, and with his knife cut two narrow strips from the hem of his cloak. With these he wrapped his hands, and he continued on his way.

It took some time for the passage roof to sink low enough that his pack scraped against it as he crawled, and longer still before he could no longer advance upon hands and knees, and was obliged to sink down and propel himself forward with his elbows. He had no choice then but to snuff the candle, wait for it to cool, and tuck it back into his pack, which he pushed before him as he advanced. He could not afford the luxury of panic now: if he moved without thinking or he struggled against the ever narrowing tunnel, he would wedge himself in and might never writhe free. He drew upon his deepest reserves of will and focused only upon gaining another inch, another foot.

Still, his heart raced within him, and he was teetering on the very brink of madness when suddenly his pack tumbled away from his herding arms, and his elbows thrust outward, and he breathed cool air once more. Frantically, he scrambled out of the constrictive conduit and found himself tumbling down a brief incline.

He landed in a most undignified heap, and he groped for his pack. There was a moment of consternation when he could not locate it, but his fingers found canvas at last and he pulled his baggage to him. He sat there for a moment, dazed and disoriented, before it occurred to him that this might be a moment when light would have a greater purpose than the strengthening of a Ranger's flagging resolve. He found the candle and lit it again. The wick sputtered, but it took the flame. Aragorn got cautiously to his feet, swaying a little as the blood rushed from his head, and took in his surroundings.

He was standing in a small cavern, far smaller than the one he had left behind. Though it was similarly adorned with stalactites and the other slow incursions of nature, this room had not been formed entirely by the forces of the earth. The floor was smooth and even, and one corner was squared as though by a skilled stonemason. As Aragorn took two steps towards that junction, his eyes shed the last of their shadows and opened wide in disbelief.

There, in the rock wall, was a door.

It was made of hard, ancient-looking wood bound with bands and braces of iron. There was a large ring beneath a keyhole, bolted to the door by a staple and obviously meant to serve as a handle. What purpose this room had originally served Aragorn did not dare to think, but as he studied the dust upon the floor it was plain that the door had not been opened in a very, very long time. He tried the handle, and was not in the least surprised to find it locked.

Aragorn withdrew to the far side of the room, considering his options. There were only two exits from this room. One was the hole five feet up on the wall, through which he had tumbled so gracelessly, and beyond it the dreadful narrow passage. He doubted that he had the fortitude to subject himself to that ordeal again, at least without rest. But there was that door. He returned to the other side of the room. Upon closer inspection, he spied a third way out; a small vent-like tunnel not far from the door. It was too small to admit him: lean though he was and slender of bone, he would never contrive to get his shoulders through such a narrow space. Yet a creature of hobbit proportions, gaunt and wiry...

He knelt, thrusting his candle into channel. There were parallel marks where something had dragged over the stone, disturbing the detritus of centuries. Thought the dust had begun to creep back, it could not wholly conceal the signs that something had pulled two legs through this space. Aragorn felt another little thrill of victory. So Gollum had come this way after all – or something near enough like Gollum that he was bound to pursue it. He wondered if the vent led to the same place as the door, but since he did not wish to go back and it was plain that his quarry had been here, he had no choice but to try it.

He tipped a little tallow onto a stone so that the candle would stand on its own. It took considerable digging to find what he sought in his pack, but at last he had his coil of wire and one of the copper bangles stolen from the corpses of the orcs. With his knife he sawed through the bracelet, and using a stone he beat the curved copper into a flat tool. It was just the right width, and a little careful tapping rounded the rough edges where he had split it. He cut a length of wire, doubling it over and twisting it. Then he shuffled upon his knees to the door and set to work on the lock.

There were many skills that he had acquired over the years. Most were the talents of a soldier, or a lore master and healer. He had some skill with instruments of music. He could ply a needle and mend a fence. He had any number of proficiencies that had been honestly come by, and were a source of pride to himself and to those who had taught him. This particular talent, however, was not one that he had ever seen fit to share with Master Elrond or his foster-brothers. He had learned it in rather dubious circumstances in the distant land of Rhûn, and though it had on occasion proved most useful he was rather ashamed of his aptitude.

After less than a minute he withdrew his makeshift lockpicks. The plate was rusted and the tumblers would not move. Aragorn rummaged again in his pack for the pot of grease he had liberated from its former owner. He smeared it on the copper tine, and worked it into the mechanism of the lock. When he tried again to shift the tumblers he felt movement. Encouraged, he set to work once more.

Still, it was not easy. The lock was very old, and very heavy. His fingers began to cramp and his wrist to ache. When at last the telltale click was heard he grunted softly in relief, falling back on his heels and slumping his shoulders.

He could not tarry long: his candle was almost spent. Slinging his pack and his one remaining torch back onto his shoulders, Aragorn took hold of the ring and hauled upon the door. The rusted hinges were reluctant to move, but after throwing his full weight into the effort he managed to drag it inward so that there was a gap of about fourteen inches between it and the post.

Suddenly a dreadful stench flooded the small room. It was a smell of decay and indescribable filth, far beyond any staleness of unstirred air. Aragorn's eyes began to sting and his throat constricted. The rushlight flickered and went out. In the darkness he huddled, choking and gagging upon the foul air until at last, as needs must, his body resigned itself to the vile stink. He endevoured to ignite the candle again, but there was no use in trying. Whatever poisons were in the air, it seemed they would not allow him the mercy of fire. Tucking away his flint and steel, Aragorn slipped through the gap in the door and began to grope his way forward. There was nothing more that he could do. He pressed on into the darkness, striving not to breathe too deeply of the loathsome vapour.    

Chapter VIII: A Web of Darkness

Aragorn's struggle to breathe was no longer exclusively the product of fear. His chest ached with the effort of gleaning useable air from the miasma that seemed almost to have replaced the darkness. What putrescence had given rise to this suffocating stench he could not fathom and did not dare to imagine. With the will that had led men to find victory where they saw only defeat, he banished all speculation and focused on the next laborious breath and the next long, shuffling step. He groped onward, his right hand creeping along the clammy rock wall whilst his left grasped the neck of his cloak, pulling it as far down his chest as he could in a vain attempt to relieve some of the pressure in his throat.

Ever onward he walked. The walls were clammy but smooth, and here and there he found a shallow alcove, such as those used that might house braziers or sconces. No such instruments of light were present here, however, and he moved on blindly through the blackness and the vile smell of decay and unthinkable foulness. The darkness filled his lungs and permeated his body and seemed to numb his mind. He tried to focus, to fix his will on his unsteady breathing, but his senses were dulled and his thoughts grew detached and disjointed. He could scarcely hear his own footfalls in the thick, stagnant air, and as the rise and fall of his chest grew more laborious even his awareness of the dreadful reek seemed to dull and grow less tangible.

His head was swimming. Dimly he knew that he had little time left in which to find cleaner air. He tried to quicken his pace, but his limbs would not obey. His feet maintained their steady rise and fall and his hand fumbled forward. Alone of all his senses his touch seemed heightened, enhanced, amplified almost to the point where the feel of the cold stone beneath his fingertips brought pain. He could feel the slightest imperfection in the wall beneath his hand, and his left could almost pick out the individual fibres of the cloth it gripped.

The fear that had plagued him in the caverns behind seemed now a very distant thing. Conscious thought was muddled, and he could not remember why the darkness troubled him. It was all that he had ever known. Light, colour, clean open air and the dancing firmament of stars... all these were less than memory, vague concepts that grew more intangible with each moment that passed. What were they but the indistinct imaginings of a fevered mind? Only the darkness was real; the darkness and the curious smell of filth and evil that hovered on the edge of his flagging awareness.

He might have lost himself entirely, save that the slow shuffling of his feet made no allowance for a change in the grade of the floor. When his toes struck the front of a low stair, he stumbled and fell forward onto his knees. He caught himself with his hands, but the impact concussed up arms and legs into his hips and his shoulders and chest. A heavy exhalation of surprise drove the fumes briefly from his lungs and for a moment his mind was cleared of its fog. In that moment he realized with a thrill of horror that he was in very real danger of losing himself entirely to the gloom around him.

Though he had to draw breath, and with the return of the poisons his reason was clouded once more, Aragorn now struggled to fix his mind upon the world he had left behind. He thought of the cold waters of Poros and the glimmer of moonlight – what was moonlight? The glimmer of silver moonlight on the autumn leaves. He thought of golden grasses bowing and rippling before the wind, and of bright wildflowers clustered in ditches far to the North. He thought of tall oak trees adorned in rich woodland green, and red squirrels leaping from branch to branch, scolding one another as they scurried to and fro. He thought of little villages where happy children played, their garments dyed in bright, cheap shades of yellow and green and blue. He thought of the Hall of Fire: of orange flames dancing and the rich colours of fine Elven garments and the rainbow of wools woven into tapestries depicting the storied history of the Noldor. He thought of a maiden, as fair as the twilight itself, clad in soft grey raiment with gems in her shadowy hair, of quicksilver eyes that pierced his very soul, and a gentle, patient smile that pledged him her love and promised all the world...

How disappointed she would be if his labours ended here, cringing on the floor of some foul passage upon the marches of Mordor. Resolutely Aragorn struggled to his feet and climbed the five steps to a place where the passage broadened.

Unsettled by the change he groped around. Not only was the way wider here, but the walls were no longer squared. They curved, meeting the floor seamlessly, and they were coated with a thin, slimy layer that Aragorn hoped was no more than a sweat of condensation from the filthy air. Yet the walls, he noted with some unease, were still smooth; either carved with tools and ground to uniformity, or worn away by some unknown force over the long centuries. He was unsure which prospect should be the more alarming.

Now the passageway branched often; to the left, to the right. Without light Aragorn could not choose his way with any clarity of judgement, and so he did what he deemed simplest and kept a course as nearly straight as he could manage. Presently the incline of the floor altered, and he became aware that he was stumbling up a slope, at times standing upright and at times scrambling with his hands like a beast. Still the darkness clawed at his mind, but he fought it, drawing upon his deep reserves of will to find the memory of living things, colourful things, in a land of light far away.

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As he moved ever farther through the vile caves, and his struggle for self-awareness grew more and more desperate, Aragorn grew gradually aware that he was not alone in the darkness. There were living things here, hidden somewhere in the dark. He could hear them down the next passage, or somewhere behind the walls, or beneath the floor: the scrape and rustle of motion. At times he thought it was only the wild imaginings of a brain poisoned by the noxious fumes, but the next moment he would find himself certain that somewhere in this hive of tunnels something malicious was lurking, waiting for the moment when it might strike.

He wanted to draw his knife, but if he should chance to stumble and drop it he might never find it again. Instead he loosed the blade in its sheath so that it might be swiftly drawn, and fumbled in the pouch at his belt for one of the slender throwing-daggers that he had taken from the fallen orc. With cold steel in his overly-sensitive hand he felt less helpless. The irrationality of this thought concerned him only a little. He was far beyond the borders of rationality now.

An absurd urge to laugh seized him as he wondered what Gandalf would have made of his present plight. Wandering without aim high within the Ephel Dûath, armed with a blade less in length than his hand, most likely lost within this maze of corridors, and growing ever more convinced that there was something in the next passage that intended to slay him if it could – what a thoroughly unwise predicament he had created for himself! If Gollum was here, he would never find him. If Gollum had once been here, he would never find a trace of him. It would be a marvel to rival the great miracles of old if he found his own way out into the open air once more. Aragorn son of Arathorn, the great adventurer, the far-wanderer, the mighty huntsman, had followed his prey too far at last.

There it was again! A clicking noise in the darkness. Aragorn whirled around as though he could cast his keen gaze into the blackness behind. If there was anything there, he could not see it. He stood motionless, not even daring to breathe as he listened for something more that might give him a clue as to whence the sound had come or what had made it. It was a vaguely familiar noise, like and yet unlike something he had heard long ago and far away, but his dulled faculties were not equal to the task of placing it and he could hear nothing more that might help him.

He turned again and continued on his way, brushing past passage after branching passage. His fear had returned, and with it the wariness that long years of unrelenting vigilance had honed into the keenest of instincts. The muting power of the noxious dark had less grip over him now, and he was acutely aware of every sound, every movement of air.

Thus it was that he realized that the next gap in the wall he passed led not to another tunnel but into a large, open space. Hesitating only a moment, he took three steps backward and pressed his shoulder to the wall. Slowly he inched around the edge of the opening, careful lest he should expose his back to attack. As his left hand guided him forward he became aware that the walls in this place were coated with some vile secretion, at once sticky and slippery. The stink was stronger here than it had been at any other point in his blind journey through this pit of vileness.

Despite the danger he flung himself away from the wall and took several unsteady steps into the open expanse of the cavern, frantically quelling the urge to retch. Something brushed against his brow and he raised a frantic hand to brush it away, but when his fingers reached his forehead they found nothing.

Disoriented, he stumbled in the darkness. Loathe though he was to touch the slime once more he knew he had to reach the wall, or he would never find his way out of this hollow place. As he took a staggering step forward his boot struck something that creaked and rasped against the floor of the cave. Aragorn's empty left hand thrust outward and touched... something.

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For a moment he did not dare to move, nor to explore further what his fingers had found. The surface was coarse and bristled, as if covered in short, scratchy hairs. He waited without breath for the thing beneath his hand to move, to rise up, to smite him.

When it did not he began to shift his hand. Hairs indeed: a thick coat of rough hairs upon a hard, scaly base, and interspersed among them were great wiry protrusions like spines of steel. With mounting horror Aragorn reached with his other hand, thumb and forefinger holding the knife against his palm while the other fingers searched. It was a cylindrical thing, covered all over with these horrible hairs, as thick as the bole of a young ash. Searching along its length, which slanted upwards to his right at about fifty degrees, his hands came to a place where the hairs were fewer and the girth of the thing swelled to a great knobbed mass, gnarled and firm but hinged. A joint. A leg.

Aragorn recoiled. As he scrambled backward he tripped and fell, landing hard with a force that jarred his spine. He could not breathe, so complete was his horror. Unable to move, unable to think, he remained motionless upon the foul floor of the cavern, waiting for whatever creature he had disturbed to rise up and smite him. Waiting for death.

It did not come. The slow time passed, but there was no sound. Each excruciating second that slipped by brought further proof that he had not yet forfeited his life. At first Aragorn could not comprehend how he yet lived, but then he realized that it must mean that the beast, whatever it was, was dead or otherwise incapacitated. If dead, he might fly from this place before its kindred came seeking vengeance. If slumbering or wounded, he had to be sure it could not later rise up and follow him, smiting him down in some tight place in the maze of lightless tunnels. Yet he could not very well go groping about the body of an unseen and unknown enemy that might rise up at any time. To make a proper assessment he would have to hazard a light, assuming he could ignite one in this heavy atmosphere.

Remembering the failure of his candle far below at the door, Aragorn instead wrested his last torch from his back. His flint sparked ineffectually, but he persisted. With a crackling sound the pitch caught fire at last, and Aragorn swiftly raised the torch as it flamed up to blind him. For a minute he could see nothing, his eyes overwhelmed by the sudden brilliance. Then his vision returned and the glow of the torch was reduced to a pitiful aura of uncertain red light. The brand was too old to burn brightly, and the pervasive darkness seemed to dim it further as it smoked and sputtered. Yet it provided some illumination at least, and Aragorn climbed to his feet, stepping towards the looming form before him.

At the sight of the thing he had unwittingly touched, his courage all but forsook him. There, upon its side on the floor of the cavern, lay a hideous creature born of nightmares. The leg he had felt was one of eight massive, hairy limbs, each one tipped with a curling claw as long as his forearm. A great, bulbous body lay upon its side, the legs outstretched before it like the fingers of some grotesque hand. It was black, marred with livid blotches, and the belly between the great legs was pale. Upon the bloated head were great horns, and fangs marked with poison glinted in the tremulous torchlight. From where he stood Aragorn could not see the spinnerets, but he knew they were there, behind the cluster of legs.

He had seen monstrous spiders before, far away in the shadows of Mirkwood, but such a creature as this was beyond even his most tortured imaginings. Its size outstripped its smaller kindred by tenfold or more, and the body exuded such a reek that Aragorn now understood some part of the foulness of these caverns. Unmoving he stared, stricken with horror.

Yet surely it was dead, for neither his touch nor the light had roused it, nor did any living spider lie with its legs thus clustered beside it, like loosely bundled branches. He forced himself to look at the great faceted eyes, and saw naught but a milky yellowish film, like glass frosted in a furnace in which brimstone had burned. One eye was cracked, and within Aragorn saw only darkness.

Reason penetrated his horror. That was not right: even a dead spider had fluid in its eyes. He shuffled to his right, edging around the massive body for he was unwilling to draw any nearer. Then he saw it. The back of the bloated body was riven in twain, and within the vile shell was a cavern of black. It was not a spider at all, neither dead nor alive, but the skin of such a beast, shed as its owner grew. There was the cradle of foul spider-silk where the thing had lain whilst its fresh hide hardened. There were the scratchings of new claws upon the stone. There was the trail of the massive monster where it had left the cavern, abandoning its cast-off shell as it sought, ravening, for food to satiate its appetites after the long labour of discarding its old skin.

Aragorn's mind raced. A freshly-molted spider was a fragile creature, weakened from the effort of forsaking the old skeleton and all but defenceless until the new one grew hard. But this shell was dry, the edges of the rift already crumbling. He knew too little of spider-lore to say how long it had been since its owner had abandoned it, but he knew that if the beast was gone from its sanctuary it was strong enough to hunt. Strong enough to kill. And after such an ordeal it would be hungry.

He had no hope against a creature of that size. Neither his knife, nor his strength, nor his agility, nor all his wits would avail him against such a foe. Yet perhaps all was not lost. Where might and wisdom could not aid him there was still haste – and luck. He was coming from the wrong direction: the creature would not look for prey in the heart of her dank bower, but in the pass below. For he knew now where he was. In the land of Mordor this place was both feared and revered, and when last he had walked these lands he had heard dark rumours of its cruel mistress, the guardian of the path that led to the old watchtower erected by the men of Gondor in the years after the last great war. Somewhere ahead, the tunnels ended and he might find the open air – if he did not find the great beast first.

He turned and hastened back towards the path. At the threshold of the cavern he cast back one brief look into the darkness where the shed spider-skin lay mouldering. A cold shiver coursed through his body, but he steeled his resolve and refused to submit. He could afford no fear now, not in this place nor at this time. Dim though it was, his one hope for life hinged upon a clear head and a fleet foot.

He could not risk a light any longer. He cast away the torch and ran unsteadily into the darkness. He was around the next corner even before the flames were swallowed by the putrescence on the floor. Sightless and struggling against the insistent terror that threatened to devour him, Aragorn stumbled on – he hoped towards his goal. In some recess of his mind he had to acknowledge the wry understatement of whatever mapmaker of ancient Gondor had named the place he now sought to reach. What scribe had so idly named it thus, and had they fully understood what lurked here? Here, above the Pass of the Spider, in a place still more terrible.

Torech Ungol.    

Note: Chapter title from "The Mewlips"; The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter IX: Spider-Shadows

For all that Aragorn knew, he was stumbling in circles through the unending maze of tunnels. At least, cold comfort though it was, he knew that he had not found his way back to the cavern where the spider-skin lay rotting. As he advanced, his head and hands were slapped again and again with tickling tendrils that he knew now to be cobwebs. It was one of those rare instances when he would have preferred ignorance to knowledge. His skin was crawling beneath his clothes, as if tiny, many-legged creatures were scuttling up and down his limbs and his torso.

The last traces of the soothing but deadly complacency that had plagued him in the blackness behind were gone now, replaced by the battle-ready alertness that the long years had honed to an instinct. Despite the noxious darkness Aragorn's senses were awake to the slightest change in his environment. His ears picked up the faintest sound, the most fleeting whisper of the gravid air. As he moved forward with what haste he could, he listened ever for the clicking noise of spider-pincers or the scrape of claw-tipped legs that would herald his death.

Yet on he ran, and neither death nor the spider had found him yet. Though he tried to keep his mind solely on the present peril, his thoughts kept drifting back to everything he had ever heard about this place and the fell shadow that dwelt here.

In Gondor the truth was all but forgotten, recalled only in the name of the pass and the hive of caverns above it. In his time in the service of Ecthelion, Aragorn had never heard more than vague legends of some evil in these caves, and in his youthful ignorance he had imagined a colony of creatures like those that plagued Mirkwood. Even the Rangers of Ithilien, who laboured near this terrible place, could say no more. Yet in Núrn the Pass of the Spider was hailed as a destination of unspeakable terror. He remembered now, too late, the rumours that he had heard but little heeded, whispered by the servants of Sauron and the wretched slaves misused by them, of a single, almost demonic presence in the Pass.

It struck him with a dawning horror that slaves and captives for whom there was no further use had at whiles been sent to Cirith Ungol to meet their end; sacrificed, doubtless, to placate the beast that dwelt within these caverns.

He stumbled as the passage changed direction, and skidded to his knees against the unnaturally smooth rock-wall. Aragorn slapped his hand against the stone in frustration: he could not afford weakness now. With an effort he hauled himself to his feet and struggled on, but fear and weariness and time unknowable spent in this gloom had drained much of his reserves of strength. As he groped ahead through the blackness he began to despair of ever finding his way out of this dreadful pit.

He beat back that thought. If he allowed hopelessness to take hold, the dark would devour his mind as it had threatened to do before. As the memory of that – that thing in the cavern behind once more eclipsed his reason, he was driven back into the realm of ancient tales, and accounts of that creature, a spirit of evil in the form of a spider, who had with Morgoth ravished Valinor. Ungoliant, who had drained dry the wells of the Blessed Realm and devoured the light of the Two Trees, belching forth darkness in its place. It was said that the great spiders of Mirkwood were her long descendants, but whatever had wrought the web of black in which he now was caught was nearer offspring than that. Aragorn understood now his former aloofness to his plight and the fog that had so consumed his senses. This darkness was more than the ordinary gloom of the subterranean paths of Middle-earth. It was the product of an evil thing, in malice equal to Sauron himself, that had dwelt in these hills through the long ages, forgotten by all save the servants of the Enemy who dwelt upon her threshold.

Again his face was brushed by a foul strand of spider-silk. Panic was swiftly mounting, and he fought it yet again. He could submit to terror still less than he could exhaustion. He had faced more desperate situations than this, he told himself bracingly – though a niggling voice from deep within retorted that he could count such incidents upon his thumbs. Still, he resolved, he would not lie down in the dark like a sheep ready for slaughter. He refused to wait for death; he would run until his legs gave out beneath him, and then if needs must he would crawl, but he would never submit.

lar

He no longer knew how long he had been walking. His back ached and his weary feet pained him. His head felt muddled, and he knew it was as much for want of rest and nourishment as it was because of the spell of the darkness. Now and again he dared to take the risk of lifting the orc's water-skin to his lips and sipping at the tepid fluid within, but for the most part his hands were needed: the left to feel his way forward along the concave wall, and his right to hold his knife. At some point he had dropped the small throwing-dagger, but he had not noticed where or when. His limbs were shaking with exhaustion and that particular enervation that came from labouring too long in a state of heightened alertness, awaiting a calamity that never descended. All that he wanted was to sink to the ground and draw his cloak about himself and sleep, just for a few short hours. Sleep...

'No!'

His voice echoed in the blackness, startling Aragorn out of the dangerous reverie into which he had sunk. He held his breath. Had anything else heard his cry? Was this the mistake that would summon the monster? But only the silence greeted him: the silence and the perpetual reek.

'No,' he whispered, and the word fell deadened at his feet. 'You cannot die here, you fool. Come now, recreant: onward! Onward.'

And onward and onward. There was a limit even to his endurance, and Aragorn feared that he would soon surpass it. If he did not receive some sign of progress soon, his flagging resolve and his weary body would no longer be equal to the task of keeping him on his feet. He dared another mouthful of water. There was food in his pack, and he had only to halt for a moment to dig it out, but the thought repulsed him. Not only pausing, but the idea of eating anything in this vile place. Though he knew it had been many, many hours – perhaps a day or more – since he had last taken nourishment in that first tunnel, he could not bear the thought of food. Closing his eyes, for they were useless anyhow and it soothed the tension in his brow to lower his lids, he groped forward again.

Suddenly he became aware of a change in his surroundings. It took him several steps before he realized what it was that was different, but when he did his pulse quickened. Though the darkness was still as pervasive as before, and the air still as foul and his body still as sore, the floor beneath his feet had changed its incline. He was moving downward now.

He did not dare to hope that this might be a sign that he was proceding in the right direction, for it might just as easily mean that he was descending further into the lair of the spider, but at least with the pull of the earth in his favour his progress was less painful. He hastened down the sloping tunnel, booted feet skidding and slipping against the slick stone. Then suddenly the grade was flat once more, and he drew himself up sharply as the wall beneath his fingers abruptly ended. This unexpected development almost thrust him into the panic that had been threatening for hours, and he stumbled backward until his back struck stone. He groped about, and found the place where the rock wall turned a sharp corner. Across the gap only a little way there was a second such junction. He had reached the intersection of two passages: the relatively narrow one through which he had passed, and the one in which he now stood.

Despite the thickness of the stinking air, this space felt more open than the other. Cautiously, Aragorn stepped forward, fingers outstretched in the darkness. One step, two. Five, six, seven... and at last he touched the far wall.

It was wider than any passage he had yet encountered, and at first he wondered whether he had found his way into some other cavern, but a few minutes' walking with the wall to his left convinced him that this was indeed a tunnel. He halted then, with his back to the wall, and tried to consider his course. What sense of direction he was able to retain in such dark places had long since forsaken him. Whether he was walking Eastward or West, North or South he could not say. Nor, he was forced to admit, did he particularly care. He could not consider his hunt now, when he was in danger of becoming prey himself, and after so long in this vile place he longed only to see the open sky again and to breathe air not permeated with evil and spider-shadows. Therefore lost as he was one way was as good as the other. He continued forward.

Then suddenly there was a sound: a sharp, creaking ululation that ended in a long hiss. It was followed immediately by the noise that Aragorn had been dreading: the clattering click of spider-legs on stone. It was coming from up the passage, rapidly approaching. The Ranger's eyes grew wide and he flung his back against the wall, flattening himself along the stone. He tightened his grip on his knife. If it was to end here, he would at least wound the dread thing.

Again the spider shrieked. It was a terrifying noise, thin and high-pitched and, despite the miasma that seemed to swallow sound, disconcertingly loud. It was near indeed now, and Aragorn braced himself to spring into hopeless battle. The scuttling legs sounded off the stone, shuffling, scrambling, ticking against the ground. Nearer and nearer and nearer still, until Aragorn could feel the wind of their motion upon his outstretched left hand.

Then with another blood-curdling cry the creature was past him, careening off into the darkness behind. Aragorn stood frozen, unable to quite believe his good fortune. Was it possible that it had not sensed his presence? Was it even conceivable that it could have passed so near and failed to notice an intruder in its lair? Shaking off his shock as swiftly as he could he turned and began to run, in the direction opposite to that in which the creature had fled.

Fled. The word struck home even before he heard the creak of joints before him and the low, venomous hiss of a huntress rapt in the chase. Even as the light of some dim, luminescent mass began to advance upon him, Aragorn realized that what had passed him was not the beast upon whose horrible hide he had stumbled far above. It was some other wretched creature, like him a captive of this mire of blackness, and it had sped past him without notice because it was driven by fear of what lay behind.

He could feel the vast bulk of the creature surging forward through the tunnel. The sickly glow was surely the spider's vast underbelly – the pallid ghost of which had been preserved on the forsaken shell. The rattling and creaking of its joints as great legs strove to support the massive body filled Aragorn's ears. In that moment his mounting terror overwhelmed him completely, and he forsook all hope of inflicting some hurt to his foe ere he perished. Unable to master himself, he flung his body down upon the floor of the cave, arms thrust up to shelter his head, and he huddled there, incapable of motion, as the beast swept towards him.

A claw landed close by his elbow. Another grazed his leg, scoring his garments and sending a fiery pain into his loins. There was a venomous hiss and the snapping of pincers and a stench unbearable even after so long in this noxious atmosphere. Aragorn braced himself, prepared at last for death...

And the creature was gone. Away it swept, carrying its vile reek with it. Heedless of the wretch cowering upon the floor it surged off into the darkness in single-minded pursuit of its prey.

lar

Aragorn scrambled to his feet, nearly tumbling again as pain shot up from his wounded thigh. He bent, clapping a hand over the place the spider-claw had struck, attempting futilely to stem the bleeding. His every instinct told him to run, as fast and as far as he could in the direction opposite the passage of that monstrosity. But reason overtook him in the time it took his hammering heart to force out three tremulous beats. The spider had come from the direction he faced. If he ran forward, he would be stumbling into its lair. When it returned – and it would return – he would not be so fortunate as he had been just now.

The other spider, the smaller one, had fled down the passage for a reason. That way had seemed to it the surest escape. Long years in the wild had taught Aragorn that beasts and birds knew best the way to water, or sustenance, or safety, and it was a foolish man indeed who did not heed their signs. He groped on the ground for his knife, taking it in his left hand, for his right was clutching his scored leg. Then he turned in the direction that the two beasts had raced.

Some shard of good sense protested that he was a fool for running towards such a foe, but Aragorn did not heed it. He was pushed beyond desperation now, and he had no longer the luxury of sober second thought. There was only a primal instinct, nurtured and heightened by the ceaseless struggle for survival that had been his adult life. If there was a way out of this place, that was the way that the smaller spider would have chosen. And if he overtook the larger beast before she found her quarry, the kill might distract her just long enough for the Ranger to escape.

He broke into a loping, limping stride, moving as swiftly as he could. Now and again he felt a jarring pain from his freshly-injured leg, but such was his desperation that he heeded it not. His chest ached from the exertion, and his head swam as the foul air failed to furnish sufficient breath. A vague white form coalesced before his eyes, swimming upon the very cusp of unconsciousness...

And then he realized that it was not a product of his failing faculties at all, but a brightness in the passage ahead. Aragorn released his hold on his wound to catch himself against the tunnel wall before utter astonishment overcame him completely. He halted for less than a breath, however, as he ran forward towards the light, praying desperately that he came not too late, and that the lesser spider was offering its pursuer adequate distraction.

As he staggered out of the tunnel and up the slope to the open cleft of the pass the light blinded him. After so long in the darkness, even the gloom of Mordor seemed unbearably bright. Furiously, frantically, Aragorn blinked his eyes in an attempt to clear his vision. When at last the vague shapes about him hardened into bleak reality, he looked about desperately for any sign of the spiders.

A cry from above alerted him, and he turned, casting his eyes heavenward. There, upon the shelf of stone overhanging the entrance to the tunnel, the one beast chased the other. The first spider was no larger than the monsters of Mirkwood, Aragorn noticed. The other, vast beyond imagining, was too terrible to behold. She was scrambling after the lesser creature, and as the Ranger watched she caught him between her mighty forelegs. From her spinnerets a thick rope of silk shot, and she looped it around the flailing legs. Then there was a horrible noise as the great spider sank her fangs into the lesser, injecting within him the paralytic poison that would keep him quiet and complacent whilst she wrapped him. Then she would drag her unhappy mate back into the darkness behind and devour him, sating one appetite with the body of a creature that had fed another.

Fighting the urge to vomit up the meagre contents of his stomach, Aragorn knew that if he was going to fly, this was his only chance. Tearing his eyes away from the horrific spectacle above, he ran. In his exhaustion he stumbled, falling with his face in the dust, but somehow he scrambled up, dragging his hurting leg after him. Down the winding way he ran, gulping greedily the cold air of a mountain winter – foul with the reek of Mordor, but fresh to lungs grown accustomed to the spider-stink. The tunnel was far behind him now, and he heard no sign of pursuit, but still he ran. He ran until he could run no more, and then he loped on at a pace less than his most lazy stride, his good leg trembling and his right a leaden weight of pain. He clutched the cliff face and dragged himself onward, until at last he stumbled upon an uneven place in the path and fell for the last time.

His final disjointed thought before he slipped from consciousness was that he still did not know which side of the Pass he had found.    

Note: Excerpt from "Old Fat Spider" from "Flies and Spiders"; The Hobbit; J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter X: Down the Long Stairway

Aragorn jerked back into the waking world with an anxious start. He did not want that! Let the spider keep on spinning, in a tree or in a cave or over the very Cracks of Doom, so long as it did not come looking for him!

His eyes opened, and when he saw only darkness he shook with a convulsion of despair. So it had been nothing more than a fevered dream: the lesser spider and the great creature of darkness, the desperate flight, his near escape. He had collapsed in the tunnels, and let slip his hold on awareness, and now that he had found it again he was still lost in the labyrinth of terror.

He was holding his breath and his lungs begged for air, but he hesitated. He could bear no more of the vile reek of this hateful place. If he resisted long enough, perhaps he would lose consciousness once more. But reflex, of course, was stronger than obstinacy, and he drew in a long ragged gasp at last.

The air was still and stale, but free of the filth of centuries. Shocked, Aragorn breathed again, and again, as deeply as his ribs would allow. The effort exhausted him and he lay there panting, curled on his side with his face pressed to the rocky ground. The stones were dry. The air was clean. Far above he could hear the whisper of the wind as it swirled around mountain crags.

Relief so great as to be shameful flooded Aragorn's body as the tension in his limbs ebbed away. He had escaped after all. Where he was he could not say, but he was free and alive and unscathed, and he was not trussed up in spider-silk waiting for death. He raised a trembling hand to his brow and attempted to sit up. When a searing shaft of pain shot up into his abdomen he fell back with a stifled moan. Not unscathed after all, it seemed.

Slowly the memories returned and he reached for his thigh, fingers probing gently amid the layers of sodden cloth until they found the rent. The lightest touch sent forth a fresh wave of agony, and Aragorn set his teeth so that he did not cry out. He knew not where he lay, nor what servants of the Enemy might be at hand to hear him.

He could feel fresh blood flowing from the place where the spider's clawed foot had torn him, and he knew that he had to tend the wound before his life flowed away through it. He had been lying on his right side, and doubtless that had stemmed the tide somewhat, but he could not risk neglecting an unknown hurt, here high in the mountains that looked down upon… where? Morgul Vale, or Gorgoroth? He could not decide which prospect was the most dismal. All that he knew was that at this moment either was preferable to the place from whence he had come, and that wherever he was he would be taking a different path out.

With a tremendous effort and much tugging upon his good leg, Aragorn contrived to sit up. He bowed his head over his lap, panting softly against the pain. When at last he had the mastery, he worked his pack off of his back and rooted around within for his sole remaining rushlight. It had snapped in two, probably when he had collapsed, but having escaped those tunnels with his life Aragorn was not in a frame of mind to be overly disheartened by a broken candle. He cut the rush with care, so that both pieces would be useable, and after a minutes' fumbling with flint and steel he had a flame.

Nothing could be seen through his layered garments, and so he removed his cloak and unlaced his cote, then braced himself against the pain and peeled away the blood-soaked wool and shredded linen that obscured the wound. The laceration was deep and ragged, digging down into the muscle. Unwilling to probe further with filthy fingers, he dug in his pack for the skin of orc-liquor and washed his hands with it, sparing a little of his precious drinking water to rinse the alcohol away. Cautiously he felt the borders of the wound, and was displeased to find them hot and inflamed. He dared not dig too deeply, but he did not think the claw had struck the bone. At least he sincerely hoped it had not. Looking at the wound, he wondered how the spider had inflicted such damage without even pausing to take notice – and how he had fled so far without falling. It was fortunate that the wound was along the outside of the thigh: the major vessels ran along the inside.

Still, he had to pack and bind the wound before he could move on. He considered his options. He might shred all that remained of his shirt to rags, and it would still not be sufficient to stop the bleeding. Yet he could hardly stuff such an injury with dirty wool. A compromise, then, was in order. He made short work of stripping off his cote and relieving his shirt of its remaining sleeve, reducing it swiftly to bandage lengths. With the linen he packed the wound. Then, cutting long strips from the hem of his cloak he bound his thigh tightly.

In the end he had lost almost a foot of the garment, but it was still serviceable, save for the long rent where the spider's claw had torn it. There were matching tears in the skirts of his cote and in his braies and his hose. He had to repair the rip in his cloak, at least, for abbreviated though it now was, it served him as coat, camouflage and blanket. Fortunately this was a swift repair, for there was no need to be careful of fit. Unwilling to squander his last yards of thread, he took sturdy stay-stitches at either end of the rent in his cote and at the base of the tear in his hose.

With his leg and his garments adequately mended, he knew he ought to extinguish the light. But he was sitting half-naked on the path, and it seemed the perfect opportunity to inspect himself for other hurts that might have gone unnoticed in his mad flight. He raised his hands to feel his head, and recoiled in disgust as he came away with a clump of malodorous cobwebs. With spastic abandon he clawed through his hair until he was satisfied that the last of the vile stuff was gone.

For a time he sat motionless, bent low over his bloodied lap. His cheeks burned with shame at the memory of his cowardice, even as his reason protested that had his courage not failed him at the critical moment he would have challenged the spider and been slain by her. He owed his life to a moment's lapse in valour – and to its equally swift return that had allowed him the folly of running after the huntress and her prey. There was no disgrace in survival, if one did not sacrifice the life or freedom of another to save oneself. Still, the memory of his weakness was bitter to bear.

His thoughts were muddled, and Aragorn realized that his unsteadiness was not wholly due to his wound and his humiliation. For uncounted hours, quite likely days, he had not troubled to eat. Small wonder, then, that he felt so feeble.

With shaking hands he hunted by the last glow of the sputtering rushlight for something edible in the depths of his pack. He did not feel quite able to stomach any of his increasingly rancid supply of meat, and the bread he had taken from the orcs was hard as stone and could not be gnawed by mortal teeth without first being softened – an effort to which he felt less than equal. That left only his untouched cache of walnuts. He took a handful and leaned back against the stone bastion beside him to take his poor supper.

He ate slowly and cautiously, drawing intermittent sips from his bottle and trying to gather his strength. The nuts were savoury and tasted distantly of salt, and though his water was tepid and stale it was clean. Gradually he felt the poisons ebbing from his mind as his scattered resolve returned.

By the time he had finished with his meal, the chill of the night was working upon his unclothed torso. He dressed himself quickly and sat shivering for a while with his cloak hugged tightly to his body. He realized belatedly that he had not finished assessing his physical state, but he had no energy now with which to resume it. He knew that he ought to move from here, to discover where and in what peril he was now, but that, too, was outside the bounds of his strength. Exhausted beyond even his endurance, he eased himself back down upon the hard ground, pillowing his head upon his pack. Sleep found him swiftly.

lar

The first grey light woke him. The perpetual gloom of the Ephel Dûath hung low over the ragged peaks of the Pass, like a rain-filled canopy sagging between its tent-poles. Aragorn's head was throbbing insistently, and he groped for his water, taking two sloshing mouthfuls before he even attempted to sit up.

Every muscle ached, and his bandaged leg was throbbing. Once he was more or less upright, Aragorn squinted against the murky half-light to inspect his dressing. There were two darker patches on the strips of green wool where he had bled through the linen beneath, but both were dry to the touch. It seemed that the worst of the bleeding had stopped.

Resolve alone allowed him to rise, hopping awkwardly on his good leg. He cast about without much hope for a branch or a tree or even a sapling that he might uproot to use as a stave, but of course there was nothing. Tentatively, he shifted a little of his weight onto his injured leg. After the first dreadful piercing agony, the pain deadened to a dull, pulsing rhythm, and he found himself able to hobble about after a fashion, so long as he kept his right hand at the ready to catch himself against the great stone pikes that thrust up from the plateau on which he stood. He picked up his pack and returned his knife to its sheath, then cast a grim backward glance at the towering cliff that marked the entrance to the monster's lair, and began to move down the path.

He had not gone more than a hundred feet when his head began to reel and his vision flooded with black stars that swam and pulsed insistently. Fearful that he was about to collapse, Aragorn staggered inelegantly towards the next mass of stone and thrust his weight against it. He lifted his right foot up behind and shared his weight between his left and the rock as he pressed his face to the cold, rough surface and fought with all his power to keep from toppling over insensate.

When at last the fit passed, he remained thus propped against the stone, trying to force his reluctant mind to work. He was in no fit state to travel, but every minute he lingered here increased his odds of discovery and capture – or worse, that the spider once finished with her ill-starred mate would come forth looking for the lesser prey that had escaped her wrath. Furthermore, he had to determine which side of the mountains he was on, and to try – here his soul shrivelled a little within his breast – to rediscover the trail that he had lost at the forgotten door.

He had to eat something also, he decided pragmatically. Perhaps that would renew some of his strength, and certainly after losing two or three pints of blood he had sore need of sustenance. Not daring to surrender his hard-won upright position, he worried his pack off of his back where he stood and dug out two strips of meat. They smelled unpleasant and tasted worse, but the flesh was not yet so far gone as to be dangerous and he managed to choke all of it down. He waited, at first patiently and then with increasing disquietude, for a renewal of strength that did not come.

Aragorn felt a small thrill of despair. He could not go on as he was, nor could he linger here, in this open and barren place without plant or animal or water to provide for his needs as he convalesced. There was nothing for it, then. Though he had sworn that he would not let himself be reduced to such measures, he rummaged in his pack and hauled out the half-empty skin of orc-liquor. Bracing himself like a child faced with unpleasant medicine, he dug out the stopper and took a swift swallow.

The loathsome brew burned its way down his throat and through his chest before sending out searing waves of discomfort from his stomach, but almost at once his hands ceased their trembling and his head grew more clear and the pain of his wound abated. With the grim satisfaction of one who knew that he had done what was necessary for survival, Aragorn bunged the skin again and hung it from his belt close by his water. The pack he returned to his back, and he set out again with iron resolve.

His progress was swifter now, for he felt little pain and the strength, for a time at least, had been restored to his limbs. He was quite sure that he could push himself harder than he was, for he knew the extent to which the orcs' potion concealed the hurts and weariness of the body, but he had no wish to do unwitting damage to himself. The cordial would not last forever, and when at last his store was gone his one hope was that his wound would have been given time to heal.

Presently he became aware of a red glow in the sky behind him and he turned, looking back. Between two crags in the cliff behind there was a beacon, a harsh carmine stain against the ominous cinereal clouds. It was set atop a great, smooth pinnacle of stone that Aragorn recognized abruptly as a tower on the far side of the Pass, beyond the lair of the spider.

'Cirith Ungol,' he whispered, and he felt the cold hand of dread upon his heart.

He had not passed through the mountains at all, but was still upon their westward flank. Worse still, he now knew himself to be caught between the two places in all the world that he least desired to walk. Behind and above was the Pass with its fearful guardian. Before and below lay the foul fens and deadly perils of Morgul Vale. Through one or the other he must now find his way, and he knew not how to choose. By rights he ought to take the way that Gollum had taken, but Aragorn knew not what that might be, either. He could not comprehend how any creature, however warped and craven, might willingly pass into Mordor unless pressed to gravest need, and yet neither could he see what might draw his quarry down into Imlad Morgul.

Aragorn surveyed the rocky place where he stood. Had Gollum ever walked here, he could have left no clear sign upon these stones. Indeed, it was not inconceivable that he lived no longer, having been consumed by the mighty spider into whose lair he appeared to have crept.

Yet logical though such an outcome seemed, Aragorn could not bring himself to believe it. The long years of labour could not have come to this: that his quarry had come to an ignominious end between the pincers of Ungoliant's unholy offspring, devoured with all his secrets beneath the Mountains of Shadow. Surely one who had eluded capture so long when pursued by a relentless Istar and the mightiest huntsman in Middle-earth could have contrived to escape the shadows of the spider, when even a blindly bumbling man had managed to do so.

If Gollum had come this way he would have left some memory of his passage, however faint. Most likely such evidence would be found in the shadows among the crevices and crannies in the stone, not only because of the rubble gathered there but also because it was in such places that the creature seemed to secret himself. Aragorn could not count the times that he had found the imprints of spindly toes or the mark of a heel or a heap of gnawed rodent bones in such corners. So slowly, methodically, he began his search, working ever downward away from the spider-tunnels and towards the Morgul Vale.

lar

Daylight – or what in this land passed for daylight, though even when the sun was at its zenith in some forgotten realm far above the shadows it was still nothing more than a murky gloom – slipped away while Aragorn hunted for any sign of his quarry. Twice he dosed himself with the orc-cordial, and once he stopped to force himself to eat a little. When at last he drew within sight of the edge of the plateau, he was swiftly losing what little hope he had.

Furthermore it seemed that he had come to a dead end: there was no further path, but only the mountains above and a ravine far below. Yet as he stood, perplexed, Aragorn recalled another scrap of rumour gleaned in the years of his great errantries, when a bold and valiant young man had delved deep into the hearts of Men to discover both the good and the evil that dwelt within. Cautiously, he drew near the edge and looked down.

The plateau stood across a great cliff, steeply sloping upward from the mountain passage below. From this dizzying height in the gathering night Aragorn could make out little of the path far below, but it took no acuity of sight to discern the stair, a winding way of carven steps that clung to the face of the cliff and wove to and fro as it made its descent. Carved a long Age ago by the stonemasons of Meneldil as an access to the watchtower of Cirith Ungol, these stairs were the only way into the Pass. They were not intended as a means of exit, for in those days Gondor had striven to keep contained the evil things that dwelt in the realm of their vanquished foe. Steep and treacherous and nearly three thousand years old, the stone steps were no fit road for a sane man.

Yet Aragorn was no longer sure that he could be counted among the sane, at least not where this search was concerned. The reasonable course of action would have been to cast aside the hunt in Harondor. The judicious decision would have been to admit defeat and return to the North. His choices since refusing to take the sensible path had all bordered on madness, though it was some comfort at least that he could not be counted reckless. He knew well his limits, and though he had pressed them in this journey he had never yet surpassed them. He did not fear to take these stairs, if only he might find some sign that this course was the one that Gollum had chosen.

Yet his alternatives were threefold: go down, remain here, or turn back. He was not entirely certain that he could have found the courage to do the last, even had he been following a fresh and incontrovertible trail. To venture into those tunnels again, to enter Mordor, upon a half-chance that Gollum might have turned east was beyond senseless. If he remained here he would eventually starve, or worse. Therefore there was no choice after all but to descend.

The first steps were treacherous, for the way was narrow and steep and there was nothing to cling to. Furthermore, Aragorn was putting his off-foot forward, which proved awkward, but he did not dare to thrust his full weight down upon his wounded leg, orc-draught or no. He lowered his left foot first, and then placed his right upon the same step, instead of alternating as he would ordinarily have done. When he had progressed far enough that he could grip the cliff he let fall a soft sigh of relief. He leaned heavily upon the wall each time his left foot lifted.

The descent was excruciatingly slow. Aragorn could not say how long he climbed, ever wary, ever anxious lest he should slip or his bad leg should fail him at a critical moment. He watched his boots carefully until the dark fell about him and he could no longer discern the black leather from the black rock. He attempted to sound each step before entrusting it with his weight, but now and again a stone would give way or crumble beneath him and only luck and lightning reflexes saved him from tumbling into the ravine.

Down and down the stair wound, and the hours of night dragged by. Aragorn measured time only by the failing of the orc-cordial and his need to drink again. Twice he quaffed of the vile potion, then three times and four. The pain was resurging yet again when his left leg jarred unexpectedly upon uneven ground. There was a moment of horror as Aragorn stumbled forward, fearful that he would fall, but then he realized that he had reached level ground at last.

He was still high upon the mountain, for he could hear the wind whistling in the gorge far below, but the stairs had come to an end. The night was black as ink, and he could not even see his own hands, but in the ravine there was a light, a distant sickly glow. As he stared it began to take shape, and he could feel the blood draining from his face as his innards withered and a fist of dread closed upon his heart. Minas Morgul.

Resolutely Aragorn turned his face away, drinking in the darkness of the path. He could not think on that now, weary as he was and half-drunk upon the orc-brew. Best to sit awhile and rest. When day returned, he would scout around for any sign of Gollum, and then seek out a way down into the valley. Though naught but danger and terror awaited him there, he had chosen his course and he would hold to it. Though hope was all but lost, he still had his stiff neck and his obstinacy. His pride would hold him to the course a little longer.

As he eased himself to the ground, knowing that he would not sleep, he ground his teeth against the ache in his knees and the agony stirring in his right leg. He only hoped that his pride would be sufficient to sustain him through whatever ordeal lay ahead.

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Dawn brought little light and less hope. As soon as he could see his own body, Aragorn tugged back his clothes and inspected his bandage cautiously. The pain was nearing the border of unendurable and he was drenched in perspiration despite the mountain chill, but he was not willing to unwrap it. He could not afford to have it bleeding afresh. In any case he had no cleaner dressing and the orc-draught was needed for other purposes now and could not be squandered to wash a wound.

His dried meat smelled worse than ever and his stomach felt bilious after his dose of liquor, so he turned to the orc-bread instead. He pounded it almost to dust between two stones and ate the resulting crumbs with half a dozen walnut-shards. He drank the last dregs of water from his bottle and tucked the empty vessel in his pack. He had only the orc-skin left now; enough for three or four dangerously sparing days. Nor was his thirst slaked even at this moment: his tongue felt thick in his mouth and his throat ached. He would have to be more careful of the orc-brew.

With his meagre morning chores completed, Aragorn took in his surroundings in the grey half-light. The plateau on which he stood overlooked the ravine above Morgul Vale, but he did not turn that way again. A little farther along, twin ramparts of stone rose high above, and the path became a winding passage that disappeared around a corner about a quarter-mile away. The Ranger wasted no time in following that road, if for no other reason than that it hid the valley and the ghastly City from his sight.

He walked for hours, his cloak wound about his arms and hugged tightly to his chest, for in the narrow passage the mountain breezes were whipped to a bitter wind. With his hooded head bowed low, Aragorn pressed on as the spell of the cordial ebbed away and the pain returned. Not daring to drink again so soon he limped forward, placing as little weight upon his leg as he could. While he moved he kept his eyes upon the ground, watching for prints or any detritus that might speak to Gollum's passage. He saw nothing.

At last the path ended, though the walls of stone went on. Aragorn drew near the edge and looking down saw precisely what he had expected: a steep, straight stair descending into the cleft. The angle of descent was dizzying. The steps were at least three times higher than they were deep, and they were by no measure deep enough. He could not walk down: he would have to climb. Aragorn took another mouthful of the orc-draught, steeling his nerves while it dulled the pain of his wound and restored strength to his tired body. Then he lowered himself over the edge and proceeded to descend.

His fingers gripped the narrow ledges as his left boot groped for the next hold. Down he climbed like one descending a ladder of stone. On three sides the rock surrounded him, but behind the gaping openness of the air was a constant reminder that a single misstep, the slightest mischance, would send him tumbling to his death far below. It did not do to dwell upon such things. If he fell, he fell. There would be no help for it.

Despite the numbing effects of the liquor, Aragorn's arms soon ached and his fingers were cramping. His left leg was unsteady after bearing his weight for so long, and his right was growing increasingly useless. The way was treacherous: the stones were worn smooth by the long years, and more than once the rocks crumbled beneath his feet or his hands. At such times only the proximity of the walls saved him; he could brace his long body against them just long enough to find a fresh hold.

He had been climbing long enough for his wound to reassert itself when he came upon a step already broken. There were many that had decayed and disintegrated over the centuries, but he stopped to examine this one, his fingers clinging to the ledge above and his left foot bearing him up from below whilst his right hung limp. For a minute Aragorn stared, unable to comprehend why, precisely, he was so entranced by this particular broken stair. Then he understood. The edges were rough.

Most of the others, broken long ago, were smoothed by time, slippery and dangerous. This step was ragged, coarse. It had been broken recently. Very recently.

Hardly daring to pray for good fortune Aragorn cast about for some other sign, any other sign, of the creature whose weight had proved too much for that one aged stair. He found what he sought on the rock wall to his left: faint grooves scoring a chink in the stone. The marks of fingers dug hastily into the wall to catch a flailing climber. But there was nothing else; nothing to indicate what manner of being – Man or orc or Gollum himself – had passed this way, nor whether they had been coming or going.

Aragorn sighed softly. It would have been too much to hope for a broken fingernail or a scrap of clothing. He lowered himself further, looking for traces of the feet. Nothing.

This was what his hunt was reduced to, he thought sourly as his left foot groped for the next step and his right began to quiver with referred anguish from above. A jagged bit of broken stone, and a few scratches on the wall of a cliff. There was nothing to find, or he would have found it long ago. Why did he keep up this charade? Why did he continue to labour for an impossible end? Had he taken leave of his senses?

'No,' he grunted, gaining another stair and easing his aching arms down a few inches. 'No, I'm stubborn, not mad. Too stubborn by far. Too stubborn to quit, too stubborn to die.' His foot struck stone – not his toes, but a good three-quarters of his foot. The step was deeper: the stair was growing less steep. 'Too stubborn to fall!' Aragorn hissed triumphantly as he realized this trial, at least, was drawing to its end.

After a few more steps he was able to turn. His shoulders screamed in anguish as he lowered his arms and began to walk, slowly and carefully, down stairs that, while still rather more steep than he would have liked, were broad enough to accommodate his feet. As the steps widened further, his pace increased. Before he realized what he was doing he was taking them like a man instead of a tottering dotard: one foot on each step, hurrying downward as though oblivious to his cramping muscles and his aching knees. The relief of making tangible progress at last was so great that he was able almost to forget his pains as he moved forward.

But stubborn or not, his body did not forget. He had not eaten since the dawn, nor had he had the days of rest and nourishment necessary to replenish the lost blood, and the orc-liquor, marvellous though it was, wore off to leave its victim weak and enervated. When his right foot slipped upon a loose stone, wrenching his ankle, his leg could not compensate. In the moment of astonishment he failed to react swiftly enough, and he pitched against the stone. His left hip struck the edge of the step behind and his head barked against the wall as he tumbled down the stairs like a discarded rag doll.    

Note: Bilbo's verse from The Fellowship of the Ring; J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter XI: The Flowers of Morgul Vale

Aragorn made a single abortive attempt to slow his fall, but in his haste he reacted instinctively rather than rationally, thrusting out his lead foot to brace himself against the rock wall. The anguish of driving the wounded limb so violently against a hard surface blinded him, robbing him of both the will and the strength to resist the chaos that had engulfed the world. He did nothing more to arrest his progress, nor could he take any action to lessen what harm might come to him as he tumbled down the stiars.

It was over soon enough: he could not tumble forever and abruptly he found himself motionless. He lay there long, crumpled upon the unyielding rock, dazed and almost insensate from the pain. Distantly he berated himself. Fool, arrogant fool, to take his thoughts off his feet ere the danger was past. Though he could not quite remember how he had come to stumble, nor why he had failed to keep from falling, he remembered his vainglorious self-satisfaction at reaching a place where he could walk properly down the steps. Fool. Fool!

Try though he might, he could not muster much anger. A muzzy detachment was wrapping his mind in comforting folds. Why trouble to think, or to move, or to feel? Far better to remain here, still and insensible, until the inviting oblivion already encroaching on the borders of his mind surged forth to claim him.

Yet there was an insistent presence that refused to let him sink away into the gentle arms of unconsciousness. It needled at his brain and goaded him, pinching and throbbing and burning as mercilessly as the fires of Orodruin. Aragorn bit back a moan as the pain in his wounded leg refused to allow him the mercy of a well-earned swoon. Unable to resist it, he remained as still as he could, stalwartly enduring what he was powerless to control.

Slowly, tortuously, the anguish faded to a deep, searing discomfort and he was able to categorize and weigh the other, lesser pains. His left cheekbone stung, and he raised his unsteady right hand to touch skin rubbed raw on the rock. His fingers crept over his ear to the place where he had struck his skull on the rock: a hard swollen mass that ached until he touched it, whereupon it exploded into blinding agony for a moment before settling into a dull throb. Aragorn did not feel especially nauseous, which was ordinarily considered to be a good sign after a blow to the head. He was about to attempt to sit up when he remembered what had happened immediately before the knock, and terror seized him. If he had done serious harm to his left hip he would die here, for without at least one good leg he would be entirely helpless, unable even to move from this spot.

Gingerly he attempted to wriggle his toes inside his left boot. When he found he still could, he ventured to roll his ankle. It, too, moved without pain. Encouraged, he began to raise his knee, drawing up his leg.

Suddenly, every muscle in the long limb contracted, twisting and cramping in fiery torment. Aragorn could not help a strangled cry as his hamstrings tensed into knots. The pain was familiar, but no more welcome for that. Ordinarily he would have leapt to his feet to walk off the cramps, but he could not do so now, with his wounded head and other unknown hurts. He screwed his eyes tightly closed and flexed his foot, slowly stretching the overworked leg. The taut muscles protested, making known their displeasure in fresh spasms of agony, but as he locked his knee and drew in a halting breath the knots loosened and the leg relaxed.

Aragorn exhaled through clenched teeth. At least he knew his hip was not fractured, he reflected dourly, slowly allowing his foot to go limp. There was that to be grateful for.

He braved the pain in his thigh to move his right foot. The ankle that had failed him was tender, but did not appear to be broken or even inflamed. He began to hope that he had had a little good fortune at last: if his only hurts after falling down stairs uncounted were a crack to the head and a scraped cheekbone, then he was lucky indeed. Gingerly he rolled onto his left side and tried to prop himself up on his elbow. He fell feebly back.

His eyes drifted closed. He had to get up: he could not remain here, exposed at the foot of the stair. He was in Morgul Vale – he could smell the sickly-sweet stench of decay even now. He was not safe here. But he was sore and he was weary, and he lacked the strength to stand. He toyed briefly with the notion of simply slipping into sleep with no regard for his continued safety, but in the end such folly was beyond his ken. His right hand groped for the all-but-empty skin hanging from his belt, and he tried to fumble with the knot that held it in place.

Unable to release it, he moved his left arm, and was met with a sharp pain that shivered up into his shoulder. Aragorn tensed, hugging the injured limb to his ribs. What had he done to himself, and more importantly, how severely would it impair his efforts to survive? He tried to raise his head to look at his hand, but the effort made the world spin precariously around him. Closing his eyes against the whirling gloom, Aragorn moved his right hand to unbuckle his belt. Then he was able to slide the strap off, and he tucked the skin between his elbow and his side as he worked out the stopper with clumsy fingers.

His hand shook and he could not help but spill a little, but in the end he got the vessel to his lips and took a long swallow of the orc-liquor. He lay back, panting like an invalid and waited frantically for the vile concoction to take effect. When it did, the easing of the pain brought with it such merciful relief that Aragorn rather wished to weep. He restrained himself, and turned his attentions to gaining an upright position.

When at last he was sitting, leaning heavily upon the rock wall to his left, he looked down at his injured wrist. It was swollen and glossy, but did not appear disfigured. He probed the joint – an action that would have been excruciatingly painful had he been entirely sober – but he heard no grinding of broken bones, nor did he feel any shifting of torn ligaments or tendons. Merely a strain, then: doubtless he had landed strangely upon the limb at some point in his ignoble descent. Aragorn reached out, stretching his right arm to grab his belt and tugging it towards him until he could lay hold of his knife. Another four inches of cloak were sacrificed, and he wrapped his wrist tightly.

A cursory inspection of his leg told him that he was bleeding again, but slowly. Aragorn weighed his choices and decided to leave the bandage undisturbed for now. If the wound was not pouring profusely, any interference with the dressing would only serve to do more harm than good. He would wait and see how he fared in a few minutes.

With his injuries for the most part tended, he was at last at leisure to assess his surroundings. He was at the foot of the stair. He could not say how far he had fallen: the worn stone steps gave no sign of his passage. Doubtless if he dragged himself up the stairs he would find traces of blood where he had scraped his cheek, and perhaps even the loose stone that had proved his downfall, but he had no strength to squander on such fruitless endeavours. Truth be told, he did not wish to know how far he had toppled: whatever the answer, it would not please him.

His pack was still on his back, and that was something for which to be thankful. His water-skin, still looped around his cast-off belt, had not burst, and that was something more. He still had his knife, and – he shook the other skin gently as he replaced its cork – a few drams of orc-liquor. On the whole his position was less than favourable, but he had the means to survive if he could find the will and determination had always been his strong suit. A grim ghost of a smile touched his battered face. He was not dead yet.

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Aragorn lingered there awhile, trying to rest. He could not bring himself to eat, nor did he dare to sleep, but he let his mind wander for a time in the realms of distant memory. Even with the blessed numbness of the orc-draught, his hurts ached and tickled, and his thoughts were ringed about with a fog.

He remembered the first time he had been wounded in the Wild. He had been sixteen years of age – Estel son of Gilraen, then, with neither sire nor heritage nor lofty and burdensome destiny – cocky and eager and imbued with the particular enthusiasm of one whose academic pursuits had at last found practical application. His foster-brothers had seen fit to take him with them on a patrol south of Imladris, down towards the Angle. Riding at dusk the two Halfelven warriors and their mortal charge had found themselves beset by a hunting pack of fell white wolves.

Though they had made quick work of dispatching the beasts, Aragorn had sustained a wound to his side where a particularly audacious animal had attempted to maul him with its foreclaws. The hurts were not deep – more like whip-weals than proper wounds – but nevertheless Elladan had insisted upon cleaning the marks and dressing them with care.

'Never leave a wound untended in the wild, Estel, no matter how small;' he had said as he applied balm to the injuries and his patient exerted every effort not to squirm with embarrassment. 'Even an injury like this can fester, and you may find yourself in dire straits far from any aid. If you are wounded and alone, find a place to secret yourself in as much safety as you can find, and rest until you can continue on your way without placing yourself in further jeopardy. A day of rest will do more to heal your hurts than any herb or tincture.'

Over the years, Aragorn had done what he could to heed this advice. He had found through repeated experience that there was almost always some thicket or cave, some hollow of the land where a wounded man might take shelter, there to rest and eat and gather his strength once more. But now he was in the heart of Imlad Morgul upon the very threshold of the Witch-King himself. Even if there was by some miracle a hidden place where he might be safe from the ceaseless vigilance of the Nazgûl and their servants, he would perish of privation if he tarried here. There was no clean water in Morgul Vale, nor could the vile foliage be trusted. With his stores rapidly dwindling to nothing and his injured body demanding greater consideration than was its wont, he could not linger. His only hope was to retreat to more hospitable lands where food and water might be found, and to attempt to convalesce there. The time had come to move on.

Cautiously, Aragorn got his good leg under him and with the help of the rock wall he managed to stand. He shook out his belt and eased it around his waist, giving consideration to his sore wrist. He buckled it snugly at the next-to-last notch. Then, arranging his cloak more comfortably upon his shoulders he limped forward.

The path bent in a sharp curve, and he stepped out onto a ledge overlooking the valley. His eyes were drawn inexorably across the desolate waste of putrescent blossoms and poisoned grasses to the eerie iridescence of the river, and thus to the winding road that led up to the Dead City itself. Though Aragorn tried to turn away, to shield his eyes from the horror of that dread place, even his will was not sufficient to overcome the spell of Minas Morgul.

It rose like a pinnacle of woe above the blighted plain: tall and fell with its great, ghastly summit rotating slowly in the swiftly-falling darkness. The high walls, once held to be wondrous and fair, glowed with an unearthly death-light that offered no illumination to the surrounding lands. The gaping maw that was the front gate seemed to draw to it all hope and courage, leaving only a vacuous pit of terror and hollow despair. As he stood transfixed it seemed to Aragorn that his very life was ebbing away, stolen by the silent watchers behind the empty windows of the City of the Nazgûl. Before such unearthly power, what hope had one man, wounded and alone in the Enemy's lands? How could he possibly defy the Shadow? What could a lone warrior hope to accomplish before all the vast might of Mordor?

Aragorn drew in a sharp breath as he attempted to startle himself out of the unnatural despondency that was settling on his soul. Though he could not shake off the despair, he managed at least to close his eyes and turn his head away. A chill wind blew, and he drew his cloak about himself, striving to reason away the Morgul-spell.

Verily he had no hope of assailing those walls. Even at the height of his vigour such a task was too much for any man. But he had not come here to challenge Sauron. That day might come, but it was not yet at hand. No, he reminded himself; he was here for a very different purpose. He sought only one small creature, one malicious wretch whose knowledge might be put to use to bring about the defeat of the Shadow. He did not need to ride to war: he had only to discover his prey, and in the interim to escape discovery himself.

With as much haste as his wounded leg would allow, Aragorn moved down the path. Night had fallen, and all was darkness save the unnatural phosphorescence of the accursed tower. Aragorn kept his eyes upon feet he could not see, and moved swiftly down from the ledge to a place where the path took on the glowing aura of the Morgul-road. Here the stench of the tainted blossoms grew stronger, and his head swam. There was nowhere to hide, and indeed he hesitated to halt in this place even for a brief respite from the labour of moving. Keeping his ears alert to any whisper of a patrol, Aragorn moved forward with what haste he could.

The way was treacherous, for he did not dare to follow the road too closely and the terrain was uneven. As he went he crushed the stinking flowers beneath his boots, and their malodorous fumes grew swiftly nauseating. More than once he was obliged to halt, shaky and lightheaded from the reek.

Yet worse than any vile odour was the feel of the sightless Watchers in the haunted city behind. Long had Aragorn dwelt in fear of the Shadow, his identity hidden beneath many layers of disguise, and many names, and many deeds both secret and overt. Now it seemed the gaping windows of Minas Morgul bore down upon his back, stripping away the pretense and laying bare his shivering soul. With each step his heart sank deeper into despair and hope fled further from his weary heart.

So long had he laboured, so long had he waited, and no nearer were his goals now than they had been on an autumn's morn long years ago, when a gallant boy had strode forth from Imladris to pursue his destiny. Each year the Shadow grew, and each year the might of the Wise was diminished. Gondor was a land under siege, and however wise and capable Denethor was he could not endure forever against the incursions of Mordor. As for the Dúnedain of the North, their numbers dwindled with each passing season. If the hour of reckoning came at last, who among them would remain to ride to battle with their lord?

He had hoped that the discovery and interrogation of Gollum might prove the catalyst that at last might turn the tides of fortune in their favour, but Aragorn had to admit that success in that quarter was beginning to seem as unattainable as a victory against the hosts of Sauron. If the creature had not been devoured by the spider months before, like as not he had been captured by the servants of the Enemy. He might even now be languishing in some hidden dungeon high in the circles of Minas Morgul. Mayhap he was a prisoner of the Eye, wracked with torment in the bowels of the Barad-dûr where he had long since poured out his secrets. Even at this moment, agents of Sauron might be descending upon the Shire, felling the Rangers who guarded its borders and cutting a broad swath of destruction as they rode for Bilbo's old home...

Aragorn could not breathe. He felt as if his lungs were collapsing under a great weight of unspeakable hopelessness. It was as if he were drowning in a sea of despair, sinking ever deeper into darkness, never again to resurface. Nevermore to draw breath in living lands, nevermore to look with hope to the Firmament, nevermore to lay eyes upon his beloved... nevermore...

At once he recognized the aberrant pall settling upon his heart, and his hand flew to the hilt of his knife. He dropped to his knees, welcoming the pain that shot up from his wounded thigh as it drove back the most insidious tendrils of despair. What he felt was not a genuine failing of hope and courage. It was the incursion upon his mind of an unseen evil: wickedness unclad was wandering Morgul Vale tonight. Though he could neither see nor hear the threat, he knew that he was not alone.

A Nazgûl wandered nearby.

By dark the Ringwraiths were a terrible foe, and he had neither blade nor fire with which to defend himself. Aragorn's limbs began to tremble, but he fought the rising tide of terror. Perhaps, he told himself, it was unaware of his presence. A ragged spy, wounded and alone, he might prove to be beneath its notice. He would cast a shadow in its mind, but if he remained in control, utterly unremarkable, it might pass him by. He had done nothing to draw attention to himself – or at least he did not think that he had. Perhaps, perhaps...

But he was afraid, and his fear conjured up visions of horror and desolation. It seemed that he could see all those he loved laid low by the Enemy's slaves: his folk, his friends, his kin, all gone. And Sauron raised upon a dark throne, and on his finger the Ring of Doom—

No. He must remain innocuous. Unworthy of the attentions of the wraith. He could not be the architect of his own defeat. He filled his mind with the only thing that came to him in his hour of need, rising up through the Morgul-mists like a swimmer fighting the deep, unseen currents that washed all others away. It was a scrap of verse, a simple riddle-song written with love by a kindly hobbit in a serene valley far away: its words meaningless in this land of despair. Meaningless, save only to him.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

The second part eluded him, but Aragorn fixed his mind upon what words he could remember. It was better this way: the other lines were bold, defiant, perhaps prophetic. Better that he remembered these alone; the puzzle-words, the hidden truths, the many layers of dissembling and disguise, protecting his mind as they had guarded his identity.

Not all those who wander are lost...

There was a whispering of wind and the air grew cold. Aragorn closed his eyes. He had encountered these wraiths before. He knew their power, but he knew also their weakness. If he could hide his mind from the searching thoughts of the Nazgûl... it was not seeking him, or it would have found him long ere this. There was still hope. He was older now. He was wiser. He was strong enough to resist.

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

He was shaking now, trembling with the bitter cold and with the terror that sought ever to gain a foothold in his heart. Bilbo's verses rang in his ears and his heart pounded. He felt that he would swoon, and then, then the Ringwraith would find him, would bear him off to torment and disaster in Isildur's fallen city.

All that is gold does not...

Then suddenly, like the summer storm that strikes with all its force and then abruptly dies, leaving behind the battered fields beneath a scattering of hailstones, the assault upon his faculties ceased. His mind was clear. The treacherous despair was past. The Nazgûl was gone, and in its place was only the empty night, and the reek of the deadly flowers of Morgul Vale. Quaking violently, overcome with the strain and with a surging relief, Aragorn hid his face in his right hand as the rest of Bilbo's rhyme came welling up from deep within his heart. Whether they were a portent of things to come, or merely a reflection of his friend's blind optimism and endearing good faith, the words brought comfort sufficient to ease his soul even in this terrible place.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

Chapter XII: Fruitless Days

Before the grey gloom of morning touched the mountains at his back, Aragorn reached the mouth of Morgul Vale. He halted at the foot of the slope that led up and out of the valley, eager to be gone but at the same time reluctant to tackle the incline. He was weary and the gash on his leg was throbbing against the bandages. With his spirit still reeling from the close brush with the Nazgûl he wanted nothing more than a safe place to sleep, but there was no safety in these lands for him. He took a frugal swallow of the orc-cordial, and when his aches began to dim a little he started up the steep, winding way towards the cleft in the mountains.

This was perhaps the most dangerous stretch of road that he had walked in many years. The way was narrow and bereft of cover. If a patrol of orcs, or a messenger, or a spy were coming from the other direction Aragorn would not be able to conceal himself, and he misdoubted his ability to fight, injured and exhausted as he was. There was nothing to be done about it, however, and hoping grimly for the best he followed the path with what haste he could muster.

For all his fears he was not assailed and soon found himself moving down the slope, leaving Imlad Morgul behind. The stink of decay clung to him, refusing to dissipate though the distance between himself and the hated valley grew with every uneven step. Aragorn was beginning to wonder if he had at last slipped into madness, for it seemed his mind was deceiving him, but then he realized that his boots were fouled with the juices of the grotesque flowers over which he had trodden through the night. He stepped from the path into the grey, scrubby grasses in the hope that the residue would be worried away as he walked.

Even with the orc-cordial in his veins he felt treacherously close to falling asleep upon his feet. What a sight he must look, he thought to himself. Grubby and bloodied in his patched travelling clothes, shoulders stooped with weariness, his right leg lame and his left stiff from carrying so much of his weight. His bandaged wrist he kept tucked against his side, hugging his cloak close to his body in a way that was oddly consoling. Aragorn supposed that he ought to be very glad indeed that he was alive and well, neither slain by the spider nor broken upon the stairs nor even now weighed down with Morgul-chains awaiting torment in the Dead City behind, but at the moment he was incapable of enjoying such satisfaction.

The ground levelled off and the road grew straight. Abruptly Aragorn realized that it was not prudent to continue as he was. If he kept on this course he would soon reach the great Cross-roads, where the ancient Númenórean highways met: East to Minas Morgul, West to Minas Tirith, South into the once-verdant hills of Harondor, and North – to the Black Gate. Not one of those roads appealed to Aragorn, and yet they were his only choices and the question before him now was which way Gollum might have chosen, had he ever passed this way.

Gollum. Aragorn stopped where he stood, his weary shoulders sagging still lower as he hid his face in his right hand. Not for the first time in fifteen fruitless years he cursed the creature whose name had become such a symbol of bitter and hopeless toil. In the hunt for Gollum he had endured greater privation, and weariness, and indignity than he had suffered for any other quest or errand in his life, and what had he to show for it? A few scraping tracks in a cavern left far behind, and a rumour that something had dwelt in the Ephel Dûath two or three years past. Now here he was, having since passed through darkness and blood and nameless horrors, no further along in his search than he had been a fortnight past.

And where would he go from here? How could he search for something without any evidence that he had even been in these lands? He had lost the trail yet again, and this time he had no hope left that he would find it.

His wounded leg was thrumming distractedly again. It would soon be time for another dose of the orc-liquor, but Aragorn was reluctant to take it. He had so little left, and it would be days yet before he would be able to move on without it. Besides, he was exhausted. He needed to lie down for a while, and if he could only root out a safe place he might even sleep a little. Perhaps the world would not seem so grim and hateful once he had found some rest. Limping rather badly, he veered off the road.

As he drew farther from the highway winding down to Morgul Vale, the undergrowth grew more dense and plentiful. Though the way was proportionally more difficult, Aragorn was glad of the hedges and bushes. For one, they would obscure his passage and might well provide cover for him when he found a place to halt. For another, where vegetation was plentiful there was hope of water. He doubted that he would have the strength to roam far afield in these next days, and he had only enough drinking-water to sustain life for another two. He had no desire to repeat his experience in the mountain pass, and he did not doubt that if it came to that death would find him more quickly this time.

He had not been walking long when he came upon a hollow in the lee of a great spur of the mountain. Out of sight of the road, it was bordered on three sides by rock, and the ancient gorse-bushes were high upon the fourth side. It was as good a place as any for a wounded man to hide, and Aragorn settled upon the ground with his back to a large boulder. He stretched out his wounded leg and tucked up his good one, rubbing his hams awkwardly with his right hand and hoping that he would not be visited by further cramping. Though he wanted to maintain a watch at least for a little while, he rapidly found himself incapable of resisting his enervated body, and he slipped into a deep, incautious slumber.

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He did not sleep long, for his leg was troubling him. For several fruitless days after that he moved northward as best he could, keeping to the foothills where the underbrush was thick. His marches were brief, for hobbled as he was he could not endure long without rest. The orc-cordial was all but gone, and he had resolved to use no more now, lest some greater need arrive later, but his pain was considerable and it wore upon his resolve. Though he remained as vigilant as he could he neither saw nor heard any sign of servants of the Enemy.

He was fortunate enough to find water – vile, sulphurous little rills trickled down from high places and met this most fundamental need– but now his stores of food were growing short. With the pain clawing at his appetite he was eating little enough, but he had to cast away his meat, for it was too rancid to eat, and that left him with orc-bread and walnuts. In this desolate place there was little to be found by way of wild food. There were whortleberry bushes here, but it was the very heart of winter now and their fruit was for the most part gone. He ate what shrivelled purple husks he could find, but for the most part he subsisted on bitter roots and the mushrooms that seemed the only living thing save the gorse that thrived in these grim climes.

He was tempted to turn westward, for he knew that in the heart of Ithilien both flora and game abounded, but he was apprehensive of crossing the road. There, too, he would have to be doubly wary, for he could no more afford to be taken as a spy by the Rangers of the Steward than he could to be captured by orcs. Though he did not doubt that under normal circumstances he could have walked in that land without detection, in his present state he would not take much tracking. He knew well the skill of the border-wardens of Gondor, for he had served with them long ago and taught them many of their tactics.

Furthermore, he knew that Gollum was not in Ithilien, and there was still some part of his mind that refused to forsake the hunt. Aragorn understood now that it was not hope: if he were to be honest, he would have had to admit that all hope of finding the wretch had been abandoned long ago. But his obstinacy lingered, as did the inertia of the chase. After searching so long, it seemed almost more difficult to stop than it did to limp forward another mile, scanning the undergrowth for hobbit-like tracks and moving ever northward towards the Ered Lithui.

In those miserable days while the year waned around him, Aragorn kept a wary eye upon his wounded leg. At first the gash bled whenever he chanced to disturb it. At last the first webs of scar-tissue began to form, but the wound oozed pus and fluid, and was most painful to the touch. He dared not chance a fire, which would have drawn unwanted attention from both the thralls of the Enemy and the soldiers of Denethor, and so he could not make compresses to leach out the infection. Instead he used one of the little throwing-knives to drain the wound from time to time, and whenever he came across water he washed the bandages and applied them anew. A day came at last when the inflammation was all but gone, and after that the discomfort eased considerably and he was able to walk properly again.

lar

By Aragorn's reckoning, it was the twenty-second day of Afteryule, or by the calendar of Imladris the sixty-ninth day of hrivë. He had lost count of the days during his time in the bowels of the Ephel Dûath, but two nights ago the clouds to the West had lifted sufficiently that he could make out the ghostly outline of a great round moon in its first night of waning. Unless he had languished beneath the earth for twenty-four days, he reflected wryly, his estimate of today's date was near enough to the mark.

Certainly it felt enough like January. Even so far south, the air was cold and the wind nipped at the tip of his nose. There were no animals about, though high above him lean, avaricious crows circled like the harbingers of evil. Somewhere away to the west, the men of Ithilien were about the business of safeguarding the border-lands of Gondor, working together to ensure that the bridge at Osgiliath remained inviolate and that no servants of the Enemy crept across the river to worry the fertile lands beyond.

Aragorn spared a pang of longing for the camaraderie of his own men, far in the North. They would be suffering the privations and the dangers of a bitter winter now, wandering through deep, uncut drifts of snow by day, and by night huddling together around meagre campfires built on ground for which they had been obliged to dig. Yet Aragorn would gladly have traded this barren place where even the nights were not sufficiently cold to bring frost for the frigid expanses of home and the company of his folk. With the perils of Imlad Morgul now a fortnight and more behind him, he found the loneliness creeping inexorably back into his heart. He longed to speak with someone, with anyone at all. He had not expected to miss Gandalf's company so soon, but miss him he did. It would have been well worth the ribbing for his self-endangerment that he would doubtless receive to hear the wizard's voice again. These empty lands offered a bitter road to the solitary wanderer.

A sound rent the stillness of the twilit evening, and Aragorn dropped at once to one knee so that he was hidden by the gorse-bushes all about. The motion that a week ago would have brought excruciating pain from his thigh now engendered merely a sharp twinge into the muscle. The Ranger drew his knife, listening warily. The noise repeated itself; harsh and unpleasant even to ears that longed for the voice of another: the discordant syllables and strange fricatives of the Black Speech.

The speaker was too far away for Aragorn to discern precisely what was being said, but the voice grew nearer, and with it the noises of heavy feet and thick blades idly swinging against the bracken. He heard the grating sound of orcish laughter.

Hastily he cast about, looking for the best place to conceal himself. When no such hiding-place seemed forthcoming he cast about instead for the position of most tactical advantage. He settled swiftly upon a space of clear ground some yards behind him. There he might stand free of the undergrowth, while any assailant would be obliged to grapple first with the gorse. Swiftly and silently he crept to his chosen place and crouched there, ready to spring up at the first challenge.

The orcs were drawing nearer, and the ground was groaning beneath their feet. It was a large party – a dozen or more – and as they drew nearer Aragorn could at last make out their words.

'... stinking tarks think they can go where they please – pah! That'll teach 'em to go sticking their noses where they don't belong!'

'Did you see that tall one bleed? You think he's dead yet?'

'No telling,' grunted the first orc. 'It's just madness, isn't it, carrying away their wounded and their dead?'

'Selfishness, more like. They just don' want us to enjoy 'em.'

'You ain't asking the right question,' said another, and Aragorn's pulse quickened as he recognized the voice of the orc whose life he had spared. 'The question is why are they nosin' around so far north in the first place? What're they up to? What're they planning?'

'Who says they're planning anything?' the leader asked, snorting as he hacked at a nearby gorse-bush. 'They're jus' tarks.'

'Yeah?' Third Voice sneered. 'Then tell me why Lugbúrz is massing armies. Tell me why the City's sendin' out spies! Tell me why there's tarks in the mountains—'

'Aw, not this again!' a reedy voice moaned. 'I'm tellin' you, you didn't meet a Man what can understand our speech – an' if you did, then it was one of their Men and no tark.'

'Easy mistake to make,' another put in. 'Pale faces, dark hair, soft underbelly: they all look alike.'

'I'm telling you, it was a tark! Fire in his eyes, and a pale Elvish sword... but he knew our speech an' he let me go!' protested Third Voice.

'There you 'ave it: why'd a tark let you go? It must've been a warrior from the City.'

'Why would a warrior from the City kill all the others?' Third Voice argued, as mulish as ever. ' 'E let me go 'cause I answered 'is questions.'

'Questions 'bout what?'

' 'Bout that thievin' sneak was worrying our patrols two year back,' said Third Voice. He was beginning to sound rather defensive, and the forward progress of the company had halted. Aragorn wondered whether the others had the little dissenter surrounded.

'Another myth you mountain sentries dreamt up; just a fib to explain missin' supplies!'

'The tark didn't think so; 'e took me serious.'

'There weren't no tark!' the leader bellowed.

Third Voice said with the wounded air of one whose dignity has been impugned beyond hope of conciliation; 'Well, they believed me.'

'Pah! They would. They've got it in their heads that there's some kind o' conspiracy brewin' behind every door. You'd think they—'

'You think you'd have the good sense not to say such things out loud,' another orc hissed. 'That's treasonable, that is.'

'So what if it is? We're miles from the Road and days from the City. They can't hear me here.'

'Somethin's listening,' Third Voice whispered. 'We ain't so alone as you think we are.'

'This another one of your hunches?' demanded the leader, scorn dripping like venom from his lips. 'Dunno why you're wasted on this duty: maybe you oughta be up in the Tower counselling the Eye 'isself.'

'I'm a loyal City soldier, same as you!' snapped Third Voice. 'You'd do well ta listen ter me!'

' 'E might be right, Ghashmaz,' ventured the one who had spoken of treason. 'Las' time 'e said something was about, it was them tarks.'

'Fine, then: let's move on!' Ghashmaz grunted. 'But if I hafta 'ear about your mysterious warrior one more time, you maggot, I'll gut you like a pig an' leave your entrails for the crows!'

Their march resumed, and Aragorn waited at the ready as they stomped past perhaps fifty yards from his hiding-place, felling the venerable gorse-hedges as they went. At last the noise of their passage faded as they marched away southwards, towards Morgul Vale.

He had not wish to fall afoul of such a company, nor did he want to encounter Third Voice again. When they were well away, Aragorn got to his feet, rubbing idly at his thigh which had stiffened after so long crouching beneath the bushes. Sheathing his knife but keeping it loose in the scabbard, he started north with all haste.

lar

Through the night he walked, and into the next day, too. At what he took to be noon – though the smoky clouds hung low and made it difficult to be precise about the time – he reached the end of the gorse-forest. Here the land was rocky and grey, too barren to support even these hardy plants. Aragorn halted in the last stunted thicket, and under its cover he slept a little. At dusk he rose, and gathered his possessions, and started northward again.

Soon he realized that he was moving east: though the mountains were still to his right the aura of the rising moon was almost directly ahead. He had at last reached the end of the Ephel Dûath where they joined the Ered Lithui, the tall ashen range that marked the northern border of Sauron's land. Here the red glow of Orodruin stained the sky from afar, belching black smoke into the air where it mingled with the clouds into a maelstrom of darkness. The barren land soon gave way to a treacherous path rent with fissures through which the foul emissions of the earth belched up to sully the air.

Aragorn made slow progress here, for the path was dangerous and there was no light save the carmine blight upon the horizon. The reek was terrible: brimstone and ash and evil mingling in the stagnant air. At dawn he halted in the lee of a great hill of slag, there to rest a little, though in this place he dared not sleep. Then onward he went, out of long habit keeping a sharp lookout for hobbit-prints among the debris. The grey half-light of day faded around him as he came upon a deeply rutted cart-road that wound about the towering mounds that were the detritus of the mines of Mordor.

By his reckoning it was well past midnight when suddenly he saw the light of bonfires and torches away below. Instinct sent him onto his belly atop a mound of gravel and filth, and he crept so that he was peering over its edge, hopefully unseen.

Before him stood the Black Gate, monstrous to behold even in the indistinct darkness. The great watchtowers, built by the Kings of Gondor in their golden age of triumph but long abandoned by a waning line and a weakened land, stood still in the gloom. The stonemasonry of Númenor had endured the centuries of neglect, only to be captured by Sauron and rebuilt. Despite the night about him, Aragorn could see the shadows of the sentries upon the high walls, and he could feel the penetrating gaze of the watchers, ever vigilant lest some impudent spy should dare to assail the Teeth of Mordor.

It was not the first time he had laid eyes upon this place, and the horror of the Morannon alone was not enough to freeze his blood. Yet he lay there transfixed as his eyes followed the flames on the plateau before the gate. It was alive with activity: labourers and slaves quailing beneath orc-whips as they hauled forth the waste of Sauron's war-efforts. When he had walked these hills before, this place had been empty, visited infrequently by the carts of rubbish and useless stone. Now there were dozens, hundreds of folk below, toiling in this last part of the process by which the hosts of Mordor were armed and armoured. If such was the effort at the end of the line, what vast labours were taking place in Gorgoroth itself?

Dismay rendered the Ranger utterly immobile. He could do no more than stare, whilst his mind flooded with dread and with images of utmost disaster. What hope had Gondor before such a force? What would befall the West on that dreaded day when Sauron saw fit to pour forth his armies against the Free Peoples? And if upon that day the One Ring was on his finger...

Abruptly his instincts were screaming at him to rise, to move, to flee! There was danger here! But his limbs would not respond. He could only stare, horrified, at the spectacle before him as the ramifications of this sight sank home with the full weight of despair. There was a moment of clarity in which he was made aware of the dreadful truth that the pressing threat was not before him but behind, but by then it was too late.

'Well, well, what have we here?' a lilting voice sneered as a clawed hand closed on Aragorn's shoulder and an iron-shod foot settled upon the small of his back. 'Seems the little maggot was right: tarks nosing about where they've no call to be. P'raps you can answer a few of our questions, eh, my pretty?'    

Chapter XIII: An Unwilling Guest

Aragorn arched his spine. As the hob-nailed boot shifted he launched himself to the right, heedless of the claws digging into his shoulder as he rolled onto his back. The orc was caught by surprise, and stumbled. Aragorn managed to get his left foot under his body, and with his right leg he pinned the orc's feet against the ground, pressing upon the thick ankles. A sharp pain shot into his chest as the grip on his shoulder tightened, but his assailant fell upon the slag and Aragorn sprung atop him, grappling with the flailing limbs as he attempted to overpower the orc.

Though by nature the Uruks of Mordor were stronger than Men, Aragorn had yet to meet one who could equal him in speed or agility. He would have made swift work of this one, too, save that the orc was not alone. Without warning, three more set upon him. Even as he drew his blade the knife was wrenched from his hand and his arm was twisted behind him. One grabbed his feet whilst the third took a fistful of his hair and yanked back his head. Resisting the urge to cry out at the unexpected pain in his scalp, Aragorn let his whole body go limp.

Abruptly the orcs let go, and he fell to earth with a heavy thud. As he had hoped, the three who had seized him relinquished their hold and he was left with only the first orc still clinging viciously to his shoulder. He closed his eyes, trying his utmost to look unconscious though his heart was racing and it took all of his will to steady his heaving chest. He did not dwell on recriminations for his folly: there would be time enough later. There were more important considerations at hand.

'Wha'd you do to him?' one of the orcs demanded.

'Do? I ain't done nothing!'

'You killed 'im!'

'Did not!'

'He ain't dead,' the first one snorted, pushing himself up. As he did so, he released his grip on the Ranger's shoulder.

Instantly, Aragorn was up and away, running as fast as his tired legs would carry him and groping in his pouch as he went. But the ground was uneven and the orcs were swift, and the necessity of fumbling with his sleeves slowed him. One flung himself upon Aragorn's ankles, sending him crashing painfully to earth. He tried to scramble up, but the orc was on top of him now, long arm crooked tightly around the Ranger's throat, cutting off his supply of air.

'That were stupid, tark,' the orc snarled, using the Common Tongue. 'Got 'im, fellas. I got 'im!'

He need not have made that pronouncement, for the others were on his heels. An iron-toed boot blasted into Aragorn's side and his legs ground against the debris that littered the ground as his body attempted to curl itself forward. His prone position rendered that impossible, but the orc straddling his legs pulled back, causing his spine to curve painfully. Aragorn's hands clawed frantically at the arm, trying to loose its hold on his neck. He could not breathe, and reality was becoming a very fuzzy plane of existence which threatened to forsake him at any moment.

'Now don't you try anything like that again, see?' said the first orc. A blade pricked at Aragorn's ribs. 'If you do, I'll skewer you like a rabbit. And no screamin', neither. We don't need those dunghill rats up here, makin' trouble and stealing credit. Understand?'

Aragorn reflected distantly that he ought to nod, but it was all that he could do to fight off the oblivion of asphyxiation. His eyes lolled in his head.

Apparently this was assurance enough, for the first orc boxed his comrade's left ear. 'Let 'im go before he chokes to death, you stupid fool!' he snarled.

No longing for dignity could stay the sundering gasp that shook Aragorn's body as he crashed back to earth. He gulped greedily at the air, coughing helplessly. His pack was torn from his back, the orc responsible for despoiling him severing the straps as he pulled it away. Then suddenly they were yanking his arms, twisting them behind him and crossing his wrists in a most unnatural position. Under other circumstances he might have struggled, but instead he lay there, fighting for air and hoping that they made quick work of binding him and that they did not detect anything strange about his forearms.

Mercifully they did not, though the bonds were cruelly tight. Aragorn gritted his teeth as one of them took hold of his shoulders and dragged him up onto his knees.

'Now bind 'is legs,' the orc said.

'Bind 'is legs? How're we s'posed to get 'im back to Ghashmaz if we bind 'is legs?' another demanded incredulously.

'Carry 'im, of course! I'm not takin' the chance of 'im bolting like that again!' snapped the first orc. 'This one runs like a stinkin' Elf. If he hadn'ta hesitated you never would've caught 'im. Bind 'is legs!'

'Why not 'is neck instead?' the fourth orc suggested. 'Then it's keep step or strangle 'imself, and we won't have to carry 'im. Too tall by far for hauling. Filthy tark.'

The hateful epithet was accompanied by a blow to the gut that left Aragorn freshly breathless. In his moment of debilitation he scarcely noticed the noose of rope that was forced over his head. Only when it was drawn snug against his neck did he realize that they had fixed him on a halter like an animal.

'Where's 'is knife? Tark steel ain't to be wasted,' the first one growled.

'It ain't tark steel: it's Elvish!' another whimpered. 'I threw it away quick as I could!'

'Elvish, eh? Best find it, then: Ghashmaz'll want to see that. Strange, ain't it? Lonely tark poking 'round up here. Where are all your friends with their bright swords, my lad? Answer me that!'

The filthy claws took hold of Aragorn's chin, digging into the soft flesh under his jaw. The orc's demand was met with stony silence that seemed entirely inadequate to conceal the prisoner's dread. They were not even a mile from the Black Gate. If he did not make his escape in the next few minutes, he would find himself a prisoner of Sauron himself. But the orc's remark about dunghill rats seemed to ring in his ears. These were Uruks of Minas Morgul, not the servants of the Barad-dûr. Perhaps, then, they would not be so willing to turn him over to their northern rivals.

'How'm I s'posed to carry an Elf-knife?' the other orc whinged.

'Wrap it in a bit 'o rag, you lumbering donkey!' the leader snarled. 'Show a little initiative, or I'll have Ghashmaz send you to the mines! There'll be an opening now, with the maggot proved right again. Smarter than the lot of you, is our little hunchback!'

'Where'll I get a rag from? I ain't tearin' up my things just to carry the tark's weapons.'

There was a tugging at Aragorn's shoulders as someone seized his cloak. Despite the absurdity of such concerns at a time like this, he could not help but flinch as a length of cloth was torn from it.

'There!' said the despoiler. 'Initiative, see?'

The discontented orc moved off, muttering bitterly to himself as he went. But he returned at last, and Aragorn found himself on his feet in the midst of a diamond formation, surrounded on all four sides. The one to his left held the end of the rope affixed to his neck, and the prick of a sabre at his back egged him on as the orcs began to run. He stumbled a little, but quickly fell into stride. It would avail him nothing to antagonize his captors: any further defiance would most likely earn him a savage beating, and if he was to have any hope of escape he had to keep himself as free from injury as he could.

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When Aragorn realized that they were heading southwest instead of due East, he felt something almost akin to elation. They were not taking him towards the Morannon: as he had hoped, they were making their way back towards Morgul Vale. Ordinarily he would have despaired at such a course, but Minas Morgul was many days' march away and the Black Gate within shouting distance. The further they had to travel, the greater the opportunities for escape.

The middle-night was long past when the glow of a bonfire appeared in the distance, reflecting off the mountainside behind and illuminating the gaping mouth of a cave. As his escort egged him onward, Aragorn could make out dark figures around the blaze, and a strange shadow looming before it. Not until he was near enough to make a count of the orcs – in addition to his captors there were ten: too many to fight even if he could get his hands on his knife – did he realize that it was a tree. A gnarled old oak, to be precise, its heavy branches bare. Immediately he began to look for an orc with a bow. Uruks were poor climbers: if he could get out of their reach with a small supply of arrows he might pick them off one by one.

His assessment was aborted when the orc holding his halter shoved him forward, kicking his feet out from under him so that he crashed to his knees. By some miracle, Aragorn managed to remain upright, or he would have driven his face into the dirt.

'Found our runaway, I see!' Aragorn recognized the voice of the one called Ghashmaz, as an enormous orc lumbered forward, sneering unpleasantly in the firelight. 'You took some tracking, let me tell you,' he sneered, taking a fistful of Aragorn's hair and twisting his face upward. Something of the Man's disdain must have shown in his eyes, for Ghashmaz scowled and said; 'Ain't no call for that, tark! What's the matter? Too proud to travel with the mighty Uruks?'

A biting retort died on Aragorn's lips. He could not afford a witty riposte, however much it would ease his jangled nerves. His one hope was to avoid engendering too much animosity while he waited for dawn. They would harm him grievously enough without being baited.

The orc released his hold on the Ranger's hair, but the relief lasted only a moment: a heavy fist blasted against his jaw and his head snapped against his right shoulder as he very nearly lost his balance.

'Hold 'im up straight!' Ghashmaz ordered, and abruptly four claws were digging into Aragorn's arms, hauling up on his shoulders and increasing the discomfort in his painfully tingling hands. 'So...' the orc-captain growled. 'What's a tark doing out here all on 'is own? Lost all your little friends, have you? Or maybe you're a spy. Tracked you right 'round the mountains, we did. Why would you be headed North?'

Like the others, he was using Westron. Aragorn dared to hope that this meant they did not associate him with Third Voice and his story. Though most of the orcs were gathered in a circle now, eager to lay eyes upon the prisoner and doubtless anticipating the sport to come, the Ranger did not see his acquaintance among them. Had the company divided, perhaps? Half to return to Minas Morgul, the other half to follow – what? He wondered despairingly what sign of his passage he had left behind that had roused their interest sufficiently to make them turn around and follow him in the direction from which they had come.

'Answer me!' snapped the orc. 'Why was you headed North?'

'I was following the road,' Aragorn said, as impassively as he could. The answer was true enough, though by no means entirely forthright. 'It leads North.'

The carmine eyes narrowed, and Aragorn realized that he had miscalculated the intelligence of his opponent. A simpler orc might have accepted his answer as logical, but for one of his size Ghashmaz was uncommonly intelligent. He swooped low for his next blow, catching Aragorn under the ribs and driving all the wind from the Ranger's lungs. 'You rat, answer my question!' he roared. 'Are there others about? Was you meeting 'em?'

Aragorn made no reply. He had no answer to give, and in any case he was struggling to rediscover his breath.

'All right, then. What's your business?'

Somehow he did not think that the orc would take a sympathetic view of his intentions. He held his tongue resolutely.

'Ask 'im if the tall one's dead yet!' one of the others put in. Ghashmaz, who had been drawing back to strike Aragorn again, whirled on his compatriot.

'What's it matter if the tall one's dead?' he snapped incredulously, slipping into the Black Tongue.

'I was the one who hit 'im. When I do a job I like to know if I done it proper,' the other explained defensively.

'Fools!' Ghashmaz snarled. 'I'm surrounded by fools. And you not the least, tark,' he hissed, reverting to Westron for the benefit of his prisoner. 'Tell us what we want to know, an' we'll kill you quick. Else it's yonder hanging tree for you!' He closed his hand on the noose-knot about Aragorn's throat and tightened it ever so slightly. 'An' if you think we'll string you by the neck first, you'd be sorely mistaken!'

Aragorn swallowed hard, partly out of dread and partly because the knot of the noose was now pressing down upon his larynx. He was familiar with the interrogation tactics of the Uruks, and though he knew he was fortunate that they were not under the command of a Black Númenorean, he found this to be less than comforting in the circumstances. The orc was leaning nearer to him now, and the stench of the hot breath issuing from between the jagged teeth was overpowering. He closed his eyes.

A stinging slap sang against his cheek, and the long nails drew blood at the root of his jaw. 'Look at me when I'm talkin' to you, tark!' the orc roared. He was growing ever more enraged, and Aragorn dared not provoke him further. The threat of torture meant that he had little hope of escaping unscathed, but if Ghashmaz tired of him and left him to the devices of the others they would surely beat him to death, or near enough as made no difference. He could taste their blood-lust already, and their growing dissention at their leader's postponement of their fun. If he could but outlast the night...

As ordered, Aragorn fixed his eyes upon the orc. 'I hope you do not expect me to answer you,' he said mildly, bracing himself as best he could for another debilitating blow.

Instead, a broad grimace that might have been intended as a grin spread its way across the unsightly face. 'Not straight away, I don't,' Ghashmaz hissed. 'Truth be told, I think we'd all be mighty disappointed if you gave in too quick. Longer you hold out, the more we'll enjoy it. But in the end you'll talk. Last tark we captured? Lasted almost two days, 'til we started with the fire.'

'Fire! Fire!' several of the subordinates began to chant. The ghastly rent in Ghashmaz's face widened considerably.

'Wept like a maid, 'e did, before the end. Snivelling coward. Then we et 'im. Stringy, 'e was. Shouldn't've left 'im so long, I suppose.'

Aragorn felt a great surge of wrath at the thought of these bestial creatures of Sauron so using one of the gallant men of Ithilien. He could not help the fury that glinted in his eyes, but he schooled it as swiftly as he could, hoping the orc had not noticed.

He had, but instead of lashing out, Ghashmaz laughed. 'Friend of yours, was 'e?' he mocked. The conclusion was a logical one: his race had only the barest ties of loyalty. Rage on behalf of a stranger was a foreign concept to them, as was sorrow. 'Don' worry: you'll be joining 'im soon enough.'

Ghashmaz turned away, snatching Aragorn's pack from the orc who had confiscated it. ' 'Ere, you two. String 'im up by 'is arms! We'll let 'im swing awhile whilst I look at 'is gear.'

Aragorn's pulse quickened. If they hung him by his wrists, his one hope of escape would avail him nothing. Already his fingers were beginning to go numb, however he writhed them. If he lost feeling entirely...

'I had wondered,' he said, as saucily as he dared; 'why your men did not simply turn me over to the guards back at the Gate. I wonder still more now.'

The orc leaned close, taking hold of the noose again and leering eye-to-eye at his prisoner. 'Eh? 'Ow's that?'

'Surely the Men of the Eye could come up with more creative means to torment a prisoner than dangling him from a tree,' Aragorn sneered. His pulse was racing and he hoped frantically that his desperation would not show through his mask of disdain. 'I have seen as much done for the sport of the one who hangs! Why would you not leave me in the hands of capable interrogators?'

With a howl of rage, Ghashmaz kicked him squarely in the gut. Anguish exploded into his viscera, and as Aragorn's body crumpled forward even the grasping hands on his shoulders could not keep him from falling. He landed on his side in the dust, helpless as the heavy boot dug into his side once more.

'Scum! Filth!' Ghashmaz howled, adding several more unsettling epithets in his own dark speech. 'The soldiers of the City do not hand over our prizes to Tower filth! You are ours, you worm, and we'll wring you to death! Wretch! Maggot! Stinking tark!'

Each expletive was accompanied by another vicious blow, and Aragorn was rapidly losing track of the world around him when suddenly a cry went up.

'That's 'im! That's 'im! That's the one!'

The kicking stopped, but Aragorn could do no more than lie curled on his flank, his vision flooded with pulsating darkness and his core wracked with pain.

'Whadda you mean, "him"?' Ghashmaz snarled.

'The Man! The tark from the mountains! That's 'im!'

Aragorn closed his eyes, bracing himself. Third Voice had arrived. There was a clattering noise of cast-off firewood. So they had sent the little one for fuel... but this was no time to be answering old questions. He was about to be repaid in full for his folly and his imprudent act of clemency.

'So what if it is?' snapped Ghashmaz. 'I'm going to kill 'im!'

'Y'can't,' Third Voice said.

The only sound was the ringing of blood in Aragorn's ears. When again Ghashmaz spoke his voice was low and deadly, Westron forgotten. 'Whadda you mean I can't?'

'I got my orders. They want to meet 'im. Want to know how a tark knows our speech. Want to know 'is business in our mountains.'

'I was gonna find out 'is business!' Ghashmaz exclaimed, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice now. The fear of the Nazgûl was more powerful than the need to assert his supremacy over the small, wily one.

'They'll be right displeased if we bring 'im back too weak for questioning,' Third Voice said stoutly. 'An' if you kill 'im, well, I wouldn' be in your place for all the wealth of the Elves!'

Aragorn's eyes were functioning properly again, and though he did not dare move he shifted his gaze to Ghashmaz. The towering orc looked suddenly shrunken, uncertain. Then he scowled.

'Fine, then! Since you're the cursed expert on all that they would want, the prisoner's yours! Do what you like with 'im, an' if aught goes wrong, it'll be your head that's for it, not mine! Understood? And the rest of you! Little maggot's givin' the orders now: hark to 'im. And let's see about some supper: it'll be dawn soon! Move it!'

The Uruks dispersed, and Aragorn's attention shifted to his new jailer. As his eyes locked with the cold eyes of the approaching orc, Aragorn's heart grew cold within him. It seemed he was going to pay a high price indeed for the folly of mercy.

lar

When the grey dawn came, the orcs retreated into the shelter of the cave. Aragorn was left by its mouth, bound at wrists, ankles and knees with the noose still trailing from around his neck. The embers of the dying fire afforded no warmth to the shivering captive, and his cloak lay some rangar away, discarded among the scattered and trampled contents of his pack. From the look of things, Ghashmaz and his soldiers had found little of interest among the Ranger's belongings. The copper bracelet was gone, and the rushlight, but as far as Aragorn could tell everything else was there, strewn about like so much trash. There was his knife, half-wrapped in a scrap torn from his cloak: such creatures of evil could not bear to touch steel wrought by the Noldorin smiths of Imladris. Even his scant supply of food had proved beneath their notice, though ground into the dust and the grime of an orc-camp, he doubted that any of it was edible. They had found it monstrously amusing that a tark should carry with him a supply of their liquor, and they had taken great pleasure in slicing open both skins and emptying his bottles over his garments. Damp in the cold winter wind, Aragorn had to struggle to keep from slipping from consciousness.

He was bleeding sluggishly from the nose, and his lip was split and swelling. His abdomen was rigid with bruises that prevented him from curling up for warmth. Lying on his side with his face in the dirt, he was struggling to force his bloated fingers to obey him.

Third Voice had done little enough: on the whole he had fared better than he could have hoped. Yes, the nimble fingers had dug themselves into some very sensitive places, but the wounds in his shoulder would heal and he could still hear out of both ears. It might have been far worse. The small orc had claimed the silver star that held his cloak, gloating over the treasure as if it were his first plunder. Upon reflection, Aragorn realized that such might indeed be the case. Then having yanked off his boots to ensure that the prisoner was concealing no blade within them, Third Voice had bound the Ranger's legs as tightly as he could. Commandeering the services of two of his larger fellows, he had ordered his captive deposited on the threshold of the cave, where he had left him.

There was no one about now, save for a dozing sentry well within the shadows of the rocks. Aragorn's perseverance was paying off, and he was now able to move his fingers and to grasp. He would have found any precise task a trial at this moment, but he hoped he would have enough dexterity for this. He curled his right wrist, trying desperately to reach into his left sleeve. Sharp pain lanced up his arm, and he knew he could not manage it. Instead he rolled further onto his belly and began to shake his arms as fiercely as he could.

There was a rustling in the gorse-bushes, and Aragorn froze, his eyes seeking out the movement. There was something hidden there, watching him. Another orc? Some spy of the Enemy? Or merely a fox or a badger going about its morning business with no more regard for the trussed-up man than it would have had for a stone?

But he had seen no game animals in all his northward journey, and why would a spy of Sauron shy away from a camp full of orcs? Unless, of course, it was some servant of the Tower bent on striking the next blow in the senseless but very useful feud between the servants of the Witch-king and those who took their orders straight from the Barad-dûr.

He resumed his struggle to shake loose the weight in each sleeve. By the most extraordinary stroke of luck, both had survived his rough handling and the search efforts of Third Voice. That alone doubled his chance of success, or at least he tried to believe that it did.

There it was again! There was something very large hiding in that hedge. Aragorn tried to bring into focus the shadows beneath the gorse. At last he saw them: two keen eyes, bright and piercing, staring straight at him. Once he had a reference point, the rest of the figure came into focus: a face masked in green, cloak and hood dyed in variegated woodland hues, left hand braced against the trunk of the bush, right hand tucked out of sight and doubtless concealing a sword. A Ranger of Ithilien.

The Man saw the recognition in the prisoner's eyes, and he raised his gloved hand, one finger to his lips. Aragorn nodded. He should have been grateful of the sight of an ally, but he was not. If the man was alone, he had no chance of overcoming the orcs. If he was not, Aragorn would soon find himself a prisoner of the Steward, for nothing that he was free to admit would exculpate him of the crime of wandering unbidden in Ithilien, prisoner of orcs or no. He did not relish attempting to explain himself to a dour woodland captain, and utmost calamity would strike if there was one in the company old enough to know him.

The Ranger lifted his mask a little, exposing his lips. They moved in a silent question, but at this distance it was difficult for Aragorn to read the motions. He shook his head once, and the man tried a second time, pointing at the mouth of the cave.

Ah. How many? He wanted an estimate of the enemy's numbers. Aragorn mouthed back: fifteen. The Man shook his head. The motion was hampered by the swollen lip. Carefully Aragorn repeated himself again, and a third time, and a fourth. Finally the soldier nodded in comprehension, and flashed his open fingers three times to represent the number. Aragorn bobbed his head emphatically. The man mouthed his thanks, and something more that might have been a promise of aid. Then he covered his mouth and vanished into the trees.

It was not long before Aragorn heard the trilling noise of a whistle. He knew well the code, and he understood. The Ranger was communicating that the enemy was near, fifteen in number, and that aid and one with healing skills was needed. Then he heard the signal for 'prisoner'. The answering call came, faint but clear. It was a relaying voice. Aragorn listened as the second whistler repeat the message, and then for a long time there was silence. At last the answer came: help was coming, and would arrive in less than half an hour. Was the scout in immediate danger?

Aragorn did not concentrate any further upon the communications of his would-be rescuers. He redoubled his efforts with greater desperation. Half an hour. He had hoped for an entire day.

There was no time to waste.    

Chapter XIV: The Fruits of Failure

The effort of struggling with his arms was growing swiftly exhausting. Aragorn's breath was laboured and beads of cold perspiration were trickling into his eyes. He let his body go limp for a moment, panting softly and striving to gather his resolve. He could not rest long, however, and as soon as he was able to breathe again he resumed the urgent motions, shaking his arms with such vigour that he felt as if his shoulders were about to be torn from their sockets.

He was hovering on the cusp of defeat when he felt the insistent bite of steel against the heel of his left hand. The exhalation of triumph was more of a moan, but a moment later he had the blade in his fingers. It was one of the little throwing knives: he had anchored the remaining two in the hem of each sleeve during his abortive break for freedom.

With excruciating care he twisted his fingers, trying to slip the blade between his wrists. He was not confident that he would be able to pick it up again if once he dropped it. He nicked more than one finger in the process and his hands grew sticky with thick, sluggish blood, but in the end he had the knife in place. Sawing through the ropes proved a challenge, for by now his fingers were cramping and his left wrist ached terribly. He would have fared better after a few minutes' rest, but he had no time to squander.

At last he felt the fibres snap and the bonds loosen. Frantically he wrenched his hands free of the rope and eased them forward. His arms burned and his joints creaked and popped as he restored his body to a more natural position. He ground his teeth against the spasms that tore into his shoulders and breast; to cry out now would be his downfall.

Scarcely had the cramps faded into a burning ache than Aragorn was forcing himself up. Fumbling rather badly, he cut quickly cut the bonds at knees and ankles, but it took some vigorous rubbing to restore feeling to his calves and his chilled feet. He did not trust his clumsy hands with a knife against his throat and so he did not remove the noose, but merely coiled its long tail about his shoulders like some strange hempen cowl. Perhaps a bit of rope would come in handy later on, anyhow: he would remove it when he found the chance. A concerted effort got his knees under him and he struggled to his feet, clutching his arms to his bruised abdomen, which protested cruelly against such exertion.

Casting a furtive glance towards the cave to reassure himself that the sentry yet slept, Aragorm moved with what haste he could to where his boots lay. He leaned against the hanging tree to wrestle with them. It proved a challenge to drag them on over bloated ankles with hands that could not properly grasp, but the desperate need for haste was a powerful motivator. Shod once more, Aragorn turned his attention to gathering his belongings. He was able to salvage little. His cloak and his knife he gathered, but the former had no clasp and the latter's sheath was nowhere to be found. His belt lay discarded by the hewn remains of his bowl, and it was with grim gratitude that he discovered that the pouch hanging from it had been overlooked by the plunderers: flint, steel, tinder rags and his cache of dried nailwort were all untouched. But his provisions were ruined, his water-bottles useless, his pack-straps cut and everything else either spoiled or soiled. He recovered his wooden cup although he would not dare to use it without several thorough rinsings, and he managed to find the coil of wire and his sewing-wallet – but the needles were gone and the thread had been pulled from its winder and tangled into a hopeless snarl. He kept in anyway, in case he might be able to work it out of the knots once he had time and proper dexterity.

There was no sign of his penknife, which was not of Elvish make. He grieved to lose it, for it had been a gift from his mother's cousin many years ago, but there was no help for it. By the fire, the smoke of which had doubtless drawn the attention of the Rangers, he found his comb. It had been snapped in two. He kept the half that had retained the most teeth, but left the other. The little crock that he had taken from the orc on the mountain was smashed, but Aragorn scraped up what grease he could and folded it into a corner of the rag that had been cut from his cloak.

There was nothing else worth bearing away, so he bundled the meagre remains of his gear into the ruined pack. He hesitated when he came to the cloak. He would have been glad of its familiar warmth in the sharp winter air, but without his star it was unwearable. He could scarcely stroll brazenly into the cave to reclaim his property from the sleeping Third Voice, nor could he linger here to improvise a clasp. Hastily he rolled up the tatty garment and stowed it in his pack, which he fasted by its one remaining cord and tucked under his arm like a washerwoman's bundle.

He had lost track of the minutes, but he did not doubt that he was all but out of time. With his free arm pressed against his battered trunk, he began to hasten away from the camp. To the northwest there rose a rocky hill, and it was in this direction that he moved. At first his legs trembled and he feared he would be unable to gain any significant speed, but as he fell into his stride his limbs steadied and his head grew clearer despite the ache in his core. Soon he reached the foot of the slope and he began his hasty climb, now and again casting his eyes over his shoulder at the camp below. If he could only pass the summit before the men of Ithilien came, he might stand a real chance of escape – for the orcs would surely be slain and the Rangers would not expect anyone to make for the empty lands that lay beyond.

But there was too little time. When next he looked behind, he could see the hooded figures creeping out of the gorse towards the cave. One squatted in the place where Aragorn had been lying, searching about for any sign of the captive. The man spied him, and rapped upon the arm of his comrade, pointing. But there was no time now to follow after a runaway, for with a cry the orc-sentry awoke.

Aragorn turned from the sound of battle and doubled his pace, straining against the pain in his side as he ran up the hill. Behind him the sounds of battle rent the air. He had no hope now of staving off pursuit: once the skirmish was decided, the victors would come after him – either the orcs, to reclaim their prize, or the Rangers, to discover what manner of man was trespassing in their lands. He must outrun them both.

There was a part of him that did not wish to run, not only because it galled him to fly from battle but because he knew that even a prisoner would find mercy at the hands of Denethor's men. They would give him food and drink, and allow him to rest – bound, perhaps, but unharmed and unharried. Though they would interrogate him they would not put him to torment, and no captain of the Rangers would sentence a man to death untried. If there were a healer among them, they would tend to his hurts. They would have made kinder jailers than the orcs.

And yet he could ill afford such a capture. The hour had not yet come for Aragorn son of Arathorn to walk once more in Gondor, and if he returned now there would be great calamity. What a coming for Isildur's Heir: to be dragged before the Steward as a tattered beggar, taken by the wardens of the debatable border-lands! Well could Aragorn imagine Denethor's expression as he beheld the once-puissant Thorongil, come back to Gondor at last. What hope would there be of restoring the kingship then? And worse, if Thorongil were still beloved in the hearts of those who had once been young soldiers and lordlings and who were now the nation's elite, there might be civil strife. Gondor might tear herself in twain, all for the sake of a few hot meals and a healer's scrutinizing touch.

At the very least it would be most embarrassing for Gandalf to have to extricate his ragged friend from the dungeons of Minas Tirith.

So Aragorn ran. He ran until he reached the crest of the hill. He ran, or rather skidded very quickly, down the far side. He ran until the noises of the fray were far behind. He ran while the sun climbed high. He ran though his throat burned in a torment of thirst and his abdomen ached and his head swam. He ran when his legs could scarcely bear him up. He ran until he stumbled and fell crashing to earth, and then he gathered up his weary bones and his ruined pack and ran again.

He ran until he came to a slow-moving stream wending its way between the scrubby hillocks. There he stopped for a time, his chest heaving. He drank his fill, and then lay down for a few minutes, resting his pulsing head and curling over the dull anguish in his viscera. He rinsed his cup, scrubbing it with silt from the creek-bed until he was satisfied that it was free of orcish filth. Then he drank again, until his belly felt bloated and could hold no more. He filled the cup and rose up again: it was all the water he could carry with him.

Surely the battle was ended. He wondered who had triumphed. He had counted half a dozen Rangers and others might still have been in the undergrowth. Likely they were sufficient to defeat a party of fifteen orcs, sunlight-shy and taken unawares. Though he hoped they had succeeded, and though he prayed that no man had been slain or grievously wounded in the endeavour, Aragorn could not help but wish that they would not pursue him. He knew that to be a foolish dream, however, and so he rose up and went on again, trying not to jog his steps too much lest he should spill his small supply of water.

The sun sank westward, staining the ragged clouds orange. Aragorn was stumbling now, made clumsy by exhaustion and hunger, but still he kept on. The Rangers might halt to rest awhile, whilst the hours of darkness made tracking impossible; but if the orcs had won they would not stop for night. Aragorn could not take that chance, however slim. Into the night he ran, until he could run no more. Then he crumpled to his knees. He drank what water remained in his cup and he cut loose the halter about his neck, stowing the coil of rope in his pack. Then wrapping himself in his ragged cloak, he fell into an uneasy slumber.

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He awoke before the dawn to the sound of booted feet far off but drawing nearer. There was no noise in the frosty air, but the ground echoed with the drumbeat of distant pursuit. Aragorn rose up, stowing his cloak in his pack, and he loped off, shivering, into the morning chill. Now and again he glanced behind him, fearing to catch sight of his pursuers, but ever onward he ran like a wounded hart before the hunt, his energies focused only upon survival.

Just ere noon he saw them: a black mass on the crest of the horizon. Whether at this distance they could see him he did not know, but he doubted it. They were many, moving in close formation. He was one, a grimy figure indistinct against the brown lands around him. Yet the sight of his followers filled him with despair. He could not run much longer, and there was nowhere to hide. They would catch him in the end.

It was his own fault, he knew. He should have listened to his friend. He should have heeded Gandalf's advice and taken his generous offer and departed for the North while he had still had the chance and the choice. Had he but listened to Gandalf he might be in Imladris now, resting in safety before he rejoined his men in their hopeless watch upon the Shire. He had been too weary, even on that afternoon in Harondor when Gandalf had announced his abandonment of their quest, to undertake such a journey as he had. Again and again he had misjudged and misstepped because he was exhausted, his endurance worn thin and his patience strained. In his full vigour and reason he would not have ventured so far by orc-roads in the mountains. He would not have passed that door without an adequate supply of light, and so would not have run afoul of the spider. Rested and alert, he never would have fallen on the stairs below Cirith Ungol. Even the brush with the Nazgûl would have been easier to bear had he not been teetering on the edge of enervation and despair. Most horrifying of all was his lapse before the Black Gate. Such a sight never would have caused him to forget himself so utterly, except that the darkness in his heart and the weariness of his body had made him vulnerable.

It was irresponsible to continue on, to press further into these black lands in his present state. He needed to recoup his strength, to renew his spirit before he faced any other challenge. If he wished to remain alive he could not endanger his ill-equipped body any further. He had pushed himself to the very brink of disaster, and now it was time to draw back a little. He knew now that if he escaped the current predicament he would not be resuming his hunt. He would make his way North as best he could. Though it was a bitter thing to return empty-handed yet again, it was better that he should return alive, having failed in his hunt, than to die in an attempt to achieve the impossible. He could always try to pick up the trail again at some other time.

Save that he knew he would do no such thing. If he forsook the hunt now, then it was over. Never again would he find the resolve to search for Gollum. Never again would he go striding South in search of the lost trail. If he quit now, he was forever finished. He would never find his quarry. He would never learn the whole truth. If Bilbo's ring were ever identified, it would be on the strength of Gandalf's findings. Aragorn the huntsman would have failed.

It would haunt him forever, this defeat. Evermore he would wonder how he could have done better, what more he could have tried, where else he might have looked. Evermore he would be tormented by the thought that if he had dared – if he had only dared – to pass into Mordor proper, perhaps he might have found the creature at last. Evermore he would think that had he been a little swifter, had he pushed a little harder, mayhap he would have caught the creature's spoor where it was fresh. Evermore he would revisit at whiles these long wasted years, wondering, supposing, reliving. And from time to time he would catch himself looking about, searching a riverbed or the shadows in a bog or the border of a mountain pool for just a hint of a hobbit-like print in the mud, as if somehow he might turn back time itself to the days when he had had the chance to find the troublesome wretch and to save Middle-earth from darkness...

Despair, colder than the winter winds, more pernicious than the probings of a Nazgûl mind, crept into Aragorn's heart. So be it. He had failed; such were the fruits of failure. He could not find Gollum. He could not go on. All that he could do was to keep moving, to place one weary foot before the other as slowly, tortuously, he plodded out the thousand miles that would bear him back to the lands of his birth. He would confess his failure and he would strive to bear both the shame and the consequences like a noble man. He could no longer hide from the truth. He had failed.

The hunt was over.

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Yet though he was no longer the hunter, he was still prey. Whether the distant shadow on the southern horizon intended to butcher and eat him or whether it intended to reel him in for questioning he did not know, but he could not fall into their clutches. That they moved even during the day did not much narrow the field. In these lands, the gloom of Mordor hung low and day was little more bright than night. Furthermore, orcs when pressed for revenge did not halt even for the dawn. Third Voice and his comrades might still be on his heels, lusting for retribution. With a heavy heart and aching legs, he trotted onward, unable now to run. About him the lands grew ever more barren, and there was a sour smell upon the air. It plucked at Aragorn's memory, but it was not until he reached the summit of the next hill that he realized where he had come.

Below him spread the grey expanse of the Dead Marshes. Here and there a sheen of sickly green disrupted the bleak winter fens. Tangles of swamp-weeds formed dark pox upon the land, and the foul, heavy smell that had plagued him for miles now seemed quite overwhelming. Revulsion shivered up the Ranger's spine as he stood there, numb with pain and cold and bitter despair. But he could not tarry forever, and there was no path for him but the northward path. He began to stumble down the slope onto the flat approach to the marshes themselves.

He would have struck a westerly course, and skirted them entirely, save that by now he was fairly swooning with exhaustion. For two days and a night had he moved forward with only a handful of hours spent in restless slumber. He was wounded and he was weak from hunger and thirst. He could run no farther: he had to find shelter, some place to conceal himself in the vain hope that his pursuers would pass him by in the gloom of the evening. The only cover in all these lands lay amid the sickly reeds and rushes of the fens ahead.

Soon he reached the edge of the quagmire, picking his way carefully into the muddy lands. He cast about desperately for somewhere, anywhere, large enough to conceal a man. Time was running short. His pursuers were doubtless behind the last hill now. There was not a moment to spare.

But there! A tangle of cattails, and a broad stretch of rushes, almost waist-high. Aragorn looked back. There was a shadow on the hilltop now, less than a mile behind. Swiftly he crouched, crawling forward through the mud until he was concealed among the reeds. Breathless he waited. It hardly seemed possible that such a place could hide him long. His breath came in ragged gulps and his heart was hammering in his chest. He had tarried too long on his hopeless quest and his tenacity, mayhap, would cost him his life. At the very least it would cost him his freedom. Again the black thought came to him and his wayworn spirit quailed. Such were the fruits of failure.

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Surely it took no more than a quarter of an hour for the trackers to descend onto the plain, but to Aragorn, huddling in the stinking mud and contemplating which of two grim fates was the more calamitous, it seemed an eternity. While he waited he berated himself. Fool, to believe he could accomplish what Gandalf could not. Doubly a fool, to press on even after losing the trail once again. And thrice three times a fool to be caught by four craven orcs because he was too dumbstruck to bestir himself! Fool he was, aye, and he was about to suffer either a fool's death or a fool's humiliation.

He could hear them now. They were perhaps three hundred ells away. At that distance, the clamour of orcs would have filled the air. These folk were quiet, murmuring among themselves. The Rangers, then. Aragorn felt a craven flutter of relief deep in his gut. He was not about to be slain like a dog in the muck. Then he remembered the disastrous consequences of capture by Denethor's men, and that small comfort, too, abandoned him.

Nearer still; they were on the very brink of the Marshes, and now Aragorn could make out their words.

'There, clear as day; the same boot-prints we saw in the camp, and back by the creek-bed,' said one. 'Well-made, but old and worn. Never a nail to be seen.'

'That cannot be right,' another put in. 'If those are his tracks, he has made his way into the very heart of the fens. All living creatures shun this cursed place. Captain, let us leave here while the daylight lasts!'

'We cannot leave! The man is a spy; else why would he have fled before our coming?' argued a third.

'A spy, or some sorry wretch who knew little of our ways and our skill,' said a quieter voice. 'He may have thought us unlikely to prevail, and snatched his chance for escape while he could. Who is to say how long he languished in the tender care of the orcs? Show pity for those less fortunate, Damrod, and you may find grace when most you have need.'

'Pity he could have had in abundance yesterday;' said Damrod; 'but he has led us on a merry chase, and I see no reason to forgive that. Never before have I ventured so far to the North, Captain, and I do not intend to return empty-handed.'

'What business had he in Ithilien?' asked a fifth man. 'That, at least, we must learn.'

'He may have had no business there at all,' put in a sixth voice, younger than the others. 'Mayhap the orcs brought him thence against his will. His face was bloodied and swollen: they had used him cruelly. If he has other wounds than I saw he may need our help.'

Aragorn supposed that this last must be the Ranger who had come upon him. Though he could not accept the implied offer of aid, he was nonetheless grateful to the kind-hearted youth. After so long among foes, it was consoling to find that someone cared enough to remark upon his well-being.

'Indeed he may need it, Anborn,' said the Captain, his voice low and pensive. 'But it seems he wants it not. Therefore I must chose: do I make further pursuit, even into these hated fens, and force our aid and our questions upon him, or do I withdraw, and allow the unfortunate to pass out of the knowledge of the Men of the West? By which course shall I best serve my nation, and my Steward, and my men?'

'Withdraw,' said the second Ranger.

'Aye, let us be gone from here. 'Tis a wicked place, and night is falling,' the first agreed.

'Your father would bid us press onward, my lord,' said the fifth; 'yet though I confess we should learn the stranger's intent, I would as lief remain upon unchanging ground.'

'Then I will speak what the rest fear to say!' Damrod exclaimed. 'We cannot bend the laws of this land for any man, be he pitiable or no! He had no right to walk within our borders—'

'I did not see him walking; I saw him bound and helpless,' protested Anborn.

'Yet he freed himself with no aid from you,' the fifth man put in. 'He cannot have been as helpless as he looked.'

'The laws of Ithilien—'

Damrod fell silent in the midst of his explanation. Aragorn knew the sound of such an abrupt halt in a soldier's speech. With a gesture or an imperious glance, his commander had made a demand for silence.

'We are no longer in Ithilien,' the Captain said presently, having made full use of the pause. 'We are beyond our borders, and in this debatable place there is no rule of law. Therefore the word of the Steward holds no weight here, over traveller or fugitive or servant of the Enemy. As this man was a stranger in the camp behind, so we are strangers here and so in danger. We do not know these fens and cannot walk them safely. Therefore let us depart, and tarry no longer. He has escaped our nets whatever his hurts; so let him be gone.'

There was no use in arguing with such a tone. Aragorn felt a sudden, irrational thrill of pride, like an old general who realizes that the new generation is indeed worthy to succeed him.

'Very well, my Captain. Let it be as you say,' Damrod professed. There was no resentment in his voice, nor any defiance. He had the sound of one who had discharged his duty and spoken his mind, but who accepts as a good soldier must the word of his leader. 'I shall be glad to return to our own borders, where at least the law holds.'

'Give me your bottle,' the Captain said. 'Is it full?'

'Aye,' said Damrod. 'But why?'

There was a sound of clinking buckles and shifting gear. 'You four men will share with the two of us, I trust?' asked the Captain. 'We shall have enough water between us to see us safely to the stream?'

'Aye, Captain.'

'Verily.'

'We shall.'

'But why?'

'There is no clear passage through these Marshes,' the Captain remarked. He was still shuffling through his equipment. He raised his voice to add; 'If the man has any sense, he will come out and take the long road around.' Then more softly he said to his men; 'And it is a long road, and lonely. The waters of these swamps are not to be trusted, nor have I seen any sign of game. If the man comes out as he went in, he will happen upon this. Whatever his transgressions, I would not condemn the poor soul to starve in this wasteland.

'Now let us go,' he said then, grunting a little with the unmistakable sound of a man hefting a heavy pack upon his back. 'We shall not halt until we are once more within our own lands. Onward!'

Aragorn listened as the footsteps sped away. Even when all was silent, he crouched there, breathless. He did not know whether the Captain had been aware of his lurking presence, or whether the raised voice was mere supposition – or even coincidence. They might have sent off some of their number only, with the others lying in wait. Yet his thirst was utterly unbearable, and at last it drove him forth, picking his way back to the firm ground at the borders of the Marshes.

There was no sign of the Rangers, but in the scrub grass lay two bottles, each full of clean water from the stream to the south; and a small bundle wrapped in linen. Within Aragorn found two wrinkled apples, several strips of dried meat, and a couple of pounds of hard, dry bannock; the waybread of the Men of the South. Such was the mercy shown to a suspect stranger by the Captain of Ithilien. Stricken with awe that brought unshed tears to his weary eyes, Aragorn bowed his head. There was yet hope in the world while good men dwelt in Gondor. With this gift he might win through to the living lands beyond the Emyn Muil, and so find his way home at last.

But he would never find Gollum.

Chapter XV: The Dead Marshes

Aragorn stirred no further that night. He did not feel able to eat, and though he partook of the water he did so sparingly. There was no telling when he might find more, for the Captain had spoken aright: the waters in these lands were not to be trusted. With his thirst but scarcely dulled Aragorn dug out his cloak and settled on the dry ground outside the borders of the stinking fen. There he passed the hours until dawn drifting in and out of uneasy dreams.

He was haunted by the vast uncertain future, and it tainted the night-roaming of his spirit. In these last months he had seen much of darkness and evil but little of light or hope, and it was despair that visited him now. Though his brush with the Rangers of Ithilien had left him with firm proof that decency and honour dwelt yet within the hearts of Men, he was afraid. These seemed such poor weapons to pit against the might of Mordor. Furthermore throughout his long life Aragorn had oft witnessed the frailty of mortal hearts. There were those, of course, in whom nobility of spirit was as tireless and enduring as the Flame Imperishable, but in others it was like the seed of the beech tree, blown swiftly away by the first strong wind. When the storm came, would the valiant hearts be sufficient to uphold the rest? Or would the innocents quail and the mighty ones fall until all the world was plunged into darkness?

Aragorn had in generous measure the gift of his kindred, and he was held by many to be a man foresighted. But beyond the gathering Shadow he could see nothing. Often in these last years he had felt like one stricken blind, groping fruitlessly forward though he did not know the way.

Before the dawn he forsook his hopeless attempts to find rest within his rambling mind. He sat huddled under his torn cloak, trying to endure the damp chill that hung over the Marshes. His shoulder stung where the orcs' claws had dug so mercilessly into his flesh, and the rope-burns on his wrists were irritating. He wished that he might wash his hurts, but he could not spare water for such a luxury until he was sure of securing his next supply. His legs were sore and leaden after his frantic flight and the healing gash in his thigh ached. The cold did not help any of these pains, and as he waited for the grey gloom of daylight Aragorn found himself daydreaming wistfully of a crackling campfire. He had not had fuel or safety enough for fire since ascending into the Mountains of Shadow, and he sorely missed the comfort and companionship of a warming blaze.

When at last the Sun arose, a pale disc of light behind the grey clouds, Aragorn surveyed his surroundings. It seemed that he had come upon the Marshes at their most south-eastern edge. To the West the fens stretched out endlessly to meet the horizon, while looking to the East Aragorn could see the change from brown to grey that marked the beginning of the plains north of the Morannon.

An unpleasant choice, latest in a long list of unpleasant choices, awaited him now. To pass through the Dead Marshes by the most direct route was the act of a madman: the shifting quagmires and ever-changing tussocks would confound even the most experienced traveller. Aragorn had no desire to be swallowed up by the swamp. Yet in the eaves of the Marshes would he be most safe from any pursuit or patrol. If even the stalwart men of Ithilien dared not chance the borders it seemed improbably that any band of roving orcs would do so. Thus his path would be both long and treacherous, whatever way he went. Westward the Marshes stretched for fifty miles or more before fading into the bleak approach to the Vale of Anduin beneath the Falls of Rauros. There a wanderer would be obliged to follow the river for many leagues before one came to a place where a man might cross without a boat. Eastward he might vanish swiftly into the Emyn Muil, emerging from the mountains where Anduin provided a girth amenable to the efforts of a strong swimmer.

Now that he had made up his mind to return to the North, Aragorn was of a mind to do so with all haste, and the East road seemed the quicker. He gathered up his provisions into the pack, which he tucked under his arm. He realized only after he had dragged himself to his feet that he had made no effort to fashion a clasp for his cloak. Rather than sit to struggle with the puzzle, he merely wrapped the garment around his shoulders, clutching it to him like a blanket. Thus equipped, he ventured forward into the Marshes, watching his feet with one eye whilst he searched his environs with the other.

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All that day he walked, the silence broken only by the burbling of the marshes and the noise of his boots in the sucking mud. Though he stepped with care, ever attentive to the ground before him, he often found himself in muck ankle deep or worse, and twice he sank so far into the mire that the vile swamp-water oozed over the top of his boots. Slowly, inexorably, the wetness crept through the leather also and his feet in their woollen hose grew wet and almost intolerably cold. His clothing was damp and his cloak was heavy on his shoulders, slipping frequently out of the dogged grasp that held it in place. His arm ached from carrying his pack, dangerously light though it was, and his weary legs struggled against the mud.

Despite the miseries of the body, Aragorn found his thoughts straying towards a more philosophical matter: his abandonment of his quest.

The draught of failure was a bitter brew to swallow. Seldom in his long labours had Aragorn been driven to admit defeat. True, victory was often hard-won and not infrequently unpalatable by the end, but nonetheless he most often succeeded in whatever venture he undertook. Though the years had worn on and the trail wound into lands ever more perilous, he had truly believed that in the end he would succeed. He knew well his own skill: he had tracked horses over bare rock, and found Rangers who did not wish to be discovered. He had pursued men through shifting desert sands, and followed all manner of beasts and birds. If there lived a man who could outdo him in the hunt Aragorn had not met him.

Yet his skill had failed him, and with it his hope. It galled him to return thus, despairing and defeated. What would he tell his brothers when they asked how he had fared in the South? How would he explain to his beloved the nature of his failure and the depth of his disgrace? And Master Baggins, who held his friend the Dúnadan in such high esteem – how could Aragorn face him, having failed to capture his old nemesis? What of his foster-father? He dreaded the grave expression that would seep into Elrond's eyes as the unhappy tidings were spoken; empathy and resignation intermingled, and with them a spark of terror, well-concealed but not wholly hidden, for the Lord of Imladris knew better than any other the terrible stake that rode upon the question of Bilbo's little ring.

Worst of all would be the confrontation with Gandalf. For all the wizard's words at their parting, Aragorn knew his friend had yet believed him capable of success: however improbable his triumph had seemed at least conceivable, else Gandalf would never have allowed him to go on. To dash that secret hope would be a terrible blow to Aragorn's heart. And the Istar would never accept that Aragorn had simply tired of the hunt. There would be questions; an interrogation to rival that to which the creature itself would have been put. In the end, Aragorn knew, Gandalf would wring from him every last detail of the fruitless weeks upon the marches of Mordor. Then there would be a reckoning, a tongue-lashing to equal the castigation of Fëanor before the seat of the Valar, followed by a great deal of undue consideration. That Aragorn dreaded almost more than the confession of failure itself, for he knew that he deserved it. At no point in their ill-starred quest had Gandalf intimated that the hunt was worth the risking of life, limb or sanity.

At least, Aragorn thought, he was not an oathbreaker. The wizard had released him from his promise and he was free to return home as best he might. Had been free, indeed, since their parting in Harondor. He half wished that he had turned back then, with his body unscathed and his spirit unassailed and his clothing still whole. Yet he knew now as he had then that to turn back while there was still a chance, however slim, would have driven him to madness. As hateful as his failure was, he could at least say with absolute verity that he had hunted to the very limits of his strength.

That was enough to sustain him. It had to be.

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Dusk fell unexpectedly, the gloom of the day vanishing rapidly into darkness. As the temperature dropped mists began to rise off of the vile meres between which Aragorn picked his way with all the care he could. The air grew denser, and the sour stink of the Marshes only seemed to intensify. Then something flickered in the corner of the Ranger's eye: a glint of faint and unearthly light. He turned his head swiftly, but when he looked the glow was gone.

Again it happened, and again. Aragorn was beginning to fear for his reason when another appeared, a little ahead of him. And there was another, away to his left, and another beyond that. Soon the darkness was filled with them; pinions of pale illumination like the wavering glow of hundreds of sickly candles, shining amid the waters of the Dead Marshes but illuminating nothing. Aragorn's pulse quickened. What devilry was this? He turned about in a full circle; he was surrounded by the lights on every side, dancing dizzyingly in the mists.

They were fair, perilous and fair, and they seemed almost to call to him, but before he could venture a single step his common sense prevailed. This was some enchantment laid upon the land – no wizard-work, nor any contrivance of the Elves, but some more ancient and terrible power, older maybe than Mordor itself, that had settled in this place of death. He could feel the lure of the lights, tempting the traveller to come, to follow, and so to sink forever in the stagnant waters. Resolutely he resisted, closing his mind to temptation and his eyes to the enticing flickering of the ghostly lights.

His mind was filled now with tales of the great battle upon the plains of Dagorlad. He had heard many accounts of that conflict, some even first-hand from those who had fought before the gates of Mordor. Master Elrond spoke with respect and love of the honoured dead. The Lady Galadriel recalled well the glory of the first valiant charge and the bittersweet satisfaction of victory, when the Black Gate was cast open and the forces of Elves and Men swarmed down upon Gorgoroth itself. But it was from Celeborn that Aragorn had learned of the grim work that followed the battle: of the great graves carved into the packed and blood-soaked earth, into which Elf and Man, Dwarf and Orc alike were laid to rest, with their arms and armour still upon their bodies.

Like the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Dagorlad had left no time for the proper disposition of the dead. Yet where the servants of Morgoth, triumphant, had piled high the bodies of their enemies to rot shamefully beneath the open sky, the victorious hosts of Elendil and Gil-galad had made what hasty efforts they could to offer a dignified burial to the slain. Strange, Aragorn thought: the defilement of Morgoth had been purified, becoming the great mound of Haudh-en-Ndengin, green amid the desolation of Angband. Yet by evil had the honourable intentions of the folk of the Last Alliance been twisted into this place of stench and death.

He dared walk no further while the ghostly candles shone, and so he crouched down in the mud to eat a little and to rest as best he might, unable to lie down as he fought back sleep and dark thoughts with equal resolve.

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On the following day it rained. No cleansing downpour was this, but a slow persistent drizzle that dampened the spirits and the garments alike. Even the rain had a foul smell in this hateful place, and Aragorn plodded on in misery, head bowed beneath his hood, one hand still holding his cloak in place. How glad he would be to leave these bleak lands behind! How blessed it would be to breathe clean air once more, and to walk where the earth was fair and unsullied! How his heart ached for home.

He banished that thought. He had a long road before him, a hard and bitter path. His scant supplies would not last him long, and further to the North winter was thick upon the land. He remembered his words to Gandalf about venturing into the snows clad in light summer garb, and a convulsive shiver ran up his spine. He hugged his wet cloak nearer to his body and sighed. He would cope with that difficulty when he came to it. He might walk two hundred miles or more before he saw any sign of frost.

Today he was troubled by the sense that he was not alone. He felt bare and exposed, as if hundreds of eyes were upon him. Yet he saw no sign of bird nor beast, and the grey lands far away to his right seemed bereft of all life. Still an irrational fear of discovery cast a pall upon Aragorn's heart and he moved onward with caution. He was not beyond the power of the Enemy yet, and he could ill afford to fall afoul of an errant company of Uruks. At last, he turned his course in a more westerly direction and picked out a path that led somewhat more deeply into the Marshes.

A little after noon, the rain ceased its merciless incursions upon his health, but the Sun could not be seen and the heavy clammy air smothered all hope of drying his clothes. He was far from the northern snows, but it was cold enough here, particularly with the hope waning so in his weary heart. Not for the first time, Aragorn longed for companionship; for the company of someone, anyone, whose voice might break the wretched monotony of this lonely journey.

'Well, you've done it this time, Aragorn my boy,' Gandalf would have said. 'You've led me down some strange and unpleasant paths these last years, but this is by far the most unusual. Here, have a care where you step: we almost lost you in that last mere!'

'I don't know how you abide that wet hair in your eyes!' He could almost hear Elrohir's jovially teasing voice now. 'Men who don't trouble to keep their tresses in order ought to cut them off!'

'Leave him be, Elrohir: he's not a child anymore and might resent your treating him as such,' Elladan would have rebutted. 'Estel, tonight you really ought to see what can be done with your comb. You'll be more comfortable for it.'

And Halbarad: 'Time to halt and eat a little, I think. Even the mighty Strider cannot walk on indefinitely without his victuals.'

Aragorn would have traded anything for the company of even one of his friends. Yet he supposed that he should heed their advice, even if they were not present to speak it. When he reached the next tussock set upon firm and marginally less soggy ground, he sat, dug out the remains of his comb and made a cursory attempt to restore some order to his overgrown crop of hair. This proved counterproductive, however, for far from making him feel more comfortable it only made him long for a hot bath and a shave and clean clothing. Frustrated, he stowed the comb away. He had wandered in the wilderness for decades, bereft of such comforts, and yet somehow he never grew quite accustomed to being filthy and ragged and unkempt.

This seemed as good a time as any to address the matter of his cloak. Aragorn took inventory of his meagre possessions and settled upon two options. Either he might use the length of rope to tie the cloak to his body, or he could try to contrive some sort of fastening with the wire. The former seemed too much a reminder of his recent travels in the company of orcs, and so he settled upon the latter. He had six handspans of wire, and he cut away a length of two. Then, positioning the cloak most comfortably upon his shoulders he wove the wire in and out through the layers of wool until they were held together by stitches of bronze. Cautiously he tugged at the makeshift clasp, then more insistently. It held. His tired arm throbbed gratefully.

He ate the second apple and tucked a sliver of the dried meat into his cheek to gnaw on while he walked. The longer he chewed, the more satiated he could trick his stomach into feeling. It would be a long and hungry journey home and he had to contrive to keep himself on his feet somehow.

He resumed his journey with a heavy heart, watching the earth with one eye and the land with the other. The thready mists clung to the swamp-grasses and obscured the path below his feet. Tired and disheartened, Aragorn did not immediately comprehend what he was seeing until his instincts began to shriek at him to slow, to stop, to look.

Swiftly he turned. Hastily he crouched. Long fingers slipped forward almost of their own accord to brush the surface of the mud. Aragorn's pulse quickened and his throat grew taut as he fought back wonder and disbelief. It could not be, and yet his senses would not lie. He cast about for some corroborating sign and he found it, not ten inches away from the first.

Tracks.

There in the soft mud were the marks of broad, flat feet – bare, with long, prehensile toes. Smaller than orc-feet they were, smaller than Man. Unmistakably hobbit-like.

A little farther along Aragorn found the marks of four knuckles where they had dug into the earth to bear up the passage of their owner. And here was the indentation of a knee. Here the off-foot had dragged after the lead, and here the creature had stopped to root about among the rushes. He moved forward swiftly, crouched low to the ground as he picked up the trail. It scarcely seemed possible, after fifteen years and more, after all the perils and the hardships and the futile pursuits, that he should chance upon what he sought now, now when he had at last despaired of ever succeeding. Yet so it was: tracks clear enough that a child could follow them, and fresh! They were not more than three or four hours old, or the rain would have washed them away. Even now the groundwater was seeping into the deeper imprint made by the ball of the foot – for a creature that scrambled rather than walking left little by way of a heel-mark. In another hour or two the marks would be unintelligible, even to one of Aragorn's skill.

Swiftly he rose, tracing the path of the imprints where it wound away to the North. His heart was hammering in his chest now, but there was no time to tarry, reflecting upon his astonishment or the senselessness of such a discovery at such a time. Forward he sped, keen eyes racing before him to pick up the next sign, and the next, while the day waned swiftly and the twilight began to gather behind the gloom to the East. Weariness and hunger, despair and loneliness all were forgotten. Strider was on the hunt once more.

Chapter XVI: A Prize Hard-Won

Dusk was falling rapidly as Aragorn sped forward, bent low so that he might follow the trail even in the gathering gloom. The creature kept up a great pace for so small a thing, but still the Ranger was swifter than his prey and the tracks grew ever more fresh. It seemed that his quarry was following much the same route Aragorn himself had intended to take, skirting around the very heart of the Marshes but remaining far enough within their border that the fens afforded cover from any hostile patrols in the bare surrounding lands. Of course, Aragorn reflected, this was not altogether astonishing. Certainly Gollum was adept at subterfuge and the arts of survival, or he never would have eluded capture for so long.

Aragorn halted, listening to the gurgling of the swamp-waters and the whispering of the dry reeds. Below these sounds he heard another, out of place in these empty lands. Low and sibilant, a keening whine filtered through the haze ahead.

The pack was eased to the ground, and Aragorn groped within it until his fingers closed upon the coil of rope that had been fixed about his neck when he flew from the orc-camp. Deftly he knotted one end into a three-coiled noose – a good knot for his purposes, being quick to draw tight but easy enough to loosen if one knew the trick, and perhaps most importantly, reliable when wet. As he worked he listened warily, but the muttering and whimpering remained constant. The creature, it seemed, was no longer moving forward. Aragorn slipped his cloak over his head and folded it over his pack. Thus unencumbered he crept forward, exerting every effort to move noiseless through the mud.

Apprehension pricked at his mind, and he rather wanted to draw his knife. Who could say whether Gollum would be armed? Bilbo had seen so sign of any weapon but his quick fingers and his teeth, but that had been more than seventy years ago, and Bilbo had stumbled unwittingly on the creatures' lair. Now Gollum was far from the security of his hideaway, and in country as dangerous as this who would not carry a blade? Nonetheless, Aragorn settled for shifting the knife that he now wore tucked into his belt into a more favourable position. It would easily be seized if he had need, but he earnestly hoped that he would not. After fifteen years of searching he could not risk slaying Gollum in the struggle to capture him.

He paused in his creeping. The creature was near at hand now, and though Aragorn could not yet see him amid the tussocks of dead grass and the broad, squelching meres, he could make out the words of his whinging lament.

'...and we does, preciouss, we does! Poor, poor precious, gollum!—' And here he made a horrid gurgling noise in the back of his throat. 'Poor handses, poor handses, yess! Hateful, hot, hurting... poor handses, my preciousss!'

There was a sound of splashing and a sharp yelp. Aragorn held his breath, fearful that the creature had heard him, but after a moment the resentful soliloquy continued.

'How iss we supposed to go on, my precious, tell us that! Poor precious, gollum. No foods, no nice fishes in the pool, and nassty orcses, precious! Nassty orcses! Orcses, preciouss!' Here his voice grew shrill and panicked until it rose to a long, wordless shriek. Aragorn flinched involuntarily as his eardrums began to throb. Just when he thought he could bear no more, the ululation of rage and terror cut off abruptly. 'Nassty orcses,' the creature muttered sullenly.

Aragorn drew nearer, edging carefully around a clump of weeds. Then at last, at long last after fifteen futile years, he had his quarry in his sight. There, huddled low over a stinking pool, was a pallid, craven creature. Filthy, all but naked, coated in green slime, Gollum squatted in the mud with his emaciated legs sticking out to either side and his knobbed knees almost level with his rounded shoulders. His head was bowed low, giving him a strange silhouette against the light of the ghostly candles now flickering to life in the pools, and the bones of his spine seemed ready to tear through his discoloured skin. Even in the last light of evening Aragorn could see the hollows between his ribs and the sharp protrusion of his hip-bones. More like beast than hobbit was he, and as Aragorn watched him, keening and muttering to himself, he could not help a shudder of revulsion.

He crept a little nearer still. The creature was less than three rangar away, and still he seemed unaware of the watcher. Aragorn took a firm hold of the end of the rope, holding the loop loose in his other hand. Slowly, cautiously, he stretched his left leg forward, planting his boot firmly in the mud. For a moment he paused, listening for any break in the creature's mumbling that might indicate his presence was no longer a secret. Then swift as a cat he pounced, closing the distance between himself and his prey in two swift strides. Gollum whirled, his hands sending up a spray of vile water, and he shrieked – but by then the Ranger was upon him. The rope slipped over his shoulders and Aragorn yanked it taut, triumphant. He had his prize at last!

Only for a moment did the warm glow of success linger. Even as the noose grew tight, pinning his arms to his sides, Gollum was struggling. He thrust one bony foot against Aragorn's leg and hurled his body backward over the arm that was trying to seize him. Aragorn overbalanced, falling forward as his right hand shot out to close upon Gollum's ankle. This brought another shriek of fury, and before the Ranger's left hand could find the rope Gollum had doubled back over himself and was scratching ferociously at the fingers on his leg. One long, skeletal arm had worked itself free of the rope, and with it he lunged for his assailant. Aragorn rolled to the left, dragging the creature with him as he struggled to find some more useful hold.

Still Gollum struggled, writhing with such frenetic energy that it was impossible from one moment to the next to be sure what part of him one held. Aragorn lost his grip on the foot, but then for a moment he had an arm, then an ear. Each time Gollum managed to slip free, though the Ranger managed to keep him from gaining sufficient mastery to flee. They were lying in the mud now, grappling frantically while the candles of the Dead flickered around them.

It should have been no contest at all: Aragorn was twice the creature's height, hale and strong and if not well-fed at least neither withered nor emaciated. Yet Gollum was quick and astonishingly strong, and as he howled unintelligible maledictions he beat at his would-be captor with foot and fist. The scrabbling hands closed on Aragorn's wildly flying hair, and the Man could not stifle a hoarse cry of pain as his scalp blazed in protest. It was as well he did, for the noise startled the creature, who twisted to backward to fix his pale eyes upon the Ranger's face. Taking advantage of the moment's hesitation, Aragorn struck out with his left arm, driving his fist into Gollum's side. The grip on his hair loosened abruptly as the bony thing crumpled into the blow. Aragorn forced the creature to roll with him, trying to pin the wiry limbs beneath his body. Gollum had his other hand free of the rope now, and he reached up to claw at Aragorn's eyes. There was a hot rush of fluid as the scrabbling nails drew blood.

Aragorn thrust up his arm, sweeping away the nimble fingers and attempting to immobilize the hand, but Gollum was too quick. His shoulder rotated in defiance of the laws of nature and he evaded the Man's attempt to pin him. Before Aragorn could compensate his head was jerking instinctively backward. As the nails tore into his flesh, glancing off his cheekbone, he realized with a sickening lurch that only his reflexes had saved his right eye.

Again he struggled to catch the flailing hand, all the while shifting his legs in a desperate bid to trap the creatures feet, which were kicking furiously against his hips and lower abdomen. Aragorn was fully cognizant of his absurd position, grappling so desperately with a thing not half his size, but there was nothing for it. He was fighting now not merely to pacify a prisoner, but to avoid grievous harm. Never would he have imagined that such strength or tenacity might be hidden within so pitiful a creature, but it was plain that Gollum was not to be easily cowed.

Then, so swiftly that he was not entirely sure how he had caught the creature off-guard, Aragorn had the advantage again. He pressed it without reflection, snatching Gollum's arm and trapping the deadly hand under his left knee. Awkwardly he shifted forward to improve his hold without relinquishing the tenuous control he had over Gollum's flailing legs. The mire beneath them shifted under the Ranger's weight, and the shrieking, squirming creature was pushed further down into the mud.

He tried to exploit the inconstant terrain and made an effort to wriggle from beneath his assailant, but Aragorn had anticipated such a tactic. He bore down with his full weight, and bowed his head as he pressed his forearm across Gollum's throat, applying enough force that he creature began to make harsh choking noises and his flailing grew less intense.

With his right arm thus occupied and both legs desperately trying to keep the rest of the creature pinned in place, Aragorn's left had began groping for the rope, which was tangled around Gollum's trunk and leg. If he could only catch the knot, he knew he would stand at least some chance of immobilizing his prisoner without resorting to baser methods.

Piercing anguish shot through him.

Aragorn almost lost control over Gollum's hand as his back arched against the unexpected agony. For a moment he was not even certain what quarter of his body had given birth to this pain, but ignorance did not endure long enough. The creature had sunk his teeth into the flesh of the Ranger's arm.

Aragorn tried to wrench free, but Gollum's jaws were stronger even than his limbs. Deeper the teeth drove, and Aragorn could feel the flesh puncturing, tearing. The next awkward twist made his elbow-joint pop, but he shook off the creature – at least momentarily. Gollum thrust his head forward, his long neck seeming almost to stretch upon command, snapping again. He grazed deep into the sinew of the Ranger's wrist, and Aragorn's field of vision was obscured with blackness. Yet his left hand was still free, and it flew forward almost of its own volition, closing with bruising force about Gollum's stringy throat. Tighter he squeezed, and tighter until the tearing teeth forsook their quest to strip every scrap of flesh from his bones.

Gollum flailed, clawing at the strangling hand. Aragorn ground his teeth against the sting of the ragged nails and the throbbing torment in his wounded arm, resolutely maintaining his hold. It was not an honourable way to subdue an opponent, but he had no strength left for nobler methods. He had to neutralize the creature swiftly, or either he would lose his quarry or be lost himself. Gollum was choking in earnest now, wholly unable to draw breath. Of greater moment, his carotid artery had collapsed beneath the knowing hands of a healer: the blood that his craven heart struggled to pump was not reaching its destination. The malicious eyes grew vacant and his struggles grew weaker every second. Then they ceased entirely: at last the creature was limp.

In the brief window of time between unconsciousness and death Aragorn relinquished his hold. He rolled off of his captive, crumpling in the mud beside him. He lay there panting as desperately as if he had been the one with a hand upon his windpipe, quaking with exertion and pain, his strength utterly spent.

Yet there was little time to squander. Aragorn pushed himself up with his left hand, pressing his bleeding right arm to his chest. He would see to his hurts later. The important thing was to secure the creature before he regained consciousness.

Aragorn disentangled the rope as swiftly as he could. Only now did he realize how his prisoner stank. It was a reek discernable even amid the foul air of the Marshes: a mingling of offal and bodily secretions and rot, and something unidentifiable that defied even Strider's extensive experience with the vile and the putrescent. He tried to close his nose, swallowing the rising bile as he fought to keep his pinched stomach from roiling in rebellion. The green slime that coated his body – at least that which had not been transferred to Aragorn's clothing in the course of the struggle – seemed to indicate that he had made some attempt to swim in the stagnant pools of the Dead Marshes. That, at least, would account for some of the smell, and Aragorn dared not think what the creature could possibly have sought in the waters. All thoughts of binding his prisoner from head to toe fled. Aragorn had no wish to carry him: Gollum would have to walk.

The rope, then, would be needed as a lead. Aragorn undid his noose, his right hand clumsy and his left trying to compensate. He slipped the cord about the creature's neck and tied it awkwardly into a collar, too snug to be removed but not so tight as to be cruel. As he worked he tried not to look at the purpling circles on the creature's neck, four on the right and one on the left: the marks of Aragorn's fingers. The nausea of remorse mingled with that brought on by the stink, but Aragorn subdued it sternly. He could spare no compassion for his prisoner. Hundreds of miles lay before them, and if he was going to reach his goal he would have to be unyielding and pitiless.

With the knot firmly affixed and reinforced, the tail of the halter was less than half again the length of the Ranger's arm. None could be spared to bind Gollum's hands. Aragorn plucked at the skirts of his tunic, but that thought fled almost at once. He had already lost much of his cloak: a few strips more would not make any difference.

Yet he could not leave Gollum alone, unconscious or no. Therefore steeling himself against the hated task, he hoisted the unconscious wretch over his shoulder. When he tried to rise his legs trembled and he nearly fell, but he obdurately refused to submit to his tired body. With his left arm curled in support of the creature, he stumbled back to where he had abandoned his gear. Hastily he deposited his prisoner in the mud, ignoring the fresh ache in his shoulder and arm. With knife and teeth he produce sufficient lengths of dirty wool from his cloak to bind Gollum's hands before him.

He hesitated at the sight of the bony appendages. The slimy palms and the long fingers were marred with abrasions and deep, suppurating wounds, and horrible marks that could be nothing else but burns. In the darkness little more than a cursory inspection could be made, but Aragorn's stomach turned anew at the sight. Small wonder the unhappy creature had yelped when it splashed its hands in the mere, and it was astounding that he had found the strength to fight with them. Even in the gloom such hurts were unmistakable: these were the marks of torture.

They wanted cleaning and proper dressing, but there was no time. As gently as he could Aragorn bound the creature's wrists together, keeping the knots as tight as he dared but ensuring they were still loose enough to admit his smallest finger between the bonds and the arm. He could afford no mercy now, but neither had he any wish to be cruel.

Gollum was stirring now on the brink of consciousness. It seemed he was more resilient than any Man, and many orcs: Aragorn had counted upon having at least a few minutes to investigate his own hurts. Hastily he took another strip of his ravaged cloak and tied the creature's legs together. Though as soon as dawn came they would be on their way the Ranger did not wish to wait out the hours with a prisoner that might try to flee. As his captive's eyelids fluttered and his lips began to work soundlessly, Aragorn recalled himself and hastened to thrust another piece of cloth into the creature's mouth, knotting it snugly behind.

He affixed the gag not a moment too soon, for the pale eyes shot open, glinting with the reflections of the unearthly candles. For a moment there was nothing but confusion in the haunted orbs, but terror and hatred swiftly flooded back. Gollum arched his back and tried to move his bound limbs. Aragorn snatched up the end of the rope and held fast while his prisoner flopped about in the mud like a fish flung onto the land. Though his heart was hammering in his chest, he did not move as Gollum struggled and muffled noises of rage filtered around the cloth. Only when his captive fell back in the mud, emaciated ribcage heaving with the exertion, did Aragorn kneel, taking hold of the halter near the creature's throat and leaning low to fix him in his gaze.

'Do not struggle,' he said, keeping his voice firm but free from anger or disgust. Small wonder the wretch was afraid: he had sprung upon him unawares, and other hands had ill-used him lately. 'No harm will come to you by my hand, provided that you do as I say. Do you understand?'

Gollum's eyes narrowed to malicious slits. He gave no further sign of comprehension.

'I wish to question you. If I remove the cloth from your mouth, will you cry out or attempt to bite again?' the Ranger asked. 'I do not wish to hurt you, but neither will I suffer such assault a second time.'

Still Gollum only stared, but he was trembling and beneath the hate there was fear. Aragorn's eyes flitted once more to the savagely abused hands. It did not look like orc-work: the wounds were too precise, too meticulously executed.

'Answer me yeah or nay,' he said sternly; 'for your life and mine hang upon the answer. Are you fleeing the servants of the Enemy? Are you being followed by orcs? By black Men of Mordor?'

Incoherent sounds filtered around the cloth. 'Yeah or nay?' Aragorn repeated. 'Nod your head.'

Gollum made no attempt to comply.

Bound and gagged the creature was in no position to trust him. If he wished to glean anything from his captive, Aragorn would have to make the first gesture of truce. With hands made studiously gentle despite the pain that shot through his torn right arm as he stretched it, Aragorn reached behind the creature's head and undid the gag. Even as he withdrew it, Gollum strained forward, snapping at his fingers.

'None of that,' Aragorn said sternly, grabbing a length of the lead and wrapping in around his hand. 'Tell me: are you being pursued by the servants of the Enemy?'

'Are we being pursued, precious, it askss us,' Gollum muttered, his voice hoarse and strangled. 'Yes, precious, pursued it iss. Hateful manses hunts us, precious, with cruel ropeses, yess…'

'Orcs!' snapped Aragorn. 'Are you being hunted by orcs?'

Gollum fell silent, glowering blackly at him. Then he curled in upon himself, launching up to bow his head over his lap as he raised his hands to his face. Before his captor realized what he intended, Gollum was gnawing on his bonds.

Quick as flash, Aragorn had the gag back in his prisoner's mouth. Gollum tried to struggle, but with hands and feet bound there was little he could do. The advantage of size was with the Ranger, and with a nasal wail that rang piercing through the air despite the gag, the wretch flung himself back in the mud, curling on his side and whimpering piteously.

Aragorn no longer wished to linger in these fens, even to interrogate the creature he had sought for so long. Gollum had been put to torment, and not long ago. If he had escaped the Enemy's clutches, there would be a pursuit, and who was to say how near the servants of Sauron were at this very moment? Aragorn had no strength for battle, nor any sword with which to stake his claim to the captive. He was not entirely sure that he had the wherewithal to fly, either, but at least he had to try.

A sudden irrational fear clutched at Aragorn's heart. He felt more exposed now than he had even before the Black Gate, for suddenly he had something to lose that was of greater moment than his life. He had the truth within his grasp, if only it could be wrung from the creatures lips. To lose it now would be more than his wayworn spirit could bear, and who could say what attention the noise of their struggle had drawn? He could not take the chance of losing his freedom or his prisoner now, when he had at last achieved his goal. His hands shook as he undid the bonds about Gollum's ankles.

'On your feet,' he commanded. 'We cannot tarry here.'

Questions could wait until they were in some safer place, somewhere they might take cover. Keeping a firm hold on the rope, he scrabbled for his pack and his cloak. Gollum was still lying in the muck, whimpering and muttering to himself behind the gag. Aragorn prodded him with the toe of his boot. 'On your feet!' he repeated more urgently.

The bony back rounded still more dramatically. Gollum's forehead was very nearly pressed to his knees. Aragorn had no patience left. Hundreds of miles lay between this place and the halls of Thranduil in Mirkwood, where it had long ago been arranged that the creature should be brought if ever he were found. If Aragorn did not assert his authority now, what hope had he of driving his captive so far? The Ranger swooped down, seizing the creature by the shoulder and shaking him mercilessly.

'Up!' he commanded, imbuing the word with the full weight of his will.

Gollum's legs worked wildly, splaying in improbably disparate directions. Aragorn tightened his hold and hauled the stinking carcass up, and after a moment's struggle he had his prisoner more or less upright. 'Now run!' he hissed, the light of Númenor flashing in his eyes. Before it Gollum quailed, but he began to move.

To move, but not to run: his gait was more of a stumbling, loping trot and he seemed poorly balanced, like one bereft of some accustomed support. But at least he was propelling himself under his own power, and as Aragorn drove him forward between the flickering corpse-lights the oppressive threat of discovery seemed to ease somewhat. Yet as he struggled through the shifting mires of the Dead Marshes, his head swimming and his right arm throbbing, Aragorn could see neither any chance of escape if indeed the enemy was upon their trail, nor how he could ever tread the countless leagues that lay between his weary body and the succor of the wood-Elves.    

Chapter XVII: Of Clemency and Necessity

For all his iron will, Aragorn could not outlast the night. Long before dawn he was obliged to halt, stopping on an island of relatively firm ground that was overgrown with brittle rushes. His temples were pulsing with a dull ache, and the pain in his right forearm had only intensified through his flight. As soon as he stopped moving the world swam perilously about him, but he did not allow himself to fall.

The moment he paused, Gollum flung himself upon the ground, weeping and attempting to utter curses that were muffled by the gag. Aragorn knew that he ought to repeat his assurances that he would not harm the creature, but speech eluded him. Silently he eased himself down onto his knees, sparing not even a sigh. He could not afford to show weakness: far better that his prisoner think he had halted by design rather than out of desperation.

He took a frugal swallow of water, and forced himself to gnaw upon a piece of bannock. Gollum seemed insensible to his surroundings, writhing in the mud and twisting his hands fruitlessly against his bonds. Aragorn watched him with one eye while with the other he tried to examine his injured arm. It was a useless endeavour: the flickering of the candles of the Dead offered no illumination to aid him. He was loath to think what damage the creature's mouth had done, much less what poisons might be found upon his teeth, but without light he could neither assess nor properly dress the wounds. At least they were still bleeding sluggishly, and whatever filth was in them was thus prevented from settling in to fester.

Presently Gollum ceased his struggles and picked himself up out of the mud. He crouched with his bound hands on the ground between his feet, staring at the Ranger with hatred gleaming in his eyes. Aragorn studiously kept his expression inscrutable, though his innards crawled to be beneath such a malevolent gaze. What secrets lay behind those pale orbs? What dangerous thoughts lurked in the crafty mind that had so long outwitted him?

While the candles burned in the stagnant meres, the Ranger and his captive sat. Aragorn would have liked to lay down to rest, even if he could not sleep, but he restrained himself, bowing over his lap with his arm cradled against his chest, his left hand keeping a tight hold upon the rope. When the last of the ghost-lights winked out and the grey glow of dawn began to suffuse the mists, he rose and waited for his prisoner to do the same.

'Come, now,' he said when Gollum did not comply. 'We have had our rest: let us see if we can find solid ground today.'

From behind the gag, Gollum began hissing to himself.

Aragorn's jaw tightened in annoyance. He was not fool enough to expect cooperation, but this absolute reticence was grating on his already-taxed nerves. 'Come,' he repeated, more sternly.

Still Gollum did not move. Coiling the lead firmly around his hand, Aragorn began to walk. The creature would follow, he resolved, or be dragged like a sack of meal. For a few steps it seemed as if Gollum would chose the latter, but then the rope grew more slack and Aragorn, casting a perfunctory glance over his shoulder, saw his captive loping awkwardly behind.

They had not walked more than an hour, keeping a more or less northerly course, when Aragorn's boots struck earth that did not ooze or shift beneath them. Here the grasses were thinner and more pale, and there were no pools slick with slime, nor any whispering waters. They had come, so it seemed, to the northern border of the Marshes.

Though Aragorn was grateful to be out of the hateful fens, he was also wary. The protection afforded by the Marshes was gone, and they were on solid ground again; ground that would bear up the Uruk-hai and lend speed to any who pursued the creature. There was no cover here, but in the distance the foothills of the Emyn Muil loomed dark against the indistinct horizon. It was there that they must head with all speed, but as Aragorn quickened his pace he was faced with an unpleasant realization. Gollum could not move as swiftly as he. Even if he had chosen to cooperate, his shorter legs and unbalanced gait were no match for the long, even strides of the Ranger. Aragorn had not counted upon being thus hobbled, and the epiphany filled him with terror. If he could not coax some greater speed out of his prisoner, then the flight across the Wilderland would take months, if not seasons. Matters of food and water aside, there was the danger of pursuit. Even now he could not find cover quickly enough.

Yet in the end they came unassailed to high ground, and in the shelter of a boulder Aragorn sank to his knees. He drew in the rope, compelling Gollum to scuttle nearer. The captive did not look at all pleased with this arrangement – but truth be told, neither was Aragorn. Though some memory of the reek of the fens clung to his hair and mud-soaked garments, being now removed from the Dead Marshes he found Gollum's stench beyond overpowering. His disgust was tempered only by the knowledge that the creature could no more help its filthy state than he could his own.

It was time now to attend to his arm, which was still throbbing beneath the grimy sleeve. 'I must see what can be done about your handiwork,' Aragorn said, making a conscious attempt to sound amicable. 'Then I daresay you and I would each fare better for some food. I have little enough, but it is better than nothing.'

Gollum glowered at him, his thin lips working grotesquely against the gag.

'Come nearer and I will remove that,' Aragorn offered. He strove to smile kindly, but feared a weary grimace was all that he could muster. 'There is no need for you to go thus bound, if only you will refrain from biting. Once you have proved yourself worthy of that small trust, I may loose your hands as well.'

Gollum made no motion to obey. Had he not heard the creatures words the night before, Aragorn almost would have doubted his captive's ability to understand speech at all.

'Come nearer if you wish me to remove the gag,' he repeated, enunciating more clearly. The effort strained the healing lesion on his lower lip, and the resulting discomfort did nothing to restore his good humour. 'I will do you no harm.'

No further harm, he silently corrected. Was it any wonder the creature feared him? The marks upon its neck were now excruciatingly black; a livid reminder of the force that had been necessary to cow him. A twinge of compassion stirred in Aragorn's breast, and he repressed it sternly. He knew much of the art of command, and whether dealing with young recruits or a dangerous prisoner he understood that he could make no apology for needful action. In the desperate days to come, only discipline would stand betwixt him and utmost calamity. If he could not command the creature's cooperation at least he must gain his grudging respect.

Or failing that, Aragorn reflected bleakly, his fear.

'Very well,' he said indifferently. 'If you will come no nearer you may wear the thing until I am finished with my arm.'

Gollum, of course, made no attempt to answer.

Aragorn wished he might turn away from the creature. He disliked any show of weakness, and before his prisoner such might prove dangerous indeed, but he did not dare to turn his back on his catch. With clumsy fingers he tied the rope to his belt, that his left hand might be free to tend to his right. Then he began, gingerly, to tug his sleeve up towards his elbow, revealing the wounds.

Somehow he bit back the noise of dismay, but he knew he could not keep his consternation from his face. He darted a furtive glance at Gollum. He had seen no more than half a dozen teeth in the creature's mouth, but it scarcely seemed possible that such damage could be done by so few. The wound in the midst of his arm was the more serious by far. Here there were deep punctures and long, jagged lacerations. The skin was torn and mangled, ragged strips of flesh hanging loose from the tears and curling unnaturally under the black, curdled blood. The places where dead flesh lapped over living were already hard with inflammation and gathering pus.

At his wrist there was less tearing: he had not wrenched his arm free that time, but strangled his assailant until lack of air cost him his hold. The punctures were deeper here, laced with traces of slime and filth and still oozing blood. The perforated sinews ached, protesting even the smallest movement. Here Aragorn could clearly count the marks of five teeth, narrow and sharp and vicious. There were other scratches that might have belonged to another – perhaps two. Surveying the damage, he shuddered to think what harm might have been done if Gollum had possessed a complete set.

Aragorn was at a loss as to how to wash and dress the wound. He had not a scrap of clean cloth remaining anywhere on his person, nor had he any means of heating water, nor indeed any water to spare. He found himself longing for the orc-liquor.

Gollum was watching him intently now, gauging his every motion. Under the scrutinizing eyes of his captive Aragorn could ill afford any show of hesitation or uncertainty. If he could not bind the wound with a clean bandage, a dirty one would have to do. His cloak – now less in length than his cote – was filthy, and so he cut his bandages from the skirts of his tunic instead. He spared a little of his water to lave the wounds, and then wrapped them tightly. For a moment the pressure was unbearable, but then the pain settled to a dull, persistent throb and the tightness in wrist and elbow eased. Aragorn worked his fingers warily, and the motion prompted little increase in his discomfort. Still he doubted the arm would be of much use for knife-work. If they were set upon now, he would be unable to adequately defend himself or his prisoner.

His prisoner. Aragorn loosed the lead and took it in hand once more. 'Come nearer, now,' he said, firmly but not unkindly. Gollum did not obey. Aragorn's hand twitched on the rope, ready to reel it in, but he restrained himself. If he were to have any hope of undoing the damage of his first encounter with the creature, he would have to refrain from such high-handed tactics. Though his long legs ached and his tired body protested, he pushed himself nearer, taking in the line slowly so that Gollum could not scurry any farther away.

'I will not harm you,' Aragorn repeated yet again. 'You are in my charge, and I shall treat you with all the consideration that I may. Now, I will remove the bit from your mouth, but if you attempt to bite again you will regret it. Do you understand? Nod your head.'

Gollum only glowered blackly at him, as if with his eyes he might sear a hole through the Ranger's heart. Unable to entirely restrain himself from an exasperated sigh, Aragorn reached around Gollum's head, three fingers still gripping the rope. Stretching his right arm proved painful, but he could not undo his knot single-handed. He eased the rag loose of its bindings and slowly, cautiously peeled it away from the creature's face. The wide mouth worked frenetically, twisting and stretching as a pale tongue darted against thin lips. Aragorn could not restrain himself from making a count of the creature's teeth. Six. He shook his head and returned to the task at hand.

'Are you thirsty?' he asked, stretching awkwardly to tug his pack nearer. He had no wish to share his bottles with the vile-smelling thing, and so he dug out the wooden cup and tipped a few ounces of fluid into it. He held out the peace-offering. 'Surely you must be thirsty. I promise you the water is clean, if not fresh.' In part to lend veracity to his words and in part because the sight and sound of water made his dry throat burn, Aragorn used his right arm to lift the bottle to his lips and took a meagre swallow.

Gollum's eyes were still narrowed in suspicion, but he made no attempt to shrink away as Aragorn put the cup between his bound hands, curling the long, knobby fingers around them. Again he tried to smile. 'There. Drink: you will feel better for it.'

He withdrew his hands, and Gollum lifted the cup as if he were going to quaff of the life-giving fluid within. But then his arms shot out and he hurled the vessel away. It landed with a dull sound among the rocks, the water running out over the ground.

White-hot rage seized Aragorn, and for a moment he was certain that he was going to strike the prisoner. Decency restrained him at the last, before he could raise his hand against a bound and helpless captive, but the anger remained. To waste water thus, out of spite, while they had too little even to ensure their survival, was a crime deserving of stern punishment.

Aragorn closed his eyes, setting his jaw. It took all of his strength of will, but when he spoke his voice was level and his fury was constrained. 'That was a foolish act, and one that I fear we will both rue. If you will not drink what I give you then you must go thirsty, for there is no water in these lands fit for man or beast.' He fixed his gaze on Gollum, the stern light of command in his eyes. 'I shall cosset you no more. I have questions that you must answer, for your sake as much as my own. Are you being pursued by the servants of the Enemy?'

Gollum's mandible was jutting out obdurately, and he said nothing. Aragorn tried a different approach.

'Your hands. Tell me what has so harmed your hands.'

A whimper welled up in the creature's throat. 'Handses, poor hands,' he moaned, drawing his arms in against his ribs and licking at his torn and oozing fingers. 'Hurts us, precious. We doesn't tell, so they hurts us. Burning, biting, bleeding – then we talks, precious. We answers hateful questions, gollum. But no more!' Here he glared at Aragorn, accusation and defiance in his eyes. 'No, no more questions, precious. We'll bite his nassty handses if he tries it, precious. No more questions, no more, no more...'

'You were interrogated,' Aragorn translated, trying to make sense of the roundabout words and the echoing phrases. 'You were put to torment, and you answered their questions. Who harmed you? Who hurt your hands? Orcs? Men?'

'Hateful manses, with his ropes and his nassty cups. Hates him, precious. Bite him, we will. Bite him and scratch him and dig out his eyeses. Ties our poor handses! Chokes us and kills us, he does! Hateful, hateful, gollum.'

'Were you interrogated by the servants of Sauron?' demanded Aragorn. His patience, much tried already by pain and weariness and the desperation of his plight, was wearing thin. The creature would not talk to him, and indeed seemed scarcely to hear his voice, and that he might have expected, but the senseless prattling to 'precious' was growing swiftly tiresome. While he wasted time indulging this quixotic creature, pursuit might be drawing ever nearer. He pressed harder. 'His men: were you questioned by his men? What did you tell them? How did you escape?'

'No! No more!' Gollum whimpered, twisting his wrists so that he might claw at his forehead despite his bonds. 'No more questions, gollum! We can't! We can't! Don't look at us, gollum! Leave us be! Go to sleep! Go to sleep!'

'Gollum!' Aragorn exclaimed sharply. 'You must answer me! Those marks on your hands are not orc-work. Were you held captive in Mordor?'

He waited, but Gollum's wretched whinging only continued along the same vein. Each sibilant syllable grated more painfully against Aragorn's frazzled nerves. It was obvious that the creature had been tortured, and questioned, and such prisoners were never turned loose. If they chanced by luck or by guile to escape, the pursuit was terrible and unrelenting. Orcs were trouble enough, but if the Men of Mordor on their fell steeds were after him, Aragorn had to know.

'Tell me!' he snapped. 'Who questioned you? Who tormented you? Who harmed your hands?'

'Hands!' Gollum wailed, stamping his broad feet against the earth like a small child in the throes of a fit of temper, even as his fingers tugged at his lank, sparse hair. 'Poor, poor handses! Poor precious, gollum! Questions, always questions. He wants it, he does. Wants it. Wants answers. Wants poor precious, poor precious, gollum... wants... no! Not for you! No! NO!'

Aragorn's fragile self-control abandoned him. The creature's panic was infectious, and under its influence the Ranger's own fears overcame him at last. 'Enough!' he cried. 'Enough of your ramblings: I must have an answer! Are you being hunted by the servants of the Enemy?' He reached out and seized Gollum's shoulder, as if by doing so he could shake him free of the terrible hysteria that gripped him.

It was a grievous mistake. Gollum reacted instantly to the restraining hand. He spun, jaws snapping. Only reflex and the knowledge of the damage those teeth could inflict saved Aragorn from another wound. Yet as he yanked back his arm he lost his hold on the rope. In the selfsame moment Gollum launched himself to his feet and began to run, loping and bobbing with the lead trailing behind him. Aragorn had no time to think or to reason out the best course of action. He could not lose his prisoner. He scrambled after Gollum, who moved now with speed that belied his slow progress across the lowlands. There was a terrible moment when Aragorn was unsure whether his failing strength would be sufficient to close the gap, but then Gollum overbalanced, bound hands powerless to help him, and tumbled to the ground. He clambered to his feet almost before he struck the earth, but the delay of a breath was all that the Ranger needed. His hand closed upon the end of the rope and he hauled in his quarry, choking and gasping and clawing at the collar about the scrawny neck.

Aragorn said nothing as he dragged the creature back to where pack and bottles lay. Gollum writhed, his slippery limbs and his wiry strength making it impossible to gain a firm hold. When Aragorn attempted to immobilize him, the gnashing teeth once more sought for flesh to tear. With his right hand Aragorn took hold of the creature's lank hair. Gollum yelped, but his captor, grim and resolute, pushed the gag into his mouth, forcing down the tongue and rendering his teeth harmless. Aragorn knotted the restraint tightly behind the creature's head, tugging to ensure that the gag would not slip. Then he tightened the bonds upon the creature's wrists, for these had been worried loose in the struggle. Finally, he took another strip of wool and tied the creature's bony feet.

Only then did he fall back against the boulder, his chest heaving and his head pounding. The niggling voice of failure clawed at him. So much for gaining the trust of his prisoner. His attempts to do so had been repaid with this: water needlessly wasted, further injury upon his person attempted, and most horrifying of all, the near-loss of his prize. Aragorn shifted against the stone, trying to ease his laboured breathing. He looked at Golllum, trussed up in the dust, still struggling against his bonds, and he tightened his grip on the rope. Whatever it took, he would deliver the creature safely into the keeping of Thranduil and his folk. Whatever the cost, Gollum would not escape. If mercy and decency could not accomplish this, then they must be laid aside. His purpose was to bring Gollum to Mirkwood, not to befriend him; and however much it galled him he must show no pity. Though he would not be cruel, he could not be kind. The concerns of Middle-earth were of greater moment than the hurt heart of one solitary Man. He would tame Gollum by whatever means necessary, and most important of all, his prisoner would not find another opportunity to fly.    

Note: "Time" from "Riddles in the Dark", The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter XVIII: Into the Emyn Muil

Despite the risk of pursuit Aragorn knew he could go no further without sleep. His head ached with fatigue and even his good hand shook as he stowed his possessions in his pack. Injured as he was, he could endure no more. Nearly three days had passed since he had last submitted to his weary body, and if he did not take his rest now he would find himself utterly debilitated, as like as not in a place with less cover. So he drew his hood up over his face, wrapped his ragged cloak around his torso, and settled with his back to the boulder and his right calf across Gollum's bound ankles. This earned him a searing glare, but any movement on the part of the prisoner would rouse him immediately.

As it turned out he need not have bothered. Though slumber claimed him swiftly enough it was an uneasy sleep, troubled by dark imaginings and the occasional bolt of pain. Again and again he awoke, startled into wakefulness. Like a frightened child seeking reassurance his eyes would dart first to Gollum's bound body and then to the surrounding land. Then, his two fears proved for the moment unfulfilled, he would slip back into the shadow-world until his overwrought mind roused him again.

Yet poor sleep was better than no sleep, it seemed, for when he awoke for the last time with the Sun a faint whiteness behind the clouds above, he felt better for his rest. His head was clear and his vision sharp once more. Gollum was awake, lying motionless beneath Aragorn's boot and glowering blackly through slitted lids. Whether he had slept Aragorn could not say, but if he had not, so much the better. A swift assessment showed no sign of any enemy or watcher. It seemed his weakness had not cost him too dearly, and for that Aragorn was wretchedly grateful.

Slowly he bestirred himself. His right arm had stiffened and the first movements were agony, but once the violated muscles warmed the discomfort was tolerable. Aragorn dug out his drinking-bottle. His throat was taut with thirst and his lips were tortuously dry, but he took only enough to wet his tongue, and he was careful to turn away from Gollum while he did it. Though he would not give water to a captive who would only throw it away, and he must wait until thirst and want of food curbed his prisoner's violent temperament, he refused to dabble in needless cruelty.

He could not carry his pack as he had been, for his left hand was needed to manipulate the rope, and his wounded right arm was useless for such a purpose. Aragorn knotted the two sundered straps to one another and slung the bag across his right shoulder. Old hurts protested: he had all but forgotten the damage inflicted by orc-claws. Though the scratches were surely healing, the reminder of his torn cote was worrisome. He had many, many miles to travel, and each northward league would bear him into colder lands.

It would not do to dwell upon the obstacles to come – upon the winter that lay deep over the road before him, upon the deadly, open expanses of the Wilderland, upon the web of spies surrounding Dol Guldur, and the black heart of Mirkwood where dwelt the spiders, lesser than the beast he had left in Torech Ungol but terrible enough and far more numerous. Such thoughts would drive him mad. Aragorn sternly suppressed the thrill of fear that bolted through his chest at the thought of the numberless feats of improbable daring that lay ahead. It was all that he could do to overcome the challenges of today: to rise up, and to induce his prisoner to move, and to get them both into the relative safety of the mountains before whatever servants of Sauron were seeking the poor wretch caught up with them.

He untied the knots that bound Gollum's legs. He wasted neither breath nor strength attempting to coax action from his prisoner, but took him firmly by one bony shoulder and hauled him to his feet. Gollum shifted his weight onto his legs, but the moment Aragorn released his hold he plunked himself down amid the rocks again, sullen defiance in his eyes.

'I will not carry you,' Aragorn said sternly, though despair chilled him. He had not the strength to bear the creature upon his back, nor indeed to drag him, and if he refused to move then there was an end to everything. 'On your feet.'

Perhaps Gollum could read his desperation, or perhaps the creature was merely taking control of the one thing he could. Whatever the case, he did not move.

Aragorn rounded the captive, fixing him with a cold, imperious stare. 'Rise and walk,' he commanded. That tone and that expression had mustered armies, and cowed the men of Sauron, and even bolstered the courage and resolve of the Wise, but Gollum alone of all the folk of Middle-earth seemed immune to its influence. His expression grew only more obdurate, and still he remained unmoving.

It seemed likely that the Ranger would have to resort to threats or blows. Setting his teeth against distasteful necessity, Aragorn returned to his original position, and with the toe of his boot he nudged Gollum's tailbone. He applied just enough pressure that the creature stiffened, doubtless anticipating a swift and painful kick.

'Up!' Aragorn cried, and though his voice cracked painfully in his dry throat, this time Gollum took heed of him. The prisoner scrambled awkwardly to get his broad feet under his body, and when Aragorn began to move he did not resist.

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Through the afternoon Aragorn cut a northward course, driving his prisoner before him with harsh words and the occasional threatening motion of his foot. Gollum was sufficiently motivated by fear, it seemed, though Aragorn could not help but wonder whether it was fear of his escort's boot or of his erstwhile jailers doubtless trailing behind. Yet all through the day the Ranger saw no sign of any servant of the Enemy, and the shelter of the mountains drew ever more near.

Aragorn allowed a brief halt at sunset, but then pressed on despite the darknesss, stopping at last to rest a little in the waning hours just before the dawn. The hobbled pace he was obliged to keep filled him with unease. Alone in his present state he would have been hard-pressed to outrun hunting Uruk-hai. With his loping, stumbling captive it was impossible that their foes would not gain on them. Still he held out the fragile hope of eluding capture long enough to reach the mountains. There they might manage to shake off any pursuit, provided that he could induce Gollum to climb.

The next day the terrain was more difficult, as the foothills gave way to the first steep slopes of the Emyn Muil. Gollum had more trouble than before in keeping his feet, for the rocky terrain was treacherous and often the creature slipped or slid among a shower of stones and debris. Aragorn had to be doubly vigilant, lest a sudden loss of footing should cause the creature to throttle himself upon the rope. At first he was driven almost to distraction by the necessary delays, but as the day wore on beneath the gloom of an impending storm, the Ranger found himself almost equally incapable of maintaining the pace.

His head throbbed and his wounded arm ached however he held it. His thoughts were ringed about with haze of pain and thirst. He drank sparingly, and though he knew that his body had need of food in order to keep up his strength his appetite eluded him. The thought of waybread or dried meat made his empty stomach clench in protest. Nonetheless when a stumble over a loose stone brought him crashing to his knees, head reeling, he took it as a sign that he had to eat anyhow.

His efforts to choke down the bread without taunting his deprived captive were hampered by Gollum's refusal to look away. As he forced himself to swallow Aragorn could feel scrutinizing eyes burning into his back. He turned at last, intending to attempt a trade of obedience for sustenance, but at the sight of his travelling companion the intended proffer perished upon his lips. Gollum's eyes were not filled with famished desire, but with cold and malicious appraisal. He had seen weakness in his captor and he was hunting for more.

Deliberately misinterpreting an expression that he knew all too well, Aragorn tilted his head to one side, frowning sternly. 'When I have your assurance that you will not attempt to bite me, only then will I give you food and water. Have I such assurance?

Gollum's eyes narrowed, the look of hatred and defiance surging back. He turned his face away in clear repudiation of the terms of truce.

'Very well,' Aragorn said as coldly as he was able. 'It is of little moment to me if you choose to go hungry.' As he tucked his half-empty bottle into his pack next to the empty one, taking quick stock of his remaining stores, he did not add that soon enough neither of them would have any choice in the matter.

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Though the bread sat uneasy in his stomach, it did him good. After only a few minutes Aragorn's head ceased to throb quite so mercilessly, and his hands stopped their shaking. When he went on again with Gollum scurrying before him, only the pulsing agony in his bandaged arm served to remind him of his compromised state.

For a while they made good time, skirting the base of a towering cliff. It was not yet near nightfall, but in that sheltered place it was nigh as dark as night. Far above Aragorn heard the rumble of thunder and he shivered, hugging his inadequate cloak more tightly to him. Despite the boon of water that a downpour would bring he prayed silently that this storm would spare him. He could feel the threatening tendrils of fever stretching from his injured arm, and he knew he could not endure a soaking tonight.

For the present, at least, the rain did not come. Still the clouds were low and menacing when they came to the foot of a broad talus. There were boulders here, many too large for Aragorn to encircle with his arms, heaped at the foot of a slope. Squinting into the darkness, Aragorn thought the mountain before him looked passable – certainly more so than any in the immediate vicinity. Furthermore the talus would serve him well: here a light-footed Ranger might move with greater ease than a crowd of iron-shod orcs.

Yet as he took the first steps onto the scree, Gollum hung back, sullen and stubborn behind his gag. Aragorn closed his eyes, wearily steeling himself for the contest of wills to come. When he looked down at the prisoner again, Gollum was bent over his arms, twisting his hands against the bonds that held his wrists and casting the occasional furtive glance of terror at his captor.

'Of course,' Aragorn sighed, hopping off the stone and back onto the ground. He bent, and Gollum shied away, hissing through his nose as his body tensed, anticipating a blow. Instead the Ranger took hold of his hands and began to work free the knots. 'You cannot climb with your hands bound,' he said. 'But if you attempt to remove the gag, or loose the noose, I will bind you hand and foot and drag you after me like the carcass of a boar.'

He was not at all certain that he could find it within himself to follow through with such a threat, but Gollum at least seemed convinced of his sincerity. When Aragorn withdrew the strip of binding wool the thin hands flew not to the prisoner's other bonds. Gollum scratched at his left knee and then scraped a little in the dirt. Satisfied that he was to be obeyed, Aragorn straightened his back and began the climb.

It was less arduous than it might have been, but the way was steep and soon the Ranger found himself using his hands almost as much as his prisoner was. At least, his left hand, for any effort to use the right brought terrible pain. Aragorn knew that he ought to inspect the wound and see what might be done, but by now it was too dark for such ministrations. Instead he pressed onward. Gollum proved to be an able climber, and soon he was outstripping his captor, hurrying ahead until the rope grew taut and obliged him to halt and wait for Aragorn to catch up. It was an eerie thing to see those two pale eyes glinting in the darkness ahead, hovering impatiently and glutted with hatred.

At length they reached the end of the talus and began a steep ascent on solid rock. The incline was such that Aragorn was still able to walk more or less upright, but soon his legs were aching and the healing tear in his thigh stung. He longed to stop for the night, but the fear of pursuit drove him onward, ever onward, to gain another mile, another league that might forestall the inevitable.

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Dawn found the hunter and his captive upon a flat stretch of hill upon which a great bastion of stone rose ragged towards the sky. Gollum lay upon his side against the towering rock, restrained hand and foot to keep him from mischief while his captor rested. Near at hand Aragorn leaned for support upon the stone, huddled semi-prone beneath his tattered cloak. He was shivering violently, wracked with chills that he feared had little to do with the cold of the fading night air. As the sickly daylight approached, he forced himself to sit up, and dug in his pack for water and the little throwing-knife. His left hand was cold and clumsy, but he managed with some effort to undo the knots that bound his right arm. Peeling loose the makeshift bandage proved an excruciating process, but he set his teeth and endured.

At the sight of his mangled arm, Aragorn all but despaired. For two days he had felt the infection take hold, entrenching itself ever more deeply, but to see the red and glossy flesh, the wounds rimmed in black clots here and there torn open so that the carmine blood oozed out, the pockets of putrescence where the dead flesh held in the poisons, was almost more than his courage could bear. Such wounds could easily be fatal, and he had no materials for a poultice, nor any clean dressing, nor even water enough to properly wash the wounds. For a moment he was overcome with wrath at the thought of the creature who had caused this damage, but he reigned himself in sharply. Gollum could not bear the blame for this. He had lashed out in the only way that he knew how against a superior opponent. The state of his mouth was not his fault, and the lack of proper supplies certainly was none of his doing.

With the little knife and a coarse stone, Aragorn set about the ugly task of debriding the wounds as best he could. He drained the punctures at his wrist, and then tried to cut away the scraps of dead skin that were breeding the infection. More than once he had to stop, panting with pain, until he could muster the courage to continue with the gruesome ritual.

When at last he had done all that he could for himself, he spared a little water to rinse the wounds. Blood and pus mingled, trailing down the side of his arm in unpleasant orange rivulets. More water was needed to clean the worst of the filth from his bandage, and then he carefully wrapped the arm again, his hand trembling as he used fingers and teeth to knot the dressing.

Looking up, he found Gollum staring at him with something like horror in his great, pale eyes. He had likely not thought his captor doughty enough to endure such ministrations, Aragorn thought grimly.

'Ah, but I am,' he croaked, though of course Gollum likely had no idea what he was thinking. The effort of forming words made his dry throat sting. He rocked the bottle in his hand. There was scarcely more than a mouthful of water left, but his thirst was becoming once more unbearable – a further sign of fever. Aragorn raised the vessel to his lips but hesitated and then set it aside. There was one more thirsty than he.

'Gollum, I am going to remove your gag so that you may drink,' he said. 'If you snap at me then you will lose any hope of drink until we happen upon some rill or spring. I must tell you that I fear such a discovery will not be forthcoming: this is your last chance of water. Do not be a fool.'

He crept forward and fumbled with the knot behind the creature's head. He pulled back the strip of cloth, and then with finger and thumb drew out the damp plug of wool from the creature's mouth. Instantly Gollum bared his teeth, hissing with hostility. His dry lips were cracking and his tongue was visibly swollen, but he thrashed against the ground, attempting to sit up, his jaw working as he tried to attack.

Aragorn was ready. He waited until the gnashing mouth was at its widest, and then more deftly than he would have thought possible in his present condition he rammed the ball of cloth between the threatening teeth. Gollum made a strangled choking noise, and fell back against the ground, straining against his bonds and whimpering through his nose. Grimly Aragorn replaced the gag, knotting it tightly.

'So be it,' he said, unable to wholly mask his regret. 'Then you must go thirsty, for I have not the will to carry this last any further against the day when you will see sense and obey me.' Yet though he drank the water brought him no satisfaction, for it was too little to slake his thirst and his prisoner's torment galled his heart.

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On this side of the Emyn Muil, the mountains were bordered by lofty cliffs that rose like an impenetrable wall to the North. Aragorn had walked these lands once before, but he found that memories of that terrible time eluded him. As he drove his prisoner on, he tried to keep his eyes from the creature's tortured hands, for the delicate, precise pattern of the wounds was all too familiar and though he could not say with impunity what lieutenant of Sauron had inflicted such hurts, he would have staked a considerable wager upon his guess.

His own injuries troubled him less now, though whether that was a sign that his efforts had brought about improvement or whether the mounting fever was merely dulling him to pain Aragorn could not say. He kept his right arm tucked against his chest while the left was occupied in holding the rope and catching him when the angle of incline necessitated the support of a third limb. Soon he found himself moving in a more easterly direction, with the cliffs to his left. There was a place, he knew, where the way was not so impassable. He had only to find it.

He longed to dwell upon pleasant thoughts as he walked; to think of distant lands and verdant valleys, of warm beds and gentle healing hands – but he knew that he could not indulge such a reverie. If once he slipped into pining for home, he would lose the will to carry on with his impossible task. Instead he tried to focus his attention on the bent form of Gollum, scrambling ahead at the end of the rope, but again his thoughts strayed. This time they meandered back through the years, out of the Ephel Dûath and through the vales of Harondor, into swamps and out again, over broad barren lands, under hills and deep through empty woods, and so at last back to a dark place far beneath the Hithaeglir where a misplaced hobbit had stumbled upon the lair of a menacing creature, escaping only by virtue of his wit and tenacity. Before he realized what he was doing, the Ranger found himself running the story through his mind, as Bilbo had told it to him fifteen years ago.

Aragorn did not quite comprehend that he had uttered the last riddle aloud until he almost tripped over Gollum, who had frozen in his tracks to stare back at his captor with dismay and terror in his eyes. They stood for a moment, regarding one another, before the prisoner shuddered and scurried away to the end of the rope again. Aragorn trudged onward, but grim amusement fluttered in his breast.

'So now you know that I know more of your history than you suspected,' he thought wryly, watching his captive clamber over a boulder and halt again, hunched over so that the knot of the gag stood almost upright. 'I wonder what you intend to do about it.'    

Note: The wisdom of Hamfast Gamgee from "Journey to the Crossroads", The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter XIX: Onward and Upward

That night the rain came. There was a roar of thunder that seemed to shake the mountains to their very roots, and the clouds that had been menacing for days were torn asunder. Instantly an icy deluge engulfed the Emyn Muil, battering the peaks and stirring the stones and drenching the Ranger and his captive with ruthless efficiency.

Aragorn's first instinct was gratitude. When the skies opened, he was able at last to gather water and to drink his fill. But soon enough his thirst was slaked and his bottles were heavy once again, and the warm euphoria of relief gave way to grim reality. His hair was already sodden, grimy rivulets running into his eyes and over his cheekbones, and his cloak afforded little guard against the chill of the storm. With a nudge he induced Gollum to move, and picked his way through the blinding rain towards the towering cliff. The rocky ground beneath his feet was slick and treacherous, and more than once he almost fell, but at last Aragorn found himself against the sloping wall of stone. Here he crouched in the lee of a ragged outcropping, hood drawn over his bowed head, to shiver until the storm passed.

Gollum retreated to the end of his lead, cowering against a boulder and watching his captor with eyes that glinted even in the darkness. He seemed to give no notice to the rain or the cold, but he had plenty of attention to lavish upon the Ranger. Again Aragorn wondered what was going on inside the creature's insidious mind. What did he make of the afternoon's revelation? More importantly, what was he going to do about it?

There were no answers to be had. Aragorn tucked his infected arm against his chest and drew up his knees. He could not sleep here: if the rains prompted a landslide he would have to flee from this poor shelter. Yet he tried to rest his mind, listening to the feral roar of the wind and the mighty percussions of the thunder.

From out of the noises of the storm came another sound, a horrible squelching slurp. Aragorn stiffened, his head snapping up as he cast about, wondering what manner of strange creature might make such a sound, and, more importantly, how dangerous it would prove. But in the flash of sheet lightning that illuminated the rocky landscape for a moment he saw nothing.

The sound was heard again, wet and rattling, and Aragorn cast his gaze in the direction of the noise. When he realized what it was, he let loose a hoarse chuckle. Gollum was sucking upon his sodden gag, drawing in the rainwater to slake his thirst.

'Make good use of this respite,' Aragorn warned, a rueful note creeping into his creaking voice. Though he knew that any water Gollum salvaged would only prolong their war of attrition, he could not begrudge the wretch his poor drink. It eased his conscience to know that his prisoner might have water without undermining his authority. 'Next time you may have to purchase water with obedience.'

Gollum lolled his eyes scornfully at his captor and sucked all the harder.

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By morning, the rain had seeped through the cloak to soak the back of Aragorn's cote and the shredded shirt beneath. His front was little more than damp, but the chill of the wet garments and the weight of sodden wool were something of a torment. Yet he knew that the cold had done a little to alleviate his fever, and he made a conscious effort to count the storm a blessing. He set out across the slippery stones, driving a recalcitrant Gollum before him. The ever-present threat of the Ranger's foot seemed less effective now than it had been, and Aragorn wondered grimly how soon he would have to find some other method of motivating the captive.

As he walked, he kept a sharp look-out for some means of scaling the cliff. Alone and in his ordinary state of health and hardihood, he might have attempted a climb at any one of half a dozen places he had passed. Feverish and exhausted, with a captive in tow and one arm all but useless, he needed some easier place of ascent. If he could not find it, he would be obliged to make a broad detour eastward, out of the mountains and up into the Brown Lands. Such a delay would surely mean capture, and that he could not allow. He could almost feel the heavy tread of pursuing Uruk-hai in the lands behind. Though his stride remained as steady as the uneven terrain allowed, his heart began to hammer against his ribs.

The rain had spent much of the thick cover of clouds, and as the sun climbed higher the dark lands grew light. Aragorn cast his face skyward, drinking in the glow of the Sun beyond the thin greyish haze that still obscured her face. How he longed to walk beneath clear skies again! How long it had been since he had seen the blue vault of noontide, or the endless field of stars uncounted. Not for the first time his heart ached for home, and he drove back the yearning. Clear skies he might have soon enough, if once he found a way out of these hateful hills. For the rest, he had long ago come to accept that it was not his lot to dwell in peace in the fair places of the world. Pining for them would serve no purpose.

As they walked Gollum's back grew more stooped, and time and again he would spare his hand from his strange scrambling gait to cover his eyes, whimpering behind the gag. At first Aragorn was puzzled as to what might be the cause of the creature's distress. Then he grew anxious. He could hear nothing behind them, but he could not disallow that Gollum might possess instincts that he lacked.

Halting beside a great spur of stone, Aragorn knelt, taking hold of one bony shoulder still coated with a memory of slime. At such close quarters the stench of his captive was overpowering, but the Ranger closed his nose and leaned nearer. His eyes locked with Gollum's and he held the creature's gaze with the full strength of his flagging will.

'What is amiss?' he demanded. 'What troubles you? Is there someone on our trail?'

Gollum whimpered and tried to look away, but he could not; the last scion of the House of Kings would not allow it. Aragorn tightened his grip. 'Nod your head: is there someone behind us? It will serve you ill to prevaricate: your life is in my hands, and I will not suffer either of us to be taken captive by the Enemy. What you have told him in the throes of torture I cannot guess, but be assured you will not be permitted to tell him more. Now answer: do you sense some pursuit?'

Gollum was trembling beneath his hand now, and Aragorn was just about to take this development as an affirmative answer when the skull-like head lashed from side to side with such force that it was a wonder it did not fly off of the scrawny neck.

'No?' Aragorn exclaimed, the syllable coming out harsh and startled and betraying more of his own state than he would have wished. 'Then why are you cringing in this way?'

In his surprise he had quite forgotten that the creature could not answer open-ended questions with a rag rammed into its mouth. He closed his eyes, sighing softly. 'Are we in imminent danger?' he asked.

But in his moment of weariness Gollum had torn his gaze away from his interrogator, and though Aragorn tried the creature refused to look at him, screwing his eyes tightly shut and resolutely ignoring any further attempts at questioning. His patience wearing thin and his nerves rattling badly, Aragorn forced the creature to move forward.

As he walked, egging Gollum on, Aragorn reflected anxiously that the prisoner's denial did not mean that they were not being pursued. Gollum was a craven and deceitful wretch, bound neither by the constraints of honour nor even those of good sense. As he picked his way forward through the barren mountains, it seemed that Aragorn could feel the breath of Sauron upon his neck.

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Gollum was cowering in the shadow of the cliff, both arms thrust up over his head, emaciated hands clutching at his lank shreds of hair. Aragorn stood nearby, the line between them slack. The Ranger's shoulders were stooped, grey eyes deadened with dread. He reflected that at this moment he surely looked as unlike his puissant ancestors as any man now living. He had been walking for only a few hours, but he was weary beyond telling. His head ached, and his right arm, tucked close to his body, thrummed with hot discomfort. His clothes were dry now, his cloak stiff upon his back, and from the tremor in his one good hand he knew that the fever was once more raging through his blood. Yet he could not submit to his body's weakness. There was a terrible task ahead; not until it was accomplished could he rest.

He had found a place where the cliff dipped low, not more than seventeen or eighteen ells in height. Here the rock face was no longer sheer, but sloped slightly away towards its summit. The surface was pitted with fissures and handholds, and two-thirds of the way up there was a ledge that looked as if it might bear the weight of a man. That was important, Aragorn knew. Though he would have counted this an easy climb as compared to some he had made in his long journeys, in his present state he would need to rest.

The shadow of the cliff cast a gloom over the rock wall. If Aragorn waited too long, the Sun would sink low and it would become too dark to hazard the climb. Steeling his resolve, he twitched the rope. 'Gollum,' he said, as firmly as he could; 'do you think you can make this ascent?'

The creature made no move to answer, but his whinging ceased and he cast a critical eye at the cliff. It took all of Aragorn's resolve not to show his desperation. If Gollum could not or would not climb, there was no hope at all. He was too weak to carry such a weight upon his back as he climbed, and any wriggling on the prisoner's part would then send him falling to his death.

But Gollum, it seemed, felt this a worthy challenge. He cast a cold, disdainful look at his captor and picked himself up, hopping forward to the end of the rope. Startled by this unexpected show of cooperation, Aragorn followed him. The creature scurried to the face of the cliff and stood, almost straightening his back. Then, with the agility of a spider, he began to climb.

Aragorn lost himself in a moment of slack-jawed astonishment, but he rallied his wits and hastened after his prisoner. He took hold of a crack in the stone with his left hand, and stepped into another with his right foot. His leg trembled as he attempted to shift his weight, but after a dreadful moment when it did not seem he would be able to lift himself, Aragorn was off the ground.

He gained the first ten feet one-handed with Gollum clinging to the rocks above him, hurrying swiftly on when the rope grew slack and then waiting impatiently for his captor to follow. Yet quickly his left hand began to cramp, and Aragorn knew that he had to offer it some aid.

Gritting his teeth, he stretched out his right. To move his fingers was painful. To grip the rock was excruciating, but when he tried to put weight upon his wounded arm he was engulfed in unspeakable anguish. Desperately he clutched the rock with his left hand and his toes, keening softly as his vision grew dark. He thrust his right arm against his chest, pressing it between his body and the rock. Frantically he waited for the agony to pass, but it only dulled into a hot, aching torment.

Let his left hand cramp, then. He could not use his right.

With only three useful limbs his progress was tortuously slow. His arm and his legs were aching, his feet quivering as they found their next hold. And whenever he looked up to seek a fresh niche in the rock there was Gollum, hanging from some impossibly small crevice like a great malicious bat, glaring impatiently downward.

At last he reached the ledge, hauling himself onto it with one last valiant effort. It was smaller than he had hoped, but wide enough nonetheless for him to balance his torso and thighs. His calves and feet hung off the edge, but he had no strength to sit up. He lay there long, his chest heaving and his muscles twitching.

Presently he collected himself, tucking in his tired limbs and leaning his head against the rough stone wall. He raised his head and there was Gollum, not three feet away, clinging like a limpet to the rock and leering at him with something like triumph in his great, cold eyes.

It was that, more than anything, that roused Aragorn from his stupor. Though his legs protested and his left shoulder sobbed in protest, he got to his feet, clinging to the wall. Here its angle was more pronounced, and for that he was grateful. It would make the rest of the climb easier.

His unsteady mouth curled into a wry smile as Gollum scurried upward a few more feet, as far away from him as the creature could contrive. 'I am not defeated yet,' Aragorn said. 'Though I confess I lack your considerable talent, I think we shall both make it safely to the top.'

After a few feet more, however, he was beginning to doubt his earlier confidence. He was exhausted and his overtaxed body could not take much more. A despairing heavenward glance told him that he had several ells yet to travel, but though there were footholds aplenty he was not certain that he could find the strength to continue.

Gollum, of course, had been waiting for this moment. As Aragorn once again hauled himself upward with his left hand, the creature took hold of the rope hanging from its neck and tugged violently upon it. As it bit into Aragorn's wrist, his left hand slipped.

Instinctively he thrust out his right, ramming his fingers into the nearest crevice. He drove his boots against the rock, and even as the cry of anguish tore from his lips he arrested his fall. Blinded by pain he could not move, but he did not let go. He could feel the wind at his back, flattening his cloak against his body, and there was a tug at his wrist.

Swiftly he seized the rope, yanking insistently upon it. A shower of loosened pebbles rained down upon him as Gollum hastily compensated. Aragorn released the cord before his prisoner could fall, and threw back his head, fixing pain-filled eyes upon his adversary.

'Do not be a fool!' he snarled between teeth clenched against his torment. 'If I fall I cannot but take you with me: you have no means of cutting the rope. Either both reach the top, or both fall. Do not hinder me.'

This speech, it seemed, took the last of his strength, for he could not move. His legs were shaking and so great was the pain from his wounded arm that he doubted that he could induce the muscles to work at all, even to release his hold on the rock. Perspiration was blinding him and his breath came in shallow, stunted wheezes.

Again he felt something tugging on his left wrist, but he had no strength to react. Then suddenly soft, sticky fingers were closing upon his flesh, taking hold of his hand and guiding it upwards. His fingertips felt a fresh hold and closed upon it. There was a sound of scuffling feet and another downpour of debris, and something gripped his right hand. Instinct drove him and he hauled himself up, fumbling with one foot to gain the next hold. In the critical moment the force that held his right hand pulled, offering the extra leverage that he needed. Then the pressure released, and as Aragorn blinked to clear his vision he caught sight of two enormous eyes not six inches from his face. Then Gollum scurried on ahead, this time leaving the rope slack.

Momentum drove him now. Aragorn clambered upward, oblivious to the agony in his right arm or the weakness in his left. He could scarcely make out the features of the rock, and it seemed the climb would never end, when his left hand reached out for the next hold and found only empty air.

The shock of this unexpected change was almost his undoing, but before he could overbalance Gollum hauled on the rope again, pulling his arm forward. His elbow struck the cliff's edge and bent, and Aragorn's hand slapped down upon flat earth.

Whence came the strength for that exertion Aragorn never learned, but somehow he found himself slithering forward, bent first at the arm-pits, then at the waist. Then he was prone upon the ground, breathing in dust and gravel as his left hand dug into the earth against the unbearable anguish coursing through his body. Hot tears ran from his eyes onto his forehead as his body was wracked with a spasm of utmost exhaustion. His right arm was a burning brand of torment unknowable, and his heart was thrumming as if it would burst.

Then slowly, so terribly slowly, all this ebbed away. He lay there motionless in the dirt, subsisting in a fog of indistinct pain. But his pulse slowed and his panting leveled off, and finally he was able to roll to the left, landing on his back with a heavy huff of breath. He craned his neck, following the line of rope with his eyes. There, three feet away, Gollum squatted amid the stones, picking at his left great toe with the fingers of one long hand. Feeling Aragorn's eyes upon him, the prisoner raised his head. He scowled blackly and shuffled further away, drawing taut the lead between them. Then he resumed the study of his feet as if he had never before noticed them hanging there, of all places, at the end of his legs.

Aragorn let his head fall back into a position that took no effort to maintain. He stared dully upward at the hazy sky stained red with the setting sun, and the right corner of his mouth twitched. He had survived another day, a most difficult day. Somewhere in the cobwebs that enshrouded his mind, he could hear Bilbo's voice over the crackling of a bright, inviting fire.

'Do you know, Dúnadan, my old gardener used to say where there's life, there's hope. I quite think he was wiser than he knew, wouldn't you agree?'    

Chapter XX: Respite from Toil

Aragorn did not know what to make of Gollum, nor indeed could he guess what Gollum made of him. Uncooperative at best and openly hostile at worst, he squatted now at the end of the rope, watching his captor out of the corner of one eye.

Driven by fear of what might lay behind, Aragorn had managed to drag himself away from the edge of the cliff and into the mountain passages. Here, clefts in the rocks allowed access to the next narrow path, and the next beyond that. There were few inclines of any significance, and for the most part the ground was bare and solid beneath his boots. Yet he was weak, worn down by his wounds and by the sleepless nights. The climb had left him bereft of any strength to walk on towards dawn. Not long after sundown he had halted here, in the shelter of a massive pillar of stone.

Now the first grey light of day was leeching slowly across the sky. It was time for the improbable companions to rise up and start on their way, but Aragorn found himself incapable of motion. His left limbs felt like a pair of millstones, weighing down his body. His right leg was thrumming with a bone-deep ache that followed the fledgling scar tissue along the spider-wound in his thigh. And his infected arm burned as if it had been thrust naked into a vat of molten iron.

He knew that something of his discomfort was showing in his face, for Gollum was watching him intently now, his unwieldy skeletal head turned to stare down his emaciated shoulder. There was hatred in his eyes no less intense than it had been in the foothills behind, before their strange climb, and yet though his hands were not now bound he made no move to tamper with the halter about his neck or the rag still stuffed into his mouth.

Attempting to school his features, Aragorn stared back. He fixed his weary eyes on Gollum's gleaming orbs, as if by doing so he could read the creature's heart. Yet insight eluded him. It seemed most unfair. Gollum knew something now of the man who had caught him. He knew that Aragorn had some connection to Bilbo Baggins, whom surely he remembered as the one who had dabbled in riddles and come away with his dearest treasure. Doubtless he knew or suspected that the Ranger took no pleasure in the force necessary to subdue him – and that knowledge was dangerous indeed. Worst of all, he knew that Aragorn was weak, and growing weaker with each tortuous mile. All this Gollum knew, and yet to Aragorn he was as unfathomable now as he had been on the night of his capture.

Gollum's actions on the cliff had shaken his jailer badly. Aragorn had been quite secure in his assumption that the prisoner was motivated by malice alone, and thus Gollum's attempt to unseat him had come as no surprise. But then, of his own volition, Gollum had taken Aragorn's hands and aided his ascent, and this was troubling. While it was true that he might have been acting only out of a desire for self-preservation, saving the Ranger so that he was not also dragged to his death, the alternative could not be disallowed. It was possible that Gollum had acted with temperance – even mercy. Certainly he might have dispatched his escort at the top of the cliff, strangling him or even eviscerating him with his own knife while Aragorn was too overcome to defend himself. That he had not seized the opportunity spoke to more inscrutable motives. It was this that unsettled Aragorn. A creature driven by hatred was easy to guard, his actions straightforward and predictable. A prisoner at war with himself could not be relied upon to adhere to a set pattern of behaviour. The need for vigilance, then, was only intensified by Gollum's ambiguous actions.

Yet so too was the need for clemency, for if Gollum had taken pity upon the struggling Ranger it behoved Aragorn to repay that kindness. Perhaps today the prisoner would submit to having the gag removed, that he might eat a little.

Aragorn tried to speak, to bid Gollum draw near, but his voice would not obey him. He closed his mouth, swallowing with a tremendous effort. His throat stung. Most likely he was in need of water. One of the bottles hung heavy from his belt, and the other was tucked into his pack, lying awkwardly against his hip with its one makeshift strap taut against his chest. Distantly he thought of moving his left hand up, only a short way, to loose the bottle and bring it to his lips that he might dig out the stopper with his teeth and take a mouthful of rainwater… but none of those events transpired. He could think about moving all he wished, but his body seemed determined to remain still.

For a while he did not resist, content to sit there with his back against the stone, blinking dumbly at Gollum. It seemed so difficult to move, even a little. Far simpler to lie here, languishing in thirst, until he slipped at last into gentle oblivion. Sleep called to him; not the healing sleep that eased the heart and restored the body, but a warm, insidious slumber within the hot embrace of fever. He could feel himself sinking into the tempting realm of unconsciousness, sliding inexorably beneath the surface of the waking world like an incautious traveller caught in a sucking mire. Down, down into darkness…

With an undignified snort he roused himself, the cold hand of terror snatching him back from the heat and the gloom. He must not submit! He had a prisoner to watch, and to bring safely to Mirkwood. He could not give in to his beleaguered body and its mounting fever. Even the luxury of sleep must be denied until he secured his captive and took steps to ensure that he might wake again. Driven by a desperate surge of will, he got the drinking-vessel to his lips and quaffed a tepid mouthful.

The water did something to clear his addled wits. He set aside the bottle and drew his good hand across his brow. It came away sticky with perspiration. His fingers were cold and could not gauge the feel of his skin, but he did not doubt that he was burning with infection. Objectively he reflected that what he needed was a warm, dry place to sleep, where he might have clean water aplenty – both to quench the fire raging unchecked in his veins and to boil, that hot compresses might be applied to his festering arm. Given these two things, and perhaps some wholesome food, he would swiftly recover his full vigour, but he had nothing; not even the wherewithal to rinse his makeshift bandages. If his circumstances did not swiftly take a turn for the better, he would never reach Mirkwood.

'We're moving,' he announced, the simple syllables grating painfully in a throat still raw despite the boon of water.

Gollum's eyes narrowed instantly.

'Come, on your feet. We cannot stay here.'

Still, Gollum did not stir. Aragorn knew that his command held little weight while he sat thus, supported by the rock and teetering on the brink of an unhealthy slumber. With an effort that almost cost him his hold on consciousness, he struggled to his feet. His injured arm he clutched to his breast while with the other he shored himself up against the stone, drawing taut Gollum's lead. An abyss of blackness swam before his eyes and the world spun wildly around him. He pressed the side of his face against the rock, old bruises aching under the pressure of that desperate contact, and fought with all his fading will to keep his feet.

Somehow he did not fall, and when at last he raised his head, he began to shuffle forward without waiting for Gollum to rise. He half expected to have his arm jerked backward when his captive refused to move, but as the cord tugged at his scrawny neck the prisoner sprang to his feet and followed like a sullen dog.

Aragorn had not gone far when his scuffling feet skidded onto softer ground. He froze immediately, his muddled mind not fully cognizant of the ramifications of such a change but his harried instincts crying out for caution. It took him a moment's laborious puzzling to realize that suddenly the ground was not so rocky, but covered over with grey-brown earth. A dizzying glance at the surrounding land revealed no imminent threat, and so he continued, walking on the borders of a nightmare and now and then twitching his left wrist to encourage Gollum to follow more promptly.

Soon it became plain that he was in some sort of shallow gully that wound its wandering way through the mountains. The skeletal remains of bramble-bushes clung here and there in crevices of the rock wall, still stubbornly upright in their poor soil. To Aragorn they seemed like the last memories of life in a place long since given over to death. He shuddered, and his palpitating heart skipped unsteadily in the cavern of his chest.

Each step became more difficult, and with each slow minute that passed the effort of remaining upright was becoming almost more than the Ranger could manage. Soon he would reach the point where he could not go on. His legs would fail and he would fall, landing doubtless on his injured arm in a blinding euphoria of anguish. And then – he would not rise again, unless to crawl into the comforting shadow of some sorry thorn-bush, there to wait for the sleep from which none awaken.

He could hear the mountains laughing, singing out their cruel mockery of the foolish mortal who had dared their paths in such a state. They sniggered and chortled and chuckled, relishing every painful step, every moment of his suffering. They giggled and rollicked and bubbled and rushed...

Aragorn halted, swaying unsteadily. Gollum stopped short of scrambling into his captor's legs, then took a look upward and scurried to the end of the rope, where he would be less likely to find himself pinned under the weight of an unconscious Ranger when his escort fell. Aragorn paid little heed to the creature: he was listening to the laughter of the mountains as abruptly he realized that it was not laughter at all, but the sound of running water.

Eagerly he stumbled forward, dragging Gollum behind. If there was water, fresh water, he might lave his brow and beat back the fever. He might wash his wounds. He might even, if he dared, gather dried brush for a fire and see about leeching out the poisons from the marks of Gollum's teeth.

Yet when he reached the place where the stream rushed away into a pool that cut into the rock wall of the gully, he had only the strength to crumple to his knees without crashing down upon his injured limb. He sat there motionless, staring into the grey depths of the thrice-blessed rill. Near him Gollum, for once too preoccupied with his own needs to glare at his captor, squatted down and began to paddle his wounded hands in the water, making unpleasant noises deep within his throat.

For a long time Aragorn sat there, insensate. But his will returned at last, and he bent his body down, dipping his left hand into the cold water and splashing it up onto his fevered face. The gentle slap of the fluid restored something of his good sense. He repeated the motion, and again and a third time. Beads of water clung to his brow and tracks of murky wetness ran down his face and his neck. Finally he braced his left hand against the edge of the riverbed and leaned down to plunge his whole face into the water. He held his breath as the cold took hold of his skin, easing the fuzziness of fever and restoring some vigour to his heart.

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He lingered for a long time, content like his prisoner to dabble in the stream, bathing his face and his useable hand, and even going so far as to unlace the first few inches of his cote, that he might dribble water onto his neck and breast. But as his faculties returned out of the mists of fever, Aragorn set about other necessary tasks. He eased his right arm into the water, holding it beneath the surface though the torment of the cold was almost more than he could bear. As he waited with gritted teeth for the stream to soak the bandages, he reminded himself that this was less painful than trying to remove the dressings dry, with the first new flesh and the crusted blood and putrescence still fusing them to his wounds.

When he deemed the bandages were wet enough, he worked loose the end and unwound them slowly. He hissed in consternation as his forearm was revealed in all its varicoloured splendour. Around the edges of the first set of wounds the flesh was white and lifeless, peeling away from growing abscesses. Yellow, curdling pus covered the raw new skin beneath, and several of the wounds were bleeding blackly. Purple bruises surrounded the hurts, and red striations radiated outward over the pale skin of his arm – the marks of entrenched infection creeping into his blood.

The puncture-wounds by his wrist were less gruesome to look upon, being swollen and glossy almost like an adolescent's blemishes. One looked disconcertingly dark, but the others were oozing orange tendrils of ichor and infection.

Aragorn turned his eyes resolutely from the wounds and set about washing his bandages. He swirled them one-handed in the shallows, then set them on a stone and beat them with another. Then he rinsed them again, and again pounded the filthy water from them. This process he repeated until the fluid driven from the cloth ran clear, and though he knew such rough handling would shrink the wool, he was glad of the opportunity to do it. Much could be accomplished with tight binding and clean dressings.

He turned back to his arm, sniffing resolutely for any hint of the sickly-sweet stink of decay that would herald his death. All that he could smell was the sharp memory of shed skin and the coppery tang of stagnant blood. Luck then was with him. As he eyed the wounds, however, he came to an important conclusion. Whatever the risks he must have a fire: he needed hot water to draw out the infection.

By the waterside the bracken was thick, but it was not dry enough. Aragorn could not take the chance that these branches had life left in them, and might then smoke. He moved to shuffle on hand and knees towards the wall of the gully, where the bushes were brittle and dead. He was stopped by a fearsome tugging on his wrist. Gollum had seized the rope just below the knot that encircled his neck, and he was hauling on it with one hand while with the other he was still paddling in the pool. He was reluctant, clearly, to leave the water.

Rather than argue, Aragorn crept back. The fuel near the stream would have to serve, then. In his weakened state he found that he cared less for prudence than he did expedience. All he wished to do was see to his wounds and dress them again, that he might lie down to rest. He gathered such wood as seemed best-suited to his purposes, and set about building his fire.

Using his flint proved a greater challenge than Aragorn had anticipated. His right hand was useless, scarcely able even to shore up the steel against his knee, and his left shook with fever. Several times he dropped his tools, and more than once his sparks failed to catch the tinder of grubby linen, but at last he had a little flame that he coaxed and fed with the care of a shepherd tending a sickly lamb, until at last the bracken caught alight.

Breathlessly he watched, anxious lest his fire should send up a pillar of smoke to announce his location as clearly as a cross-roads marker. But the fuel was dry enough, and what pale tendrils there were the thicket under which he crouched quickly dispersed. While the blaze took hold and the embers grew hot, Aragorn dug out his wooden mug and collected small stones.

The process of heating water was slow and weary. He let the stones grow hot, and dropped them one by one into his cup. When at last he deemed the water hot enough he poured it over his wounds, eyes screwed tightly closed against the pain. The first sorry dribbles were not enough, and the process had to be repeated over and over again, until Aragorn lost count of the cupfuls of heated fluid.

Then he set to work with knife and stone again, cleaning away the newly-dead flesh and such of the pus as had not yet been washed away. At last the wounds were pink and naked, the dark blood trickling back. He drained the puncture-marks and dug out the plug of cruor that occluded the black one. Then he heated water again and washed his arm once more, and with fingers that trembled with pain and enervation, he bandaged his arm again. The pressure of the clean dressing soothed his torment, and Aragorn allowed himself a low, slow moan of relief.

Gollum, who had turned his head violently away when first Aragorn had produced the little orc-knife, looked back at him now. The act of turning lifted his tortured hands out of the water. Aragorn felt a reflexive wrenching of guilt; he had seen to his own hurts first, at the expense of one who was in his power. That he could have done little for Gollum in his prior state did not much mollify him.

At least he could rectify that want now. He filled his cup again and heated the water.

'Come here,' he said. 'Let me see your hands.'

Gollum glanced anxiously down, his long fingers twitching. Then his eyes darted to the abandoned blade and the dark stains in the underbrush.

'I will not hurt you,' Aragorn tried. 'I have some skill as a healer. I can ease your discomfort.'

Frantically, Gollum shook his head. The effect was almost comical, but Aragorn was too wracked with fever and a niggling horror to appreciate it. Again, Gollum looked furtively at the knife, and again his chin wagged from side to side so that his lips chaffed against the gag.

'You will not need such treatment as I have had,' Aragorn promised, realizing the source of the prisoner's reluctance. 'Let me wash them, at least. They will heal more swiftly for it.'

Again Gollum shook his head. Aragorn sighed wearily. He took the cup and leaned forward, setting it halfway between his prisoner and himself. 'Wash them yourself, then. Such hurts cannot go long untended.'

Gollum lashed out with one long foot, kicking over the vessel. At this repudiation of his attempts at humane treatment Aragorn felt a hot flush of anger, but it faded swiftly into profound weariness. His little fire was dying now, and his wounds were clean. If Gollum would not cooperate even for his own benefit, then so be it.

He kicked out the last of the embers with the side of his boot and then edged away from the detritus of the fire. Gently but firmly he reeled in the rope so that Gollum, however reluctant, was forced to hop nearer. Aragorn took the strips of cloth that he had been using to bind his prisoner, and in an exertion that would have been impossible prior to tending his arm, tied Gollum's wrists and feet. The creature struggled, but less than he had before. Perhaps he, too, was worn down from the hard ascent and the long nights of sleepless enmity. When Aragorn was finished, Gollum lay in the underbrush, his legs writhing only a little.

'There,' said the Ranger. 'We do not trust one another at all, I think, but I must sleep and therefore you must be secured. Rest while you may: we have a long road before us.'

Hatred shone from the pale eyes, but Aragorn was too weary to care. The effort of immobilizing the creature had sent his right arm throbbing again, and it was with numb gratitude that he eased himself down amid the bracken and slipped into a wary sleep.

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He awoke perhaps four hours later to find Gollum curled into a ball, his bound limbs tucked awkwardly and his malicious eyes hooded with paper-thin lids. He had all the seeming of a being deep in slumber, but his emaciated ribs were rising and falling too quickly. Aragorn guessed that the prisoner had been watching him all the time he had slept, and had taken up this position the moment his captor began to stir. The thought was unsettling, but at least the creature had made no move to throttle him in his sleep.

The fever still lingered and Aragorn's throat was burning. He inched towards the water's edge, careful not to overextend the line between himself and the prisoner. He bathed his face and drank a little, then wetted his hair and tried to work out some of the snarls with his fingers. The effort proved too much for him, and for a while he lay there with his cheek against the rocky creek-bed, trying to summon his strength once more.

When he felt well enough to sit up, he rummaged in his pack for the last of his bannock. He gnawed the waybread slowly, cognizant of the reluctant stirrings of his stomach. Then he drank again, this time from his bottle, and settled with his back against the stems of a sturdy gorse-bush to watch the shadows shift as the Sun travelled far above.

All through the afternoon he languished there, now dozing fitfully, now creeping back to the water's edge to lave his face and neck. After the hideous, barren lands through which he had passed this dying gully seemed a place of great peace and beauty, and his weary heart craved both. As he looked about he thought he could imagine this hidden vale as it must have been long ago: green and verdant, filled with every variety of hardy mountain life. He thought of other such places he had seen, amid the lofty, snow-capped peaks of the Hithaeglir, or the noble heights of the Ered Nimrais between the Hornburg and the fastness of Edoras. For a moment, as he walked in memory, it seemed he was a young man again; bold and fair and valiant, driven by unbridled optimism and visions of a bright and hopeful future.

And all his errantries and labours had come to this. The mighty Thorongil, marshal of the Mark, captain of Gondor, whose voice had rallied men to victory, was now but a wayworn wanderer, struggling against the forces of probability and the travails of his own injured body. He was caught up not in great deeds for the glory and preservation of the West, but in a tedious and bitter and mayhap hopeless chore.

Aragorn beat back the stirrings of a self-pity that he would never have felt, save that the fever was wearing on his will and weakening his resolve. True, this unhappy drudgery would prove no deed of glory, but it was necessary. Much hinged upon this journey; perhaps the very fate of the world. This was no lofty quest, to be memorialized in song and story. No tales would be told of this dark road. When it was done and the prisoner was delivered safely to Mirkwood, no one would even remember who had brought him thither or what had been endured in his finding and capture and on the long northward road. Yet glory and renown were of no consequence: if he survived to succeed that would be reward enough. And if any good came of his struggles, he hoped he would find the humility to be grateful.

In the meantime, his sole focus must be to bring himself and his captive to Thranduil's realm alive, and as he closed his eyes against another wave of nausea, Aragorn reflected that that struggle would prove quite difficult enough.    

Chapter XXI: The Safer Path

Progress through the mountains was slow. Though the pain in his arm was lessened and his other limbs were no longer so unsteady, the fever still smouldered in Aragorn's breast, threatening at any moment to flare up again and overcome him entirely. He could not walk more than four or five hours without a halt, and his pace was not what it ought to be. Every hour's delay filled him with dread: he had counted on the passage of the mountains to give him a strong lead over an enemy that would either have to toil behind with less-than-Elven agility, or else circle around the Emyn Muil – a journey of five or six days at least. Now he feared there was little hope of avoiding an encounter with those who pursued the creature in his keeping: inevitably they would close the gap and overtake him.

Despite this mounting fear, Aragorn took some small comfort from the fact that he seemed to be making progress with his captive. Want of food and water was beginning to tell on Gollum. There was a glassy look to his great eyes now, and the hollows of his face seemed more pronounced. More telling still was his behaviour. He no longer fought when his keeper bound his hands and feet, and though he obdurately refused to offer assurance that he would not bite, his rejection of Aragorn's oft-repeated offer to remove the gag grew slower every time.

He seemed to be near to capitulating, and Aragorn hoped that he would do so soon, while there was still something to give him. Thought the occasional north-flowing spring kept the Ranger well supplied with water, the dried meat of the Men of Ithilien was all but gone. Aragorn had little appetite, for fever quelled the desire for food, but even so he had to eat a little each day. His stores would not last long.

Dusk was gathering over lands deeply shadowed by gravid clouds when Aragorn came at last to the summit of the last great foothill of the Emyn Muil. He halted, breathless from his climb, and as his arm eased its throbbing and his chest stopped its heaving he looked out across the land. Below him lay low, rolling humps of earth covered over with last year's grey-hued grasses, now dead and withered. Beyond that, dun-tinted plains stretched out to meet the horizon, North, East and Weest. Here and there a scrubby clutch of trees could be seen, black blotches on the winter landscapes. There was a stream like a pale ribbon in the distance, running doubtless to Anduin far away.

The time had come to choose his course. Eastward Aragorn sent only the most cursory of glances. There was nothing at all in those empty lands until one came at last to the borders of distant Rhûn. Then away to the north he cast his eyes. There the plain stretched off towards a fading horizon, upon which Aragorn half imagined he could see the first dark fringes of Mirkwood. That was impossible, he knew, for the forest lay yet many leagues from where he now stood.

Perhaps it was an irrational anxiety born of the lingering fever, or merely the unhappy construct of a weary spirit over-burdened with sights of darkness and dread, but it seemed he could feel the oppressive shadow of Dol Guldur bearing down upon the land. A cold shiver coursed up his spine. Four hundred miles lay stretched between this stony hill and Thranduil's halls: all the length of Rhovanion. Pursued from behind and hobbled by his conspicuous prisoner, Aragorn could scarcely hope to escape the notice of the servants of the Nazgûl. In some lonely place he would find himself caught between the huntsmen of Mordor and the sentries of Dol Guldur. What fate would then await him he dared not guess.

With a shudder he turned to the West. Thither lay the safer path: over Anduin and north in the shadow of the Hithaeglir, fording Limlight and Celebrant and Gladden until he came at last to the Old Ford. Then finally a desperate push eastward again, in the hope he could reach Thranduil before his enemies overtook him. Once he was across the river he had little to fear from the Ringwraiths, at least, for they would not risk its crossing to pursue a nameless vagrant and a craven escapee. Orcs would find a way if so driven, but that would take time. Provided that Aragorn could coax a faster pace out of his body and his prisoner once they reached less hostile terrain, he might stand a chance of reaching more familiar territory.

Despite its merits, the plan filled him with a sinking dismay. Safer that road might be, but it would double the distance he had to travel. Eight hundred miles made an onerous journey to cover under the best of circumstances. Weakened as he was, wounded, feverish, exhausted; clad in rags and without supplies, the thought of dragging an uncooperative captive over such a vast distance into winter weather was a task bordering on the impossible.

Aragorn had to fight the urge to sink to his knees, knowing how hard it would be to rise again. He had no choice. The shorter road was fraught with peril. Only if he could disappear into the woodlands and hills west of Anduin did he have any hope of reaching his destination. Looking down at Gollum, who was glaring at the dirt beneath his long toes, Aragorn swallowed painfully as if by doing so he could beat back the mounting despair. There was nothing to be gained from dwelling on the enormity of the task at hand. If he was going to survive, he had to control himself. He had to focus only on today's struggles, and let tomorrow bring what it may. Therefore he did the only thing that he could do, in the circumstances.

Nudging Gollum so that he moved into a position conducive to forward movement, Aragorn began to walk.

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That day and the next, Aragorn moved at a marginally faster pace. He was too weary and ill to accurately gauge the distance he was covering, but he knew that he was still moving too slowly, for Gollum had no difficulty keeping up. At dusk on the second day he reached the banks of the west-flowing stream, and there he halted, easing his tired body down beside the water. Gollum, making eager, unpleasant noises through his nose, scrambled down the bank and plunged his face into the brook, sucking and slurping as he tried to drink in spite of the gag. Watching him numbly, Aragorn felt a tug of guilt before he reminded himself that Gollum had been given ample opportunity to cooperate.

While his prisoner was thus occupied, Aragorn drank a little and bathed his face. Then he unwrapped his arm and examined the bites. The wounds were still suppurating, but the inflammation was much reduced and the pus was not so purulent. Satisfied, he washed them and cleaned the strips of cloth, and then bandaged his hurts again.

The effort proved less exhausting than he had feared, which was a sign that his health was improving. Indeed, he could feel for the first time in many days the restive stirrings of hunger creeping through his viscera. Though he had a few strips of meat left in his pack, Aragorn cast about for signs of edible fauna among the scant vegetation that clung to the creek bed. There was nothing within arm's reach, and so he crept a few yards downstream, dragging a reluctant Gollum after him. There, in the mud by the water-side, he found the toppled stalks of a clump of bulrushes.

A ghost of a smile tugged at Aragorn's lips and he did not doubt that his joy showed in his eyes. The rushes were rotting in the river mud, and the brown seed heads that tasted so sweet in early summer lay dry and useless on the rocks, but as he dug hastily into the river bed his fingers closed upon the head of a root. Eagerly he unearthed it, and then sought for the next one. The soft, sodden earth gave way with little difficulty, and his small heap of treasure grew. He was aware of Gollum's perplexed gawking, but he heeded it not. He worked with more fervour than he would have thought himself capable of, and he had to make a conscious effort to stay his searching hand before he had denuded the patch entirely. He left half a dozen of the plants where they were, to grow and reseed the river bank against the need of some other unhappy wanderer, should any chance this way in later years.

With greedy eyes he surveyed the fruits of his labour. The spindly, fibrous tangles were choked with mud, and did not look especially appetizing to the untrained eye, but the sight of the amassed roots eased Aragorn's anxieties considerably. Bulrush roots contained a starchy pulp that could be gnawed from the heavy fibres, or soaked out of broken pieces. It could even be made into a flour of sorts, though that was a labour-intensive process that was not worth the effort – especially when one had no fat for baking, nor safety enough to chance a fire. These roots would sustain him for a week or more, he thought triumphantly. Then he cast a sidelong glance at his prisoner and amended his estimate. It was enough to keep two fed for four days.

'Are you hungry enough to behave yourself?' he asked, trying to ignore the harsh timbre of his voice. Fever and disuse had worked their evil on his throat. Gollum did not seem to care: he merely scowled back, intractable as ever. Wearily, Aragorn repeated his offer of truce. 'If you promise not to bite, I will remove the gag.'

Gollum hesitated, and in the pale eyes the Ranger could see hunger and defiance at war within the creature's heart. Then Gollum looked at the heap of bulrush roots, and with a disdainful sniff turned his face away.

Aragorn sighed. He was beginning to suspect that Gollum knew how difficult this was for him to witness the self-inflicted suffering of the starveling wretch. 'So be it,' he said, with more apathy than he felt. 'It is your stomach that will suffer, not mine.'

With Gollum glowering at his back, he bent over the water to wash his harvest. He picked away the stringy hairs that were too new to afford any nourishment, and separated the slender, softer roots from the thick, woody cores. The former he wrapped in a scrap of cloth, tucking them carefully into his pack. Using a flat stone as a cutting surface, he split two lengths of root, and chopped them into small crescent-shaped pieces. Filling his mug with water, he let the pieces soak. He waited patiently for a while, and then restlessly, and at last when he could bear it no longer he raised the cup to his lips and drank the slurry that had formed in the water. It felt gritty in his mouth and the fluid was tasteless but for a faint bitter tang, but almost at once the snarling in his stomach was eased and his head felt less giddy. He filled the cup again and set it aside, so that whatever nourishment remained in the root fibres could be drawn out while he took his rest.

Tonight, rather than truss up his prisoner like a slaughtered pig, Aragorn bound only his hands. Gollum had made no attempt to interfere with his bindings in several nights, and the Ranger was beginning to hope that the taming process was at last progressing as it ought. It was impossible that Gollum should endure much longer without food, and if Aragorn showed a little trust now he might find it later repaid. With a word of encouragement he gently knotted the strip of wool about his captive's wrists, and with Gollum secured he stretched out on the ground, casting his eyes towards the ragged clouds above.

He did not sleep that night, but rested his mind after the fashion of the Elves, lying flat upon his back with his long legs bent. Now and then through the clouds he could catch sight of a star, and he drank in each glimmer of light as if it could nourish his lonely soul.

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The next day, Gollum refused to move.

Aragorn rose before the dawn, to wash his face and fill his bottles and drink his cold bulrush tisane. The tugging of the binding cord earned him several unpleasant looks from his prisoner, who was lying curled on his side, but Gollum seemed no more uncooperative than usual, even scrambling to his feet before Aragorn's boot found leverage to raise him. They started off well enough, following the creek-bed westward as the sun rose behind. It promised to be a bright day, and Aragorn's spirits were lifting considerably when, as the last hints of night vanished behind the horizon, Gollum flung himself upon the ground, cringing and weeping and covering his eyes with his wounded hands.

Aragorn halted immediately, kneeling swiftly and trying to divine the source of the creature's distress. He had done this before, in the mountains, and then Aragorn had assumed it to be a reaction to pursuing orcs. Looking behind him now, he saw no sign of any living thing as far as the eye could see.

Gollum was making horrible sounds behind the gag, and his body was arcing and contorting in the most improbable of ways. Fearful that the creature was going to do himself an injury, Aragorn gripped the bony shoulders. 'Gollum! Be still!' he said urgently. 'What is causing you such distress? Gollum! Listen to me!'

The whimpering and writhing only grew more intense. It was a dreadful sight. Aragorn had witnessed bodies wracked with torture, and the horrible death-throes of men felled by swift-bleeding wounds, and children seized by fits of convulsions, but none of those things quite compared to this. Gollum's agility and malicious strength gave his motions a surreal and terrifying quality.

There was no other recourse: Aragorn seized the knot at the base of Gollum's skull and wrestled it loose. Away came the gag and with fingers that were hopefully nimble enough to escape any snap of the bony jaw, Aragorn plucked the plug of wool from the creature's mouth. Golllum scarcely seemed to notice. As if pouring uninterrupted from some bottomless well within him, words tumbled from his pale lips, beginning in mid-sentence.

'... it does, my preciouss! Burns us, shows us up! Nassty, hateful manses drives us on, on, gollum! Must hide, my preciousss, must hide from Yellow Face! Oh, poor preciouss, poor preciouss, gollum!' Here he let loose one of his shrill shrieks, and the hairs on the back of Aragorn's neck stood on end.

'What burns you?' he asked, unable to mask his concern as Gollum continued to sob and thrash and claw at his head. Was the creature rapt in some memory of the torture he had endured while in the clutches of the Enemy? Though he knew it would undermine his attempts to be a stern and indomitable jailer, Aragorn could not keep from saying; 'I will help you if I can. Let me help you.'

Gollum, it seemed, could not hear him or would not heed him. He continued with his wretched moaning. Aragorn cast anxiously about. If there were any watchers in this land, his prisoner now made a most eye-catching sight. This place was too open by far. Yet a few yards away a clump of barberry bushes clung to the edge of the stream. Aragorn looked at Gollum, wondering whether he could pick up the creature with his left arm and carry him so far. He decided he might have managed it had Gollum proved likely to be still and allow himself to be borne, but twisting and flailing as he was, Aragorn could not hope to succeed. He took hold of the creature's shoulder and shook him insistently.

'Stop this!' he commanded. 'We must take cover before your antics draw the attention of every beast, bird and goblin within a hundred miles!'

At the words 'take cover', Gollum fell instantly silent. He twisted his neck to look at Aragorn, who pointed towards the bilberry thicket. So swiftly did the creature spring into a loping run that Aragorn scarcely had time to snatch up the rags lately stuffed into his mouth before he was obliged to spring after his prisoner, lest Gollum should strangle himself upon the rope.

When they reached the edge of the brook, Gollum dove amidst the bushes, seemingly untroubled by the grasping thorns. Near the edge of his lead he halted, squatting by a thick stalk and staring out at Aragorn with enormous, glinting eyes.

Nonplussed, the Ranger sat, keeping safely out of the way of the woody spines. Gollum's reaction perplexed him. After such a performance, his fresh silence was all the more astonishing. Had this whole incident been nothing but a ploy to induce his captor to remove the gag? But no, Gollum had been seized by true panic, and that could not lightly be laid aside.

'What distressed you so?' Aragorn asked, trying to keep his voice impassive but nonthreatening.

Gollum glared at him, looking for all the world as if the incident had never occurred.

'Not good enough,' said the Ranger, sternly this time. He fixed his eyes on Gollum's, foiling the captive's attempt to look away. 'What is a yellow face? A man in a mask? Some strange breed of orc?'

Gollum's lips moved as if they were entirely disconnected from the rest of his face. 'He knows, he does, preciouss,' he muttered. 'Hateful trickses. He knows it, pretends he doesn't, gollum. We know he knows it, precious. Eye in a blue face, eye in a green face. Knows it, he does, wicked manses.'

Realization came with quiet relief as Aragorn recognized yet another of the riddles from Bilbo's tale. 'Sun on the daisies,' he murmured. 'You fear the Sun. It burns; shows you up... after so long in darkness you dread the sunlight.'

Too much gentleness drifted into his tone; too much pity. Gollum closed his mouth with a snap, and stared at his captor with cold, calculating eyes. Cognizant of his lapse in judgement, Aragorn set his face into a stony mask.

'So be it,' he said. 'I cannot carry you and I will not drag you. We will rest here a while, until the Sun is past its zenith. The rest will do me more good than it will you, I think.'

He settled into a more comfortable position, one eye still fixed on Gollum while the other searched the bushes for any sign of fruit, however withered. There was nothing. Birds, perhaps, had long ago picked the bilberries clean – or perhaps these sorry shrubs had never borne fruit at all.

A thought occurred to him. He knew such a show of deference was unwise, but he was already compromised and the gag was already removed. Aragorn dug in his pack and drew out the remaining strips of meat. He held them on an upturned palm, turning again to look at Gollum.

'Are you hungry?' he asked.

Gollum did not answer, but he hopped nearer, eying the food greedily. Aragorn waited, like a child holding seed in the hope of coaxing a redwing to land on his hand. Quick as lightning, Gollum reached out and snatched the meat, then retreated to the end of his leash. Turning his back and casting a suspicious glower over his shoulder, he tore off a piece and began to chew. A shudder of revulsion coursed up his spine and he spat out the half-ground meat. Aragorn's jaw tightened. After such a long fast, if Gollum was going to waste this food—

But he plucked up the cast-off plug of dried flesh, and though he shuddered and whined he ate it. The rest was soon devoured, and then Gollum edged nearer to Aragorn, skirting around as he crawled towards the water's edge. Greedily he drank, muttering maledictions to himself. Then he returned to his hiding-place among the thorns, eyes still smouldering with hatred.

When he was certain that Gollum was not looking at him, Aragorn allowed himself the luxury of a tiny, triumphant smile. His prisoner, it seemed, was tamed at last.

Chapter XXII: Down to the River

The stream followed much the same route that Aragorn had intended to take – though perhaps not quite so northerly. Most likely it drained into Nen Hithoel in the shadow of Tol Brandir, where the river was impassible to a man without a boat. Despite this, he followed it, and intended to do so until he neared the Vales of Anduin. He was so weary of the stern rationing of water that had been his lot since he had parted with Gandalf in distant Harondor. It was an inexpressible relief to be able to drink whenever he wished, and to bathe his wounded arm twice every day without paying a dear ransom of thirst. He had even made an effort to restore some semblance of cleanliness to his person and his dilapidated attire, though the results were hardly impressive.

Almost as welcome as the water was the plant life that clung so resolutely to the creek-bed. Dead though it was in the heart of winter, Aragorn still managed to scrounge edible taproots and the occasional tuber. These, particularly the latter, he hoarded with the zeal of a starving man, and each day his pack grew a little heavier. He ate enough only to keep himself firmly upon his feet, for the hungry northward leagues haunted him. Far better to suffer the pinchings of an undernourished belly now than to face utter famine in some snowy waste far from succour.

Glad though he was of the gleanings of the land, Aragorn kept a sharp lookout for signs of game. His attention to this matter was not entirely self-serving, for Gollum disdained the Ranger's diet of roots and resolutely refused to partake of it. Despite the creature's earlier hostility and his continued bitter silence, Aragorn as the jailer had a duty to feed his captive. If Gollum would not or could not gnaw the tasteless fibres that were sustaining the Man, then Aragorn had to make an effort to provide a reasonable alternative. Harsh policies were all very well while a prisoner was violent and openly defiant, but now that Gollum was beginning to show signs of cooperation he had to be met halfway, lest continued restraint discourage further good behaviour.

To that same end, Aragorn now travelled through the hours of darkness, finding shelter as the Sun began to climb and his companion began to quail. His primary concern was to avoid another performance like the one that had driven him to remove Gollum's gag. In truth, though, he was just as happy to rest through the day. Sunlight was helpful for foraging, and it helped him stave off sleep. Furthermore, the nights were growing colder, and it was easier to stay warm when one was on the move.

It was early in the morning on the eleventh day since Aragorn had found his quarry, when they came to a place where the stream tumbled over a swell of the land in a cascade some four feet high. The little waterfall was sufficient to form a pool at its base. Here the vegetation was as dense and varied as any Aragorn had seen in this land. Even the desolation of winter could not disguise the wild beauty of this peaceful place. There were thickets of raspberry and whortleberry – picked clean, of course, by unseen birds – and grasses of every description. Aragorn could see bald patches of earth where clover would flourish when spring came, and there were crocus stalks on the far side of the pool. Even trees grew here: a few scrawny willow saplings stretching their denuded branches towards the pale sky.

Beside one of these the Ranger settled himself, within easy reach of the water and close by a whortleberry bush beneath which Gollum could hide. The work of gathering food could wait awhile: though his fever was all but gone he was plagued by fatigue that his brief, unsettled attempts at sleep could not allay. The night's march had left him sore and weary, and he longed for rest.

With his back to the sapling, which despite its slender bole was deeply rooted in the sandy soil, he dug the bundle of bulrush fibres from his pack and carefully chose a few that were slender enough to chew. While Gollum cringed in the shadows, Aragorn ate, spitting out the woody fibres once the nourishing centres were extracted. It was not a genteel repast, but as he was in the company of a creature who nipped at his own toes, such considerations troubled Aragorn but little.

The sun was distant but bright, and the air grew warmer as she mounted ever higher. His meal concluded, Aragorn leaned against the tree and closed his eyes. Reluctant to sleep, which would entail bestirring himself to bind Gollum's hands, he wandered in a pleasant daydream while the sunlight filtered golden through his eyelids.

He thought of Imladris in high summer, when all the valley was in bloom. The apple orchard, frosted with fragrant white blossoms, was filled with the song of plump bees, hovering industriously amid the laden branches. Roses like great, intricate gems seemed to glow in the sulight. In the herb gardens, wholesome healing smells intermingled and the pansies smiled at the sky. By the water there was a cluster of bluebells, heavy heads hanging low above the crystalline rush of the Bruinen…

A tug at his wrist dragged Aragorn back to the present. Opening his eyes, he wished at once that he had never closed them. In contrast to his vivid imaginings, this place that had seemed so fair and peaceful was now grey and bleak. Suppressing that ungrateful thought, he sought out his prisoner, whose movement had dragged him from his reverie. Gollum had moved down to the water's edge, as far from Aragorn as he could contrive to get without throttling himself. He was not paddling his hands in the water as was his wont, but crouching instead by the pool's edge, staring intently at the rippling surface but touching it not.

Curious as to what might so entrance his captive, Aragorn remained motionless. Gollum scarcely seemed to breathe, so still was he. Then sudden as a striking adder his arm shot out, plunging beneath the water with scarcely a splash. Then in a great shower of spray he raised his arm. Clamped firmly in his spindly fingers was a fat, thrashing carp. Gollum hissed triumphantly, digging his ragged nails into the gills of the fish until dark blood oozed forth.

Aragorn chuckled appreciatively. 'Most impressive,' he said, and for the first time since Gollum's capture the civility came easily. 'I shall have to try for myself, and then I think we can risk a fire to roast them.'

Gollum's look of unguarded victory blackened at these words, and he glowered at Aragorn. He turned the still-twitching fish in his hands, holding it much as one would a fresh pasty. Then with a savage jolting of his head he sunk his teeth into the scaly underbelly and tore loose a hunk of iridescent flesh. He hardly seemed to chew it before his throat constricted in a swallowing motion and he dove forward for another mouthful. This time he punctured the carp's intestine and came away with a fragment of tattered fin clinging to his chin. The slurping sound he made as he sucked back his meal was accompanied by a pungent smell of offal.

Aragorn had a strong stomach, well schooled by years of unpleasant sights and scents, but this display was very nearly too much for him. He cast his eyes away and tried to close his ears to the noises of mastication as Gollum set into his meal with ravenous abandon.

Suddenly roasted fish no longer seemed quite so tempting.

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That evening Aragorn crossed the little stream, fording it at a shallow place where the bed was studded with broad, flat stones. Gollum came splashing after, muttering resentfully under his breath as he did so. Aragorn felt a tug of annoyance that was tempered by amusement. He had a habit of conversing with himself, particularly at times when he was alone with a sticky problem to address, but he could not compete with Gollum's soliloquies. The angry ramblings rarely made any sense, and were usually too low to hear. Occasionally Aragorn caught a wrathful oath or an especially sibilant adjective, but for the most part he tried to ignore his prisoner's nonsensical raving and tonight was no exception to that.

Despite his earlier determination to remain near the water, Aragorn was suddenly anxious to begin his northward progress. Anduin could not be far away, and if he did not want to make a broad detour around the lake, he had to change his path. It worried him that there was no sign yet of the expected pursuit. It scarcely seemed possible, given the delays that his injuries had caused, that servants of Sauron upon Gollum's trail would have failed to come near enough to be seen upon the horizon or heard in the whisperings of the earth. Therefore it seemed that either Gollum had an extraordinary head start upon his foes, or he was not being hunted by the Enemy at all.

Certainly it was possible that Gollum had never been captured by Sauron; or else that, having escaped, he was unworthy of pursuit. Yet the meticulous regard that had been paid to his hands told a different story. Obviously he had been given very careful and particular attention. If the torturers of Mordor had extracted from him every fragment of useful information – a prospect that filled Aragorn's heart with a horror he could ill afford – it was conceivable that they would think him useless. Yet useless or no, Aragorn had never heard tell of any captive set free out of pity. Perhaps Gollum's escape had gone unnoticed for a sufficient stretch of time to allow for the lack of any detectable trackers, but by Aragorn's reckoning such a lead would have had to be three days or more; it was unlikely that even the most negligent jailer should for so long fail to notice that his charge had absconded.

It was the illogical nature of the situation that most troubled Aragorn. He was accustomed to predicting the actions of the Enemy, and to interpreting the motives that drove Sauron's thralls. He had insight into the hearts and minds of others that few could rival, and he understood more of the machinations of his foes than any of his race yet living. This lack of pursuit was not consistent with what he knew of the servants of Mordor, and so he could not know what he should do to avoid needless danger.

Through the night the problem clawed at him, while Gollum whinged and muttered and contorted his spine. Dawn came at last and found them near a copse of trees – in rather poor shape. Gollum was favouring his left arm and whimpering wretchedly deep in his throat. Aragorn's riven right thigh was aching along the new scar, and his head was throbbing. His eyes stung and his thoughts were muddled: he had been too long without sleep.

He found a sheltered place where heather grew in more clement months, and there he halted. Gollum retreated at once to the end of his lead and started to fawn over his sore hand. Weary though he was, Aragorn forced out an offer of aid that was repaid with a venomous hiss and a black look. Too tired to press the issue, he stretched himself out on the spongy earth. His leaden eyes slipped closed almost of their own accord.

For a moment he fought the inexorable pull of slumber. He had a prisoner to secure, and they were both in need of water... but exhaustion won out over good sense and he resisted no further.

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Aragorn awoke abruptly, yanked out of the warm embrace of darkness into petrified wakefulness. Unsure what had roused him he did not move, but remained with his eyes closed as he listened intently. Near at hand – very near at hand – he could hear the low, wheezing exhalations of his prisoner. Furthermore he could smell him: Gollum's vile scent, now liberally tainted with the reek of raw carp.

His pulse quickened. For days Gollum had kept his distance as much as the rope would allow. What was he doing now, that he was so close? Cautiously Aragorn opened his eyes far enough that he could peer through his lashes. Gollum was practically on top of him, crouching by his side. His attention was focussed on the Ranger's pack where it lay by his hip. While Aragorn watched Gollum cautiously plucked up one side of the opening, lifting it with care. Then the other hand slipped inside and emerged with the little coil of copper wire between finger and thumb. Gollum tossed it disdainfully away and reached into the pack once again.

Aragorn sat up and his prisoner recoiled with a cry of startled dismay, landing hard on his tailbone with one foot in the air. With stern eyes the Ranger surveyed his captive's handiwork. Gollum had managed to empty the pack of most of its contents: roots and bulbs were scattered across the ground, and among them the rest of Aragorn's scant possessions. A quick glance into the bag revealed that only a few taproots and the rag full of grease remained within.

Gollum was glaring defiantly, as if daring him to retaliate. Aragorn levelled his gaze, concealing both his irritation and his amusement. 'What did you hope to accomplish?' he asked.

Gollum, of course, made no answer.

Aragorn pressed the back of his hand to his brow as if by doing so he could scrub away the lingering exhaustion. Evidently he had not slept long – and a skyward glance confirmed it. Yet now his heart was hammering against his ribs, and his limbs felt charged with a nervous energy, and he knew he would be unable to settle down again. This time the irritation could not be so easily driven back. He was weary and far from any respite, and the thought of the persistent struggle, pitting his will against that of his captive, left him bereft of the determination to be kind. It was all that he could do to grit his teeth against his anger and to proceed, silently, to collect his belongings and his poor cache of provisions.

As he tucked away the last of his gear, he at last felt able to speak with some semblance of restraint.

'You will soon learn that there is little to be gained from aggravating me,' Aragorn said, closing his pack and tying it with care. 'If you will neither rest nor allow me to do so, then we will move on. We have almost three hundred leagues to cover, and time cannot be squandered.'

And though Gollum moaned and wept and cast unintelligible curses to the sky, Aragorn got him to his feet and drove him onward, defying his own weariness as much as the reluctance of his prisoner.

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They walked through the afternoon and on into a starless night. They were drawing near to the river. Dawn brought mists as thick as curing smoke; mists that dulled the sense and muted even Gollum's whining. For that Aragorn was grateful, so grateful that damp clothes and dripping hair were forgiven. The shrill feral sounds were grating on his nerves, and he was half tempted to gag Gollum again just to induce silence. Though in the name of justice he restrained himself, it took a great deal of self-control to do so.

At length the sun climbed high enough to melt away the fog, and the Ranger began to look for a suitable place to camp. His exhaustion was mounting, and without rest he had little hope of crossing Anduin. At last he settled upon a hollow in the lee of a great standing stone. Whether it had been placed there by accident of nature or design of Man he did not know, but he was grateful for the cover that it offered.

He eased himself to the ground with his back against the stone, and when he had eaten and Gollum had refused his food, Aragorn took the woollen rags and bound his prisoner's wrists.

'I will not have you relieving me of my stores while I sleep,' he said. 'I suggest that you make good use of these hours. Tomorrow at this time I hope to cross the river. Then there will be little rest for either of us.'

So saying he drew up his knees and rested his arms upon them. With his face buried against his ragged sleeves he sought desperately for a few hours of peace.

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His slumber was uneasy, troubled by vague nightmares that eluded recall and made still more difficult by the permeating chill that was now settling over the land. He had made some progress northward, it seemed, for there was something of winter in the wind and he soon had to tuck his fingers into fists to keep them from growing cold. As the afternoon wore on, Aragorn gave up the effort of sleep and rose. He wished to pace about, but Gollum was curled up in a ball, having apparently decided to heed his captor's warning. Instead he stood, leaning against the boulder, and watched the shadows grow. When dusk was near enough, he roused his prisoner and set out in a westerly direction.

As he had reckoned, the land began to slope downward, away from the barren plains behind. Here the signs of life were plentiful, and had Aragorn been able to spare the time he did not doubt that he could find game here. But time was precious, and he was anxious to cross the river and to leave the lands of the Enemy and the threat of the Nazgûl far behind.

Down into the lowlands he marched, his way lit by the distant stars. Westward and always a little to the north he pressed, hoping that he had managed to circumvent the lake. If not, he would lose many days winding his way around her broad waters, until he came to Tol Brandir and the gates of the Argonath. Dearly though his heart wished to stand in their shadow once more, he could ill afford any delay.

At last, perhaps an hour before the dawn, he came to the brink of the river valley itself. Here the land fell sharply, stubborn ash trees clinging to the slopes with thick roots that protruded like spiders' legs from the rocky soil. Aragorn had no wish to tumble down to the water's edge, and so he made good use of the trees, gripping a trunk with his good hand as skirted down the incline, and then reaching for the next one. Gollum seemed to need little support, but on occasion he took hold of a root as he waited for his jailer to catch up to him.

After many minutes of careful navigation, Aragorn reached the floor of the valley. Here the earth was almost level, sloping gently away. Here, too, he could at last hear the rush of the river, the muted roar of Anduin as it swept towards the sea. Gollum heard it also, for he halted with his head cocked to the wind like a hunting spaniel, eyes gleaming with an unearthly light.

Aragorn did not allow a lengthy halt. As soon as he found his breath again, they were moving. The worry that he had not come far enough was now overwhelming, and he wished only to answer his fears, for good or ill. Through the trees – larger here, and doubtless a majestic sight if one had but leisure to look – he hastened. On flat ground his long legs and his determination imbued an advantage of speed, and Gollum now struggled to keep pace. The valley was not very broad here, and dawn had not yet come when the Ranger and his captive reached the water's edge.

Gollum hastened at once to drink and to splash, muttering to himself and anointing his hands and feet in the water. Aragorn stood silent, straining his eyes into the darkness in an attempt to spy the opposite shore, that he might gauge the breadth of the river and the strength of the current, and so determine if he had reached his goal or no.

At length the far bank came into focus as the sun rose behind him. Practiced eyes measured the distance, and a low noise of relief escaped his lips. The river was narrow here: perhaps half a mile across. Below Nen Hithoel it broadened considerably, a mile or more from shore to shore, and was held to be impassable to any man without a boat until one reached the narrows in Ithilien, where the bridge of Osgiliath spanned Anduin. Aragorn was tempted to laugh aloud. He had come far enough.

But the reality of his plight seeped inexorably back as the chill of the morning crept into his motionless body. The day was cold and the river was flowing swiftly, glutted with the runoff of mountain streams. Aragorn crouched and dipped his fingers into the water. He withdrew them with haste. It would be a bitter swim, and though he knew that in his full vigour half a mile was little enough distance to cover, he was not in his full vigour. His right arm yet pained him, and its wounds still oozed fine trails of purulence. His leg had not recovered all of its strength. And he had a prisoner and baggage to bear with him.

The first echoes of despair clawed at his breast, but he closed his heart against them and tried to consider his options objectively. Every day spent upon this side of the river increased his chances of pursuit and capture. Every northward mile increased the likelihood that he would draw the attention of the denizens of Dol Guldur. He had to cross the river somehow, and Gollum had to come with him.

He looked out across the deceptively calm waters. Here and there he could see a white crest rising above Anduin's grey surface: the marks of a mighty current. Mists were beginning to gather as the sunlight struck the water. The rumbling roar of the river was at once a challenge and a threat, and as a creeping chill began to settle into his trunk and limbs, Aragorn wished that he might decline it and walk away from the contest of strengths – for in a trial pitting himself against the river, he was not certain of victory this day.

Yet even as he longed for some other path, he knew there was none. This was his path, whether or no. He had to cross the river. He had to find a way.

At his feet, Gollum was singing some scrap of half-forgotten doggerel.    

Chapter XXIII: Over, Under and Through

Aragorn stood long by the water's edge, studying the coursing surface of the river as he tried to divine the movement of the currents and eddies beneath. It was an impossible task, he decided. There was no hope of a well-planned crossing: Anduin's swollen breadth would surely prove unpredictable.

Therefore his one hope was to properly arrange himself and his burdens. He cast an appraising eye upon his prisoner, still warbling tunelessly under his breath. Aragorn saw as if for the first time the ropey sinews standing out beneath the discoloured skin that stretched like a shroud over the skeletal limbs. Beneath the hollow ribs he could almost see the carmine lungs stretching and shrinking with each shallow breath. A twinge of pity plucked at his innards: as ill-suited for this swim as he was himself, Gollum's condition was worse. He could not be expected to swim across, and therefore he must be borne.

There were a number of ways to tow a body through water. A hand beneath the chin, supporting the head above the surface while one drew the other person along, was the least strenuous, but it was easy to lose one's grip in a rapid current. Aragorn did not suppose that Gollum would have much chance of escaping him mid-stream, but the thought of his prize swept away and drowned was intolerable. A cooperative passenger could be carried on a swimmer's back, holding fast to waist or shoulders, and when the swimmer was weak this was the preferred method, since it left both arms free for propulsion and allowed for a reasonably efficient front stroke. Gollum, of course, could not be trusted to be cooperative. He might attempt to strangle his bearer in the midst of the river, or to blind him with his spindly fingers. Or he might merely panic and let go.

The pale eyes were glittering maliciously at him, as if the captive sensed the Ranger's thoughts. Aragorn stared coldly back, carefully concealing the doubt and trepidation that had been writ across his brow. With a whimper, Gollum cast his eyes away and resumed his petulant splashing.

There was also the question of baggage, Aragorn thought, turning his own face before the prisoner could look back to it. Scant though his possessions were, they would prove a hindrance in the frigid currents. In friendlier lands or fairer weather, he might have considered abandoning a portion of his luggage, but he was already reduced to carrying the barest essentials of survival, and even what he had might prove inadequate in the end. Stores and clothing, boots and scant sundries, all had to come with him.

The magnitude of the problem was beginning to make Aragorn's head ache. He eased himself down onto the river bank, bracing himself with his left leg and stretching his right towards the water so that the scar on his thigh twanged irately. Crooking his elbow around his raised knee, he rested his head upon his arm. In this perfect aspect of defeat he sat, leaden eyes closed.

Perhaps his mind was trying to light upon some distraction from the present conundrum, and latched onto the first noise to reach his ears, or perhaps Gollum raised his voice, but suddenly the muttered syllables of the eerie song penetrated Aragorn's sphere of awareness. He listened, entranced, as his prisoner sang:

A small, cynical laugh reached the Ranger's lips and he raised his head. Long legs sinking, was it? Gollum wouldn't be rid of him that easily. There was something to be said, however, for branch and log.

'You have my thanks, O sullen one,' he said, cocking his chin and smiling rather superciliously; 'for you have neatly solved my problem.'

Gollum gaped at him, taken aback by this apparent reversal of his captor's mood. Then his mouth snapped closed over his isolated teeth and he glowered wrathfully, drawing his legs up to his chest and curling his spindly arms around them.

Aragorn stood and, without consideration for Gollum's stubborn stance, began to walk upstream, examining the flotsam cast up in the mud of the riverbed. With a strangled noise, Gollum came scrambling after – having learned at last, it seemed, that the Ranger was more stubborn than he. Sharp eyes scoured the detritus washed from the wild lands to the north: tangled weeds and splintered twigs, coarse stones destined to be worn smooth long before they reached the Sea, a denuded knucklebone that had once belonged to a sheep or a goat, and a goodly assortment of driftwood.

Here, where the river flowed swift and narrow, few larger pieces found the shore. Most rode Anduin over Rauros, dispersing in the lake and washing up upon its dark beaches. But soon enough he found what he sought, all but buried in the mire. With a little effort and a just measure of pain, he wrestled it from the sucking river mud and held it up, the better to examine his prize. It was a piece of pine, doubtless splintered from some venerable old tree far in the north by wind or lightning or a woodsman's axe. A little more than a yard in length and almost two handspans wide, it was as thick as a framing board. Waterlogged and heavy, it would nonetheless float even under the weight of a child – or a strange hobbit-like creature.

'A raft,' Aragorn said in answer to Gollum's perplexed stare. The look of bafflement became one of scepticism, and the Ranger curled his lip. 'You'll see,' he promised, grim but half-teasing.

He plunged the width of wood into the water, brushing it clean with his good hand. It bobbed and bucked, tempted to ride with the current. It was as buoyant as he could have hoped, and Aragorn felt some of his anxiety lifting. Beaching the split log, he set about divesting himself. There was little hope of his clothing remaining dry in the crossing, but at least it would not be weighing down his limbs with its sodden mass. He lifted his cloak carefully over his head, mindful of the makeshift copper clasp. Laying it out on the dead grass, he set his belt upon it.

Removing his boots was no easy task. He sat down to wrestle with the obdurate leather, but having been worn continuously for weeks, repeated wetted and then allowed to dry, it clung to his feet like an outer skin. Gollum watched, vindictive glee in his eyes, as Aragorn struggled. Using a heavy stone for leverage behind his heel, he pushed with his left foot at the side of his right boot. At the same time he struggled to pull his right leg free. With a crackling of his ankle-joint his foot slipped loose, and he fell backward, landing uncomfortably on his elbow. A fiery numbness shot into the last two fingers of his hand and he grated his teeth against the indignity of the prickling sensation. His discomfiture did not last long, fortunately, and he was able to pry off the other boot with less difficulty.

He peeled off his foul-smelling hose – a duck in the river would do them no harm, at least – and inspected his feet for the first time in many days. The nail of his right great toe was half gone, and he remembered that he had noticed it blackened in the clearing in Harondor. It seemed that long ages of the world had passed since that autumn afternoon.

There were three blisters, all healing, on his left foot, but close inspection of the offending boot revealed no probable cause. Despite a few bruised toes and the habitual calluses his feet were largely unscathed. He spared a moment of gratitude for this small kindness.

He could not remove his cote while still tethered to Gollum; at least not without dragging the prisoner through his left sleeve. He worked the knot loose, and shifted the rope from one hand to the other and back. After a minute more, he stood clad only in the bandages that wrapped his forearm, and the tattered remains of his shirt. It was now a sleeveless smock, its ravaged hem hanging in straggles about his knees. Coarse though it was it was light, and he decided to retain that last modicum of modesty.

Still gripping the end of Gollum's halter, Aragorn knelt. Reaching into his pack, he found the little bundle of grease that he had carried for so many miles. Then he took the pack, his boots and his garments, and rolled them tightly in the heavy, fulled wool. Abbreviated and tattered though it was, the cloak provided several layers of protection. With a little good fortune, his clothing would not be soaked quite through when he reached the thither bank. He tucked in the ends of his bundle with care. Then with the first finger of his right hand he scooped up a blob of grease. Carefully, he pushed it into his ear canal, sealing out water and locking in heat. He did the same with his other ear, and as he did so he tried to steel himself for the next ordeal.

It was time to secure his prisoner.

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In the annals of Minas Tirith, the lore-masters of the White City exercised a certain degree of circumspection when it came to the indiscretions of their betters. When a princess of Dol Amroth ran away to be married without her lord's consent, or a younger son of the Steward begat a child with his mother's chambermaid, or a member of the Council was dismissed in suspect circumstances, a veil of tact was drawn discretely over the humiliating details. No record remained of the particulars of these regrettable cases: one could only speculate what had befallen the indiscreet lady when her father discovered her mesalliance, and how she had come to be gifted with a minor manor holding on Tolfalas; or what machinations had been necessary to ensure an advantageous marriage for the Steward's illegitimate grandson; or what further penalties the disgraced counselor had suffered. Such diplomatic omissions were a frustration to the historian, but doubtless they had been a consolation to the unfortunate people involved. Some facets of life were simply too unpleasant and demeaning to be recorded for posterity.

If the tale of this tiresome journey were ever told, Aragorn reflected sardonically, he hoped the scribe would be prudent enough to exclude, neatly and artfully, any account of how Gollum came to be bound to the length of driftwood. In the end, at least, it was accomplished: the prisoner and his captor's baggage lashed firmly to the log with the length of orc-rope. Gollum lay upon his back with Aragorn's clothing beneath him, scowling but silent at last. Neither party had sustained any serious hurt in the process, save perhaps each to his pride. And that, the victor decided, was all that he had a right to ask.

He had left a little rope free of the bands trussing together his burdens, and Aragorn now knotted it about his left wrist as firmly as his right hand could manage. He would have preferred to tow with his weaker hand, but travelling westward his left was downstream. He plunged his bare forearm into the water, soaking the rope before testing the knot. It did not yield under his wrenching; he prayed that it would withstand the brute force of the river. He knew from experience that he would not be able to rely upon his fingers to grasp the rope properly.

Bent double, he nudged the little raft into the river. There was a terrible moment when he feared that it would sink, but it bobbed and stabilized, the water lapping gently against the pad of cloth beneath the prisoner's body.

'Now for good fortune and a fair wind,' Aragorn muttered, raising his eyes towards the far bank and trying to quell the doubts that were assailing him. Then he glared sternly at Gollum and said; 'If we drown, we drown. But if you are wise you will not attempt to scuttle me mid-stream. Be still and be silent.'

He extended his right foot into the water, gritting his teeth against its icy bite. The first steps were difficult, as the burning band of cold rose higher upon his legs. Even here at its very border Anduin dragged upon his limbs. Further he waded, drawing deep and deliberate breaths as he attempted to acclimatize himself. When Gollum was floating level with his hip, Aragorn tucked his hand under the loop of cord that crossed his belly. He closed his fist around it. Then, turning forty degrees downstream, he bent his knees. In one concerted motion that demanded all of his resolve, he plunged his trunk and head into the water and drove forward with his right arm extended above his head.

Despite his effort to prepare himself, the air was driven from his lungs. His eyes burned, blinded by the frigid waters, and for a moment it seemed that he would drown. But instinct overcame panic, and he rolled onto his side, flexing his right leg and drawing up his left. He brought them together like the blades of a pair of shears, and forward he shot, sucking in a painful measure of air and dragging his burden beside him.

The current was at his back, driving him downstream as his powerful side-stroke carried him westward. He bent his legs again, as if genuflecting before some great lord, but this time he drew in his right arm. As he kicked again he extended his elbow like a rudder, guiding him in his southeasterly course. He tightened his grip upon Gollum's bonds, hauling the makeshift raft with him.

Five times he kicked, then six, then seven. Each time breathing became more difficult, and his toes began to prickle with the cold. Setting his teeth and inhaling resolutely through them, Aragorn forced an eighth kick. A ninth. His riven thigh was aching. A tenth. The currents were dragging on his limbs. He was now past the depth at which he could stand with his head above the water: Anduin flowed in a deep and cavernous bed.

He gained another twenty yards before a spasm of torment shot through his wounded right arm. The resultant gasp of anguish drew in a lungful of water, and Aragorn jerked into a vertical posture, feet flailing as he fought to keep his head above the surface. In the moment of panic he almost forgot the board floating beside him, but then he hauled it nearer, bracing his shoulder against it and coughing furiously. He clutched his forearm to his breast, the sodden bandages doing little to ease his discomfort. Presently he regained some semblance of control and his breathing leveled again.

But he was loose in the current now, and it was dragging him southward, parallel to the bank. Whipping his legs in circles like two complimentary cogwheels, he forced his shoulders out of the water and blinked through the streams flowing from his brow, trying to orient himself. He was not fifty yards from the east bank, with the whole broad expanse of Anduin still severing him from safety. A cursory glance told him that Gollum, though incandescent with silent rage, was still unscathed and indeed, largely dry. An ironic snort expended more energy than he could at this moment spare, but it was exceedingly satisfying nonetheless.

Aragorn tried to calm himself, to forget the cold and the myriad reasons that he should fail. Failure was not now, nor had it ever been, a viable alternative to the struggles of survival. Slowly he began to relax, easing back onto his side. He extended his right arm again, resting his cheekbone upon his shoulder as he let his legs float upward once more. When he was lying on his side, he resumed his kicking, but this time he left his arm unmoving. It was steering him forward and holding his course, but no longer was it bearing the burden of motion.

His progress was slower now, but less frenzied. He closed his eyes, trying to relish the cathartic rushing of the water over his limbs and against his spine and around the outstretched fingers of his guiding hand. He had always enjoyed swimming. It had been a delight in the summers of his boyhood, and in his wanderings he had never regretted the necessity when it arose. The unified, almost harmonious motion of long limbs and lean muscle, the triumphant surges of strength that worked at once with and against the water, the sweet, cleansing feeling as his head broke the surface and his lungs drew in a fortifying measure of cold, clean air – all this he enjoyed.

He focused now on the slipstream of fluid running from his fingertips around his arm, over his shoulder and down the length of his body. The strong lateral motions of his legs alternated with long seconds of gliding as he rode the momentum of his efforts. Aragorn opened his eyes again, trying to weigh his progress. He was now about two hundred ells removed from the eastern bank. Twice that distance lay between him and the far shore, but his path was not perpendicular. The downstream route was longer, but this way he had to waste less energy fighting the current.

The river flowed more swiftly now, as he drew on towards its middle. A crest of water broke against Aragorn's back, and Gollum yelped indignantly as he was splashed with the icy spray. The Ranger expected a string of creative curses, but apparently the creature appreciated the gravity of the situation, for he made no sound. Drawing in a deep breath and a mouthful of icy water, Aragorn spared the strength to say, with as much confidence as he could muster; 'Hold fast. The worst is behind us.'

Anduin waited five strokes before it proved him wrong.

Aragorn's right leg was weakening, and at the nadir of his kick it was no longer parallel to the surface. Instead it drifted downward, and though he tried to correct this deficiency in his technique the newly-healed muscles were hesitant to obey him. On the fifth kick, his leg sagged further than before.

There was a sharp tug upon his ankle, as if a fist of ice had closed upon it and yanked, hauling him at once downstream and towards the riverbed. Startled, he foundered. His cry of dismay was muted by an influx of water as he sank below the surface, his right hand flailing helplessly in the air. The deep-water current dragged harder, and for a moment he feared that he would be swept away.

Then his left shoulder jerked, resisting. His wrist stung, and pain shot down towards his body as the wet rope chafed the palm of his hand. The pain roused him, and he remembered Gollum and the raft.

His right hand flew, clutching at something chilled and slippery – but firm. Aragorn kicked violently downward, driving his feet into the subversive eddy and propelling himself up and out of its insidious grip. His head broke the surface and he scrabbled against the log, choking and sputtering, his lungs burning in his breast.

Gollum, doubtless panicked by this sudden calamity, began to shriek and to struggle, rocking against his bonds. Aragorn wanted to shout out a command for stillness, but as he was struggling merely to breathe speech eluded him. Instead he tried to right himself so that he could ease his grip upon what he now realized was the prisoner's forearm. But he moved too slowly and Gollum once more proved stronger than he looked. Wrenching himself to the right, away from Aragorn, he succeeded in upending the raft. Aragorn's right hand lost its hold and his left arm was extended violently as the length of driftwood capsized.

Horror froze the Ranger as his captive vanished below the rushing waters. Hours seemed to pass as he stared in mute dismay at the overturned board, though in truth his heart beat once, then twice. Before the third staccato knell rang against his ribs, he gripped the rope with his left hand and the board with his right and rolled it towards him. Gollum, spitting and apoplectic with rage, emerged from the water like a sea-serpent.

'Be still!' Aragorn cried, as he should have done before. 'Be still, or you shall drown!'

'Curse us and splash us! Drownses us, precious! Drownses us!' Gollum shrieked.

Unable to ease back onto his side and unwilling to linger longer in the chaos of the river's heart, Aragorn shoved the board ahead of him. Gollum howled as again the frigid waters broke against him, but the Ranger closed his ears to the creature's indignant noises. Now on his belly, he gripped the raft with both hands and pushed it before him, kicking with all the strength in his legs.

He moved swiftly, bobbing his head up to inhale, and down to eject a cloud of roiling bubbles. His toes were searing with a fiery agony now, and his fingers were numb. He could feel them growing thick and clumsy, and he drove his right hand between Gollum and the bundle of clothing. Wedged fast, it held. His left hand was safely tucked under the rope, and he pushed onward.

In Rivendell in winter, swimming in the Bruinen was strictly prohibited. The water that rushed down from the mountains was too cold to be borne by elf or by man-child. The ponds froze solid, and the river-bank was rimmed with ice. Once – only once – Aragorn had disobeyed, flaunting the ban on swimming. Weary of winter activities, he had shucked off his layers and waded out into the deep water. Thirteen and defiant, he had refused to admit to himself that he was growing too cold. When at last he had found the good sense to remove himself from the water he had been half-stupid with the chill of it. Somehow numb feet had found their way back to the house, where swift rewarming and a long scolding had awaited him. When the reprimand was over, he remembered lying in bed, a hot stone at his feet and blankets piled to the tip of his nose, while his mother sang. Warmth and peace and a gentle hand upon his brow…

Aragorn gasped, sucking in yet another lungful of Anduin. His thoughts were growing muddled. The pain in his limbs was gone, but in its place it had left only leaden uselessness. The muscles of his thighs still remembered how to kick, but below the knees his legs were without sensation. His hands could not grasp. Even the burning anguish in his wounded arm was gone.

He tried to blink through the frost forming on his eyelids, to clear his vision that he might measure the distance yet to travel. He could not. He was no longer even certain whether he was moving westward, or east, or merely floating downstream to the south. He would float for hours, unable to move, unable to think, unable at last to breathe. When the cold took him and he knew no more, Anduin would bear him over Rauros Falls and sweep his moldering bones down into the Sea.

Gollum was silent now, or else Aragorn's ears were choked with ice and he could no longer hear him. Strength was forgotten. The desire to survive was no more. His head slipped beneath the surface, and it was only the last feeble, habitual jerks of what had once been his legs that raised it up again. He drew in a tortured breath. It sent daggers of anguish through his ribs, and that saddened him. It was such a pity that his last breath should bring with it no pleasure, no peace. In sleep alone there was peace. He had tried. In the end he had failed, but at least… at least he had tried.

Serenely, quietly, he sank into the river. Only his left hand, stubbornly bound to the driftwood litter, remained in the cold morning air. Sleep and peace, he thought…

Then his sinking knee scraped against the slick stones of Anduin's bed.    

Chapter XXIV: The Thaw

First there came a moment of indolent surprise: a mild and indifferent astonishment born of the realization that he still had some vestige of sensation below the knees. Next, a thrill of sour despair as he realized he must have sunk to the very depths of Anduin's bed, never to rise again. But third came the tremulous voice of logic, reminding him that his left arm was pulled taught, its wrist and hand kept above the surface by the raft to which it was tethered. So at last his cold-muddled mind reached the roundabout conclusion that he was kneeling in water shallow enough for him to stand.

Actually standing was another matter entirely. Aragorn tried to rise, but the foot on the end of his leg would not obey him. The ankle buckled and his knee crashed against the rocky river-bed. His lungs seared with the pressure of the spent air within them and his eyes were blinded by the murky water-world that engulfed him.

A thin stream of bubbles burst through the resolute dam of his lips and he tried again to rise. Again he failed, but in his scrambling he gained a foot of riverbed. Abandoning the futile attempts to rise, he propelled himself forward; pushing with leaden legs until his dangling right fist barked against the stones. He tried to enlist its aid, but a weak floundering of his shoulder was all that he could manage. Another painful dragging of his legs, however, brought the raft down so that it barked against his skull. Anxious lest he should scuttle his helpless passenger, Aragorn kicked instinctively for the surface. The motion lifted him – head and shoulders, dazed and disoriented — into the biting air.

He drew in a roaring breath that tore at his breast like the claws of some unearthly beast, and his legs struggled to bear him up. Again they failed him, collapsing beneath the useless weight of his body, and he pitched forward into the water. Rivulets of impenetrable cold shot into his nostrils and the air he had so desperately drunk was tainted with Anduin's chill affusions.

Aragorn reared up out of the water again, his legs struggling for purchase while his flaccid arms hung heavy from his shoulders, the right flailing like a warp-weight and the left dragging behind him, towing along its burden with the patience of an aged ox. Coughing and sputtering, Anduin herself flowing from his lips and nose and hair, he dragged himself through the last yards of water. Tumbling at last in the shallows, he fell in the mud, unable to stagger further upon his frozen legs. He lay there for a minute or two, choking quietly upon the water that forced itself from his tortured lungs.

It was the hissing maledictions of his prisoner that roused Aragorn at last to drag himself, writhing like a snake in the muck, away from the water. The log, which had been floating benignly at his side, stuck in the mud and forced him to roll onto his back that he might haul more fruitfully upon his deadened arm. In the end, Gollum was ashore and Aragorn's legs were no longer in Anduin's frigid courses. He fell back, caring nothing for the sucking mud that squelched around his ears. Free of the river's grasp, he might sleep at last…

Sleep did not come. Instead, swift as the currents he had vanquished, fingers of fiery cold curled about his limbs. The air was intolerably raw against his wet skin, and the sodden linen that clung to his ribs seemed to leech the very marrow from his bones. A violent paroxysm tore down his spine, sending tendrils of anguish into extremities that had heretofore been so mercifully numb. He lay there tormented and shivering, unable to find the strength within him to rise and do what he must to survive. His teeth were rattling in his head and his shoulders twitched and quivered uncontrollably.

When the shaking abated his first thought was one of gratitude. But reason still lingered in his frost-addled skull, and he knew that he would not live long if he did not warm himself at once. The day was not especially cold and above the riverbank the ground was dry and free of snow, but sodden as he was he would freeze here if he was unable to bestir himself from Anduin's mud.

His objective then – but to rise seemed impossible. All that he could do was lie where he was, conjuring up manifold reasons why he could not move.

The thought that he was reduced at last to a waterlogged naysayer brought a ghost of amusement to Aragorn's chilled and leaden eyes. He let out a heavy huff of air that vanished almost as it left his lips. Reassured he braced himself and, with an effort surely equal to any he had yet mustered in this sorry quest, he rolled onto his side.

From that position it was a small thing to get his knees beneath him, though his ankles were ablaze with choleric blood and his numb feet felt bloated and alien under his weight. He planted the heels of his hands in the mud and prepared to dry himself to higher – and drier – ground. At that moment he realized with all the petulance of a vexed child that he was still tethered to the driftwood raft bearing his prisoner and his scanty gear.

Gollum was glaring at him with pale, implacable eyes, and for once Aragorn could not fault him for his resentment. The wretch was every bit as damp and chilled as he, if perhaps less exhausted, and bound as he was he could neither move nor warm himself. Easing back upon his tingling heels, Aragorn began to fumble with the knots.

'Your pardon,' he said, his words rasping hoarsely against the residue of water in his throat. 'I would have provided more elegant passage had I possessed the means. Still, we are both alive and largely unscathed, and that is better than I had hoped.'

Gollum snorted and twitched his nose unpleasantly, but the Ranger half fancied his expression softened a little – doubtless mollified by the apology. Nonetheless the effort of speaking put an ache in his chest, and so he fell silent as he struggled with the wet rope.

He had tied his knots well, and they gave almost easily under his manipulation. The moment the last of them fell away, Gollum sprung onto his heels and scurried away, scrambling up the bank. Seized with the terrible realization that he had allowed his quarry to escape, Aragorn tried to bolt to his feet, but his legs would not bear him up and his frozen toes slid in the mud. He pitched forward and the cord that was bound still to his wrist thrashed against his side. He was about to make a second wretched attempt when there came a low unpleasant snigger from the bank above. Raising his eyes to peer through the curtain of drenched and matted hair, Aragorn saw Gollum sitting with his back to a tree. His knees were drawn up near his chest, and his long, scarred hands were hidden in the pits of his arms. Too cold for flight perhaps, or else unsettled and afraid on this alien shore, he had chosen not to run.

Unwilling to question small blessings and too shrewd to tempt them, Aragorn tucked his drenched cloak-bundle into the crook of his arm and crawled up after his captive. Gollum did not balk or make any attempt to bolt as his captor drew near, and with remarkable and most unexpected patience he allowed Aragorn to replace the tether about his neck. Startled and grateful for this sudden cooperative cast, the Ranger took care to leave the bridle somewhat looser than before.

With Gollum secured, Aragorn turned his attentions to his own person again. His shirt, though badly soiled with mud, was already beginning to dry. A chill ran up his spine, and Aragorn tucked his limbs to his body and rocked a little, 'thinking warm thoughts', as Bilbo would have said.

The thought of his old friend and of what the dear hobbit would say if he could see the proud Dúnadan now cheered Aragorn considerably. If he ever reached the end of this perilous road they would doubtless laugh together at the account of captor and captive, two naked wretches shivering together beneath an uncomplaining ash tree. With the trial by water behind him and all of Anduin's frigid breadth between him and both pursuit from the south and the threat of Dol Guldur, Aragorn felt a weight lifting from his heart. Neither the promise of a cold and miserable day nor the imminent dangers of his winding road could serve to discourage him at this moment. Now, with his wits returning and his accomplishment to warm him, he felt able to press on.

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Aragorn moved slowly through the underbrush that clung close to Anduin's bank. His legs were sore and unsteady, their lean muscled length overtaxed by the desperate swim. More pertinent to his guarded pace was the need to tread with the greatest of care; for he went now unshod. The weight of his bundle of clothes told him it was most likely soaked through – an assumption given still greater validity by the incessant dripping of river water from the bottom of the roll. Wet boots were difficult to don; wet hose dangerous. It was far better to pick his way slowly forward until he reached a safe place to rest.

Gollum followed meekly, and again Aragorn marvelled at his prisoner's quiescence. Even the usual cries of 'yellow face' and 'burns us, preciouss!' were silent today. Anduin, it seemed, had the power to wash away defiance.

After about an hour, when the Ranger was beginning to wonder how much longer his weary limbs would obey him, they came upon a clearing. The trees formed an almost perfect ring carpeted with fallen leaves and the soft detritus of years past. The sun, now climbing to its zenith, cast an orb of yellow light upon the glade. It was as if the wilds had conjured up a bower built precisely to Aragorn's specifications. Thankful but worn down by the exertions of the day, Aragorn sank to his knees and bowed his head while Gollum sulked at the end of his rope, well away from the patch of sunlight.

There the wanderer unknotted his cloak, examining and spreading out the contents. As he had expected everything was wet. Hose and boots were soaking, his pack was flooded, and even the inmost folds of his cote were damp. For the first time Aragorn was glad that he carried no bread: his store of roots and tubers could not be spoilt by a little ducking. He dried his knife upon the grass, and lay out his cloak and belt and footwear. He could not hazard a fire so near the river, so instead he drew his tunic up over his legs with the less sodden panels against his skin. The wool offered a little warmth despite its wetness, and its weight was strangely comforting. Aragorn hunched low, huddling against his knees with his arms crossed over his chest. Forcing his strained muscles to loosen, he gave himself over to the quivering convulsions that he had been fighting since he washed ashore.

The indignity of sitting there helpless, shaking with cold, was a paltry price for the relief that shivering brought. Now that his shirt was almost dry and he was able to feel the winter sun upon his bare arms and his wet hair, Aragorn was beginning to grow warm at last. He let his head fall so that his brow rested upon his knees, and he huffed softly into the wool of his cote. His lips were trembling and it was only his careful effort to keep his jaw loose that kept his teeth from chattering, but he could feel the blood returning to his fingers and toes, and there was an unpleasant crawling feeling as the grease began to melt and to run out of his ears.

At last the paroxysms ceased, and Aragorn uncoiled himself. He stretched out his legs, rolling his ankles to loosen them. His left hand he planted on the ground, propping himself up as he leaned back a little. No longer frozen, the bites on his right arm were beginning to ache – but he welcomed this now-familiar discomfort on the grounds that he had come very near to never again feeling any sort of pain at all. The distant and dispassionate sun now felt quite pleasant upon his upturned face, and nearby Gollum was rooting in the mulch, apparently content to stay well in the shade and so well away from the Ranger.

Quite certain now that he was no longer in danger of slipping into deathly slumber, Aragorn eased himself onto his back. He drew his tunic a little higher upon his body and curled upon his side. He did not mean to fall asleep, but when it came he welcomed it.

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He awoke, stiff and chilled, to a smarting impact upon his right cheek. Warily he waited. Again something stung him, this time at his shoulder. He opened his eyes just in time to see Gollum, who was squatting at the end of his tether, flick another twig at him.

Aragorn rolled forward a little and sat up, his back creaking and his hams aching. His legs still held the memory of their swim, and he kneaded his right thigh with his good hand.

Twilight lay upon the land, and casting his eyes towards the circle of sky above Aragorn could see the first stars glittering in their nightly field. The despair he had felt during the last minutes of his frantic crossing had now wholly dispersed: how long it had been since last he had looked upon a clear sky, unsullied by the gloom that spread from Mordor like a cloud of ink in a dish of clear water.

Evidently Gollum was tired of watching his captor's reverie, for he threw another bit of wood, larger than the others. It nipped at Aragorn's left elbow, and the Ranger turned narrowing eyes on the prisoner.

'You are insolent, but you are right,' he said grudgingly. 'We have rested long enough. The miles are many that lie upon our northward road, but first I would like to put some distance between us and the river.'

Gollum did not appear interested in arguing.

As quickly as he could with his limbs stiff and his left hand bound, Aragorn dressed. His tunic was dry now, and warm from close contact with his body. Though also dry, his hose were cold and his boots stiff. His cloak was still quite wet, so instead of wearing it he slung it over his pack. With his belt once more girded and his knife at his side, he twitched his wrist to encourage Gollum to move, and off they went.

He cut a course now as due west as he could manage. There was little hope of concealing his trail from a skilled huntsman, though he did not doubt that his careful ways would be hidden from the casual observer. Their best chance, if pursuit found their landing, was to get as far from Anduin as they could, and in as little time as possible.

Before the night was full about them, the river valley fell away and Aragorn found himself upon a broad, grassy plain. There was little cover here, but also little obstruction. He fell into a comfortable stride, outpacing Gollum only enough that the creature had to scamper to keep up. A slow wind was blowing from the south, and far away a tawny owl cried out as it fell upon some unfortunate prey. The sound made the Ranger's mouth water. He walked now in living lands, and thought tonight he moved with all speed perhaps tomorrow he could hunt. It had been many days since he had last tasted flesh, and uncounted weeks since he had seen any fresh game.

Gollum, apparently, had similar yearnings. At the call of the owl he paused, one ear cocked to the wind. Then he crumpled forward, shaking his head and muttering woefully to himself as he followed his captor.

Chapter XXV: A Man in the Hay

Eastemnet was a quiet land. Mile upon mile the improbable companions traveled that night, and no sign did they see of man or beast. When dawn's first pale blush touched the blackness behind, Aragorn began to cast about for some place where they might rest. He was as eager as Gollum to halt today, for in sunlight upon these bare plains they would be readily visible to any watcher within two leagues. Furthermore, though he strove to keep any sign of it from his watchful prisoner, his exhaustion was mounting. The steady pace he was able to keep across these gentle plains had done much to warm his limbs, but it was wearing nonetheless upon his fortitude. As the stars rolled above him, hauling the lodestone of time towards the dawn, his thoughts began to turn covetously towards slumber.

He had fond hopes that he would be able to sleep again this day. Gollum's obduracy, it seemed, had been quenched in Anduin's frigid eddies. He had not made any move to escape despite the unconscionable opportunity he had been allowed. He had done nothing to press his advantage while the Ranger had slept. And now he moved quickly and obediently, scrambling on hands and feet through the long dry grasses half a pace ahead of Aragorn's softly treading boots. If he was not broken, he was tamed at last to the point of compliance. However long the road that led to Mirkwood, at least it would be a road free of bitter battles of will.

A nebulous shadow showed itself upon the horizon, blurring the distinction between the substantial dusk of the land and the inky blue void of the star-fields to the west. There was not yet enough light for the sharpest of mortal eyes to pick out any detail, but long experience and a half-forgotten familiarity with these lands told Aragorn that it was a little copse of the sort that clung fast to streams and creek-beds in these rolling grasslands.

'What do you think?' he said, addressing his captive with little hope of a reply. 'Shall we find a place to rest our bones?'

Gollum glared blackly over his shoulder and raised one hand to his mouth, nipping at a tag of loose skin that had once been a blister. He spat out the sliver of desiccated flesh and turned away, scrambling more quickly and forcing Aragorn to lengthen his stride. Weary muscles protested, but the Ranger had to smile. How often had he used the same trick himself when a travelling companion had made some inane or irritating remark?

By the time they drew near to the small cluster of trees the Sun had already ascended halfway over the horizon behind. Aragorn was for a moment affronted, but then he remembered how swiftly she climbed in these lands where there were no mountains and few hills to hinder her. Gollum was already beginning to writhe and whine, wringing his long fingers against his eyes and gnashing his sparsely populated gums. As they reached the first low bushes he scrambled into the shade, tugging insistently upon the rope that bound him.

'Peace,' said Aragorn. 'I would like to move farther in than this, unless you wish to proclaim our presence to every bird and roving fox within two leagues.' He twitched the cord and the yanking ceased. Resentful but subdued, Gollum came inching out into the open.

Not a hundred yards hence, they came to the place that gave life to the sheltering boughs above. A little brook in a sandy bed broadened into a shallow pool that had been made both deeper and more broad by the building of a little stone weir at the mouth of the stream. How long ago this modification had been made Aragorn could not say, but from the wear of the stones and the untouched nature of the surrounding underbrush he could see that this was no longer a place much frequented. Few men now dwelt in these lands, and never had there been a great number of permanent settlements in Eastemnet. The herdsmen of Rohan kept their beasts upon these rolling plains, but they were a restless lot, moving their tents and their folk in an endless circle as they followed the grazing grasses. With winter now upon the land, they would be away to the south: there was little chance of stumbling upon the habitations of men.

Gollum, his eyes glittering with avarice, hurried to the water's edge and peered into the clear, rippling depth of the pool. Recalling previous encounters, Aragorn knew the creature was looking for fish, but he would find none. The little stream was strangely bereft of weeds and plants, though the sand was fine of grain and land about seemed fertile enough.

The Ranger knelt and dipped his fingertips cautiously into the water. It was cold and slow-flowing, until it tumbled raucously over the little dam. Lifting his hand to his face he sniffed at it, but smelled nothing. He touched the tip of his tongue to the wet place on his first finger, but he could taste only the bitter tang of the earth that was ground deep into his skin. The water seemed free of any alkali minerals, and there was no hint of sulphur, and yet river-weeds did not grow here. Uneasily he sat back upon his heels, tracing its upstream pathway until it vanished westward into the trees.

His efforts to find food proving fruitless, Gollum snorted loudly and braced himself against the bank, rearing his head to plunge it into the water. With a sharp hiss, Aragorn recoiled, yanking thoughtlessly upon the lead that bound him. Gollum was jerked backward, choking out a shriek of indignation.

'Do not drink the water!' Aragorn cried, scrambling over to his prisoner and coiling his left arm around Gollum's thin chest. Gollum writhed, trying to escape, but the Ranger held fast, one eye ever upon the sharp yellow teeth. 'Do not!'

When Gollum ceased to struggle the Ranger eased his grip. 'There is nothing growing in the water,' he said uneasily. 'Something has rendered it unfit for plants, unfit for fish. There is not even a water-skater to be seen. The rill seems wholesome, but it is not. Something upstream has tainted it; we would be most unwise to drink. I have not sought you these many years and brought you these weary miles to see you poison yourself.' He took the bottle from his belt and held it out to Gollum. 'If you are thirsty, take this.'

Gollum glowered blackly, but took the bottle. He dug out the stopper with his spindly fingers, and quaffed quickly of the tepid fluid inside. Then without troubling to replace the cap he thrust it back into Aragorn's hands. With a tiny twitching of his lips that might have been the beginning of a smile or the first syllable of some recrimination, Aragorn drove the bung back into its hole and hung the vessel once more in its place.

'We will find some other place to rest,' he said, getting to his feet and moving back into the trees so that Gollum was no longer within reach of the stream. 'I do not trust empty waters.'

He expected a fight as he led his captive away, out of the shade and once more into the milky sunlight, but Gollum did not resist. He walked, loping in his usual unbalance gait and rubbing at his throat between strides. Back onto the plain they moved, Aragorn now limping a little. The brief relief of sitting by the stream had brought to light the pain in his right leg and the weary tenderness that plagued his ordinarily tireless feet.

He walked northwards until he came to a place where low, flat stones furnished a ford across the peculiar little brook. He wondered what evil could have stripped it of its life, yet left no trace within its waters. Some strange devilry far upstream, perhaps – but what? Sauron had no sway in these lands, and to the west from whence the brook flowed there lay only the fields of Rohan and the rivers of Entwash and Isen. The former was held by the lord of the Mark, and the latter watched over by Saruman from his stronghold at Isengard.

At another time and in other company he would have laid aside his present road to investigate. Following that stream westward, to its very root high in the stony crown of Methedras if needs must, he would have discovered the source of the contamination. Then he might have taken some action to remove or remedy it, to restore life to this lonely rill and put right this small wrong that troubled a fair land. Such was his duty as a hidden guardian of the peaceful West, but he had not the leisure for such stewardship now. His obligation first and foremost was to his word, and to the grim commitment he had undertaken when first he had set out upon this quest nigh on sixteen years ago. He could not now turn from his set course: Gollum had to be delivered safely to Mirkwood. If he chanced again to walk in these lands when under no such obligation, he would explore the cause of this trouble. Until such a time, all that he could do was hope that one little ill was not a mark of a far more grievous wrong.

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Noontide was near before keen and heavy eyes fixed upon some other sign of shelter. When he discerned what it was, Aragorn quickened his strides. There in a little hollow of the land sat half a dozen golden domes, their rounded caps twice as high as a man's head. They were themselves a wanderer's friend, for hay-ricks provided shelter from wind and rain and even snow, but he was more interested in the dark mass beyond them. There sat a squat, forlorn-looking hut. Doubtless this was some waystation built by the herdsmen of Rohan, visited at whiles as they made their way across the plains. But there were no herds to be seen, no kine nor any horse nor any hint of human habitation. No smoke rose from the thatched roof, and the skins stretched over the windows showed no sign of light within. The thought of lying down to sleep beneath a roof, safe from watchers and guarded from the wind, gladdened Aragorn's heart. Such places were difficult to find, but there was a curious comfort in passing a night – or indeed an afternoon – in an abandoned building, provided its walls were sturdy and its roof in little danger of collapsing.

Gollum seemed less eager, and he hung back so that Aragorn was obliged to tug at the rope to induce movement. As they descended into the little dell, Aragorn abruptly recognized the source of his prisoner's discomfiture. There was no fire in the cottage, and the wattle-and-daub walls were cracked and in places beginning to crumble, but hanging at the windowsill was a neatly darned apron, and the bucket beneath it was sound and watertight. A broom leaned next to the stout wooden door, and the latch-string had been pulled to the inside. Though there were no cattle Aragorn could smell the unmistakable musk of pigs, and somewhere behind one of the hay-ricks a clutch of chickens were gossiping.

The cottage, sorry-looking though it was, was not abandoned.

Aragorn turned to make a hasty retreat, but at that moment the squall of an indignant infant came from within the house and he heard the telltale shriek of brittle leather hinges. There was no time to flee, and so he bolted for the nearest haystack, burrowing carefully into the straw on the side furthest from the house and reeling his prisoner after him. Gollum, who ordinarily scorned close contact with his captor, seemed to find the prospect of a screaming child more horrible by far. He came without resistance and dug his way so deep into the hay that Aragorn lost sight of him.

The door thumped against the wall, and a woman's voice was heard, scolding anxiously in the tongue of the Rohirrim. Long years had passed since last Aragorn had heard such syllables, and his ear was slow to adjust, but as remembrance seeped in he realized she was upbraiding a child.

'… sleeps little enough without you prodding at him! Get out with you and leave me be! Annis! Go and mind your brother.'

From within a muffled, petulant little voice protested; 'But Mamma, it's cold outside!'

'Never mind that,' the woman retorted, raising her voice to be heard over the infant's lusty sobs. 'I can't put the baby to bed with Osbehrt underfoot. Wrap up in my shawl and mind him.'

She sounded near to tears herself, and it seemed the girl was aware of it, for she said softly, 'Yes, Mamma.' A moment later the door closed gently and Aragorn heard her say, doubtless addressing the unlucky Osberht in a solemn and most instructional tone, 'You mustn't prod Baby. Baby is just like a little piggy: if you prod him he will squeal, and Mamma can't bear it.'

Osberht mumbled something in the contrite jargon of a child who has not yet mastered words sufficient to express his feelings.

'And take your fingers out of your mouth,' his sister scolded superciliously. 'You sound like a little pig yourself.'

' 'M sorry, Anni,' said the little boy. 'Play with me?'

Aragorn pursed his lips, wishing that he had taken the time to dig himself deeper into the hay. He was behind the stack furthest from the cottage, but two energetic youngsters could cover such a distance in a matter of moments. That Gollum was well out of sight was something of a comfort, but a strange dark-haired wild man dressed in outlandish rags and carrying a long naked knife would garner suspicion enough in these lands. Though he could easily escape a brace of children they had a mother – and like as not a father – nearby. Aragorn did not relish the thought of a confrontation with an angry husbandman or his stalwart wife: the Rohirrim were a hardy lot, and his knowledge of their ways and their tongue would not be sufficient to extricate him and his prisoner without explanations he could not offer.

Yet it seemed the little boy's notion of play did not involve running or exploration. After an interval of silence, he heard the child lisping out his numbers. 'One. Two. Three. Six.'

'Four,' Annis told him. 'One, two, three, four.'

'There's four. There's six. There's one,' the boy said. This time the girl did not trouble to correct him, and he went on. 'There's nine. There's seven. There's six. There's six.'

He seemed to have a particular affinity for six.

Aragorn listened for a while, and his head grew heavy with weariness. He let it bob down so that his chin rested upon his chest and the hay drooped down over his eyes. He longed to stretch out his aching legs, but such a noise would attract undue attention. So he sat there, huddled awkwardly in the hay-rick, half-dozing as Osberht continued his counting.

'There's one. There's two. There's five. There's six. There's eight. There's six.'

After a while, his sister sighed. 'I'm cold,' she said. 'I wonder if Baby's asleep yet.' There came the unmistakable sound of small bare feet rustling in the grass. 'I'm going to see the chickens.'

'There's four,' Osberht said happily.

'Yes, there's four,' agreed Annis with a tired sigh. Despite his predicament Aragorn felt a warm hint of amusement. There were some things in the world that remained the same, wherever he wandered and whoever he met. A sister's patient tolerance of her younger brother was one of those things. He supposed that if he were ever so fortunate as to have children of his own, they would behave just the same as these two. Save of course, a prideful little voice in his heart declared, that his son would know all of his numbers in the proper sequence.

He heard the girl move off, doubtless towards the henhouse. Osberht continued his contented counting. Somewhere deep in the hay, Gollum was breathing through his nose.

The straw was warm and the children were no immediate threat. Aragorn closed his eyes and let his mind slip away, clinging tenuously to the last thread of consciousness despite the intolerable urge to sleep. He could not give himself over to slumber however he might crave it. Instead he let his thoughts depart, swaying to the rhythm of his beating heart, into the realm of memory where dwelt still the impetuous young man who had come down from the nameless North into the green fields of the Riddermark.

He had stood before the gates of Edoras eager and filled with the vainglory of youth, but the initial flush of pride and the excitement of his first lone journey into distant lands were swift to fade. Waking from the pleasant dream of independence he had found himself, isolated and very much alone, in a strange country filled with unfamiliar folk who spoke a tongue that despite his extensive education in the languages of the West he had never had occasion to learn. Having been an articulate child and an equally erudite young Ranger, it had proved quite a shock to find himself suddenly incapable of expressing his smallest need. While some of the Rohirrim spoke the Common Tongue of the West, such folk tended to belong to the more prosperous classes: merchants who traded with the people of Gondor; men of learning and profession; and of course anyone closely associated with the court of Thengel, who had dwelt for many years in exile in Minas Tirith and who had returned with a bride from among the Dúnedain. These people, though courteous enough, had little cause for discourse with a foreign youth of unproved mettle serving as a soldier of fortune in the meanest ranks of the king's men.

For the most part his early dealings with the Rohirrim were with soldiers and labourers, like himself of lowly estate. Unlearned in Westron and impatient with his ineptitude in their own language, they had proved reticent teachers. In the end Aragorn's tenacity and innate gift for tongues had rendered him fluent, but the lesson in humility that had come with those early months of inarticulate helplessness had left its mark. He had learned a patience for those who struggled to express themselves in even the simplest of terms, and that patience had remained with him through all the long years since. It was, he reflected with some irony, that very same patience that in recent days had been stretched to its very limits by his silent and impassive companion.

The heavy, rotund syllables that tripped so easily from the tongue of the counting boy nearby brought a fond flicker of remembrance to Aragorn's eyes. He remembered his initial amazement at the rich, deep quality of the sounds that issued from the throats of the children of Rohan. Such resonating vowels seemed to fill their small mouths beyond reasonable capacity. In the days of Thengel's reign Edoras had been filled with children: merry-eyed and contented, flaxen-haired and bright-eyed. And westward, beyond the cold waters of the Entwash, the golden roof of the Meduseld still shone at sunset and the young of the Mark still laughed while he and the errantries of his youth were long forgotten by their grandsires.

It was a bittersweet taste of the draught of the Eldar, this knowledge that those with whom he had ridden as brothers in arms were now old men in their dotage while he, weary and worn but still filled with the vigour of his manhood, laboured ever in the timeless fight. Strange it was, to think that he remembered those now aged or dead as young men in the green summer of life. From Gandalf he knew that Thengel's son still reigned in Rohan, but he would now be in his sixty-ninth year – unrecognizable to one who had known him as a boy of fourteen summers.

Gollum's breathing could no longer be heard.

The unwanted thought tore through Aragorn's reverie, and his pulse quickened. The moment of dismay was allayed by a waspish intake of air, scarcely audible through the wall of hay. In the next beat however, the horror returned as Aragorn realized what had caused his prisoner to fall so abruptly silent.

Not ten feet away, standing pigeon-toed with two grubby fingers in his mouth, stood what could only be Osbehrt. He was a tiny child, surely not yet three years old. His tousled hair and his untidy tunic attested to his age and the acquiescence of an overtaxed mother to the inevitable disarray of childhood. Though perhaps not presentable he appeared to be well-fed, and his wide eyes were enormous in his plump little face. In other circumstances this picture of innocent astonishment would have warmed Aragorn's heart, but the great staring orbs and the thunderstruck expression were both directed at him: the intruder half-buried in the hay rick.

It was strange that, after all he had suffered and survived in recent weeks, he found himself uncertain how he might cope with this small challenger. If he moved or spoke, it seemed likely that the boy would scream. If he did nothing, surely Osbehrt would recover his senses in a moment or two, and go running off to fetch his sister and his mother. The Ranger could not fly, and his perfunctory attempt at hiding had obviously failed. At a loss as to how he might extricate himself, and mindful of his disheveled and largely threatening appearance, Aragorn did the one thing he felt able to attempt. He smiled.

It was not so difficult as he would have supposed. The boy was an endearing spectacle with his small bare feet and his downy hair. In almost any other circumstance his countenance of bewilderment would have been quite comical. And through all the trials and travails of his long life, Aragorn had retained the talent of producing, when his cares allowed him some respite, a genuinely disarming smile.

To those truths that remained constant in every land Aragorn decided to add this: that children who had not yet achieved the age of suspicion were not so easily swayed as their elders when it came to judgment on the basis of dress or cleanliness. His unexpected presence had startled the boy, but his unkempt and begrimed appearance weighed little against his expression. Instinctively the boy reciprocated, turning up the corners of his little bow mouth so quickly that his hooked fingers quite disfigured his lower lip. It was seemingly every bit as uncomfortable as it looked, for he promptly loosed his hold on his jaw and let his arm fall aside. Then he bent at waist and knees, leaning forward in a classic pose of babyhood with his hands cupped over his knees. From thence he sprung forward in a bounding hop, bouncing on the balls of his feet and clapping his hands joyously.

Aragorn's smile widened, and he was just about to speak to the boy when an irate young voice cut through the winter air.

'Osberht? Where are you? Come here at once!'

Annis was near at hand, apparently unable to see her little charge. Osberht's head shot to the side like a hunting-hound mustering to the horn. 'Here, Anni!' he called.

'No!' Aragorn hissed. He might be able to endear himself to a babe of two years, but an astute girl of six or seven was another matter. Osberht looked at him, startled, and Aragorn realized that in his haste to quiet the child he had cried out in the wrong tongue. 'Go on: go to her,' he whispered, this time in the language of Rohan. 'Don't keep your sister waiting.'

Osberht nodded sagely, and charged off with his short legs flying. 'Here I am, Anni,' he said happily as he trundled out of sight.

'You know you're not meant to go past the haystacks!' Annis scolded. She was very near: twenty feet a most. Aragorn held his breath, bracing himself against imminent discovery. 'Naughty boy! What were you doing over there?'

'Looking at the man,' Osbehrt said enthusiastically.

'What man?' Aragorn could almost hear the narrowing of her eyes and the skeptical frown as it spread across her lips.

'The man in the hay. He's my friend.'

Annis sighed in exasperation. 'There's no man in the hay. There are only mice in the hay. You saw a mouse.'

Blessed was the cynicism of an older sister. Osberht, however, did not share the Ranger's desire to have his tale dismissed. 'No, it's a man!' he said firmly. 'A man with black whiskers.'

Annis stifled a giggle. 'All right, then; it was a man,' she said condescendingly. 'With black whiskers.'

Osberht was young and innocent, but he knew when he was being patronized. 'It is too a man! Come and see!'

Aragorn's mouth went dry. It was absurd, even funny, that after escaping orcs and spiders and even the tender ministrations of the Nazgûl he was about to be caught and waylaid by a little girl. In his present situation however, when all he wanted was an expeditious escape, he was in no fit state to appreciate it.

'Come on, Anni! Come see the man.' The strain in Osberht's voice told the Ranger that he was hauling on his sister's arm. As it turned out, this was a tactical error on the part of the boy, for older sisters do not take kindly to overly forceful brothers. A moment later Aragorn could hear their padding feet as she marched him back towards the house.

'You're not allowed to go past the haystacks!' she admonished with all the passionate vehemence of one child's authority over another. 'Mamma will be most unhappy!'

There was a groan of leather and the cottage door swung closed behind the children. Through the waxed linen stretched over the window of the house came the unhappy squawk of a baby as Osberht exclaimed eagerly, 'Mamma, Mamma, there's a man in the hay!'    

Chapter XXVI: Falling Out

Aragorn did not pause to listen to Osberht's merry account of their strange meeting. He got one foot underneath himself and turned onto his knees. Facing the place where the length of orc-rope vanished into the hay he hissed with all urgency, 'Come out of there! We have to move.'

Gollum did not emerge. Whether he was afraid of the children or merely seizing the opportunity to antagonize his captor, he was evidently intending to cling to his hiding-place. There was a certain element of good sense in this proposal, but Aragorn doubted very much that he might join his prisoner and so escape scrutiny and therefore they must both move. He reached out, intent upon plunging his hands into the hay to fish for his travelling companion. As he did so, however, a little bolt of pain shot up his right arm. The skin drawn snug over the still-swollen bite marks protested the sudden movement, reminding him all too vividly of the dangers of grappling with Gollum.

Yet he could hear the boy protesting over his sister's prim remarks about mice with whiskers, insisting that there was a man in the hay and that his mother ought to come out to meet him. There was no time to reason with Gollum; no time to coax him out. Aragorn took hold of the rope that joined him to his captive, and tugged upon it. He tried not to pull too forcefully: a firm pressure would indicate his will just as effectively as a sharp jerk. But Gollum on the other end pulled back, dragging on the rope from his side. Clambering to his feet and bracing his boot firmly against the ground, Aragorn hauled on the cord with all of his strength.

Gollum emerged with a hoarse, piercing shriek. One hand clung to the rope, clutching it to keep slack the loop about his neck. The fingers of the other scrabbled against the ground while his spindly legs flailed.

Swift as a diving hawk, Aragorn swooped down and drove a tattered corner of his cloak into Gollum's mouth, silencing the scream – but too late. Inside the cot the little family had gone silent: even the infant had ceased his burbling. The Ranger hooked his good arm around Gollum's chest, using his right hand to keep the makeshift gag in place. Hoisting the thrashing creature off the ground, Aragorn cast about for a route of escape.

The empty plains of Rohan offered little in the way of cover. Indeed, without the hay ricks his only hope of concealment was the shield of little house itself, and in full flight it would not hide him long. He had no chance of vanishing swiftly enough over the distant horizon: even unencumbered by his prisoner such a sprint was beyond his admittedly diminished powers. In the moment of desperation, with Gollum writhing and kicking against him, Aragorn took six long, loping strides and cast himself down on the ground behind the canted shed that served as a henhouse, pinning Gollum beneath his body. A command for stillness fell hollow upon his lips: there was little use and no time.

The inevitable squawk of the leather hinges tore through the air. Aragorn bit down upon his lower lip, an involuntary spasm born of apprehension.

In Gondor the women he had encountered during his years in Ecthelion's service had been delicate; accomplished in the desired pursuits of the privileged: music and writing and all the elaborate works of the needle. He remembered them as competent and gracious hostesses, some scholarly, a spirited few skilled in the arts politic. The daughters and wives of Gondor's lords, they represented a privileged caste and they were as cool and ornamental as the statues that populated the streets of Rath Dínen. They were conduits of great power and influence, but clothed in the fine silks of culture and veiled in carefully coded propriety.

The women of Rohan were cut of a different cloth. They were hale and stout-hearted; as bold as their menfolk, as stubborn as their children, as wild and as lovely as the wind-whipped plains of their homeland. The ladies of the Rohirrim did not remain ensconced in shrines of wealth and position. They tilled the land, they tended to their hearths, and they did what was necessary to safeguard the homes they laboured so faithfully to maintain. In their stolid determination and their unflinching courage they reminded Aragorn of the wives and sisters and mothers of his own people in the North. He could not imagine the determined and fiercely sanguine Andreth, or Fíriel with her longbow and her sinewed arms—or indeed his own mother's mother, who had been the touchstone of his people through grim years uncounted—waiting breathless and frightened inside their isolated cottages while some unknown threat lurked in the wild lands without. No more, therefore, had he expected it of this woman.

'Show yourself!' she commanded, and though there was fear in her voice the defiance was stronger. 'Trespassers are not welcome here, but if you mean no harm I will allow you to depart in peace.'

Gollum shifted beneath him, one bony knee knocking against the hilt of the long knife in his belt, and Aragorn pressed down more firmly against him. He could not but admire the woman's valour: had he wished to overcome her he might easily have done so. But a memory of Thengel's daughters visited him: tawny shield-maidens with strong shoulders and fleet feet, as able in the saddle as their young brother and filled with the same forceful fire. A common vagrant or a starveling footpad would be a poor match for such a woman, especially with her children to protect.

'Show yourself!' she repeated. 'I know you are there: we heard you cry out. Come out or I will come after you.'

It was the mark of a skilled negotiator that he could read from the words of another whether a pledge – or a threat – was bolstered with earnest intent. Aragorn was considered even among the Wise to be a gifted diplomat, and he knew that this woman meant just what she said. He also knew that he had little time to consider his options. She would come after him, and she would find him, and between his bedraggled state and his strange-looking captive he was unlikely to win her trust.

His appearance could not be altered now, but at least he might do something about his prisoner. Aragorn hoisted his cloak over his head, bundling it tightly around Gollum so that he was swathed head to foot in the weatherworn wool. Then as swiftly as he could, while the woman made a third demand that he emerge, Aragorn untied the cord about his wrist and looped it through one of the posts that supported the walls of henhouse. Then he climbed onto his feet and stood, slowly and cautiously, stepping out from behind the coop with his arms outstretched in a gesture of surrender.

'Here I am,' he said in her language, keeping his voice soft and free of any intonation that might be perceived to present a threat.

His wild looks were apparently menacing enough: the woman quailed at the sight of him, taking one tremulous step backward. Her hip struck the post of the open door behind her, and abruptly she straightened, a look of stern defiance frosting over the moment of terror. She was thin and wiry, and very young – almost too young, Aragorn thought, to be the mother of a child as old as Annis. Her hair was twisted back into a brief plait: illness or practicality had led her to shear it shorter than the wont of her countrywomen. She stood with her bare feet planted firmly on the packed earth, and her capable-looking hands gripped a long scythe with a wicked blade. Out of the corner of his eye Aragorn could see the tall hay-ricks: she knew how to use her chosen weapon.

'Who are you? What are you?' she demanded.

'Only a traveller, lady,' he answered softly, his tone belying the tension that rippled through his body. He kept his eyes upon her, watchful for any sign that she meant to spring at him. He did not doubt that she could maim him if she wished to: the winter nights had seemingly gone to the whetting of that scythe. 'I mean you no harm. I did not realize that any folk dwelt in this country so early in the year.'

'Well, I'm dwelling here!' snapped the woman. 'And strangers aren't welcome. What do you want? You don't belong in this land.'

'Indeed I do not,' said Aragorn. 'I am travelling north, and do not wish to tarry in Eastemnet, but I was weary and I confess your hay seemed a tempting shelter.'

'That fodder is for our cows, not for wild men to sleep in. And you have no business talking to my boy!'

A faint smile touched Aragorn's lips. 'In that I must beg your forgiveness, lady. He is a darling child, and I have not seen his like in many years.'

The woman's expression shifted almost imperceptibly, and her grip on the scythe-handle loosened enough that a flush of colour returned to her knuckles. 'Yes, he is a darling child,' she said; 'and I promise I will kill you if I must, to protect him.'

'There is no need for that. I shall go willingly. Had I known you and your children were here I would never have come down into this dell. I mean no ill to the good folk of the Riddermark, and I seek only safe passage through these lands.' Reason seemed likely to prevail: his words were dissipating some of the panic that lurked behind her brave face. Aragorn allowed himself to relax a little in turn, lowering his hands so that they rested at his sides.

Abruptly the woman grew tense again, jerking the scythe in unequivocal menace. Aragorn realized too late that the motion had drawn undue attention to his knife. With finger and thumb he plucked it from his belt and cast it on the ground. The woman inhaled sharply, torn between alarm and surprise.

'I mean no harm,' Aragorn said again. 'Please. Let me go on my way.'

Before the woman could answer him there was a flurry of woolen skirts and pale, bouncing curls, and a sturdy girl-child bounded out in front of her mother, brandishing a long iron poker.

'Go away!' she commanded viciously. 'Go away before my father comes back and shoots you with his sling!'

The woman seemed torn between horrified astonishment and wild amusement, but Aragorn made a point never to mock the courage of children. Solemnly he bowed his head to her and said; 'I will be glad to go away, young mistress, if your mother gives me leave. I am a trespasser on her holding, and I am therefore at her mercy – and yours.'

His level words brought the lady to her senses. 'Annis!' she said sharply, letting one hand loose of the scythe to seize her daughter by the shoulder and push her back into the doorway. 'I told you to mind the baby.'

'I'm minding the baby,' lisped a familiar voice. Osberht appeared on the threshold, his short arms wrapped around a lusty-looking babe of some three months. The boy's back was swayed and his belly thrust out as he trundled beneath the weight of the infant. 'I'm helping,' he said happily.

Mother and sister turned upon him and a moment later the scythe was on the ground as the woman scooped up her child before his well-meaning sibling could drop him. The babe hiccoughed contentedly and the woman smoothed his downy hair. She clucked softly to her little one in some nonsensical love-language, before reaching down to rap Osberht's chin with her knuckle.

'You're too small to carry the baby,' she scolded fondly.

'Yes, much too small,' Annis agreed. She was holding the poker like a cooking spoon now, and no longer seemed quite so formidable an opponent.

Not until the woman turned her eyes upon him again did Aragorn realize that he had been smiling at the portrait of domestic serenity before him. He moved his lips slightly in a wordless apology. She hiked the baby up onto her bony hip and cocked her head to one side, studying him with a critical eye.

'Go,' she said. 'I cannot stop you. Next time you pass this way, remember that you are not welcome in our hay.'

'Yes, lady. I will remember,' Aragorn said. 'Thank you.'

The woman clicked her tongue and herded Annis and Osberht into the house. She turned on the stoop, looking him over once more. 'You may fill your skins at our well,' she said. 'The stream is foul: we lost one of our calves this spring. But be sure you replace the cover. Osberht might so easily fall in.'

Aragorn nodded wordless thanks, and stood motionless until the woman was inside. He heard her draw the latch, and then there was the grinding sound of a bolt being lowered across the door. Then he took a moment to exhale, gratitude for his easy escape suffusing his chest like warmth. He bent to retrieve his knife, and then moved towards the wooden pallet that doubtless covered the well. It might have been prudent to check on his captive first, but it was only by the best of fortune that the woman had not inquired whether he was alone. It would not do to court discovery.

Quickly he raised the well-cover. There was a bucket within, hanging from a hook driven deep into the sheer earthen side of the hole. He lowered it deftly, drawing up the full vessel raining clean water. He rinsed his bottles and filled them, then cupped his hand to drink of the cold fluid. Last he bathed his face, before returning the pail to its place and covering the well again. Then tucking his knife into his belt he rose and moved swiftly towards the henhouse. What he saw as he turned made him regret his choice to draw water first.

Gollum had wriggled free of the Ranger's cloak. Though he was still tethered to the coop he had rounded it, and with his nimble fingers had forced the latch on the hen-house door. He was squatting before it now, one leg bracing it so that the fowl could not escape. He was leaning into the crack, his head twisted round and his eyes screwed closed in concentration as his feeling fingers groped inside. The chickens seemed oblivious to his surreptitious quest, for they had not altered their gossiping clucks, but Aragorn realized at once what the wretch intended.

He bolted forward, covering the remaining ground in a bounding leap. Just as he was about to seized him by one bony shoulder, Gollum bared his teeth with a hiss of triumph. Rocking back on his heels he drew out his prize: a small brown egg. His eyes glittered greedily, and he flexed the fingers of his other hand in anticipation. Quick as he could, Aragorn plucked the egg from the creature's fingers while at the same moment hauling back on the halter so that Gollum was robbed of breath before he could cry out his protest.

'You hateful thief!' he snarled, his voice a discordant whisper that was hopefully inaudible within the house. Gollum was clawing at the rope, his tongue working furiously as he made a muted attempt to scream. Aragorn twisted the cord more tightly about his wrist. 'Be silent or I will silence you for all time! I will not have you betray us. Do you understand?'

Gollum tried to answer, but he could scarcely breathe. Instead he nodded frenetically. Aragorn released his grip and the prisoner fell back against the wall of the henhouse, gurgling hoarsely and rubbing at his throat. There was an angry red wheal where the cord had cut into it, but Aragorn had no patience for pity now. He opened the door to the coop and crouched to peer inside. The chickens, indignant, began to ruffle their feathers. Hastily he reached out to settle the egg in the corner, where it would hopefully keep until young Annis came to fetch it. Then he pressed the door closed and turned a smouldering eye on Gollum.

'Chokes us and beats us, precious. Tries to kill us, gollum,' he was muttering.

'Be silent!' Aragorn hissed. 'Do you expect me to watch while you rob these good people of their meagre victuals? How do you think that woman can feed her children if we take her eggs? How dare you presume your need to be greater than theirs? What—'

He stopped, closing his eyes and inhaling long and deeply through his nostrils. It was purposeless to attempt to impart a lesson in morality on this wretched thing. Gollum was little better than an animal. Although as his captor Aragorn could demand a certain standard of behaviour he had as much chance of inducing him to see the error in his ways as he had of sprouting wings that he might fly them both to Mirkwood.

He opened his eyes with snapping abruptness, and Gollum quailed, casting up an arm to shield his head. Aragorn turned away from him, and his lips tightened in anger. The hateful little beast had broken the latch in his eagerness to open the door.

'I can't leave it like that,' he muttered, more to himself than to his prisoner. 'The land seems empty, but a fox will walk ten miles for the promise of a feathered meal.' He rummaged in his pack and drew out the short length of copper wire. It pained him to forfeit it, for it would have proved invaluable in the building of a snare, but Gollum had left him little alternative. With practiced hands he twisted it into a hook, which he used to secure the door. 'You spiteful, selfish creature,' he said, surveying his quarry in aggrieved disbelief. 'Not a sound as we move off, or the Yellow Face will be the least of your pains.'

Mercifully, Gollum obeyed him. Aragorn gathered up his cloak, secured the rope once more to his wrist, and hastened northward. He drove his captive before him, and he did not look back.

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Perhaps three miles from the little cot, Aragorn made a sharp detour westward as a fistful of shadows appeared on a hillside to the east: doubtless Osbehrt's father with his cattle. As much as he desired to avoid contact with the man he was glad to have some proof of his existence. It would have been an ill thing to leave that young woman alone in the wild with three children.

He wondered what their story was. They were herdsfolk, obviously, but why then had they not followed their countrymen south with the fertile pastures? The answer seemed absurdly obvious once it occurred to him. Of course a woman in her last weeks of pregnancy could not make a long and uncertain trek to an insecure destination. They had reasoned that it was better to stay here, to pass the winter alone, than to risk wandering the plains with a new babe in the heart of winter.

For the next two leagues while he walked with his craven captive before him, Aragorn found his heart troubled by that thought. If the south lands were not safe for the herdsmen, what trouble rode in Rohan? It had been so long since he had last roamed these lands. Was it possible that there was no longer peace between Gondor and her northerly neighbour?

Thengel and Ecthelion had been near as brothers, but between Denethor and young Théoden stretched almost twenty years' difference in age – and many times that in disparate experience. Alliances between nations were never as simple as the temperaments of their respective leaders, but certainly the friendship between King and Steward in the years of Thorongil had done much to ensure amity between realms. And Denethor, though wise in his way and fervent in his duty to his people, had always lacked a certain knack for diplomacy. Yet surely, Aragorn reassured himself, a little coolness between the house of Mardil and the children of Éorl could not bring about the downfall of an alliance that had stood for centuries.

The possibility was a dreadful one, and in his overtired state Aragorn found it difficult to dwell on anything else. Gollum, silent and understandably resentful, ambled on ahead of him, pausing now and again to gnaw at his wasted fingers and to whimper deep in his throat. When a bracken hedge appeared off to the left, the Ranger decided that it was past time to halt.

Aragorn opened his pack, offering his prisoner one of his precious taproots. Gollum took it grudgingly, but he turned his back so that Aragorn could not watch him devour it. Finding himself too weary even to think of food, Aragorn took a mouthful of the sweet well-water and stretched out on his back with his neck resting on an upraised root. With a last groping check of the knot about his wrist, he let himself slip into shallow slumber.

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He dreamed, strangely enough, of Osberht. The little boy was running across a broad green field, his short legs pumping with impossible speed as he tried to keep from tumbling forward under the force of his own momentum. He was shouting something, and as he drew near Aragorn recognized the sound of his own name – though it had never been uttered in this land, not even by Gandalf. Osberht was almost upon him when he stumbled, and Aragorn bent to catch him before he could fall. He drew back with an armful of darkness… the child was gone.

Anxious, Aragorn spun on his heels, eyes straining in the blackness that now surrounded him. Dismay flooded his limbs and stole his very breath. How would he explain to the boy's mother what had happened?

There was a sound in the darkness.

He could not move, nor could he breathe. The noise was a familiar one, far more familiar to him now than the sound of his name. Yet he could not place it, that guttural hissing noise like swamp-gas escaping from some deep fissure in the earth, like the primal warning of a cornered serpent, like the inky exhalations of a spider, like the hellish maledictions of the Nazgûl…

The darkness sifted away as if the world of sight were a sinister fog rolling across the night. In disjointed segments that misted his eyes Aragorn realized that he stood in a marsh-land, grey and noxious beneath the light of a dying moon. He could smell the sour sulphurous stench of long decay. The ground beneath his boots shifted and he began to sink. Struggling against the sucking mire, he struggled forward. A willow tree stood in the midst of the swamp, its dead boughs drooping low over the waters. He reached out and caught hold of a fistful of trailing tendrils, hauling himself onto the firmly packed earth amid the tree's roots. Breathless he knelt, panting shallowly into his hands. A willow-bough brushed his ear.

All at once the branches were no longer swaying silently around him. They whipped out like tentacles, seizing hold of his arms, his legs, his body. Ten long wands like fingers twined themselves about his throat – squeezing, gripping, choking. The hissing sound was deafening now, vying with the roar of blood in his ears as Aragorn fought to breathe. He struggled, then lay still as he felt his throat collapsing beneath the pressure of the willow's hands. With his deep reserves of will he ordered himself to awaken, to abandon this dream before it put him to any further discomfort.

And sure enough, the mire melted away. The tree vanished into a canopy of bracken and the foul odours of the marshes were replaced with the spicy smell of dead grass. The dream was gone, but its two most dreadful aspects remained: the crazed hissing sound, and the inexorable pressure of fingers knotted firmly about his throat.

In the moment before black blotches obscured his sight, Aragorn saw Gollum's pale eyes looming over him, malice and triumph shining within them.

Chapter XXVII: Retribution

A noise like the crash of squalling waves upon the cliffs of Anfalas thundered in Aragorn's ears. His sight was obscured, fading rapidly into darkness as the bony fingers dug further into his throat. Frantic, he threw back his head against the ground, but the moment's relief faded swiftly into anguished desperation; he had driven his assailant to tighten his hold. He was vaguely aware of a sharp knee driving into his ribs from above. Sluggishly he surmised that Gollum must be using his other leg to brace himself against the ground.

He knew that he had no time to lavish upon thoughts as slow as chilled treacle. He had scant moments before losing all mastery of himself, and yet he could neither quicken his reasoning nor act upon blind instinct. If Gollum was kneeling upon him, he realized with agonizing sloth, then he had chosen a manoeuvre ill-suited to a small attacker with a heavier victim. He might exploit that, and with that decision made he found he was able to act more quickly than he would have expected. Striking out with his right hand to distract his foe, Aragorn groped with the left for Gollum's ankle.

The creature hissed indignantly as his victim swatted his flank, and his fingers loosened a little. Aragorn was able to haul in a painful ounce of air that burned in his breast and did nothing to restore his sight. At that moment his questing hand at last found purchase on Gollum's wasted leg. He hauled upon it, twisting the limb outward so that Gollum pitched forward in a struggle to compensate without losing his hold. He succeeded: his hands held fast and squeezed still tighter as Gollum rotated his hands outward so that his fingers flanked the Ranger's spine and both thumbs rested squarely in the jugular notch beneath his larynx.

Aragorn's astonishment was amplified almost to giddiness as this change in position allowed his carotid artery to open again. He could feel the bright blood rushing upward once more, and his vision grew marginally clearer. Above him Gollum loomed, emaciated elbows locked for leverage and shoulders hefted almost to his ears. His mouth, a hideous rictus of vengeance, twisted and contorted with wordless utterances of rage and bloody malediction. Like a spectre of horrors long forgotten in Arda he hung there, suspended, as he thrust the force of his whole withered body onto his thumbs.

There was a moan like an oaken branch straining under frost. Then came a deafening crackle that yet seemed scarcely audible through the floodwaters of agony that rippled from the narrow pinion of pressure. Finally with a soft, sickening pop the cartilage gave way, and Aragorn was consumed in torment as his windpipe collapsed.

A thousand times more terrible than the simple sleep of asphyxiation was this strained and desperate death. Aragorn's chest heaved fruitlessly against the vacuum of his lungs that no air could reach. The glands in his jaw burned with a yearning that put to shame all other corporal urges. He could feel his eyes growing wide, straining against their sockets, and in his mouth his tongue began to swell until it spilled out over his lower teeth. The blackness of encroaching oblivion was gone from his eyes now, supplanted by the searing white light of torture unknowable.

Again he tried to breathe. Again he failed. His left leg spasmed. His heel dug into the mulch. The left arm flailed. There was a strange bolt of fire from his right. Gollum had thrust down one foot upon it. The darkness reared up to swallow him.

In that last instant before the irremediable moment of strangulation, Aragorn's wildly scrabbling left hand struck something that pierced it, digging into his palm with an abrupt pain sufficient to penetrate the smothering mask of torment that consumed him. Unable to remember the word for that which he was touching Aragorn seized it nonetheless and raised his arm high, his wrist twitching with pain and desperation but his hand – in a strange sacrificial gesture – held fast.

Gollum twisted like a hound shrinking from an upraised broomstick. He let loose a hoarse shriek of terror and threw his hands up to shield his head. He scrambled away, dragging on the cord that still tethered him to his captor's wrist. The arm fell leaden across the Ranger's chest, and the knife that he had seized embedded itself harmlessly in the earth.

A squealing hiss raked against Aragorn's vocal chords as he dragged in what little air could squeeze through his compromised throat. Then with a bolt of anguish almost as terrible as the first, his windpipe sprung back to its intended position. The spastic gasp as he drew in twin lungfuls of air echoed in his pounding skull. There was a moment of delicious relief, when the burning deep within him eased and the pain elsewhere was lost in the sweet euphoria of the moment, but then the exhaling wind strained against his ravaged neck and his temples began to pound in time to his hammering heart.

An anxious voice deep within him insisted that he sit up and defend himself, before Gollum's momentary fright passed and he returned to finish what he had begun, but Aragorn could not move. It was all that he could do to lie there, paralyzed with the scourges of his frantic struggle. He breathed again, more shallowly this time and not without suffering. His jaw seemed unhinged, and his tongue writhed a little, feebly, before withdrawing into the safety of his mouth. The next breath came in through his nostrils, which of course brought no more relief to his throbbing windpipe. Casting his eyes heavenwards he saw only a strange constellation of varicoloured blotches – his mind was grappling with the myriad pains of the flesh and could not lend attention to the restoration of his sight.

Another breath and his ribs began to ache. Rolling onto his right side, Aragorn managed to get his head onto his right shoulder. He coughed feebly into the dirt. Drawing up his right knee brought a little relief to his aching flanks, and after three more laborious intakes of burning air he was able to blink. That simple act did something to clear his addled eyes: the walls of bracken appeared as vague masses of shadow, and he could make out Gollum's hunched figure, watching him with menacing eyes from some small distance.

He coughed again, this time too forcefully. A stabbing agony shot forth from his neck where Gollum's thumbs had driven into it. Knotting his fists against the pain, Aragorn was compelled to open his hands again when fresh fire lanced through them. His right arm was pinned beneath his aching head, but he lifted his left so that his hand hovered before his eyes. The palm was bright with thin and swiftly running blood: he had cut himself upon the knife. Gritting his teeth against the sting, he took hold of the hilt again and jerked it out of the soft turf. The blade he angled towards Gollum in an obvious threat that was clearly understood: the creature shrank further away, covering his skull with his arms and whining wretchedly to himself.

Thus insured against further aggression, Aragorn squeezed tightly upon the hilt. The simple, quantifiable pain of the little contusion gave him a point of focus, a standard around which to rally his scattered faculties. Pragmatically, too, the gesture was a wise one. The pressure was closing the shallow wound so that it could begin to clot.

Breathing came now without catastrophic urgency, though each hollow gasp burned on its way in and came out amid a strained wheeze of pain. His left hand was numbed now, either because there was no longer any danger or because his body was slipping into shock. Aragorn wiggled his toes against the firmness of his boot-leather and decided that it was not the latter. His eyes were now as sharp as ever, and he fixed them upon Gollum while he took internal stock of himself. His chest ached from within, and his ribs were sore where he could still feel the imprint of Gollum's knee. His trachea had restored itself to its usual position, but it would be some time, he thought, before he could speak or swallow without pain. He seemed remarkably unharmed in other respects, save for the self-inflicted wound upon his hand and a familiar aching in his lower right arm. Gollum, in his attempt to prevent his victim from struggling, had trodden upon the old bite-marks and the healing abscess beneath them.

Aragorn's mouth moved as if to form words of chastisement, but the strain in his throat from even attempting to speak proved more than the effort was worth. Grimacing against the ache in his chest and the spiral of dizziness that danced in his head, he hauled himself up into a sitting position. He raised his right knee and braced himself with his heel. His left hand with the knife rested on his left thigh.

Gollum was watching him with wary hatred, doubtless torn between anger at his failure and terror of the consequences. Aragorn was too battered and exhausted for rage, but he did not doubt that it would come and he was not looking forward to the struggle between the instinct for revenge and the solemn responsibility he had undertaken sixteen years ago to bring the creature safely into custody. He had often been accused by his men in the North – most notably Halbarad, who suffered from no worshipful awe when it came to his Chieftain – of being too patient, too merciful, too perfect to be human. The sombre truth of the matter was that the countenance of patience, mercy and perfection was the product of a mighty and constant effort to suppress his more ignoble drives and to put forward in himself only those qualities that were best. He was endowed in his own measure with the choler of his race, and although after long years of practice he was most often able to rein in the wild horses of his temper the struggle was seldom without peril and at times took every filament of his will.

Now, at least, weariness prevented him from taking any action that he might latter regret. He concentrated on taking steady, gentle breaths that did not overtax his outraged windpipe. At length the manifold pains throughout his body settled into dull, persistent aches that would dog his steps for many leagues to come. Grimly he realized the there was an evil headache setting in, doubtless in equal part the fruit of the near-asphyxiation and the incompressible magnitude of the challenge still before him.

Nevertheless, he had business to attend to. A carefully measured response to this treacherous attempt at murder was required. As much as he might wish to exact vengeance for his own hurts, his duties as a jailer demanded a stern but not wantonly cruel punishment. He did not know if Gollum was capable of understanding justice, but even if he was not Aragorn did. His own self-worth was greater in value than the respect of any prisoner, and he would not sacrifice it for a moment's bloodlust. Besides, from a purely practical viewpoint, they had a long road yet to travel. He could not carry Gollum on his back all the way to Mirkwood, and so he needed to ensure at least a rudimentary level of cooperation.

He considered the situation carefully before attempting to move. What had worked before would surely work again: deprivation – and a ducking in Anduin – had curbed Gollum's hateful impulses for a spell at least. He would try the same now. His right arm was stiff, and there were fresh patches of wetness soaking through his sleeve, but he could attend to that hurt once his captive was secured. Ignoring the tendrils of pain that crept into his elbow and up towards his shoulder as he worked, he tugged his cloak out from under him. It was a wrench to do so, but he tore loose another breadth of wool and with his knife reduced it to useable strips. It was the time for a wry comment about what tiny remnant of the garment would remain when he reached his destination, but his aching throat curbed his sharp tongue.

He shaped the gag carefully this time, wrapping one piece of cloth around the other. There was no need to cause the creature excessive discomfort; what he had in mind for Gollum's hands would be punishment enough. He reduced the remaining strips to narrow lengths of binding cloth, and then set aside his knife.

Had it not been for the tether between them he never would have closed the distance between himself and his captive. Gollum writhed and wailed, but Aragorn was swift and strong and angry. Soon the piercing cries were muffled behind the wool, the gag tied as tightly as the Ranger could make it without throttling the wretch. He had lashed Gollum's bony wrists together, and now he set to work with the ribbons of cloth.

Because of the need for haste it was not expedient to bind Gollum's hands behind his back. The creature used his arms as he walked – if walking it could be called. Yet if Aragorn left his fingers free and before him, even with his wrists joined, there was a risk that he would try once again to strangle his captor. So he set about wrapping the wizened hands in layer after layer of cloth so that the fingers were all encased in a sort of tight mitten, immobilized against one another in their shroud. When this was done he anchored the thumbs against them too, wrapping and wrapping until from wrist to tips Gollum's hands were wrapped entirely in cloth. Carefully Aragorn pinched the very end of one finger to be sure that it was not engorged with blood. Satisfied that the bindings were not so tight as to cause stagnation and blood poisoning, he sat back to survey his work.

At some point in the proceedings Gollum had fallen into a horrified silence. Now he squatted before his warden, staring in terrified consternation at the bindings. He shot a look of querying fear at Aragorn, as if to communicate his alarm at this innovation in fetters.

Aragorn licked his lower lip and braced himself. With an effort that brought him more pain than he would have expected, he forced his voice through his battered airways. The resulting sound was hoarse and harsh, so cracked and unpleasant that he would have been ashamed to speak before any other company. Yet the desire to express himself proved worth both the ignominy and the discomfort.

"You should have used the knife," he said.

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When dusk descended the Ranger drove his captive out of their shelter. Gollum had proved reluctant to move, and so Aragorn had cut himself a stave from the bracken-bushes and used it to prod him along. He drove his prisoner before him now, the stick a constant reminder to press on. Gollum's gait was more uneven than ever before, for he could not splay his palms for support. Yet he was moving and the Ranger moved with him while the night deepened around them and Eastemnet vanished into darkness.

While he walked Aragorn considered the ramifications of the day's events. Clearly he had become complacent, trusting his prisoner's current standards of behaviour and stopping to rest without ensuring that he was properly secured. More troublesome still was the fact that he had allowed himself to slip into so deep a slumber that he did not awaken at the first intimation of a threat. Worse, he knew that "allow" was not the right verb to describe what had happened. He had had little choice in the matter: his body, long robbed of the deep and restorative sleep that even his hardy mind craved from time to time, had overcome both instinct and good sense. So worn down was he by this road that the need for sleep had overpowered his predisposition to self-preservation. It could not be allowed to happen again.

It could not be allowed to happen again, and yet it would. He had been on the road with his captive for more than a fortnight, and he had not even come within sight of the Hithaeglir. The road he had chosen was safer, no doubt, than the path that led by the doorstep of the Nazgûl, but it was almost exponentially longer. Sooner or later he had to sleep, and deeply. Sooner or later, Gollum would have another chance to attempt assassination.

Far away a hunting owl cried. Aragorn's stomach wrenched unpleasantly. Only yesterday, his primary concern had been securing some game to feed them both. Now that goal seemed almost absurd in its simplicity. Yet soon he would have to hunt: the diet of winter roots would not sustain him long on the road that lay ahead, and his hoarded stash was dwindling.

A sudden and profound weariness came upon him at that thought. Was it not enough to travel this unending road, accompanied only by a creature bent on murdering him in his sleep? Why did he also have to struggle even to meet the bare essentials of survival? Could not fortune dispense some little aid to speed him on his path?

Yet he knew no aid would come. This was the road he had chosen, and it was the road that he must walk. The will must be strong, though the flesh might fail. Long years ago, when he was still too young and innocent to fully comprehend the ramifications of his choice, he had set himself upon this path. Whether it ended in triumph or oblivion, his destiny was fixed. He must continue to walk, although he walked in darkness, until he could walk no more. And then, he thought sardonically, he would crawl – until his hands were bruised and tattered and his knees bled. There was no turning back, no wayside inn upon the interminable path of life. He had to walk on.

And on, on, on into the night while the plains of Rohan rolled by in shadow around him, all the time driving his prisoner before him into the never-ending uncertainty ahead.    

Chapter XXVIII: Strange Eyes

Before dawn Aragorn was obliged to halt, for weariness weighed upon every limb and the ache in his head was now a pounding chorus of agony. There was little cover to be had, so he herded his prisoner into a leeward hollow in the land and crouched next to him – too close for comfort but near enough to seize him if the need arose. Aragorn took a little water, and it seared in his bruised throat. He longed for sleep but he did not dare to indulge that yearning. Instead he drew up his knees, folding his arms over them so that he might rest his chin. This position put a strain upon his aching neck and so he turned his head so that his right cheek leaned upon his forearm. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on Gollum, refusing to allow his mind to wander lest rambling thoughts should weaken the threatening fire within them.

Sitting thus amid the grasses of Rohan he watched as the darkness faded into twilight and the sky grew grey with the coming of the dawn. The Sun rose over the plains, clad in the iridescent ribbons of varicoloured clouds. Aragorn let his stare deviate from his prisoner to drink in the glorious and half-forgotten sight. Moving westward with desperate haste he had not taken the time to thus observe the beauty of daybreak in all the days since emerging from beneath the Shadow. It was a heartening sight, a sustaining sight. Chances ill and good befell him and fortune's vagaries more often than not left him battered and weary, and yet through it all the great celestial travellers trod their timeless paths above him. That at least was unending, unchangeable, beyond the scope of his own small part in the history of Ëa to thwart or alter. He found comfort in that.

Comfort, and the will to continue with rest or without it. He got to his feet, and although Gollum writhed and struggled he began to walk. When his prisoner quailed Aragorn prodded him with his rough-hewn staff. Cutting path almost due West, the Ranger struck out over the plains again. After a while the ache in his legs settled into the dogged rhythm of his stride, and though his pharynx still burned and his head still throbbed both pains were bearable. The tightness in his belly troubled him little now, for though his innards cried out to be fed his mouth was filled with the sour taste of bile and his bruised throat stung at the thought of swallowing.

They made good progress that morning, despite Gollum's recalcitrance. Aragorn wondered what thoughts were cycling through the creature's vicious little mind as he loped awkwardly forward with the halter around his neck and the stick at his back. Doubtless he realized that his treachery warranted stauncher punishment than he had received, and the Ranger wondered if the wretch would view that disparity as evidence of weakness. Hobbled as he was there was no doubt that he was suffering discomfort commensurate to that he had inflicted – but not to that he had intended to inflict. Yet there was no room in this precarious balance of justice and expediency to punish his aims; only actions could be addressed. The truth was that Gollum's attempt upon his life had been thwarted, and a cool contempt for failure was the only suitable response.

Still, by noon Aragorn decided that his captive had suffered long enough. It was clearly an excruciating undertaking for the creature to move beneath the light of the sun, even filtered as it was by the thin clouds overhead. When a copse of alder trees cropped up upon the horizon the Ranger made straight for it.

He did not unbind Gollum's hands, for he had no wish to court further sedition, but he let the creature find his own shade. Gollum squatted in the underbrush, contorting his arms in a vain attempt to loose his melded limbs. Aragorn watched without pity; resentment still burned in his breast and though it did not become a noble heart he could not entirely quash it. He knelt near the bush that almost concealed his prisoner and kneaded his thigh with the knuckles of his left hand. The spider-wound still ached after exertion. He wondered absently if there had been some poison upon the great clawed foot that was preventing timely healing. If there had been, he decided, he would have succumbed to that hurt many leagues behind.

Gollum went suddenly still, his arms falling into his lap and his neck straightening abruptly. There was a predatory gleam in his eyes, and a greedy caste to his posture. The sudden change startled Aragorn and he held his breath, listening.

When he realized what his prisoner had heard, he felt a sour twinge of irritation. Ordinarily he would have been just as quick to notice the interloper so near their little shelter, particularly in his present state of deprivation. Quickly he loosed the knot around his wrist, tethering Gollum's lead to a low-hanging branch. He doubted that the wretch could go far in the time this enterprise would take, but he was not prepared to risk it.

Unencumbered by his captive Aragorn moved forward, creeping low to the ground until he reached the edge of the underbrush. There, in the long grass at the very border of the plain through which he had come striding, he spied the source of the sound he had heard. Squat and plump, its drab feathers glossy and well-tended, the partridge was pecking at the soft earth. Now and again it made a low trilling noise of victory as it caught up some tasty grass-seed. Intent upon its meal it did not hear the Ranger inching up behind it. Yet his shadow stole at last into its field of vision and the round bird ruffled its feathers, short wings arching out from its back – too late. Aragorn's fingers closed about its round little body and even as it began to writhe against his grip he flicked his right wrist and wrung its neck.

Instantly the bird was nothing but a limp weight in his hands, and a grim grin of victory touched Aragorn's lips. He had at last secured useful—rather than hindersome—game.

He retreated into the shelter of the trees, where he found Gollum lying on his back with his feet in the air, attempting to use his toes to yank free the tether. At Aragorn's hard glare he froze, and as the Ranger returned the end of the rope to his wrist Gollum resumed his squatting stance. He watched with malice while his captor gathered kindling and set about laying a fire.

Fire was a risk in the wild, for the smoke might betray a traveller to watchers many miles away, but Aragorn had long practice in taking the proper precautions. He chose his hearth carefully; the hard earth between two broadly spreading roots of a tangled old tree. He cleared away the rotting leaves and the mulch beneath so that it would not smoke. To that same end he chose only the driest fuel, and instead of using grass for tinder he dug out one of his precious linen rags and shredded it. When the little fire was burning merrily he sat cross-legged beside it, intent on plucking his breakfast.

The warmth of the flames upon his hands and face was a strange and welcome sensation. He had not dared to risk a fire since that terrible day in the heart of the Emyn Muil when he had been driven to it by the need for hot water. It seemed an age ago, those days of fever and disorientation. Pensively he flexed his right wrist. The wounded flesh strained a little, and so he laid aside the dead bird and pushed up his sleeve. He had not taken a close look at the bites in several days. The marks at his wrist were nothing more than scabs now, and as he probed them one of the dark crusts came loose to reveal the pink new skin beneath.

The others, where Gollum had torn deep into the flesh, were red and raw. Where he had debrided the dead skin puckered scars were forming, but near the centre the ragged wounds were still open. Aragorn applied cautious pressure beside one fissure and a little fluid oozed out, amber-yellow with only a trace of opacity. The infection still lingered somewhere deep within, but it was no longer festering on the cusp of blood-poisoning. It was troubling that the wounds were still open, but there was nothing he could do to remedy that. He carefully drew down his sleeve and curled his hand over his battered forearm. The steady weight brought only a little pain; he was satisfied that the bites were healing, however slowly.

Aragorn added another dry branch to his fire, which crackled most gratifyingly. Then he settled the bird in his lap and set about the tedious task of dressing it.

Beginning with the downy feathers on the breast of the bird, he plucked tuft after tuft of the copper-grey plumes. Partridge tasted best if left for a few days to cure after killing: the feathers imparted a particular gamey taste that took a while to settle into the flesh. But Aragorn was not about to carry the thing around for three or four days for the sake of a culinary ideal. The niceties of cooking were all very well when one was safe within four sturdy walls, when one had at one's disposal such luxuries as saucepans, salt, thyme, and time. In the wild fresh game was luxury enough, and if it was a little dry or tough or bland it was at least meat caught in free lands and not barely-edible roots scrounged from the soil east of Anduin.

Still as he worked he fancied he could hear Elrohir's laughter as he scolded his inexperienced young travelling companion for his impatience. "We'll sling them across the saddle and let them mellow for a few days, Estel. You don't think they'll taste anything like game fowl tonight, do you?" Even after all these years, it seemed, he was in his own way hasty—though now driven less by enthusiasm and more by long privation.

When the pile of feathers stood nearly as high as lap and the bird lay naked and white before him, Aragorn took up his knife. He removed the waste parts of the partridge: the wing-tips with their long flight-feathers, the feet, and the head and neck. Then he sliced open its belly and dug out the offal. The lungs and intestines he cast away, but he removed heart, liver, kidneys and gizzard with care. His mouth was watering painfully now and his eyes were drawn to the rich red disk of the liver.

Almost without thinking he plucked it up and popped it into his mouth. There was a faint tang of blood as he bit down on the flakey organ. It was no larger than peach pit and he swallowed it quickly, but almost at once the maddening craving was gone. Aragorn arched his brow appreciatively. He knew, of course, that the liver was rich with nutrients; and that a body too long deprived of the necessities of life coveted first that which would most expediently satisfy the deficiency. Although it was perhaps a savage thing to feast upon the uncooked organs of one's prey, he had no doubt that he would benefit.

He had no desire to devour the rest of the bird raw, however, and so he skewered the carcass upon a green stick and set about roasting it over the embers. He held the bird low, that it might cook quickly before too much of the fat was melted out of it. Partridge was a lean bird, and it dried out with ease, but he had neither the means nor the time to stew it.

Behind him, Gollum had been watching with avarice in his eyes while Aragorn dressed the bird. As the mouthwatering scent of roast game began to fill the woods, however, he seemed to lose interest. Grumbling sounds rumbled deep in his throat, though no words could work themselves around the gag. When the Ranger withdrew his spit and set the remaining viscera in the embers to bake, Gollum turned away with a snort of disgust.

Guilt and a faint stirring of pity visited Aragorn briefly. It was a bitter thing to be denied food while nearby another ate. Yet Gollum had earned this punishment, and the necessity of taming him outweighed the laws of generosity. Carefully he turned his back so that at least the creature did not have to watch every mouthful.

One last decision remained: weighing the discomfort of a burned mouth against the time required for the bird to cool. This was a simple choice. Aragorn was ravenous, half-starved from subsisting on roots not meant for man's consumption. With finger and thumb he tore loose a long strip of flesh from the bird's breast, and he sunk his teeth deep into it. There was still some fat in the meat, and the slick sweetness of it slid across his tongue. His hard palate protested the heat, but will and instinct delighted in that first rich mouthful. He scarcely troubled to shred it before swallowing, and that at least he regretted as his bruised gullet protested in agony. He chewed his next portion more carefully, relishing the savoury flavor of the fowl. Perhaps it was neither cured nor cooked to perfection, but to one so long bereft of nourishing food it came near enough.

Eagerly and methodically he ate, stripping every last fragment of meat from a bone before moving on to the next portion. He paused briefly to rake the giblets out of the fire, but even that task did not distract him for long. He denuded the breast and one of the legs before a pleasant feeling of satiety settled in his ribs. He stopped then, using his knife to carve what remained into more manageable morsels. He had no clean cloth in which to wrap them, so he put what he could into his mug and settled the rest among what remained of his roots. He bundled the feathers in a scrap of filthy linen: he could use them to stuff the toes of his boots when he reached colder lands. The remaining organs he ate, for they would not keep long even in these chill days.

He settled then to enjoy the dying embers of his fire, his back against the tree and his long legs stretched before him. Gollum was lying on his back with both knees crooked, wriggling his arms hopelessly against his bonds. Ugly croaking noises filtered around the wool in his mouth as he struggled.

Aragorn sighed and looked away from the unpleasant sight. He would have expected his strange companion's appearance – and his stench – to grow more tolerable with time. It was irksome to realize that such was not the case. A Ranger could not afford an excessively fastidious nature; grime and perspiration could scarcely be avoided in the wilds. Yet the putrescent stench of this creature was quite outside his experience. Even the foul reeking of the spider-caverns could not compare, for that he had been able to escape, to leave behind. The vile smell of Gollum would dog him for many weeks yet. Even the ducking in Anduin had made little difference.

He tossed the remains of the partridge on the embers, letting the sharp tang of burning feathers fill his nose. He stared vacantly as the creeping flames rose up to devour the flesh unfit for eating.

When the sun was beginning to swing low above the horizon Aragorn rose and dispersed the traces of the fire. Gollum had at last ceased his wriggling, and at some point in the afternoon had fallen asleep. Aragorn envied him, and had no qualms about nudging him awake with his toe. Letting loose a string of sounds that were surely intended as a litany of curses, Gollum nonetheless started moving without more than the faintest brush of the staff his captor carried.

That night they made good progress, for the clouds had dispersed a little and the light of the moon allowed the Ranger to move with steady conviction. Yet as the silver orb vanished before him and the deep darkness before the dawn set in an uneasiness settled upon Aragorn's heart.

There was something different about these lands. He could feel the firm earth beneath his feet, and hear the whisper of the wild grasses as his boots skimmed through them, and from the feel of the air he knew he was still on the open plain. Yet there was an intangible change in his surroundings, a silence, a stillness such as he had never felt before. It was as if the land itself were slumbering, rapt in the somnolent chords of some ancient rhythm.

As the sky grew grey and the ghostly horizon emerged from the darkness, a great black mass rose up before the travellers. There, betwixt the rolling fields of Rohan and the endless garden of Elbereth, was a forest.

Aragorn knew well its name, and the tales of a timeless presence that dwelt there, eternally mysterious, beneath the trees. There the woods had flourished through all the ages of the world; it was said that they had sprung up from the earth at the behest of Kementári herself, long before the Eldar awoke on the shores of Cuiviénen. Deep within the earth delved their timeless roots, as deep as the Dwarves in their mines had dug. It was a place of power and glory, so said the Elves, to be venerated with that same awe offered to the Endless Ice or the raging Sea or the fields of stars themselves. An ancient place, a savage place, a wondrous place.

And a place, he reflected in an abruptly practical turn of reason, that he did not wish to visit with a recalcitrant prisoner in tow. He had never come so near its borders, for he walked seldom in these lands. Even during his years in the service of Thengel he had not ranged so far, for the folk of Rohan feared this wood as much as the Wise revered it. Perhaps long decades ago, when his eyes were still bright with wonder at the many marvels of the world, he would have found such an opportunity difficult to ignore. Now, sobered by his long wanderings and the knowledge that the awe-filled and the awful were not as different as one might suppose, he knew that this was not the day when he would learn the secrets of Fangorn.

Yet he might use the forest to his advantage. Morning was coming and the cloudless sky promised a bright day. Gollum had moved only under duress the day before, and Aragorn was in no frame of mind for another battle of wills. If they walked in the very eaves of the forest they could cover many more miles today. Continuing his westward way, he reached the tall border-trees even as the first golden light of dawn stained their doughty trunks.

Northward now he walked, the plains still visible over his right shoulder and the deep grey woods a looming presence to his left. At the edge of the forest the undergrowth was sparse. After days on the hard-packed plains the mossy floor of Fangorn was soothing beneath his weary feet. Despite the lingering unease that walked with him beneath the close-woven boughs, Aragorn found himself growing calmer as he moved.

There was a particular scent to a forest that was unlike any other. The damp, musky sweetness of the earth; the spicy memory of the fallen leaves; the deep, rich aroma of living wood. Aragorn drank them in, and in their delicious wholesomeness he almost lost the reek of his travelling companion. He listened to the unfathomable silence around him, the serene slumber of the forest; and upon his tongue he could taste the very life of the woods. It eased his spirit, scrubbing away something of the stain of the marches of Mordor. Here was a place untouched by the Shadow. Here was a place, however dread and mighty in its own right, that Sauron was unable to touch.

Unable to touch yet.

As the hours slipped away and night fell Aragorn's discomfiture returned. Although he stopped to eat a little of his bird-flesh and to rest his legs while Gollum fretted on the end of his lead, there was no rest to be had. Agitated though he knew not why, Aragorn moved onward.

The woods, formerly serene, now seemed once more a threatening place. They were filled with knowledge and acrimony. Here the trees had grown through all the long, dark years of Middle-earth. They had beheld the coming of Morgoth, the poisoning of the North, the dark deeds of the Noldor and the treachery of Men. They had watched the waxings and wanings of the lords of Gondor and the kings of Rohan. They had seen cowardice and avarice and sloth and deceit. The trees knew all that was black and wicked in the hearts of mortals, and they stood in judgment over all who dared to tread their borders. The trees bore witness to the weaknesses of Men, and the trees did not forget.

The trees could read the contents of his soul. With their strange eyes they could strip away the façade of patience, the careful appearance of hope, the mask of courage. Fangorn knew that he was clinging to his self-control out of obduracy alone. Fangorn knew how he wished he might slay the troublesome wretch he led and abandon this twisting road for the straight path that led home. Fangorn knew the despair that crept into his heart whenever he thought of the journey before him; not only the long road to Mirkwood, but all the bleakness of the years that stretched ahead in labour and danger without a foreseeable end.

And Fangorn knew his fear. The fear that he would weaken; the horrifying knowledge that someday, somewhere, he would reach the end of his endurance; and the deep, dreadful terror that most often hid itself in the innermost recesses of his heart: that when the time came and he was put to the test he would be found wanting. That after all the years of labour and sacrifice he would fail when most he had need of strength. That he would, at the crucial time, bend beneath the yoke he bore and lay by his burden as he had so often in idleness wished that he might.

All this and more the woods could see, and before their scrutiny he quailed. Swiftly, so swiftly that Gollum was left scrambling to keep pace, Aragorn veered to the right, emerging from the trees like one pursued. Away he moved, now striding, now trotting, until the oppressive knowledge of Fangorn was nothing more than a sombre quietude to the West. Yet the scent of the forest still clung to his boots and his hands and his hair, and as he pressed on his mastery of his thoughts returned to him while above the stars danced their eternal pavane above.    

Chapter XXIX: Limlight

Two days more they walked with Fangorn a dark mass upon their left. It was one thing, Aragorn reflected, to study an old map in the comfort of the library in Rivendell and to consider the mass of a faraway forest. It was quite another to traverse its whole length, step by ponderous step. He pressed on despite his mounting fatigue. Surely there was game in these lands, but he did not pause to seek it out. With care and strict self-control he managed to make four more meals out of his partridge, eating a little meat with a taproot or two. Yet at last the fowl was gone, and his cache of roots was dwindling, and he was down to his last ounces of water from the little family's well.

If the shortage of provender was a weight upon his mind, at least he was in better straits than his captive. Gollum had shown no signs of repentance in all this time. He was once more refusing to move in the heat of the day, and whenever they halted he expended an hour's energy struggling against his bonds. Although he was surely ravenous and half-mad with thirst, he stalwartly refused Aragorn's daily offer to remove his gag in exchange for assurances of good behaviour. Each day he grew weaker and more haggard, and it was now almost five days since anything had passed his lips, but he remained obdurate and his glassy eyes burned with hatred.

Aragorn could not help but wonder at the creature's temerity. For nigh on three weeks he had been driven forward to an uncertain destination by a stranger many times his equal in size. The captor was armed, the captive was not. The jailor walked free, the prisoner was bound. Gollum's every attempt to extricate himself from the Ranger's clutches had failed, and in his effort to slay his abductor he had been thwarted. Now, deprived once more of fundamental sustenance, he still resisted. Doubtless he expected Aragorn's resolve to weaken. They had each underestimated one another's obduracy, and Aragorn vowed silently that he would not make that mistake again.

Twilight was descending on that second day when the level plains began to slope downward and low-lying brushwood cropped up in the travellers' path. Gollum yelped through his nostrils as his bound hands landed on a loose stone, threatening his balance. Aragorn paused only long enough to let his prisoner recover. There was little time; he was not foolhardy enough to attempt what he must in darkness, nor could he waste an entire night waiting for light.

The river Limlight was little more than a wood-creek in comparison to Anduin's icy breadth, but it still presented something of an obstacle. Aragorn had never had occasion to ford its waters, nor did he know of any traveller who had. As he drew near, measuring the distance to the opposite shore with his eyes, his anxiety eased a little. It was surely not more than two hundred yards to the far bank. In such level country the river was not likely to run very deep, for water always took the path of least resistance. Nevertheless these flatland streams sometimes moved very swiftly beneath deceptively smooth surfaces. It did not do to take wanton risks.

He approached the water's edge with care, eyes scanning both banks for signs of wildlife or watchers. He had caught no intimation of pursuit in all these days, and yet he knew how swiftly the servants of the Enemy could travel overland. There was still a chance that either Morgul or Dol Guldur might be roused to the chase if it came to their ears that the strange tark who understood the Black Speech was travelling in the company of Sauron's escaped prisoner – and though Anduin might hold the Nazgûl for a time it could not be relied upon to protect him forever. There were spies on both sides of the Great River now, and it was in such places as this that they were wont to congregate.

Yet he saw no trace of bird, beast, Man or orc, save a scraggly sapling that had at one time given home to a woodpecker. Satisfied, he moved down to the water's edge. Gollum loped on ahead, suddenly eager. When he reached the river's bank he hesitated, looking warily over his shoulder to see if his captor would stop him.

Knowing what his prisoner wished to do, Aragorn turned away. He could not condone this subversion of his deprivation tactic without undermining his authority, but at least he could see to it that the wretch did not perish of thirst before he was quite undone.

While Gollum drank through his gag or his nose – from the unpleasant noises he might well have been doing both – Aragorn began to remove his clothes. The air was sharp with the promise of colder days to come, and he began to shiver as he peeled away the ragged layers. The shoulder-seam of his cote groaned ominously as he hiked it over his head, but he did not hear any threads give way.

Gollum finished glutting himself with water, and set about paddling his long, bony feet in the current. In the blue glow of the evening Aragorn almost fancied that he could see a glimmer of delight in the pale, staring eyes. Likely it was naught but a trick of the light, but he moved a little nearer so as not to wrench upon the rope while he struggled with his boots.

He would have liked to take the opportunity to inspect his feet, but the light was fading fast. Hastily he heaped together his belongings atop what was left of his cloak. Once more he retained the poor shreds of his shirt, for dignity was worth a little discomfort on the far shore.

Aragorn paused briefly to consider the best way of transporting his prisoner. It scarcely seemed necessary to float him across as he had last time – and the memory of the struggle it had taken to subdue his prisoner on Anduin's bank still burned him with chagrin. There would be little swimming required this time, unless he missed his guess, and limited returns did not seem to justify the effort. Instead he closed the gap between himself and his prisoner, and before Gollum had a chance to react seized him by the wrists and ducked his head up between the creature's arms.

Startled, Gollum jerked backwards and tried to yank himself loose, but Aragorn grabbed one bony ankle and swung it against his hip, rising as he did so to his full height. Gollum was dragged with him, wheezing indignantly through his nose. His right leg scrabbled against Aragorn's thigh, the ragged nails grazing the flesh, but then it latched around his other hip and Gollum hitched himself up like a child riding pig-a-back. Aragorn shifted his weight slightly forward so that Gollum settled into a position that was almost comfortable for both of them. He took the creature's bound hands with his left and pulled them forward and away from his throat, thus relieving the pressure on his bruised neck. It was not to his liking to have Gollum's hands so near his jugular again, but the creature was unlikely to find a way to take undue advantage.

There was no more time to waste: dusk was almost upon them. With Gollum's wrists in his left hand and his bundle of clothing and gear in the other, Aragorn set his teeth resolutely and waded out into the river.

The water was cold, colder than Anduin, and it flowed more swiftly than Aragorn had hoped. The currents tugged at his calves as his bare feet sank into the frigid river-mud. Yet Limlight was shallow, at least. Twenty steps he took before the water reached his knees. The next paces were more laborious, for the ring of water about each leg seemed to burn as it drew nearer to his waist and despite Gollum's weight on his back and the hot breath on his neck Aragorn began to shiver. With each step he hoisted his bundle of garments higher, still vainly hoping that he might keep them dry.

When Gollum's feet touched the water he kicked out with his right, sending forth a spray that spattered Aragorn's chest and misted his unshaven chin. An angry admonition tripped to the very tip of the Ranger's tongue, but he bit down upon it. If a little puerile splashing was to be the extent of his burden's mischief in this crossing, he knew he must count himself fortunate indeed.

He took another step, and another. Each one was more wearisome, as his legs struggled to move forward through the chill and swift-moving mass that surrounded them. The water was almost to his hip-bones now, and as it brushed Gollum's backside the creature hitched himself higher on Aragorn's back, locking one foot around the opposite ankle to maintain his position. Another step, and Aragorn lifted the parcel of clothing onto his head, settling it there like a washer-woman toting her day's work. His left hand still held Gollum's wrists below his clavicle.

They were almost in midstream now. The far bank was receding swiftly into darkness, but Aragorn could still see where water ended and land began. Staring ahead into the gathering gloom, he was for a moment less attentive than he should have been. His next step sent him shooting downward, and the shock of the impact with the river-bed bolted up his leg and into his chest. Suddenly the water was breast-high, knocking the wind from his chest with its abrupt frigidity.

The weight on his back was lifted somewhat, for Gollum was now partly submerged. He did not take well to this development, and his legs came loose, kicking frantically.

'Be still,' Aragorn wheezed. He drew in a harsh lungful of air and repeated himself more steadily. 'Be still. If you think I am going to let you drown after all the trouble I've taken to bring you this far, you are sorely mistaken.'

Gollum made a strangled hissing sound that shot in two hot columns from his nostrils, and kicked again. This time the motion was not frenetic or startled, but smooth and carefully calculated. Aragorn could feel the drag upon his shoulders easing as Gollum began to float behind him, bony chin driving into the knot of muscle between the Ranger's shoulder blades.

'Of course: the more fool I,' Aragorn muttered, taking another cautious step forward. 'You dwelt so long amid the dark pools under the earth. Surely you learned something of water-travel. Do as you will, then, so long as you do not scuttle us.'

The searing band of cold now severed him in two: his body beneath the water in the numb warmth of familiarity, and his head and shoulders above it, wracked with chills in the night air. Aragorn's next step dragged upon the soft silt in the river's middle, and the one after that was more of a paddling flutter than a proper stride. The water was over his windpipe now. It tickled his earlobes. Gollum's chin hooked itself over his shoulder while the long bony feet flapped slowly far behind.

Aragorn's grip on the bundle tightened. If only he could keep the crown of his head above water he would have dry clothing on the far shore. The thought of trying to thaw as he had before, drenched and shivering and all but naked, sent a thrill of despair through ribs now aching with the cold. He set his teeth as the water rose to cover his lips, breathing resolutely through his nostrils as he bobbed awkwardly forward. Two feet, three feet, four. His toes were only just brushing the riverbed now. In a moment he would be obliged to start swimming, and then he would have to lower his right arm for balance.

A soft pile of sand gave out beneath him, and Aragorn sank downward. The water surged up over his nose, over his eyes, almost to his brows. He kicked both feet sharply, snapping them past each other, and managed to raise himself high enough to inhale through his nose. Then he sank again, pushing off from the bottom with his toes just before his eyes immersed themselves again.

He was unsure how Gollum was coping, but a strong pulse still thrummed through the sinewy wrists beneath his fingers. Aragorn leaned forward ever so slightly, paddling cautiously with one leg while the other bounced off the river-bed. The bundle on his head was still dry, for he could feel the icy border of wetness bisecting his temples. Obstinate to the last he forced himself further forward. His toe struck something smooth and solid – a stone, no doubt. He used its surface to leverage a little more distance.

The current was dragging him downstream; of that he was aware. Yet he was still moving steadily toward the opposite bank. His next kick ended abruptly as his lead foot drove deep in the sticky sand. He stumbled a little, and then stood straight. The water lapped against his chin, and he allowed himself a triumphant grin. He was past the worst of it now.

He took a few more bobbing strides that were almost swimming-kicks, and then the water was low enough that he could walk properly. Its cold weight was now a comfort, for above the line of the water his wet skin burned with cold. Aragorn kept his shoulders beneath the water, hunching lower with each forward step, until he was no longer walking but moving forward on his knees. This, too, he allowed for a while, but Gollum's feet were grazing the bottom now and between his toes he could feel the shallow-water weeds. Setting his jaw against the cold Aragorn hauled himself to his feet.

A great column of indescribable cold struck him all at once, and with it the weight upon his back. He staggered through the shallows, teeth gritted against the intolerable bite of the icy air. Gollum was a leaden mass hanging from his shoulders. Sharp, tingling pain assailed Aragorn from every quarter and he stumbled, falling to his knees. The bundle he had so carefully protected in the depths fell from off of his head, landing with a soft splatter at the very edge of the water.

Rallying his wits, Aragorn plucked it up and flung it forward onto the bank. Then he dragged himself out of the water and bowed his head, attempting to yank Gollum's arms over it. He was forced to make a second effort, this time using both arms. As soon as he was no longer looped around his captor, the creature scrabbled off to the end of his lead where he curled himself into a ball and settled in to resolute shivering.

Aragorn's fingers were already going numb, and he fumbled with the knots he had made in his cloak. He laid hands upon his tunic and as quickly as he could hauled off his sodden shirt before crawling inside the warm woolen garment.

He had acted quickly enough: only a small patch of his cloak was wet, and the garments within had escaped entirely. In the space of a minute he had his cote and hose where they belonged, and he shook the rest of his belongings out of his cloak before bundling it around him like a blanket. He laced his arms across his chest and lay there for a time, trembling until the shivers that ran up his spine faded to memory and his teeth stopped their clattering. The wool of his tunic was stiff and scratchy against the bare skin beneath, but he could not bring himself to begrudge it. He was warm again.

About a quarter of an hour they rested there. Aragorn wrung the water from his hair and covered his wet head with his hood. He replaced his belt, buckling it to the last notch, and straightened the tops of his hose. He paused briefly over the remains of his shirt, now little more than a wet mass of rags, before twisting it tightly and tucking it into his pack. Then he rummaged through his dwindling stock of roots and dug out a gnarled tuber. It was the last: after this all he had left were a few bulrushes and a brace of parsnips. Determined to enjoy it, he laved it in the cold river-water and cut himself a thin slice. It was starchy and tasteless, save for a faint tang of dirt, but between his teeth it crunched most satisfactorily, and it would settle his stomach.

There came a plaintive sound out of the darkness, and Aragorn hesitated. He could see the pale eyes gleaming perhaps an arm's length away, and he knew that Gollum was watching him.

'I daresay you're hungry,' he said dispassionately. 'Are you ready to behave?'

The eyes bobbed frenetically.

'If I remove your gag, will you bite?'

To the left they moved, then to the right. Left, then right.

'Come nearer, then,' the Ranger said; 'and no more of your mischief.'

Gollum scooted forward. He seemed to be moving with the aid of only one foot, using his bound arms to haul himself towards his captor. The sharp stink of his person, little dulled by the ducking he had received, soured Aragorn's stomach a little. In the gloom he could now make out the shape of the creature's head and the angles of its nose. He reached out slowly, so as not to give alarm, and found the knot that held the cloth in place. Working with his nails, he pried it loose, and he drew back the gag slowly so that he would not strip off the skin beneath.

'I am going to remove the rest,' he said sternly. 'If you bite me, I promise the consequences shall be terrible.'

Gollum made no sound, nor did he move as Aragorn reached for his mouth. With finger and thumb he grabbed hold of the plug of cloth he had driven into the wretch's stinking maw. Slowly he drew it out, careful lest it should snag on one of the sharp, lonely teeth. The rag was so fouled with spittle and slime that he cast it away; there were some things too loathesome to stockpile even against the desperate need that lay ahead.

Gollum's tongue traced the perimeter of his mouth. Then he made the noise for which he had been named deep within his throat, turned his head, and spat upon the ground.

'Nassty manses,' he muttered. 'Tastes of sweat and death and dark places, precious. Binds us up, gollum, tries to drowns us.'

'Never mind that,' Aragorn said. He cut another piece of his bland supper and held it out. 'I cannot trust you, and so I cannot free your hands. Thus you must eat from mine. You are hungry; by all means partake.'

Gollum snorted disdainfully and scurried backward. As he retreated, Aragorn realized that the reason he was using only one foot was that the other was curled around something. It was slender and silvery, and the long prehensile toes were gripping it almost like grasping fingers. Even as his reason was struggling with the recognition of the thing and the improbability of the maneouver that must have been executed in its capture, Gollum raised his leg and arched his back forward, and with the ravenous abandon of one possessed sank his teeth into the underbelly of the fish.

Aragorn was too smitten with astonishment to be the least off-put by the stink of the trout's innards, or indeed the greedy slurping sounds that issued from its ravenous hunter. It scarcely seemed possible, but at some point in their crossing Gollum must have snagged the fish with his feet. Past the mid-stream depths his kicking had ceased, and this must have been the cause. Yet it was utterly baffling.

Gollum went right on eating, sucking in the raw flesh and spitting out scales and fine white bones. Aragorn mastered himself enough that he was able to finish his own dinner, but still he stole surreptitious glances at his resourceful captive. In his wanderings he had witnessed many strange and wondrous things, but this was surely among the most peculiar.

It was not until later, when the shock of the discovery had dimmed a little and the two travelling companions – each in his own way fed – were once again moving northward beneath the night sky, that the full implication of Gollum's surrender struck home. It was no earnest gesture of repentance, nor indeed an admission of the Ranger's authority. Gollum had merely set out to manipulate his captor.

That was to be expected, of course. The creature's wiles were immortalized in song and tale from Erebor to Westfarthing. What was far more disturbing was that Strider the wanderer, leader of Men and counselor of the Wise, had fallen for the trick. He had allowed his judgment to be compromised in the name of pity; a luxury he could not afford. Worse still, he knew why he had done it. Dawn would mark the sixth day since he had lay down to sleep only to awaken with Gollum's feeling fingers locked about his throat. His faculties were failing him; his wits were addled by exhaustion. It would not be much longer before reason abandoned him entirely. Somehow, and soon, he had to find safety enough for sleep.

Yet there was no safety here, and so he pressed northward.

Note: Excerpts from "The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon" from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; J.R.R. Tolkien. Excerpt from "The Song of Tinúviel" from "A Knife in the Dark"; The Fellowship of the Ring; J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter XXX: A Lunatic Quest

Weariness clawed at Aragorn's heart and set a blazing flame behind his eyes. Each leaden step sent echoes of pain into his viscera. Although he had water aplenty, having filled his skins in Limlight's shallows, his mouth was dry and his tongue felt raw against his palate. His very teeth ached.

The night was dissolving into an indifferently grey morning. Soon the air would begin to warm a little, but Aragorn doubted that the chill in his bones would dissipate. At first he had taken it to be a lingering effect of his cold fording, but as the hours wore on it had become obvious that something more insidious was at work; his exhausted body was no longer keeping itself properly heated. He used his right arm to draw his cloak more tightly to his body, but the ragged remains of the heavy wool did nothing to dissipate his discomfort.

Gollum was moving on ahead, now and then glancing back over his shoulder at his stumbling guide. Aragorn could read the malice in his eyes, and it filled him with a dread he had not felt before. The creature was not tamed, not cowed. The creature was waiting, watching, biding his time until another chance arose to dispatch his captor. And this time he would not fail. The Ranger could not walk on forever. Sooner or later he would have to stop, and sleep, and then—

Aragorn shook his head, trying to clear the fog of anxiety that was giving rise to these thoughts. Although it was reasonable to assume that Gollum meant him ill, this mounting terror bordered upon the irrational. He could do without sleep a little longer, and when at last he was forced to succumb he could take precautions to secure his captive. What worried him most was the certain knowledge that when at last he did attempt to rest he would sink into so deep a slumber that he would not be easily roused. In the wild the kind of sleep he needed was an invitation to disaster, and he was now beyond the point at which he could fight it.

For the moment all that he could do was continue to move. While he walked at least he would not sleep, and he had trod harder paths than this with less rest – though not, admittedly, in such dangerous company.

There was no sunrise that day, for the clouds were thick and low. The dull pale light rendered the rolling lands stark and brown with winter's dormancy. Aragorn tried to keep himself occupied by scanning the horizons for anything of note. When that failed, he attempted to let his mind slip away despite his slowly plodding feet, but he found that this slowed him almost to a crawl. Then he tried to sing something, anything– but neither tune nor words could he recall.

In silence he endured, numbly counting each heavy stride. He knew his steps were uneven, inefficient. He could feel the stoop of his shoulders and the pendulous weight of his head. Once he felt a tug upon his wrist as Gollum outstripped his pace and was obliged to halt. While his other senses dulled it seemed that every sound was amplified, intensified. He could hear the rustle of the grasses about his ankles, and the low whistling of the wind, and the slow, dogged beating of his own heart.

There was a curiously muted quality to existence here, in the empty lands where no men dwelt. The air he drew in through his nostrils grew warmer. The light upon his face dimmed. His pains faded, growing ever more distant as if he was wrapped in a shawl of numbness. The pressure behind his temples leeched slowly away. A gentle vacancy settled over his mind, and it seemed the very beating of his heart was slowed and hushed.

The next sensation of which he was aware was a sharp prodding prickle just below his left kneecap. With a harsh, snorting intake of air, Aragorn's body jerked back into the land of the living. His heart raced as he looked wildly about, taking in his surroundings with instinctive wariness.

He had stopped dead in his tracks. Gollum, forced to stop when he reached the end of his lead, had doubled back and was now squatting by the Ranger's boot. His head was cocked to one side like a brooding carrion-fowl, and his hands were extended before him. He had jabbed his bound fingertips against his captor's leg.

Aragorn frowned down at his prisoner. 'Get on with you,' he said, the stern caste he would have liked to take undercut somewhat by the hoarseness of his voice. 'We have many miles to walk, and…' But he could not finish the thought.

With a long, sly sidelong look, Gollum turned and began to lope forward again. Aragorn trundled after him, scrubbing his eyes with the back of his right hand. This had gone too far. He had drifted into the earliest stage of sleep while still on his feet. There was no hope of safe rest, no chance of respite here. Anxiety bit at his throat as he weighed the universally undesirable alternatives before him.

Hot on the heels of worry came anger. He was a dour-handed warrior, a man of many skills and great endurance. Most hardy of his race he was accounted, and yet he could not keep himself awake while he walked. It was unacceptable.

He blinked several times in rapid succession to clear the fog from his eyes. Biting down upon the soft flesh inside the corner of his mouth, he quickened his pace. Swollen feet and aching legs protested this, but he pushed onward into the pain. His course had been too gentle, if it had lulled him to the very cusp of slumber. He could not safely rest here, and he did not trust himself to doze warily as he normally would in hostile climes. Therefore he had to move onward in the vain hope that he would find somewhere he might secure his prisoner and conceal them both from prying eyes.

In the meantime, he had to do something to keep himself alert. He tried once more to recall some song with which to occupy himself. The standard fare eluded him, for his weary mind could not wrap itself around the complex modes and melodies of Elvish songs, nor settle upon more than a three-word phrase of any old ballad of Men. But his thoughts strayed northward, to the house of Elrond in the fair valley of Rivendell, where by the hearth in the great Hall of Fire he had passed more than one merry evening in the company of a sensible old traveller whose store of lusty, simple songs was endless. Groping about in the mire of his addled memory, he hauled out a fragment of verse.

'"The Man in the Moon," ' he muttered; ' "himself… himself came down one night… one night to…" ' He cleared his throat and tried desperately to remember. If he could remember just a little of it then the tune would come back to him, and if he could light upon the melody then the rest would follow. ' "The Man in the Moon had a silver spoon…"'

That wasn't it, either. There were two songs, he remembered: one about the raucous goings-on at a peculiar little inn, and another that Bilbo had written later, in what he referred to as his retirement. The spoon belonged to the first song, with a drunken cat and a small dog and a manic heifer. The second song was more lyrical, filled with almost Elvish imagery but still retaining a particular hobbity charm.

'Silver slippers?' Aragorn tried, but that wasn't quite right. The verse was on the very tip of his tongue, and yet he seemed unable to find the words. ' "The Man in the Moon had silver… silver… and his beard was of silver thread. With…"'

It was pointless trying to go on, he thought petulantly. He wanted to remember just what it was that the Man in the Moon had. It rhymed with moon, of that much he was certain, but it was a strange hobbit-word and it was dodging him like – well, really, not unlike his captive had for so many years.

That comparison made him cross. It was like a cruel riddle: always seeking, never finding; always hunting, never catching; always roaming, never resting; always fighting, never winning; always pressing forward, never gaining any ground.

'Noon,' he muttered. 'Swoon, boon, loon, dune, hewn, croon, festoon…'

Gollum had halted in his tracks and was staring at his captor in disbelief. Aragorn brushed past him, forcing the creature to trot to keep up.

'Rune,' he tried wrathfully; 'harpoon, shoon, buffoon…'

That was it. He remembered now. With a satisfied smirk, he launched into the song, quickening his pace to match the tempo.

Once he had started it was easy to go on. The words tripped out one after another, and though his throat ached from the exertion he continued to sing.

As he sang Aragorn felt his weariness lifting a little. The rich colours rendered so prettily in song lent lustre to the dull landscape before him, and although the hero's yearning for rich victuals and wine struck something of an uncomfortable chord with his own empty stomach, he felt his lungs filling with clean air with each line. The image of the absent-minded moon-lord tumbling in fishers' nets was an amusing one, filled with hobbit-like whimsy, and he recognized the line about 'the windy Bay of Bel' as coming from his own tales of far-off lands.

But then the Man in the Moon came to the town, and Aragorn remembered another conversation that Bilbo had worked into his song. He was under the spell of the poetry now, and he could not but continue, yet it was with mounting bitterness that he sang now.

The song was gone, and in its wake was bitterness. Dear Bilbo had meant no harm, certainly, when he wove those sentiments into his song, but just at present it was a hard thing to think on such matters. Weary was the road that wound north to Mirkwood, and at its end there was little reward. His prize, his recompense for these hardships would be to return to his daily life in the West, where his kind was reviled by those they struggled to protect. Long and lonely was this journey, but just as lonely was the next one. So it would continue, year after year until he was stooped with age and too old to go on – or else until he met his death by some mischance, or some unforeseeable change brought to a head the long war he had fought almost from boyhood.

Or perhaps, a change not so unforeseeable. Aragorn's eyes fell upon Gollum, ambling awkwardly beside him. Swiftly he knelt, so swiftly that his captive had no time to react. He dug his fingers into Gollum's shoulder and jostled him.

'What do you know?' he demanded.

The prisoner hissed, whimpering deep in his throat. His eyes at once malicious and frightened, uncomprehending, stared out from their sunken sockets.

'What do you know? Why were you taken prisoner? What did they ask you? How did you escape?'

The questions tripped out one over the other, a cascade of demands bordering upon the unreasonable. But Aragorn was weary beyond reason, and he had to learn something, anything, that might make all this suffering worthwhile.

'What did they want to know? What did Sauron's minions ask you?'

At the sound of the Dark Lord's name, Gollum quailed. He cast himself upon the ground, beating the sod with one foot while his arms twisted and contorted in an attempt to hide his head. 'Wicked orcses, hateful manses,' he moaned shrilly. 'Beats us, hurts us precious. Poor, pretty handses, gollum.'

'Tell me!' Aragorn snapped, desperation gnawing upon his last ravelled nerves. 'What did they want to know? What have you told them? What do you have to tell them?'

'Hurts us, precious. Hurts us!'

'I'll hurt you, you stinking wretch!' Aragorn cried, tightening his hold and shaking Gollum so that the creature's head bobbed. 'Tell me what I want to know: how did you escape the Dark Tower? How did you get out of Mordor alive?'

Gollum snapped with his teeth, writhing and wailing incoherently. Warily Aragorn drew back his hand, and as the moment of madness passed he stared in horror at the spectacle before him. Remorse and disgust wrenched his bowels. He knew well the horrors to which a prisoner might be put by even the lesser servants of the Enemy, far from the walls of Barad-dûr and without the ingenious tools of torture hoarded up within. What this craven thing had suffered there he would never know, but well could he imagine. The horror of it lay black upon Gollum's heart, and there was nothing to be gained from forcing him to relive that nightmare here. Foam was showing at his cadaverous mouth, and his legs twitched and scrabbled fruitlessly against the ground.

It was useless to interrogate him here, beneath the open sky where the most pertinent questions could not be asked. He would scarcely cooperate with one whom he saw—and rightly so—as an adversary and a jailor, and no answer he might give would alter what must be done. Aragorn sat back on his heels, silent and ashamed of his garish display of senselessness, and waited for the fit to pass.

At last Gollum lapsed into convulsive whimpers, and from thence to shallow hiccoughs. Aragorn removed the bung from his water-bottle and held it out.

'Here. Drink and we will be on our way,' he said. 'There are many leagues yet to travel, and I will not sleep yet.'

Gollum sat up, scowling blackly at his captor. Yet he took the water and swallowed it, and handed back the vessel without undue aggression. When Aragorn rose, he did so also, and onward they went. But the Ranger did not try to sing again.

lar

Night fell swiftly across the overcast sky. In the darkness the struggle for wakefulness grew harder. The cold that had worn at his will all day now sank to Aragorn's very marrow. He shivered as he moved, hugging his ribs in a pathetic attempt to warm himself. His jaw ached now from clenching, and his back was a web of prickling pains. Gollum wandered somewhere left of him, now and again tugging on the rope as his pace outstripped that of his escort. Bereft of any other distraction, Aragorn was counting his paces again. He was well past the numbers known to a Man of average education, but in what he reckoned to be almost three hours he had not yet lost his place in the litany.

When a distant glow showed itself on the eastern horizon, he thought at first that it must be the dawn. His eyes, so accustomed to the darkness that he could make out the faint outline of a stone or bush along his path, detected a faint rosy tint away to his right. He turned his face towards it in the numb hope that sunrise might rouse him from his unhappy stupor, but the light vanished. Sighing softly, he turned his face northward once more.

The light returned, a dim redness in his peripheral field. Again he turned his head and again it disappeared. Puzzled and uneasy, Aragorn turned his course a little to his right and moved toward the light.

It grew stronger in the space of perhaps ten minutes; strong enough that he could see it straight on. It was indeed a redness, but it was not upon the horizon as one would expect of the dawn. It hovered in the air, as if a lamp set amid roiling clouds was shining mutely down upon the earth. Aragorn rubbed his eyes, blinking to clear his sight, but the glow remained, faint but unmistakable, in the distance.

Want of sleep, he knew, gave rise to strange imaginings. Yet this, he deemed, was no creation of his faltering intellect. Bewildered, he scrabbled for some reasonable explanation for what he was seeing. Redness in the air, in the clouds, under the clouds, a reflection, a reflection on the underside of the low, heavy haze that had rendered the day so bleak and hollow. Fire.

Fear thrummed in the Ranger's breast. It was a fire, and a large one. He could not see the flame itself, which meant that it was at least five miles away. A fire that cast an echo that could be seen for five miles was a blazing inferno indeed. And who would light such a fire in the wilderness? He was many leagues north of the most remote holdings of Rohan; no man of the Riddermark would set a bonfire here. Seldom enough did Men set fires large enough to light up the sky at several miles' distance, save in signal: that was orc-work.

The dreadful realization that the pursuit he had feared was now near at hand set a tremor in Aragorn's knees. If there were orcs on the west side of Anduin, there was only one thing they might be seeking in this empty territory: the tark and his captive. As he had seen no sign of them until this night, they were evidently gaining—and he could not keep up his present pace much longer, let alone quicken it. Somewhere to the north and east lay the haven of Lothlórien, but there was no surety that he could reach it in time, or even that he could find it. The Golden Wood was a hidden realm, with charms woven about it that made it difficult for even the knowing traveller to find. He had stumbled upon it once long ago, either through happy mischance or some will beyond his own, but he did not know the road. Nor indeed could he be sure of finding succour there, with his unpleasant prisoner in tow and a band of foes upon his heels. Let a man beware who brought evil to the realm of the Galadhrim, for evil was not welcome in that hallowed land.

Yet he could not remain here, staring helplessly at his impending doom. The orcs had built a fire, which meant that they were not moving this night, at least. It was a small enough advantage, but he had to press it. Twitching the rope, he rousted his prisoner. 'Quickly,' he breathed. 'There is no time to waste.'

Awkwardly, painfully, he broke into an ungraceful canter. Muttering something doubtless unpleasant, Gollum ambled after him. After only a few minutes Aragorn's side ached and he was obliged to slow to a walk. The moment the pain faded he ran on again. So he went on, now striding, now trotting, as the night wore on.

lar

Morning's grey light found the Ranger struggling to keep pace. He was far beyond exhaustion now, so far that he could no longer keep his back straight. His shoulders were stooped and his spine rounded forward. He could make no pretence of running now, and he alternated between an unsteady stumbling gait and brief moments of stillness when he gripped the aching scar that bisected his right thigh. His breathing was laboured and his thoughts were muddled, and the distant roar of the river was a torment upon his ringing ears.

It took far longer than it should have for him to recognize the sound of rushing water as something inappropriate to his perceived location. Even once he drew that conclusion, he covered another half-mile of uneven terrain before he realized the source of the incongruity. Disoriented perhaps by the lack of sleep, or washed further downstream than he would have thought by Limlight's frigid waters, he had deviated eastward. From atop a rise in the land, he could see away to his right the tangled undergrowth and bare, lonely trees of the vale of Anduin.

Too far gone with weariness to feel any emotion, he was spared both dismay at his loss of direction and terror at the knowledge that he was almost within sight of Dol Guldur. He stood, staring eastward towards the river, with no thought in his mind but a bewildered wonderment. In Gondor there was a children's story about a traveller lost in a wood. No matter what path he took, it twisted and wound and circled back to the same clearing. That was how he felt at this moment: as if all his wandering since crossing the Great River had been fruitless. For here he stood, almost within sight of her banks again, too stupid with fatigue to imagine moving back westward.

Gollum, taking full advantage of the halt, was curled in a ball by Aragorn's boot already snoring faintly. The sound roused the Ranger briefly from his reverie, and he looked down at his captive. His weary legs needed no further invitation to give out from under him, and he sank gently to his knees. Numbly he knelt, his right hand playing absently in the dead grass. The wind was blowing from the north, and it seemed to creep along his scalp amid the trails of grimy hair. Aragorn wanted to scratch at his head to ease the discomfort, but the effort of raising his arm was too much. He plucked at the ground instead, finger and thumb closing on a withered stem of clover. He crushed the blackened head and let the wasted stalk fall to the earth.

In the corner of his eye he saw a leaf dancing in the wind. It looped upward, borne upon the breeze, and rose as if to sail far above him. At the apex of its ascent it stopped, hovering for the briefest of instants in mid-air. Then it fell to earth, landing not far from his crooked knees. Transfixed, Aragorn reached out for the leaf where it fluttered amid the dying grass. It seemed so bright and golden against the brown earth, and as he picked it up he smiled like one inebriated beyond sensibility. He twirled it in his hand, admiring the delicate veins, and he drew it into his lap.

There was a scent as of flowers and spices and spring. It was the scent of happiness, of contentment, of safety. Aragorn's eyes closed and he felt himself drifting off towards the sweet oblivion of slumber. In the darkness behind his eyelids he saw a maiden clad all in white, and light of stars was in her hair, and in her raiment glimmering…

And then recognition came to him and he returned to the waking world with a start. The leaf was still clasped in his hand, and Gollum was slumbering insensibly by his boot. The spell was broken, and Aragorn saw that the leaf was dry and dead, its veins a scaffold on which its fragile fibres clung wasted and tenuous. Yet the golden hue was unmistakeable and the scent still lingered on the edge of memory. He looked up, north and westward, and though he could not see the woods he knew they were at hand.

It took his last shreds of will, but Aragorn hauled himself to his feet. When he stopped swaying he nudged at Gollum with the toe of his left boot. The creature awoke with a snort, glaring blackly at him, but Aragorn did not care. Heavily, inelegantly, limping a little, he started forward again. He was not at all sure of his welcome, but he had no other hope. Clutching the dead mallorn-leaf, he hobbled on.    

Chapter XXXI: The Border-Watch

There was a salient moment in a battle-charge when the vanguard passed the point of no return. At that moment retreat was no longer possible. There was no longer the chance to wait, to weigh one's options, to order the assault. The opportunity to turn back was lost, the opportunity to halt was lost, and all that the captain could do was drive his men onward, forward, into whatever uncertain fate awaited them. Wary or weary or wounded, they had to move forward – to move forward or to perish, for there was no other choice.

This thought alone filled Aragorn's mind in the interminable span of time during which he stumbled on, dragging himself from one wearisome step to the next. Now and again the cord about his wrist grew taut enough to tug against his thumb and so he knew that his prisoner still walked with him, but the truth was that he was almost beyond caring. He could think no further than the next step, could remember no more than the last. The world had narrowed to a slender column of muted agony, three paces in length and no more broad than his lean shoulders. He could not recall giving the order to march; he could not anticipate the battle ahead. All that he could do was charge forward, blindly, long past the point of no return.

So lost was he in his exhaustion that he did not notice when the dull creaking of dead grass beneath his boots gave way to the whisper of fallen leaves. Instinct alone wove him to and fro between the great boles of the trees that surrounded him now. He was conscious only of the swaying of his heavy head with each stride, of the smouldering ache in his spine, of the dim bolts of pain that shot up from his heels each time they found purchase to pull him a little farther forward. His vision was obscured by a rime of weariness so thick that he could not be certain whether he walked in starlight or sunlight or befogged twilight. Now and then he attempted to loose the muscles of his jaw so that his teeth would cease to trouble him, but each time the tension crept back as though it was his bite that kept him anchored in this intolerable half-waking state.

The first voice did not even snag upon the shroud of dumb suffering. The second reached his ears, but was so garbled by his wandering wits that he dismissed it as the groaning of a winter-stiffened branch. The third he heard but could not understand, much less obey.

It was the shrill whistling of an arrow making its passage perilously close to his nose that finally stopped him, his body drawing stiffly up as his mind was jolted from its exhaustion in a brief flaring instant like the passage of lightning across a dim sky.

'Daro!' the voice cried again, and at last he was able to comprehend the word. Halt. Those that followed in a rapid, imperious patter he could not immediately follow, for the speaker was using the dialect of the Galadhrim and Aragorn found himself incapable of an instantaneous translation.

'… once, for we do not offer a second warning;' the Elf was saying when at last the language snagged in the Ranger's memory.

'Perhaps he does not understand your speech,' a second voice, that of an Elf-maiden, ventured. In the Common Tongue she said; 'Do not move, stranger, for you are in peril.'

That much the arrow had made plain, Aragorn thought, but even in his disordered state he knew better than to speak impertinently to an armed sentry – particularly one he had already unwittingly disobeyed at least thrice. He blinked his eyes rapidly in an attempt to clear them of their mist, but dared neither to raise a hand to chafe them nor to turn his head in search of the two who had spoken. He tried to offer greeting, but the words would not rise to his lips. In any case he was uncertain that his throat would open to grant them passage.

'Have him state his name and his business,' the first voice demanded. 'And ask what manner of creature it is that he leads like a cur on a rope.'

'Stranger…' the woman began, but at last Aragorn rallied his wits enough to loosen his tongue.

'I speak your language,' he said, the words crackling and catching hoarsely. His accent was imperfect, he knew, but in his exhaustion he could not improve it. 'I am an Elf-friend and a traveller who has walked these lands before.'

There was a surprised hush and someone murmured words that were just beyond his hearing. Aragorn's sight had cleared a little, but all that he saw were the trees before him, towering silver pillars in the cool light of the afternoon. He did not presume to move his head to look around, for he had been told not to move and an understanding of his peril was slowly piercing the fog of his consciousness.

'What is your name?' the first Elf demanded. Aragorn suspected it was he who had fired the warning shot. 'What is your business? What is that creature you lead?'

'I am on business for Gandalf the Grey,' Aragorn said. He had to pause and cough a little to clear his dry throat. 'Mithrandir. For Mithrandir. The creature is my captive: long have we sought him and I have found him at last, and I must bring him to the halls of Thranduil in Mirkwood as was agreed.' He glanced down at Gollum, who was hunched beside his boot staring wide-eyed to the left. Aragorn restrained the urge to follow his gaze. 'It was agreed,' he echoed hollowly.

'Your name, stranger. Your name!' the sentry ordered.

In a moment of greater rationality he would have offered it without question. The folk of Lothlórien were certainly worthy to be trusted even with the gravest of secrets, and he had indeed been thrust upon their succour before and might even be remembered by them. Yet in his present state good sense eluded him, and he fell back upon long habit instead.

'My name is of little moment,' he said. 'I am a traveler and I am weary. I ask only a night's shelter and safe passage along the border of your land on my northward journey.'

There was a discontented hiss from the first Elf, and an almost imperceptible rustling in the undergrowth. Gollum shrieked and scrabbled against his captor's leg, but Aragorn had no time to reflect upon that. At once he was surrounded by tall, lithe figures clad in shades of woodland green and grey. There was a flash of Elven steel in the sinking sunlight. A hand closed upon each of his arms above the elbow. Others moved swiftly over his body, pawing at his clothing and feeling around his belt. The bare hunting knife was removed from its awkward place at his side. Someone turned down the tops of his boots. His pack was taken from him and he could hear nimble fingers rummaging through it.

'You have trespassed too far already for safe passage along our borders,' the first Elf hissed in his ear. 'And we do not offer shelter to any vagabond who may chance to stumble where he is not wanted.'

Stupid with fatigue, Aragorn still could not make sense of the situation. 'I do not see why,' he said, sounding even to himself like a petulant child but somehow powerless to help it. 'I am obviously no threat to you, having been taken so easily.'

Somewhere to his right there was an ill-concealed snort of laughter, but the hold on his left arm tightened painfully.

'Impudence will avail you nothing,' the border-guard snapped. There was a sound of shifting leather as he signaled to his comrades. 'Bind him hand and foot,' he commanded. 'And the other thing…'

'By foot?' the lady asked, distaste apparent in her voice. 'It seems otherwise quite... well-secured.'

'Have a care,' Aragorn said in a vacant singsong that seemed almost to come from a will other than his own. 'He bites.'

Another silence followed this pronouncement. It was a third voice, male, who broke it at last. 'Mayhap he is mad?' it suggested. 'A madman and his strange companion, wandering thither and yon with no care for where he stumbles?'

'I think not,' the she-Elf said, a ponderous but puzzled tone in her gentle voice. 'He has not the light of madness in his eyes, and…'

She was in his sight now; a slender and well-muscled shape in the garb of an archer with a quiver of arrows at her shoulder and a longbow in her hand. Her hair was dark and glossy as obsidian, and twisted into twin plaits down her back. As she stared at him her eyes narrowed and seemed suddenly misted with bewilderment.

'Who are you, stranger?' she said. 'It seems that you are known to me.'

Despite his weariness Aragorn was quite certain that she was not known to him, and he was far too experienced in keeping his own counsel to be trapped with such tactics. The dim voice that protested that he was indeed mad to be so recalcitrant with these particular interrogators could not even be heard over the thrum of weariness that sounded in every nerve.

'Bind his hands, Calmiel,' the first sentry commanded again.

She turned upon him, brows furrowed. 'He is a wanderer, unarmed and obviously impoverished,' she protested. 'Ought we not to make him welcome and offer what surcease we can? I ask you, Aithron, does he seem a threat to you?'

The leader made a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan of disbelief. 'When will you learn?' he demanded. 'All these long years among us and still you behave like a marchwarden of Imladris. Would you have us bear him up in honour and carry him into the very heart of our realm? Shall we seat him at the high table, perhaps, so the Lord of the Valley can hear his tale and advise him on his errantries? And what of the foul creature he leads? Bathe it in rosewater and clothe it in silk, I suppose. We do not take in the beggars of the world in this land, lady, and that you know full well.'

Aragorn saw the Elf-maiden stiffen, squaring her shoulders and drawing thin her lips. 'He is haggard and wayworn; both look half-starved,' she argued. 'The Man is nearly dead on his feet with weariness; not even a madman would speak so imprudently else. And the creature…' She looked down and shuddered, then fixed her eyes searingly to Aragorn's left – presumably upon the face of her captain. 'Tell me, is there no room in Lothlórien for pity?'

'Pity is not mine to mete out,' Aithron said coldly. 'My duty is to guard these borders from all who approach; to admit none but as the Lady has decreed; and to keep things such as that—' Here the hand on Aragorn's arm tightened as though its partner had been thrust forward in a fierce, disdainful gesture that was surely meant for Gollum. '—far from our sanctuary on penalty of death.'

'They have not passed so far over our borders as that,' the lady said. 'We might offer them provender and turn them back.'

'We do not have the bastion of the mountains to protect us,' argued Aithron. 'Nor defensible hills, nor the great guarding Loudwater. We do not have the luxury of turning strangers back; not until we know their names and their purposes. Now bind his hands, or return to your idyll in the West and leave those of us who must dwell in uncertainty to do our duty.'

'Bind me if you will,' Aragorn mumbled, raising his hands and holding them out before him. 'Only keep watch over my captive and let me sleep. I have travelled… travelled…'

His mind was wandering again upon the edge of nothingness, and his legs were trembling. Having halted at last he did not think they would bear him up much longer, and he was quite certain that no will he might summon from out of his fading mind would induce them to walk again.

'I have travelled many leagues…' he said, still trying to finish his thought. 'If you will keep watch over my captive perhaps I may sleep. He is swift and he is sly… you must not take your eyes from him, not even for a moment. Mithrandir…'

'He names the Grey Pilgrim,' the Elf holding his right arm said. 'For his sake perhaps we should be cautious.'

Aithron made a dismissive gesture that danced in the corner of Aragorn's line of sight. 'Whom do you fear most?' he asked. 'Mithrandir and his discomfiture, or the spies of the Enemy?'

The awkward silence spoke to uncertainty, and Aragorn felt a mad desire to laugh. Clearly Gandalf's temper had been felt even in this clement land. Something of this urge must have shown on his face, for Calmiel leaned in towards him again, compassion upon her face.

'If you have some further offer of credence,' she said softly; 'name it now and perhaps we may treat differently with you. Who are you that Mithrandir should entrust you with his prisoner? What is your name?'

For a moment it hovered upon his leaden lips, but then the voice of caution fanned into a fire of paranoia by the long days of unbroken wakefulness stopped him. He knew this tactic too: a gentle voice coaxing forth what the commanding one could not. He shook his head.

'And what is that but proof of sedition?' demanded the captain. 'Bind them, I say, and then word can be sent onward and further instructions obtained.'

One of the other Elves bent, and Gollum's shriek morphed into a snarl. He gnashed his scanty teeth and the sentry drew back a little, then moved again to seize him.

'Have a care; he bites!' Aragorn snapped, far more earnestly than he had before. He stooped so swiftly that he startled the two who were holding his arms and they lost their grip. His hand closed on the halter just short of Gollum's neck and he shook it. 'Be still!' he snapped in the Common Tongue. 'Be still or I will gag you again.'

'Elveses!' Gollum wailed, the toes of one foot clawing against Aragorn's boot. 'ELVSES!'

There was a swift movement above them and Aragorn felt his back arch as if of its own accord to shelter his prisoner. His dim reason bristled and his pulse quickened. If they tried to bind Gollum, if they even touched him he would lash out and he would bite, and if he bit one of the Elves their lives might both be forfeit: Gollum's for the attack and his own for bearing the hostile creature hence. No evoking of the name of Mithrandir would save them then.

'No,' he said, and for the first time the edge of command was in his voice. 'No. I will bind him. I have bound him before. There are cloths in my pack that have served the purpose. Will you give me leave to take them?'

'We have rope,' Calmiel said. Gollum wheezed and whimpered and shook his head violently.

'Not for his mouth,' Aragorn said. The corners of his own lips prickled at the thought of it. There were some cruelties that once experienced could never be inflicted. 'Whatever may come to pass I will not put rope in his mouth.'

The Elf-maiden looked towards her commander and he must have given her some sign, for she bent to pick up Aragorn's broken pack where it had tumbled from his grip. She dug inside, fingers stiff with distaste, and drew out the bundle of wool strips. He took them from her and offered the plug of cloth to Gollum.

'If you do not take it willingly,' he said, once again in Westron; 'then they shall compel you.'

Gollum looked at his hated jailor and then up at the circle of five about them. He shuddered convulsively and then, incredibly, unloosed his jaw like a serpent about to swallow a rabbit and allowed Aragorn to insert the gag. He bound it as gently as his fumbling fingers could manage and then tied his prisoner's ankles. His hands, of course, were well secured.

'Now bind me if you will,' Aragorn said wearily, raising his wrists as far as his stiffened shoulders would allow and curling his cold hands into loose fists so that he might be most easily secured. 'Only give me your word that you will watch over him while I sleep.'

A length of soft grey rope was looped over his arm. The feet of the Elves around him swam and blurred before his fading eyes. The lady set about knotting his wrists together with hands that shamed his own fumbling. Someone tugged at his planted foot and he slipped it back beside the one on which he knelt. Behind him another of the border-guard began to bind his ankles. The murmur of voices conferring in the language of Lothlórien swam above him, but he could not quite make sense of the words until Aithron knelt beside him, once more closing a firm fist on his arm.

'Your name, stranger,' he demanded again. 'We will have your name ere you will be permitted to sleep.'

Aragorn raised his eyes stupidly, unable to quite make the face before him come into focus. His balance faltered and he slipped onto his right hip with a soft thud, his bound legs curled beside him. 'Watch him,' he begged. 'Please, will you watch him that I may sleep a little?'

Long hands seized his shoulders and shook him. 'What is your name?' the captain repeated.

His eyelids dipped slowly downward, and he felt his lashes crackle against the grime ground into his skin. Off his feet at last, with the last of the afternoon sun falling on the side of his nose, he did not think that anything could keep him from sleep now. Only the need to secure a promise kept him from slipping away entirely.

'You must,' he croaked. 'You must watch him so that I may sleep.'

'Tell me your name and we will watch him,' countered the Elf.

Relief almost beyond imagining washed over him, and Aragorn felt tears of gratitude brimming in his eyes. He had reached a safe place at last, a place where he might lie down and rest a while without fear, without danger, without negligence. And he dearly needed to rest. He craved slumber now more than he had ever longed for anything in his life, save only breath in the desperate deeps of Anduin. If his name was the price that bought it for him, it was cheaply given.

He opened his mouth and hesitated. In his muddled half-drowsing state he could not recall which name they wanted to hear. He could not remember which of his many names would buy him the safety he so desperately needed, the safety to sleep. Not Strider, surely, for when had Strider ever been safe? Thorongil, then, with his trusted lieutenants and his scores of loyal men who for love of his name would have sailed away into peril in an enemy port. Yes, they would let him sleep a little… but that was long ago, and many long leagues away. Perhaps Aragorn, for it was the name that would gain him shelter in the hidden villages and lonely farmsteads of the North. A lady of the Dúnedain would gladly let him rest, hushing her children that the Chieftain might sleep – and such a lady would be match enough for Gollum, bound as he was. Yet he knew, indistinctly, that he was far from the empty northern lands where his people dwelt. What name would buy him safety here, here among the Firstborn?

'Estel,' he whispered as his body gave up its last valiant effort to remain upright and his tortured mind slipped away. 'My name is Estel.'    

Chapter XXXII: Guarded Rest

Aragorn awoke with a concussive start that ripped through his body and summoned a dozen pains from muscles driven too hard and too long and then left to grow cold and stiff. His mouth seemed plastered shut and he could not quite manage to open his eyes, but the terrible realization that he had fallen asleep, after all his desperate efforts to keep from doing so, seized him with intractable force.

His first frantic thought was that Gollum had escaped, and he tried to reach out with his right hand. It dragged the left with it, and the muscles of his shoulders protested – the right most of all. But curling between the soft cord that bound both his wrists was the coil of coarse orchish rope still knotted to his left. His fingers closed upon it and he twitched it, feeling the reassuring weight of his captive on the far end. Only then could he draw breath, laborious and uncomfortable against the curious pressure all down his right flank.

Dimly he realized that he had fallen asleep on his side.

It came back to him slowly as he fought the haze of drowsy dehydration and struggled again to lift his eyelids: the grim realization that he had pushed himself beyond the point where he might sleep safely in the Wild, even without a captive; the interminable days of trudging forward because he had no other choice; the mallorn-leaf in the wind and his last desperate push; the Galadhrim and their whistling arrow of warning. He tried to remember what he had said to them and they to him, but that was lost in the fog of exhaustion that he had still not entirely cast aside.

His left eye finally obeyed him and he found himself staring into the pale, unsettling orbs in his captive's gaunt face. Aragorn was lying curled on his right side and Gollum, bound at hand and foot and mouth and still tethered by the neck, was curled on his left. They were less than an armspan from one another, and the creature's foul scent was not entirely masked by the fragrance of the lately-fallen leaves cushioning the Ranger's aching body.

Aragorn tugged his hands up so that he could look at them. The twists of Elven rope were snug but not cruel; he might even have been able to work himself free of them given time, but of course no Man could outrun these guardians even if he wished. Awkwardly he got his elbow under him and pushed himself up a little. His bound legs felt as if they had been carved from stone and his effort to use them to sit failed quietly. With a soft grunt of discomfort he let his head fall back to the ground. He was not entirely certain that he wanted to sit up anyhow. Truly all that he wanted was to sleep again, but his thirst would not allow it. He tried to remember when water had last passed his lips, but he could not.

Two strong and slender hands closed on him from behind; one beneath each arm. Firmly they hoisted him, dragging his body a little so that his shoulders might be braced against the bole of the mallorn tree amid whose roots he had been sleeping. Startled but free from fear, Aragorn blinked to clear the fog from his sight.

The marchwarden named Aithron was crouched beside him, head tilted thoughtfully to one side. There were questions in his dark eyes, but he did not ask them. Instead, wordlessly, he held out a leather bottle worked all over with delicate silver tracings. The stopper had been removed and Aragorn was able to clutch it almost comfortably between his two hands. He raised it to his lips in defiance of the protesting muscles in his shoulders and back, and despite the urge to quaff down its entire contents took a single prudent swallow of the water within. He lowered the vessel into his lap determined not to overtax his thirsting body.

The Elf was watching him now with something like approval. The night was old around them, and the moonlight offered each a careful inspection of the other's face. Aragorn saw the smooth impassivity of a soldier who reveals nothing to a stranger whose allegiance is yet unknown. He could only imagine what Aithron saw: a haggard mortal visage deeply lined with the strains of the past dreadful weeks, unshorn, unshaven, filthy and pale. Hard grey eyes that had seen too many dark things for three lifetimes in little less the span of one. Cracked lips, prominent bones, fading bruises still evident upon the throat. In short, not a face that inspired trust.

He raised the bottle and drank again, more deeply this time. The water was cold, and clearer and sweeter than any he had tasted since passing through the Hithaeglir long months – had it only been months? – before. He let his heavy eyes close again and inhaled deeply through his nose. Neither his own stink nor that of his captive could taint the moment of bliss that came as he breathed the wholesome air of the Golden Wood. After so long wandering in darkness and desperation and even despair, he could scarcely believe that he had reached this hidden haven.

The Elf-captain was still watching him, now with a faint furrow to his brow. It was plain that he did not quite know what to make of his prisoner. Aragorn took another long quaff from the bottle and tilted his hands awkwardly so that he might dab the back of his right to his mouth.

'Thank you,' he said in the tongue of the Galadhrim. He tried to smile, but his weary lips trembled and failed him. He hoped that his earnest intent showed clearly in his eyes despite the tricks of the moonlight.

Aithron nodded curtly. 'What of your own prisoner?' he asked.

Aragorn looked down at Gollum, still immobile by his side. The pale eyes glowed with hatred.

'I do not know if he would take your drink,' he said; 'but we might try. Only have a care—'

'—he bites,' the Elf finished, something almost like amusement flickering across his face. 'So you have said.'

Without rising off of his heels he skirted deftly and almost silently around Aragorn and reached out for the knotted rag behind Gollum's head. Instantly the creature shrank from his touch, and from beneath the gag came muffled shrieks. Aithron's lips tightened in irritation and he moved as if to seize the creature.

'Do not,' Aragorn said. His concern was twofold. He did not want this sentry to fall afoul of his prisoner, certainly, but the truth was that he felt uneasy about subjecting Gollum to handling by one who so clearly terrified and revolted him. With the burden of the captor came also a certain duty of care. The Elf appeared to understand that, for he drew back his hands and left Gollum to writhe fruitlessly among the golden leaves.

'I might try, if you would see fit to free my hands for a minute or two,' the Dúnadan offered.

Instantly Aithron was on the alert again. His lip curled disdainfully. 'I was not found amid the niphredil this morning, Secondborn,' he said coldly. 'I will not loose your bonds for any reason until I receive word as to what is to be done with you.'

Aragorn almost laughed at his own stupidity. Certainly that had sounded like a ploy to escape the ropes; in the marchwarden's place he would have been equally suspicious. 'Word from whom?' he asked, not quite daring to hope.

'From the Lord and Lady of this realm,' he replied coolly. 'It is for them to decide your fate, not I.'

The Ranger looked down at the vessel in his lap. 'And yet you have allowed me to rest peaceably, and you have given me water,' he said softly. He should have expected no less of the Eldar, but after his recent travails it seemed wondrous, indeed nigh impossible, to be treated with even this much care and courtesy.

'You may have food as well if you wish it,' the Elf said, almost indifferently. He raised his hand as if to signal to one of his comrades, but Aragorn shook his head.

'Not now, I thank you,' he said. He raised the flagon with care and drank again, this time draining it. 'Now I would sleep again, if I may. The night is not spent and I am weary.'

Aithron helped him away from the tree's broad trunk and Aragorn stretched out on his back. He would have liked to tuck his hands behind his head, but knew better than to suggest it. In any case, he reflected as the bare branches above began to dance and blur in his fading sight, his aching shoulders would have protested the motion.

He was all but lost to slumber when he felt something – cloak or blanket he could not say – being draped carefully over his long form.

lar

He slept through the night and on into the following day. Now and then he woke briefly, and each time one of the four Galadhrim was at hand to offer him water. Of the lady Calmiel he saw no sign. He supposed it had been she who had been sent to Caras Galadhon for instructions. Perhaps she had intended to plead his case, but he had no need of that. His name and his quest were known to Lady Galadriel, and Aragorn did not doubt that word would be sent that he was to be allowed to continue unharried.

Not until he opened his eyes to the gathering twilight, his thoughts clear for the first time in many days, did he realize that he had not given the sentries his right name. Then he lay still, half-dozing even as he strained to remember whether Galadriel would know him by his childhood epithet. He had roamed in her land for a brief blessed season long ago, and during that time had been treated as an honoured guest and closest kindred, but in all those merry spring days had they spoken of the name bestowed upon him by Lord Elrond when he was brought – scarcely more than a babe in arms – into his house? He did not think so, and the thought left him uneasy in his mind.

He knew he had nothing to fear from the Galadhrim, even if he was not at once recognized. At worst there would be a delay of a day or two while the misunderstanding was explained and his exhausted obduracy excused. Yet it was the delay that worried him. This day he did not count lost, and even if it took another for word to come from the city he would take it and be glad… but beyond that he could not tarry. He had not shaken off the fear of pursuit, and he was not at all convinced that the fire he had seen in the sky some nights before was a simple coincidence. It seemed more likely that it had been laid by a band set forth to hunt for him and his ill-starred prisoner. If that was the case then he would be running a deadly race to the Carrock, and with many hundreds of miles of winterland before him he could not be certain of winning.

Yet even this worry could not keep him long in the waking world, and he slipped away once more.

lar

The stars were bright amid the bare branches when he woke at last to the feeling that he might be able tostay awake. With some undignified wriggling that sent up cramps of protest in his long-dormant legs he managed to sit, the blanket tangled across his lap. Gollum was still lying at the end of his tether, and he was asleep at last. It was an uneasy sleep, however, for he twitched and snuffled and whimpered behind his gag, and amid the careful bindings his fingers writhed. Watching the hollowed eyes jump and skitter beneath papery lids, Aragorn could only wonder at the dark dreams that were visiting the creature in this most serene of waystations.

A silvery ladder whispered down from a tree some yards away, and after a moment one of the Galadhrim began to descend from the flet that Aragorn had not noticed until this moment. He was climbing one-handed: in the other he held a shallow round basket. As he approached the enticing scent of Elven bread reached Aragorn's nostrils. His stomach cramped painfully almost at once, and by the time the watcher reached him his mouth was glutted with spittle. He swallowed awkwardly, but it flooded back.

'Aithron has ordered that you are to be fed,' the Elf said levelly, sitting cross legged beside the Ranger and setting the basket between them. Aragorn saw that in addition to the half-loaf there was a helping of hazelnuts, ready-shelled, and an assortment of winter fruits such as grew only in the orchards of the Galadhrim. 'If you are not inclined to eat I must compel you.'

'Not inclined to eat!' A harsh barking sound that was evidently meant to be a laugh tore free of Aragorn's throat. His warden looked at him sharply, startled by the noise. The Ranger smiled a little and shook his head. 'I have not seen such fare since…' The words trailed off as he struggled to remember.

The Elf looked relieved. He had a flagon of water slung over his shoulder and he removed the stopper and set it next to the basket. 'Eat, then,' he said, settling back to watch.

Aragorn reached out with his bound hands and clumsily tore of a piece of bread. Conscious for the first time in many weeks of his dignity, he restrained himself from gobbling like a starving troll. Instead he managed a temperate bite, and was immediately lost in an almost indescribable rapture of pleasure. The bread was soft against his palate, faintly sweet and lightly salted. It tasted of summer sunshine captured in a single moment of glory, rich and nourishing and clean. He had scarcely swallowed the first bite when his teeth were tearing off a second. This one he savoured slowly, chewing with care and trying to trap each tiny flavour in his memory.

After that he took a few nuts and a small piece of fruit, its bright rind already peeled back so that he did not have to fumble too inelegantly with it. The tart syrupy juice tasted as foreign on his tongue as any strange concoction he had tasted in Rhûn or Harad, so long had it been since he had come across such food. Then he helped himself to another hunk of bread, but this time could only take one bite before his stomach protested its fullness. Reluctantly he laid down the rest. He might have had hope of trying again in a few minutes' time, but he did not think it would be wise. He would be out in the wilds again on short commons soon enough, and if he strained his capacity now he would only have to suffer through the hunger-pangs in force again later. He took the vessel of water and drank.

'What manner of creature is it?' the Elf asked softly. He was still staring at Gollum, bewilderment and ill-concealed disgust upon his face. 'Is it a dwarf stricken with some terrible sickness that has worn it to the bone and made its beard fall out?'

Aragorn shook his head. 'I do not know precisely,' he said; 'but he is not a dwarf: of that at least I am certain. He is something like a hobbit, or at least he is not wholly unlike a hobbit in appearance and in the tracks he leaves.' He did not add that in demeanour and disposition Gollum could not have been more unlike a hobbit, but that was how he had thought of his quarry during all the years of hunting him unseen.

His guardian cast him a puzzled look. "And what is a hobbit?' he asked.

It was not an unfair question, Aragorn realized. The Galadhrim were isolated in their land of peace and plenty, and in any case the Shire was nigh on a thousand miles distant from their westernmost border. Hobbits themselves seldom roamed far from their homes, and even Bilbo Baggins – the greatest of adventurers by hobbit standards – had never ranged so far to the South.

'A fair little folk,' he said. 'They dwell near the Grey Mountains, not quite upon the border of Lindon and Eriador. They are merry, great lovers of song and food, sowers of beautiful gardens. And for all their innocence they are courageous at need, or so I have found.'

The Elf's long gaze settled once more on Gollum and he curled his lip. 'Then it seems this creature is nothing like them at all,' he said.

Aragorn tried to gesture helplessly. With his wrists bound his aim went awry and he feared his point was lost, but it mattered little enough.

'And why would you travel in the company of such a thing?' asked the Elf. 'To be sure you are scarcely a portrait of delicacy yourself, but—'

He realized what he had said even before Aragorn had raised a sardonic eyebrow, and cast his eyes away abashed. 'I did not… it is only… do mortals never bathe?'

It was so like the tactless remarks of the folk of Bree-land that Aragorn very nearly bit down on his tongue to stop the acerbic remark that wanted to burst forth. He had to remind himself that he was, at least for the moment, the prisoner of these marchwardens, and if they were inclined to taunt him it was only their due – and nothing that he might not have expected.

'They do,' he said, meekly enough; 'but it is difficult to find the means to do it properly in the empty lands of Eastemnet or on the slopes of the Emyn Muil or amid the meres of Dagorlad.'

The shining eyes went wide and the Elf's jaw slackened a little so that he looked remarkably like some bright golden fish cast suddenly into the bottom of a fisherman's coracle. 'You have walked the plains of Dagorlad?' he whispered in frightened awe.

'There is little enough of the plain remaining in these late days,' Aragorn said; 'but that was indeed my road. I have travelled far to fulfil my promise to Mithrandir, and my journey is not yet half-finished. Perhaps then I may be forgiven for neglecting such luxuries as bathing.'

The mention of such things was raising a creeping itch over much of his skin: beneath his arms and across his scalp and up and down his spine and, strangely, in the hollow behind each knee. Hands hampered as they were he was powerless to do anything constructive about it. He resisted the urge to squirm inside his grimy clothing, for he knew it would avail him nothing. Still the Elf seemed to sense his discomfiture, for he made a small apologetic motion with one slender hand.

'Perhaps when your travels are ended?' he asked.

The thought of enduring another four hundred miles or more in this state increased the longing to scratch tenfold. All that saved him from madness was the half-hysterical thought that if the time ever did come that his travels were well and truly ended, he would bathe thrice a day. At the moment, however, if he could not wash at least he wanted to stop talking about it. In the hope that silence might serve to communicate this point, he reached for the water and took another savouring swallow.

The Elf cast an eye on the basket of victuals and frowned. 'Is that all you intend to eat?' he asked.

Aragorn's stomach was still straining to accommodate what he had taken and he nodded. 'At present,' he said. With his exhaustion eased and his throat wetted and his belly satisfied he was becoming aware of another need neglected through the long hours of leaden slumber.

When he made mention of it to his guard the Elf's brow furrowed. 'I cannot unbind your hands,' he said, almost regretfully; 'but if you wish to withdraw apace I can sever you from your… from the… from that…' He wafted his hand at Gollum.

Without thought Aragorn's left hand closed on the coarse rope still running across his palm. 'No!' he said, more emphatically than he had intended. He might trust his life to these faithful sentries of the Golden Wood, but he was not prepared to entrust them with his prisoner. At first he could not think why, but it came to him soon enough. They did not believe that Gollum was a threat. Despite his warning that the creature was wont to bite, they thought of him as a harmless – if repulsive – trespasser. So indeed he looked now, trussed up in rags and curled upon his side, mewling uneasily in his sleep, but Aragorn knew that was only an illusion and the Galadhrim did not. He could not be separated from his hard-won prize even for the minute or two it would take to relieve himself.

Therefore he took care of the matter as best he could without loosing the halter or waking his prisoner while his own jailor politely strode a small distance away and averted his eyes. The most difficult part of the proceedings was the arranging of his garments afterward, for his bound hands hampered him and his cote and hose were rent into ragged straggles that tangled about his fingers – still chilled in the winter night. In the end he accomplished it, however, and managed to creep awkwardly back to the place he had lain before. The blanket was crumpled amid the leaves where he had abandoned it, and with three awkward snaps of his bound wrists he managed to spread it across his legs from the top of his boots to his loosely drooping belt.

As he eased himself first onto his elbow and then onto his back a sharp, knotting cramp seized his right thigh where the spider-claw had riven it so many long days ago in the foul passages of Torech Ungol. He closed his eyes and locked his jaw as the pain rippled up into his hip and down to his knee and up again. His ankles jerked involuntarily, battered boots chafing against one another beneath the circlet of Elven rope. With a hot burst of will he commanded them to be still. His feet obeyed, but the long rebellious muscles in his shank would not. He could do no more than lie there, forcing slow and steady breaths as he rode the waves of this latest trial.

In the end, of course, it ceased, and the leg that had been first driven past its limits of endurance and then left to knot and stiffen all day while he slept and finally subjected to the difficult task of moving as one with its partner gave up its protestations. Aragorn let his jaw untangle, panting shallowly now. He was used to such things, though not ordinarily complicated by a deep and newly-knit scar, yet somehow he could never quite master them. A trickle of perspiration ran along his left temple and into his ear and he reached to wick it away. A warning quiver along his right scapula stopped him, and he tried instead to ignore the crawling tickle.

He opened his eyes again and saw his warden standing over him, doubt writ across the smooth brow.

'This duty does not suit you,' Aragorn observed with the eyes of a captain. 'If you cannot stomach your prisoner's discomfort then you are not fit to keep prisoners.'

'And can you stomach that thing's discomfort?' the Elf asked. His tone was hard but his eyes betrayed his unease and uncertainty.

Aragorn turned his head a little so that he could see the emaciated shape with its great head. The nimble fingers were still encased in windings torn from his cloak, but as he looked at them the bruises on his neck began to burn again as they had not in days. 'Yes,' he said, and he knew his eyes were cold.

The watcher pursed his lips in a distaste no longer meant wholly for Gollum. It was the look of one who has led a life sheltered from the ugly struggle for survival that the West had been quietly waging for years uncounted. Sheltered, Aragorn thought, by himself and others like him. It was the look of one who could not comprehend the peril in which this vagabond had come with his deadly baggage in tow, and who could not imagine what still lay ahead. It was the look of ignorance, somehow easier to bear from the uneducated men of Bree than it was from one of elder race who dwelt on the very cusp of the coming storm.

'I would sleep,' he said hollowly, jerking one shoulder forward and the other back in an attempt to make himself comfortable despite his bonds. 'Leave me be.'    

Chapter XXXIII: As Needs Must

Aragorn surfaced from sleep more gently this time, floating up towards consciousness as if on a warm rising tide. His mouth was hot and tasted faintly of hazelnuts and his lazy eyes declined to open despite the welcoming flush of dawn upon their lids. Somewhere nearby he could hear the marchwardens conferring in hushed voices. There seemed to be some dissent about him; he guessed that word had not yet come from Caras Galadhon and they were debating whether to draw their own conclusions or no. He supposed that even if they did there would be trouble reaching a consensus. He had made no friend of the Elf who had brought him his supper, while he thought perhaps Aithron had been swayed a little by the brief discourse they had shared – though what of any value had been said he could not think. In the end he thought they would decide it best to leave him as he was; bound but not wholly helpless. It was the safest course if they wished to serve their duty: if his errand was proved legitimate they could not be blamed for doing only what was necessary to secure a stranger.

At last, more out of a quiet longing to look upon the mellyrn in daylight than anything else, he opened his eyes. The sun was still not wholly risen and the golden light upon the branches danced like a masquerade foretelling the beauty of spring. In a few short weeks all the forest would be ablaze with new growth, the glory of which he had never seen the equal. For a brief wistful moment he wished he might tarry, as he had when last he had stumbled upon this realm, but of course it was not to be. He consoled himself with the knowledge that such a visit would never be the equal of the first anyhow, for she with whom he had shared those idyllic days was far away beyond the mountains in her father's house.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Gollum, awake now and glowering blackly over his gag. For once his malevolence was not focused on Aragorn, but away to the west where he guessed the marchwardens were gathered. Quite awake now, his thirst was beginning to nag at him. He could see the Elven bottle, propped carefully in the fragrant deadfall by his right knee. In a moment or two he would struggle up into a sitting position and drink, but he did not do it immediately. Wearily he decided that today he would have to offer water to his own prisoner, though how he was to manage it while his hands were bound and Gollum refused to allow the Elves to touch him he did not know. The very thought seemed to drain him of his determination and he was taken by the urge to turn his face away and go back to sleep.

Presently, when both his scratchy throat and his dully aching back agreed that he could lie still no longer, Aragorn tried to roll onto his side. His left shoulder lifted with a painful whimper of protest that his mind tamped down almost at once, but his knees would not obey him. His body swiveled from just below his ribs and his hips remained stuck fast to the earth. A sharp tingling bolt shot down his right arm and he was obliged to fall back flat again.

This time he tried to lift his legs into position first. He needed to bend his knees, drawing up so that his heels could dig into the ground to support the little push-off necessary to turn his hips in time with his shoulders, but he found he could not do it. The first day's stiffness had hampered him. Today's was crippling. His most concerted effort to shift his legs brought only tangled pain – almost no movement at all. The muscles in his neck were giving voice to their angry objections and he let his head fall back amid the leaves, panting softly and biting back a cry of frustration.

As soon as he was able he rolled his shoulders again, this time attempting to reach across his chest to dig into the earth with his fingers in the hope that this might give him sufficient leverage to get onto his side – from which position he was confident he would be able to sit up even if his legs refused to obey him. Almost as soon as he began to stretch, however, sharp rippling fire tore through his arms and he was forced to lie back again.

He ran his tongue along his lips, feeling the fissures where they had cracked in the dry wind of the plains. Drawing in a tremendous, bracing breath he tightened the muscles of his abdomen. For a moment he thought that they too would betray him, but first his shoulders and then his ribs began to lift from the ground. His hands fell heavy in his lap as he slumped forward, upright at last but suffering dearly for it. His vision swam and he subsisted for a time from one breath to the next, dimly aware of the shapes of the four Elves perhaps a hundred yards away, gathered about the base of the tree from which the rope-ladder dangled. They did not appear to have noticed his motion, and he was glad. He wanted to master himself as privately as he could.

His back was afire now, the broad bands of muscle that wrapped his ribs jumping and twitching at intervals like oil spilled across a hot hearthstone. He forced his eyes to focus on his hands with their fingers curled inward so that the two sets of second knuckles very nearly touched. He could see that the ropes were not too tight; it was his arms, taut and aching after too long in the same position, that were hampering their usefulness.

The low chattering of the marchwardens died suddenly away, and glancing from the corner of his eye Aragorn could see two more figures approaching at a great distance through the trees. They were clad in the shifting woodland hues the others wore, and it was difficult to track them for long without raising his head. The lady Calmiel, no doubt, returned from Caras Galadhon with another of the folk of Lórien. He tried again to lift his hands, but his arms were slow to obey and his left elbow creaked ominously.

There was a flurry among the four Elves nearest him, but Aragorn did not trouble to look up. He could feel Gollum's bitter gaze upon him, and he abandoned the efforts to command his limbs in favour of a campaign to conceal the dismay he knew must be evident upon his face.

Then a cry sounded out across the glen. 'Ai, what have you done to him?' a familiar and yet unplaceable voice demanded. 

There was a rush of cloth and feet and Aragorn's dogged gaze shifted a little as two strong and slender hands closed upon either side of his weathered and begrimed ones. Ashamed, he wanted to withdraw his arms, but even if they had been inclined to cooperate the other hands closed fast over his, impossibly warm against his chilled fingers.

'You did not say that he was left bound all this time!' The voice sounded angry now and Aragorn wanted to raise his head to look at the speaker, but he was transfixed by the contrast of their two skins laid next to one another and he could not rally his wits.

'I did not know, I swear it,' Calmiel said anxiously. 'I left him bound and sleeping, but I felt sure that when he waked—'

'We have orders to waylay and secure all trespassers,' Aithron said, a defensive note undercutting his firm assertion. 'As I have told you, lord, she is over-soft of heart coming as she does from Imladris. Would you have expected us to fail in our duty?'

'I would have expected more sense,' the newcomer murmured, anger now replaced with a gentle chastising tone that at last rang true in the Ranger's mind.

Against the protests of his stiffened neck he raised his chin a little and found himself staring through a curtain of filthy hair into the fair and fathomless eyes of Celeborn of Lothlórien.

His lips parted but no sound emerged. Yet the Elf-lord seemed to read the astonishment in his heart, for he smiled gently.

'Who did you think would be sent to greet you,' he asked; 'who have laboured so long and travelled so far to walk this road at last victorious?'

Aragorn's eyes slid to his right, where still Gollum lay scowling his malevolence at this newest object of scorn. He did not feel victorious. Celeborn's brow arched.

'This is the creature, is it not, so long sought by Mithrandir and yourself?' he asked. 'Surely you realized your errand was known to us?'

The slightest of nods was possible without taxing too gravely his aching body. 'Gandalf made mention,' he said hoarsely.

The lord's expression darkened and he cast over his shoulder to his warders. 'Have you given him nothing to ease his thirst?' he asked. 'Are you orcs, to put a stranger to torment?'

'Water I have had in abundance,' Aragorn said hastily, though no more smoothly; 'and victuals also. I have but lately woken; that is all. Every care has been given me.'

Celeborn turned his gaze now to their nested hands. 'Not every care,' he said. His nimble fingers found the knot that bound the Ranger's wrists and he began to unlace it. 'I would not have had you bound, who have been our loved and honoured guest.'

The pressure where his arms sagged against the bonds was suddenly released and Aragorn's hands rolled from one another. A sharp pain darted up towards each elbow and his breath caught in his throat. Gently restrained or not, it seemed his arms misliked moving outward after a day and a half pinned in.

Gripping his right palm with one hand, Celeborn moved the other up along the protesting muscles. The gentle pressure did much to ease the blossoming cramps, and Aragorn closed his eyes in gratitude. The fingers moved to his left, but the rubbing palm halted almost at once.

'And this?' the Lord of Lórien cried in dismay. There was a faint song of steel on leather as he drew a slender silver knife that hung from his jewelled belt.

Realizing what he intended Aragorn looked up at once, his right hand sliding against the pain to cover the bracelet of coarse orc-rope around his left wrist. 'That is mine,' he said, relieved to hear some of the strength returning to his voice. 'My captive…' He tried to gesture towards Gollum, but this set his arm afire from fingertips to neck. He bit down upon his lip and one of the newly-scabbed cracks broke open.

Seeing his suffering and understanding its source Celeborn again worked his hands – both of them this time – gently up the spasming limb. Aragorn was acutely aware of the many eyes upon him; Gollum, questing as ever for each sign of weakness, and the Galadhrim, both troubled and transfixed by the sight of their prince ministering to this ragged beggar. He closed his mouth and tasted the faint tang of blood on his teeth.

It seemed that Celeborn was as sensitive to his mortification as to his pain, for he cast the eye of command over his shoulder. 'Begone,' he said. 'Make ready a meal fit for me to share with one I would have as my kinsman, and lay it out in what state you can in yonder clearing. Lady, fetch us both wine and fresh water.'

Fleet feet flew off in every direction, and the three were left alone: Elf-lord, Ranger, and the strange sly creature with the wide, glinting eyes.

'I thank you,' Aragorn exhaled softly. At least he was fairly certain that Gollum could not understand the speech of the Elves of Lothlórien, but he would still have to be careful of his tone. 'I had thought perhaps I bred confusion; in my weariness I did not give my true name to your sentries. You do not know me by the name of my childhood…'

Celeborn laughed, a rich and merry sound like the ringing of silver bells upon a cool spring morning. Gollum writhed, but Aragorn's heart lightened considerably. He had not heard such a sound in many long months.

'You may never have been presented to my lady or to me as Estel,' Celeborn said; 'but in your boyhood we had tidings of you from Elrond, and though she speaks of you as Aragorn my granddaughter but rarely addresses you any other name than that you bore as a boy. When you dwelt with us for a season "Estel" was heard often enough. We knew at once when Calmiel uttered it who had once more stumbled upon our borders in need.'

'It seems I am ever fated to come thus,' said Aragorn, casting his eyes down into his lap where his hands lay frozen against the rigors of motion. 'Wayworn, ragged, and in want. You will begin to think me incapable of managing my own travels.'

'Never that,' Celeborn assured him. He shifted back from his knees onto his heels and turned, reaching for the rope that bound Aragorn's feet.

At once the Man was leaning forward, reaching out despite the daggers of discomfort in his arms and shoulders. 'No, my lord; it is not meet…'

'Be still, Dúnadan, and let me undo what should never have been done,' Celeborn argued, brushing away the cold fingers and setting to the rope as deftly as he had the other. 'It was my lack of foresight,' he said. 'From Mithrandir we knew you were travelling in the South together, and that you might return by way of our borders in time. I thought, in my folly, that you would come both together: he is known to our sentries and they have orders not to harry him. I did not think to pass along such orders with respect to you.'

'We parted in the south of Ithilien, at the crossing of Poros,' Aragorn said. 'Mithrandir despaired at last of our hunt, and he had business in Minas Tirith. He turned northwest, and I east into the mountains.' He considered his words carefully and decided that it was not prudent to say more here. They were under the eaves of Lórien, it was true, but that was yet far from the security of the great mellyrn-borne palace in Caras Galadhon. Besides, it was not impossible that Gollum might understand Elven speech, but merely unlikely.

'And your reward for persistence was success,' Celeborn said dryly. 'You have your prize at last, though a poor prize it seems to me. What use has Mithrandir for such a pitiable creature?'

Aragorn shook his head as much as his neck would allow. 'We believe he possesses information that may prove beyond price,' he said. Then he sighed and rubbed one grubby finger against his torn thumbnail, still mindful of disturbing his sore arm. 'If he does I have not been able to extract it. Yet I am sworn to bear him to Thranduil, and bear him I shall, though all the length of the Wilderland still lies ahead.'

He felt his resolve faltering as he spoke, but if it showed in his voice Celeborn took no notice. 'I had always suspected you of possessing patience in double measure to Mithrandir's,' he reflected. 'I see now that I have perhaps underestimated.'

'Either my patience or my obstinacy,' Aragorn said. The knot against his ankles came loose and he felt the troublesome pressure vanish from his hips. Then to his consternation Celeborn laid hold of his mud-befouled right boot and began gently to bend his leg. The muscles of his knee tightened painfully, but the Lord of Lórien laid his other palm under the joint to ease them. He let Aragorn's foot rest amid the littered grass and smiled a little at the drain of relief in the Ranger's face.

'I have seen a hard march or two,' he said; 'long ago though they were. Lying still for nigh on two days after such a march is bad. Lying bound is worse.' He shook his head. 'What a tale of the hospitality of the Galadhrim you will have to carry with you.'

'In their place I would have done the same,' Aragorn said. The Elf-lord was at work with his other leg now, easing out of its painfully locked position. 'I do not look worthy of trust.'

Celeborn looked at him with an appraising eye that took in all there was to see with little sign of what he thought. Yet the light in his eyes flickered and shifted, if ever so slightly, and when next he spoke his voice was low, almost mournful.

'You have trodden a weary path, that much is plain;' he said. 'What hardships you have faced one such as I can ill imagine.'

'There are hardships on any road when one walks alone,' Aragorn said. 'And when a man carries his greatest peril with him it seems they pile one upon another with alarming swiftness.'

'He has marked you, I see,' said Celeborn. His eyes were fixed now upon Aragorn's throat where the bruises from Gollum's grasping fingers still ached deeply.

'More than once.' Aragorn's fingers strayed to his right sleeve, beneath which the wounds of the creature's teeth were still hard and glossy beneath fragile new scars. 'I have left my own on him, however, and it is he that goes bound while I walk free.'

The irony of these words, when the Lord of Lothlórien himself had been obliged to unbind him, did not entirely escape him. His lips curled into a small, wry smile, but Celeborn did not return it.

'I do not think you will be free until you satisfy yourself that he is safely in Thranduil's dungeons,' he said. 'I had hoped to persuade you to return to Carad Galadhon with me and rest until you are healed of your hurts and mended in your heart, but from the look in your eye I fear such an effort would be fruitless.'

At this Aragorn bowed his head, hoping that neither his friend nor his foe could read the ache of longing in his eyes. 'You fear rightly,' he said; 'for I must press on at tomorrow's dawning, and dare not linger even one day more. I believe that the servants of the Enemy pursue us, and in the long race I must keep what slender lead I may. I had desperate need of unwatchful slumber, and I believe that even now I am not right in my mind, but once that is accomplished I must depart.'

'You would be safe in this land from whatever foes pursue you,' said Celeborn, but his tone was that of one who knows he will not succeed in his argument. 'And though we could never admit such a creature as he you lead, my people could secure him here while you rest and heal.'

'He would elude them in the end,' Aragorn said grimly. 'They do not believe him to be dangerous; they would underestimate him. He would never be safe, imprisoned beneath the open sky by sentries such as yours. And if we are pursued the sanctuary of Caras Galadhon will prove little barrier. The hunters would lie in wait and set upon us as soon as we set out again, as in the end we must.' His legs were beginning to cramp again and he shifted them with care. The pain in his back had eased only a little and he was still wary of moving his arms. 'I must press on with whatever haste I may.'

'If you lingered only a while – two days or three – we might see that you are sent forth again with all that you need to bear you on your journey. Your garments might be made whole, provender prepared to last you many weeks, tinctures to ease your pains and bear you up in your weariness…'

'There is little enough that I need,' Aragorn said. 'Such provisions as you can spare me, water, fresh tinder. If your sentries have needle and thread I would dearly love to mend the straps on my pack, for it is tiresome to carry it as it is.'

'You shall have a new pack,' Celeborn said. 'That at least should be simple enough to provide. Blankets also, if you can carry them, for you are headed into the very heart of winter in the northern lands. Your garments…' Here he paused, giving Aragorn another long and pensive look. 'Rags indeed, no better than the ones you wore when last you came to us.'

'Nay, better,' said Aragorn; 'for at least they are my own.' He looked down at the torn knees of his hose and the ragged bottom of his cote. His cloak, he knew, was all but finished, and what shreds remained of his last shirt had been stowed in his pack after the cold crossing of Limlight. 'If there is aught your folk can spare I will take it gladly,' he said. 'A shirt, at least. I make poor shrift without. A blanket will serve me as well as a cloak, and better than the light things your sentries wear.'

'Light they may be, but they are wondrous warm,' Celeborn said. 'But such garments are not in my power to give, and though I know Galadriel would not begrudge you I cannot break with long custom and speak on her behalf.' He frowned, troubled. 'Nor do I know if any here will have hosen to fit your legs.'

'A stitch and a patch is all they need. And a wash,' Aragorn added ruefully. He was once more acutely aware of the grime worked into every scrap of cloth that covered him, and over all of his skin as well. He could smell his own rank sweat in the weatherworn wool, and other things far worse than that. He had still a faint pong of the Marshes about him, and as he considered he imagined he could scent the spider-stink still, far beneath. 'My boots at least will bear me up for some seasons yet, but if you have a sheath to spare me for my knife I would be glad of it.'

Celeborn nodded. 'I shall do what I can for you; I and my folk. We may send to another border-station at need; that at least can be accomplished in a night, even if we cannot send to the city swiftly enough. It is a shame: had I imagined such haste I should have brought my horse.'

Aragorn glanced sidelong at Gollum. Evidently bored with the prattle of an unfamiliar language in his ears he was now lying on his back, bound legs curled to one side, fuming indistinctly behind his gag.

'I did not imagine such haste myself, after so many years of searching,' the Ranger said wearily. 'But what you have said is true: my heart will not rest now until he is secure beneath the earth in the keeping of the Wood-Elves.'

'You must command it to rest, at least for a night,' Celeborn said. 'I cannot restore to you the time you have languished in your bonds, but at least I can make some amends.'

'The time was not wasted, for I slept all but through it,' Aragorn said. 'I had walked without sleep for seven… eight… I do not know how many days. Sleep was the only gift I hoped to garner here.'

Celeborn clapped a firm but gentle hand on his stooped shoulder. 'We can do a little more than that,' he promised; 'though in the name of haste you cannot have all that is your due. And let us start with breakfast.'

lar

It was well that he had Celeborn to assist him, for once Gollum's legs were freed and it came time for Aragorn to stand he found his body as incapable of doing this as it had been of sitting gracefully. Stiff joints creaked and cold muscles protested, and it took some vigorous rubbing to make his calves bear him up and a number of painful stretches before he felt confident he could use his arms properly. His feet were tender after their long unbroken trek to the very edge of exhaustion and the first few steps upon them were torture. But Celeborn held his arm and Gollum loped along behind and they made their way to the clearing where the Galadhrim had laid out a meal upon the clean, dry winter grass.

They had made a feast of their simple soldiers' fare, and Aragorn, who had experience with the quartermastery of sentry posts, hoped that his presence would not deprive them. Of course it was not the same here as it was on the marches of Gondor or the lonely outposts in the North: they were but a day's easy walk from the city, and Lothlórien was a land of blessed plenty. Celeborn sat down before the baskets and bowls, and indicated that his guest should take the place of honour beside him. Calmiel returned apace, bearing with her two flagons of wine and a vessel filled with clear, cool river water. After brief words from the lord, the seven of them ate – Gollum squirming and pacing at the end of his rope, as disdainful of the food as he was of the company.

Aragorn took sparingly of the fruit and the sweet seedcakes, and allowed himself only a mouthful of wine, but he could not help but return time and again to the bread. At the best of times bread was a luxury in the wild, and the bread of the Elves was the taste of his childhood. He would have glutted himself upon it even if he had not been a slender span away from starvation, and after week upon week of roots and poor game and orcish fare he could not help himself. At last, as sated as his shrunken stomach would allow, he sat in drowsy contentment to listen as Celeborn spoke with his soldiers. Amid the ancient dignity of a great lord of the Eldar he had still the easy, companionable manner that made a well-beloved captain. The matter of ropes he plainly considered closed, for he questioned them pleasantly about their recent weeks' work and shared news of comrades and family in the city as he was asked.

Aragorn must indeed have dozed a little, sitting where he was with the sweet music of an Elven tongue to soothe him and the rough rope worrying a little against his wrist when Gollum tried to creep too far, for he opened his eyes to find that he and Celeborn were alone and that most of the food had been cleared away. The last of a loaf of bread still sat where he might easily reach it if he wished, and he found himself flushing a little. His hosts had noticed his greed for that particular delicacy, it seemed.

Behind him he could hear the unpleasant rasp of dead skin as Gollum scraped the sole of one foot up and down the opposite shin. It served as a weary reminder of his duty. He had taken his hard-earned ease, and he had a responsibility now to his captive.

'Forgive me,' he said softly to Celeborn. 'I must attempt to feed my companion. It may not be a pleasant thing to watch.'

'I should think it is not a pleasant thing to do,' said Celeborn; 'yet if you can stand to do it then I can stand to watch.'

Aragorn almost smiled at these words, but his brief moment of mirth was quelled by knowledge of the hateful task ahead. He had half hoped that the Elf-lord might withdraw and leave him alone to his ugly work. He did not want an audience for this. Mindful of his aching legs he turned his body around so that at least he was facing away from Celeborn. Gollum, sitting near the very limit of his halter, raised his head to stare defiantly at his captor.

'Come,' Aragorn said sternly, speaking in the Common Tongue so that he might be understood. 'You have done as I have bid you, and so you may have both food and water.'

Gollum's eyes narrowed and he shifted his toes to scratch the side of the opposite knee. He did not obey.

'Come,' Aragorn repeated. The pale eyes slid askance towards the Elf-lord. 'No one shall harm you,' said Aragorn. 'I did not allow the other one to touch you: no more shall he.'

Celeborn, who had been looking back over his shoulder, straightened his neck and folded his hands carefully into the rich sleeves of his tunic. With his bright eyes hidden Gollum seemed a fraction less tense. Aragorn watched breathlessly, as a hunter might watch a hart just beyond the range of his bow. It had not occurred to him earlier, when he had prevented Aithron from laying hands upon the creature because it was so obviously against his will, but this was a unique opportunity. If Gollum saw his captor taking his part against these fey strangers, perhaps he might be more inclined to trust – or at the very least less inclined to resist.

'Come, drink and eat,' he said, and this time let much of the hardness leach out of his voice. Gollum went so far as to get the foot that had been doing the scratching firmly planted in the grass, but then simply crouched there at the end of his lead, glaring suspiciously at the Ranger.

Aragorn's patience, whether greater than Gandalf's or not, was wearing thin. He took hold of the rope that dangled from his wrist and began to reel it in steadily but not too swiftly. Gollum, knowing that he had no other option, hopped forward one reluctant step at a time.

When he was within easy reach Aragorn fixed him with his firmest gaze. 'Do not attempt to bite,' he warned. 'You will find me most intolerant of such behaviour today.'

There was a sly, evasive look in Gollum's eyes, but he did not jerk his head away as Aragorn reached cautiously for the knot, which had migrated somehow from the back of his head to the hollow beneath his left ear. Despite his earlier stretching his muscles protested, but not emphatically enough to slow him down. He loosed the cloth and unwound it warily, then plucked out the plug of wool. Gollum worked his jaw in a long, slow circle, and then reared his head back and spat foully into the grass.

'Elveses,' he grumbled viciously to himself, then tried to hop backward. Aragorn's fist closed quickly on the tether and he was obliged to stop.

He had intended to offer Gollum the silver-tooled bottle from which he had himself been drinking, but at this pronouncement he began to think his prisoner would not take kindly to such a vessel. His own battered pack, borne hence by Celeborn, was lying within reach and the skins that the Ranger of Ithilien had left him were bound to it. The water within was not so fresh as that which Calmiel had drawn, but it might be more favourably received. He reached, farther than his arm wished to go, and grabbed it, his gaze never leaving his captive nor his other hand its hold upon the rope.

He unstopped the bottle and held it to the creature's lips. Gollum lifted himself a little higher on his haunches and began to suck greedily at it. The sounds caused Celeborn to turn his head again, too briefly for Gollum to notice or react. Aragorn tilted the skin a little so that Gollum could continue to drink. When at last his thirst was slaked he sat back down on his heels and went about smearing his mouth with his tightly bound hands.

Aragorn offered the last of the bread, and Gollum sniffed at it disdainfully. 'You must eat it,' the Ranger told him. 'I have naught else to offer: my own stores are exhausted, as well you know.'

Gollum looked up with wary eyes and then tore away a snatching mouthful. He chewed once and his lips jerked and wobbled. With a great retching noise of revulsion he flung the bread from his mouth, spitting again and again and scrabbling at his tongue with the tips of his fingers.

'Poisons us, precious!' he shrieked, so shrilly that a lark in one of the nearest trees rose up in a flutter of startled wings. 'Poisons us, wicked elveses, hateful manses, POISONS US!'

He hurled himself backward against the halter, and although Aragorn's fingers kept their grip his arm was jerked outward in a squall of tortured muscles. His heel dug firmly into the turf and he hauled the rope towards him. Gollum was still screeching, unintelligibly now, and spittle was flying in every direction. Snatching up the ball of wool where it lay discarded, Aragorn shoved it back atop the creature's tongue, muffling the cries and causing the thrashing to abate just a little. He bound the gag with swift, sure jerks of his fingers, and then allowed Gollum to fling himself back into the grass where he kicked his legs like an overturned beetle. Breathing heavily from the shock and the sudden exertion, Aragorn realized only then that Celeborn was watching him with mingled horror and awe.

'If it is not to his liking perhaps we can fetch something else,' he said in gentle admonition.

Gollum's fierce flailing stilled suddenly. Keen pale eyes narrowed. He understood or could guess what the Elf-lord meant, though he spoke in the tongue of the Galadhrim. With a crawling dread Aragorn's mind slid back to the fish that the creature had managed to snare during their fording of Limlight. Deprived of food in the wake of his attempt to strangle his captor, he had decided to provide for himself. Worse, he had managed to trick the Man into allowing him to eat his prize. In the test of wills they two had been running since first they grappled in the filth of Dagorlad that had been a clear strike in Gollum's favour, and it had sat uneasily in Aragorn's heart ever since. Now, he realized, he faced a similar battle.

'No,' he said coldly. He spoke in the Common Speech and though the words were addressed to the Lord of Lothlórien he fixed flint-grey eyes on Gollum. 'He shall eat what is offered, or he shall not eat at all. No quarter will I give here. Let him go hungry.'

'Hard words, Dúnadan,' Celeborn said softly.

Still he kept his sternest gaze upon Gollum, and though he spoke next in the language of the Galadhrim he kept his voice rigid and lofty as though he were still speaking in heartless rage. 'What can I do?' said Aragorn. Though his heart hummed in despair his tone did not waver: he saw that in the cowed eyes of his captive. 'He has attempted to slay me once already: if he sees the chance he will do it again. Northward I must take him, he must learn to obey me; what can I do but this?'

For all his fabled wisdom and for all the loving concern in his timeless eyes, Celeborn had no answer to offer.    

Note: This chapter is lovingly dedicated to my own maternal grandfather, the first Elf-friend in my line. Namárië, Papa.

Chapter XXXIV: The Hospitality of Lothlórien

They came at a run: Calmiel and two others with arrows notched and ready to fly, Aithron with his bright sword drawn. Together they swooped from out of the cover of the trees, forming a half-circle from which to join battle if the need was at hand. They faltered at the sight before them: Celeborn still serenely cross-legged beside his unkempt guest; the strange captive in the grass, still restrained. Celeborn smiled and raised a quieting palm.

'Peace,' he said. 'There is no danger here. Our guest was merely trying to see to his companion, and received little thanks for his pains.'

The weapons were lowered. Tucking her long arrow back in among its fellows Calmiel said; 'We are very nearly made ready, my lord. It is not the luxury you might have offered in the city, but I believe it will serve.'

Celeborn smiled and turned to the Man. 'Shall we follow?' he asked, rising gracefully to his feet. 'You can explain to my folk what is to be done about your clothing as we walk.'

He extended an arm in case Aragorn should have need of it, but he managed to stand without assistance despite the steady grinding ache still plaguing his knees. Gollum scowled up at him, but got his own feet under him swiftly enough and loped resentfully behind.

In truth it was Celeborn who gave most of the instructions, speaking with swift authority as they walked. One of the marchwardens relieved Aragorn of his pack while another confirmed that they did indeed have a supply of sewing implements.

'What of food?' asked Aithron. 'We have much to offer, but little that is suited to a long journey. More can be sent for, but it will not reach us before dawn.'

'Nuts and seeds will keep, and dried fruit if you have it,' Aragorn said. 'I would gladly take enough bread for five or six days if it can be spared. Beyond that… well, I have not starved yet, and though it is winter I walk now in living lands at least. I have good hope of game, and if you can give me twine or wire to make a snare that is all the better.'

'Will not hunting hinder your progress?' asked Celeborn. 'Perhaps the time you would spare yourself if you did not have to do it could be spent upon another day with us, awaiting proper provender from the city.'

Aragorn shook his head regretfully and glanced over his shoulder at his glowering shadow. 'I cannot,' he said. 'I am still too near the place where I crossed Anduin, and I know that I must have left signs of that passage at least. In any case it does not seem my captive is willing to partake of your food, and I will have to find other means to provide for him. What does for one will do for two.'

There was doubt in Celeborn's eyes, but he knew when he was faced with a will more unswerving than his own. He turned his attention on his captain. 'Do as he asks, and if you have not enough to supply him then we shall halt at another border-post on our northward path tomorrow.'

At the use of we Aragorn very nearly spoke again, but at that moment they came out from the close-grown trees into brilliant sunshine. Gollum quailed, flinging himself to earth and whimpering behind his gag as he tried to cover his head with his immobile hands. The Elves all gave him looks of startled concern, but Aragorn was too accustomed to such behaviour to heed it for long. The sun would not hurt Gollum however he disliked it, and the Ranger's attention was held by something else entirely.

The woods broke here at the edge of a little sandbar, beyond which flowed the bright waters of Celebrant. There was a cheerful fire burning within a ring of stones, and over it a large copper kettle was steaming. There was a broad wooden basin beside it, and a bathing sheet was spread out in the sand. Two more lay nearby, and with them a thick towel and a small stack of neatly folded linen. In a low basket sat a silver comb and a matching brush wrought with vines and flowers, a small shining knife, a little pair of shears, and a dish of the soft fragrant soap that the folk of Lórien made. A screen such as those used in a talan to cut the night wind had been rigged between two saplings so that all these accoutrements were in its lee.

The fifth of the border-guards, the one who has asked whether mortals ever bathe, was coming up from the river with a ewer in his hands. He poured the water from it into the vessel over the fire and then set it down in the basin before moving to stand among his comrades.

Aragorn's body was all ablaze with itches at the sight and he turned questioning eyes on Celeborn, who was watching with a knowing smile.

'As Calmiel has said it is not half the comfort we might have offered you in Caras Galadhon,' he said; 'yet perhaps it will serve.'

'Indeed it will, lord, thank you,' Aragorn said. 'I have yearned to wash: this is most welcome.'

Calmiel and two of her compatriots moved off, disappearing back into the forest and carrying his pack with them. Aithron, the one who had filled the copper kettle, and Celeborn remained, evidently expecting something more.

'If you will give me your clothes, lord, we may see about laundering them as best we can,' Aithron said presently.

Aragorn looked down. In his eagerness to bathe he had all but forgotten his stinking clothing. 'Of course,' he said softly.

Aithron helped him off with his boots, which seemed stubbornly fused to his lower legs. Aragorn removed cloak and hose and stood barefoot, struggling one-handed to undo the knot of the orc-rope on his wrist.

'Allow me to help,' said Celeborn, and he drew his slender knife. Aragorn shook his head.

'I would not have it shortened, not even by a wrist-length,' he said grimly. 'The knot will give eventually.'

It did, but by then he could sense the growing impatience of the two lesser Galadhrim. At last he was able to shuck off his cote and hand it off to Aithron, who strode away. Wearily he reached out to take the end of Gollum's tether from Celeborn. The Lord of Lórien smiled.

'Let him bide a while with me,' he said. 'I will guard him well, I promise.'

Despite the temptation to cry Ai, then let him begone!, Aragorn shook his head. 'I cannot have him out of my sight, my lord. I do not say that you would willingly falter, nor that you are incapable of tending a prisoner, but he is swift and he is sly. If he finds but a moment's advantage he will press it, and it might take no more than that to undo all that has been done to find him.'

There was a silence as they stood eye to eye, Aragorn unyielding and Celeborn studying the Man before him as one might plumb a well that proved far deeper and colder than first imagined. The startled eyes of the border-guard were fixed upon them, and Aragorn knew that he must look a fool, standing filthy and naked as he questioned the competence of the lord of all these lands, but he did not waver.

Finally Celeborn's eyes grew soft. 'Then he shall not leave your sight,' he said. 'I will sit here while you bathe and I will tend him.' Before Aragorn could make any further protest he reached out to put his empty hand on one bare shoulder. 'Lay by your yoke but an hour, Dúnadan. The sky will not fall without you to hold it.'

Aragorn's lips parted as if to make their own protest, though he could not imagine what they wished to say. Then he bowed his head in quiet quiescence. 'Forgive me, lord, my doubts,' he murmured.

'There is nothing to forgive, for I confess your doubts are not unwarranted,' said Celeborn. 'It has been many long years since I have guarded a captive, and I should not like to bear that dread responsibility even for a day. But an hour I can manage if it will ease your burden a little. Wash, and do not be hasty for my sake. Hithfaer shall serve as your waterbearer.'

He smiled, and Aragorn was abashed. Was he so far gone in the manic certainty that Gollum would escape him again that he could not accept aid so graciously offered by one who had proved himself a kind host and a true friend in more painful straights than this? Humbly he thanked Celeborn and turned back towards the fire and the great kettle so enticingly filled with hot water.

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In the end it took far more than an hour. The grime of many weeks was ground deep into his skin, and the relief of at last laving it away was tempered a little by the hard labour required to affect the change. Beneath the dish of soap he found a scrubbing stone and put it to work with vigour, wetting and lathering, rubbing and rinsing. Time and again Hithfaer had to bear away the basin, choked as it was with black murky water, and bring it back clean. Always he maintained the level of water in the kettle. Aragorn wondered whether Celeborn had somehow become aware of the words that had passed between them on the cleanliness of Men and assigned him this task accordingly. It was the sort of fitting reprimand he would have meted out himself, had the situation been reversed and one of his Rangers guilty of such remarks to a welcome guest.

He washed his trunk and arms, mindful of the marks of Gollum's teeth upon the right. For the first time in many days he took the time to examine the wounds. Those at the wrist were healed: dull purplish marks that would in time vanish altogether. Where the skin had been torn and had festered so long, the scars were thick and tangled and the nearby flesh was still a glossy red. Probing gently with his fingertips he found a place where the muscle did not give beneath the pressure as it ought. He frowned a little, but left it for the moment: such ministrations were best left until he was clean.

There were places near each arm and along the strip where his makeshift pack-strap had rested where the skin of his chest and shoulder was chafed and tender: sore from the rasp of the dirt-stiffened wool of his cote. It was naught but a minor irritation, stinging a little against the soap, but he took care not to rub too enthusiastically. If Celeborn would indeed provide him with a shirt to wear beneath his tunic the abrasions would soon heal.

The mark of the spider-claw on his right thigh was nothing now but a long bright curl along the pale flesh that his washing uncovered. He tugged at either side of the scar with questing thumbs, satisfying himself that the wound was well closed and the muscle beneath still able to move as it ought. He would have no more trouble from that quarter at least, save perhaps the occasional sensation of tugging. The cramp that had torn so terribly through that limb had been no more than coincidentally on the right; the price of walking too long and lying too still, and not any sign of lingering harm from his wound.

Despite his most enthusiastic efforts with the stone he could not quite buff away the dirt ingrained into his knees, but the feeling of dead skin being scraped away as he scrubbed his calves was one of the most delicious sensations he had felt in an age. He cleaned his feet carefully. They were quite vile with the humours of his body and with muck that had somehow worked its way into his boots. He had lost the better part of another toenail and his heels were bruised, but there were no fresh blisters nor any serious hurts. He counted himself fortunate, marching mindlessly as he had in the last days before reaching this haven, that he had not done himself some more serious injury.

When he was satisfied that his body was for the most part hale, and well on its way to becoming fit to live with again, he turned his attention to his head. Courteously he asked Hithfaer to fill the basin with hot water from the cauldron, and he bent low over it to wet his hair. The muscles of his arms and back protested against the exertions, but he let them complain and went stolidly about his business. He took a handful of soap and began to work it deep into his scalp with his fingertips.

No lather was raised at all, so thick were the oils and the foul residue of all his long travels trapped therein. Even in Harondor, when last he had found the leisure to bathe on the day he parted from Gandalf, he had been without the luxury of soap. Then he had used sand for scrubbing, and though it had done away with the worst of it the result had been imperfect. Since that long-ago afternoon he had trodden hard paths, and as he worked he could not but think of the memories of his travels doubtless entrapped in his matted tresses. Orc blood and stinking spider-webs, the noxious vapours of the caverns beneath the Ephel Dúath, the poisonous pollens of Morgul Vale and the scum of the Dead Marshes, the debatable rains in the Emyn Muil, the dusts of Eastemnet, the dander of the pheasant he had caught in Fangorn's eaves, and doubtless a measure of whatever unspeakable filth coated his travelling companion. And most lately, he thought with less distaste as his labouring fingers plucked out a crisp golden stem and flicked it into the sand, the fallen mallorn-leaves amid which he had slept so long and so well.

When he sat up to ask for the ewer, he found that Hithfaer was ready with it. 'Bend and I will pour,' he said. 'Your hands have other work to do.'

Aragorn thanked him and bowed over the basin, scouring beneath the gentle stream of water. Then his attendant bore the bowl away to be emptied and Aragorn took another measure of soap that he might begin again. It took two more rinsings before he managed to produce a few sweet-smelling bubbles at the crown of his head, and four before he felt halfway to clean. While his hair was still sodden he fell at it with the comb and the little silver shears, raking deep against his scalp and cutting away great burs of hair when he could not drag the instrument through. He knew that he was not keeping an even length, but he did not care. That was something he might worry about later, if at all. What mattered now was ridding himself of the weight of tangles so that he could wash what remained again.

When at last that was finished he turned his attention to his beard. It was not his wont to shave in winter, for bare cheeks stung in the cold wind and a wet face was an invitation to a chill, but the day was balmy here beneath the loving hand of the Lady Galadriel, and there was nigh as much grime in his beard as there had been on his head. He trimmed the hairs short and then rubbed soap into his cheeks and chin and neck and set to work with the knife. Hithfaer, who had for the most part tended to his tasks and kept his eyes politely averted with all the discretion of a practiced attendant, watched this process with fascination. When his progress over his face allowed it, Aragorn curled his lip wryly. His upstretched throat bobbed as he spoke.

'I have little enough of a beard even at its most unkempt,' he said. 'My kinsmen in the North outstrip me by far. I have a cousin who by winter's end can plait the hairs of his chin, much to the delight of his little granddaughter.'

At last his face was bare and he washed the smooth skin. There was no mirror at hand, but he did not need to know that now he had a rather piebald look about him: the brown, weathered flesh of his brow and nose against the paler stuff long guarded from nature's ravages by its prickly pelt. Nevertheless it was a delicious feeling to run his hand over his jaw and feel only clean flesh.

While he had the knife to hand he pared his nails with care; fingers first and then toes. In the places where they were cracked or torn he could not make perfect cuts, but still the sensation when he was finished was one of cool good health. He washed his body once more, and shyly Hithfaer offered to scrub his back. To this Aragorn gladly agreed, and when the last of the soap was rinsed away he stood bare upon the wet and stained bathing sheet feeling like a man reborn.

His helper brought a clean sheet to wrap his naked body, now shivering a little despite the gentle air. With the towel Aragorn rubbed his hair and face and ears, and then carefully dried his feet. Brisk rubbing with the cloth about him saw to the rest of his body. The sheet below his feet was bundled away and the third one laid out, and he sat to let his hair dry in the sun.

'May I have the basin again?' he asked, reaching for the little knife. 'And water hot as the fire will allow.'

Hithfaer agreed and crouched back on his heels, curious as to what more they had left unfinished. Aragorn glanced over to where the little pile of linen sat. 'Are there bandages there?' he asked.

The Elf nodded. 'We did not know whether you would have hurts in need of tending.'

'I have one at least,' said Aragorn. 'Bring them to me, I pray.'

There were two rolls: narrow cloth edged with the tiniest of stitches. Aragorn cut a piece a little less than the length of his arm and folded it thrice over. Then he took the knife and dipped it quickly into the water, which was all but scalding. Holding it with a healer's care in his left hand, he planted the side of his thumb with care. His smallest finger provided the counterbalance and he lowered the blade smoothly into his right forearm where the flesh was tight and immobile.

A bright burst of blood was followed swiftly by an outflowing of thin pus that ran down his arm and dripped upon the sheet where it wrapped his knee. He cut a little deeper until he felt the resistance of healthy flesh below his blade. Setting the knife aside he worked with thumb and forefinger, carefully draining the abscess first from one side, then another. Blood came again, thick and curdled with infection. He took the blade up and made another cut, this one perpendicular to the first. Again, drawing his fingertips with slow deep pressure, he milked the liquid from the wound until dark blood showed, the proper consistency at last. Then setting his teeth he plunged his arm into the hot water and felt it sting deep into the empty place beneath his skin where there had been a globe of rot.

He covered the wound with the pad he had made and wrapped his arm snugly with the clean Elf-made bandage, tucking it at his wrist and knotting it below his elbow. He waited to see whether a blossom of blood would show through the neat layers, but it did not. Satisfied he picked up the knife, gripping the blade between finger and thumb so that Hithfaer could take it by the hilt.

'Put that in the kettle and let it boil,' he said. 'Then we shall clear all this away.'

'Not you,' said Celeborn, who had been sitting silent by the water's edge all this time, the coarse rope wrapped around his hand and Gollum at the very end of it, vituperative but unresisting. 'You are our guest, Dúnadan. Behave accordingly.'

Aragorn smiled, the first true smile he had managed since his encounter with young Osbehrt. 'Very well,' he said. 'I shall be a burden on your folk and on your good graces while I may.'

Celeborn laughed and Gollum cringed. He made a suppurating whimper deep in his throat and clawed at the earth with one long foot. Aragorn looked down at his left wrist, where a band of flesh red and chafed marked where the rope had been. Well, he had had his rest and it was time now to take back his yoke. He got to his feet again.

At once Hithfaer was at his side, his arms again filled with linen. This time it was a shirt and braies, both showing signs of gentle wear and frequent laundering, but sweet-smelling and whole. Aragorn donned them gratefully, resisting the urge to squirm like a delighted child at the feeling of clean cloth against his skin. His smile this time was for the marchwarden.

'My thanks, friend,' he said. 'Seldom have I had such gracious assistance, and never have I been so glad of it.'

Then, astonishingly, Hithfaer bowed. 'It was my honour, my lord,' he said. Then he looked up in anxious apology. 'Forgive me,' he murmured. 'Had I known of your labours and your birth, and of she whose favour you have, I would never have spoken as I did.'

'That I know well,' Aragorn said, reaching to grip the slender muscled arm and nodding his head. 'If you have learned a little of the deceit of appearances then the words were not wasted.'

Then he walked across the sandbar and held out his hand to Celeborn. The Elf-lord offered up the rope and Aragorn knotted it securely about his wrist once more. Gollum ceased his writhing and looked up, eyes narrowed in distrust and perplexity.

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With Celeborn he walked back to the clearing where they had broken their fast. As the Elves had no shoes on hand to fit his feet he went unshod, but that was no hardship in this land. The golden leaves crackled beneath his toes though beside him the Lord of Lórien moved in silence. Behind them Gollum followed, whinging and now and then tugging at the rope as he arched his neck.

They came out of the trees upon a hive of activity. Aithron and his three subordinates were busy with the task of preparing Aragorn's goods for travel. His garments were spread over hedges and branches, drying in the sunlight. There was a sturdy pack of finely tooled leather in the grass, and beside it half a dozen folded blankets of softest grey wool – too many by far for one man to carry on his back. Aithron was hulling hazelnuts, and the two other male Galadhrim were sorting through an enormous basket of dried apricots. Off by herself in the shade of a tree, Calmiel sat with Aragorn's short knife on the grass before her. She was working with a cobbler's knife and a slender awl, fashioning a sheath that she stitched a fletcher's deft fingers. For thread she was using lengths of split bowstring.

Celeborn surveyed all of this and then moved to crouch by the place where Aragorn's old pack lay empty, its sparse contents in the grass.

'Fresh tinder, you said?' he asked as Aragorn drew near him. 'Twine and wire for snares. Is there nothing else we can offer you?'

Aragorn looked about him again, his eyes falling on his boots where they lay nearby. They had been carefully wiped and oiled, and someone had even thought to stuff the toes with rags so they would not lose their shape as they sat. 'Sleep and a bath, food, respite and blankets?' he said. 'Have you not done enough?'

The timeless wise eyes glittered. 'All that you might have had for love of he that raised you,' he said. 'Twice that I would give if I could for Arwen's sake alone. Is there nothing you would ask for yourself?'

The breath caught in Aragorn's throat, and his limbs grew cold. In his breast his heart hammered out a fierce tattoo and he could feel the colour rising in his cheeks. All day it had been the unspoken name between them; she who was their only bond to one another, she who had been for him the very light of this land when last his road had borne him hither. He had known – of course he had known – that the sight of him would be as sure to bring her to Celeborn's mind as the sight of this land had brought her to his. Yet to hear her name spoken, she who was his heart, his love, the very flame of his courage, was a different matter altogether. Seldom did he dare to think of her in his travels; more seldom still on such a dark road as this had been.

'Nothing,' he said breathlessly, though he could not think why the word came to his lips. 'Nothing more than this.'

Suddenly the Elf-lord was on his feet, one hand upon each of the Ranger's shoulders. He was smiling and his eyes were tender. 'Nothing save a treasure beyond my scope to give, perhaps,' he murmured.

Aragorn could say naught in answer. He was lost in the memory of hair like the deep shadows of twilight, grey eyes dancing with laughter, lissom limbs beneath the silver of the moon. They had stood, arms entwined, upon Cerin Amroth, and there they had plighted their troth beneath the mellyrn ablaze with the splendour of midsummer. She was waiting for him now in Rivendell, wondering, perhaps, where he would bide tonight and sending forth her love across the long miles. She would not think to find him here, he supposed, but neither would she think of him as he had been only this morning, foul and ragged and bound. Shame at the thought of the state he had allowed himself to sink to filled him, and despite his clean body and fresh linen he felt once more besmirched.

Celeborn was watching him keenly. 'I will never tell her how you came to us, Dúnadan, but do not think it would sway her love or the esteem in which she holds you. She knows that your labours are bitter and your path at times near enough to unbearable. That you bear it even so gives her pride, however you come out of it.'

Wordless thanks filled the Ranger's eyes, and Celeborn smiled once more. 'Remember me kindly to her when next you come to Imladris,' he said. 'It was my one regret when the passage of the mountains was at last made safe that she need no longer bide solely in this land.'

This too they shared, Aragorn realized in that moment: they each in their own way were bereft without her, whom each loved so dearly. 'I shall,' he pledged. 'And may I soon pass this way again to bring you word of her.'

Celeborn raised an eyebrow. 'Not too soon, I hope, my son,' he said. 'Or else I hope that when next you come hither it is not on the heels of some calamity again.'

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None of the Elves at the border station had much skill with a needle, and so Aragorn sat down with their thread and their tools and set about mending his own hose. He cut the patches from the ragged edge of his cloak. It would not be much more than a hood and a collar after this, but with one of the blankets about his shoulders it would serve him well enough. Wool was not much used for garments by the Galadhrim, for they cultivated silk and other fabrics of a sort now made nowhere else in Arda. These cloths were woven by Galadriel herself, and by her maidens – Arwen was the most gifted of weavers and had put her hand often to its making – but as Celeborn had said they were not in his gift. Aragorn did not mind in the least. Faced with the winter snows ahead he preferred to place his trust in the familiar, and sturdy sheep's cloth had never yet failed him.

The afternoon stretched on into a golden evening, and he grew cool in his borrowed linen. His cote was not yet dry, but Celeborn did off with his own embroidered mantle and laid it over the Ranger's shoulders as he worked. They had been speaking together, Aragorn sharing what tidings he had from Eriador – long outdated though they were – and a brief account of his journey south with Gandalf.

'Word must be sent to him,' he said, curling the soft silken folds into his lap and then resuming his stitching. 'He should be informed that I have found Gollum and will be driving him with all haste to Thranduil.'

Celeborn wrinkled his nose in an expression that was remarkably comical on his ordinarily tranquil face. 'Gollum?' he echoed. 'Is that what the creature is called? By the Endless Ice, why?'

Aragorn gestured vaguely with the hand that held the needle. 'It is a noise that he makes in his throat when he speaks,' he said. 'Bilbo Baggins was the one who taught it to me, and I cannot deny that it is fitting, though I confess when first I heard the tale from him I did not imagine how truly unpleasant the sound could be.'

Through what must have sounded otherwise like a melodious river of gibberish Gollum had caught the name of his old adversary. He was up on his feet in a moment, glaring at Aragorn with eyes that glowed with malice. The Ranger went on stitching as though he had not noticed, but in truth he was watching his captive intently out of the corner of his eye. He had been incautious to speak Bilbo's name; nearly as incautious as he had been on the day he had spoken the riddle aloud. He still had no sense of what passed through Gollum's mind at such moments, and that was dangerous.

Celeborn shook his head. 'I remember the story of Mithrandir's burglar and the dragon,' he said; 'but I do not understand how this creature fits into it. He seemed unable to tell me.'

'Unwilling, I'm afraid,' said Aragorn. 'As am I. The truth is that even what we know may not be half of what there is to learn, and there is so much at stake that we cannot risk saying too much. Someday I hope I may tell you all, but on this night I cannot.' He buried his last two stitches and cut off his thread, surveying his handiwork with a critical eye. 'These shall serve, I think.'

'Far better than I could manage,' said Celeborn. 'My granddaughter did not inherit her skill in that art from me.'

The others were nearly finished with their own tasks, and soon they were sitting down to a wonderful supper. Aragorn ate, but slowly. His weariness was mounting and sleep was calling to him. That night he lay upon one of his new blankets with the other atop him, warm and comfortable despite his bare feet and his state of half dress. Above in the night he could hear the Galadhrim singing.

When at last he slept, he dreamt of midsummer.

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In the dark before dawn Aragorn arose. He folded one blanket thrice, rolling it tightly before strapping it to the pack that he had been given. Everything else was bundled carefully away already. He put on his clothing, pointing his darned hose with fresh laces, easing his cote over shoulders that still ached dully after his long trek. His belt was now hung once more with his knife, safe in the sheath that Calmiel had made. She had also lent him her awl that he might punch fresh holes in the leather strap. He buckled it to the first of these new ones, for in the last of the old it had hung loose upon him when he came. Even after the wholesome food of the Galadhrim it was not too tight.

Aithron had found him a brass brooch like a ring, and with it he fastened his second blanket about his shoulders as he would have a cloak. He pulled what remained of his own over his head. He would be glad of the hood as he moved northward, but now he let it dangled down his back. Though the Elves had washed it the wool still held some unpleasant odours deep in its fibres, and he wanted to enjoy his clean hair while he could. His boots he tugged on while sitting in the grass, Gollum watching him all the time with an inscrutable cast to his eyes. His feet, still tender, protested a little but soon enough settled into the comfort of familiarity.

The Galadhrim were abroad already, and they had laid out a generous breakfast. He ate for the last time with his hosts, and rose to take his leave as the first blush of morning touched the sky. Then Celeborn stood with him, and Calmiel also.

'We two will travel with you, at least until the forest thins,' Celeborn said. 'You will walk leagues enough alone with your curious cargo. It need not begin quite yet.'

Aragorn was glad of the company, for without it he thought he would have walked too far in memory. The others came with them only as far as Celebrant, where they strung ropes to bridge the river. Celeborn and Calmiel flew across on fleet feet without the aid of a second cord, but Aragorn, Gollum slung over his back and unbalancing him, would not have managed otherwise. After that the journey was quiet but most pleasant. Calmiel went blithely, and Celeborn's calm presence was a force to soothe the most unquiet of hearts.

Yet they came at last to a place where the woods began to grow sparse, and at length Aragorn could see between the trees the broad stretch of brown land that rolled on into the North. The improbable quartet halted, and Celeborn offered a sad smile.

'Here we must part, Aragorn son of Arathorn,' he said. 'May your journey be swift and your feet set upon the homeward road ere the season grows old.'

'Farewell Celeborn of Lothlórien,' said Aragorn in reply. 'I and my kindred thank you for the grace shown to me. Long may your realm prosper.'

Their formal leave-taking done as befit two great lords, for all one reigned his land unchallenged and the other walked in exile, Celeborn stepped forward and drew Aragorn into a loving embrace.

'Take care, child,' he said softly. 'Remember to sleep when you may.'

'I shall,' said Aragorn. Tears were smarting in his eyes, but he did not let them fall. 'Please give my love and thanks to your gracious Lady. When next we meet I hope I shall be able to do so myself.'

Then he turned his face northward and strode away, Gollum scampering awkwardly after him. He did not intend to look back, but he did, once, after he had gone perhaps a mile. The Golden Wood was a distant sea of silver beneath the sun that filtered through pale clouds above. His keen eyes picked out two shapes amid the trees that might have been Celeborn and his archer watching him go, but he could not be certain. Resolutely he swivelled on his heel, forsaking comfort and companionship to face the long road that still lay ahead.    

Chapter XXXV: Silent Sedition

Beyond the gentling influence of Galadriel, the air was sharp with the chill of winter. A west wind was blowing, and after perhaps an hour Aragorn was obliged to tug his hood up over his head. Despite the dull pain in his heels he kept a good pace: Gollum was struggling to keep up, and now and then the line between them tugged tautly at Aragorn's wrist. The day was grey, but at last the sun rose high enough that his captive began to tremble, whimpering beneath the wool still filling his mouth. Aragorn wished only to move onward as swiftly as he could, as if haste and distance could ease the bitter necessity of abandoning the simple comforts he had been granted on the eaves of Lothlórien for the want of the wilds. Yet it was clear that his prisoner was suffering, and impeding their progress into the bargain.

He halted, therefore, where a stand of hawthorns spread about the foot of a low hill. Gollum retreated as far into the shadows as the tether would allow. Aragorn took progressive handfuls of the rope as he moved to sit beside him. He reached for the knot behind the creature's heavy head, and worked it carefully free. Gollum hissed threateningly, deep in his throat, but did not so much as snap at the air as the gag came away. He cowered awkwardly against a scrub-bush and watched his jailor with wide, wary eyes.

Slipping careful fingers into his new pack, Aragorn brought out one of the bottles that the Galadhrim had given him and then quested deeper still until he found the little wooden cup that had somehow survived all his strange travels. He poured some water and held it out towards his prisoner. Gollum sniffed at it and then, sullenly, parted his lips so that the fluid might be tipped against them. He grimaced, but he drank, and when he had finished Aragorn slaked his own thirst with greater ease of mind than he had hoped.

'Are you hungry?' he asked. The answer was obvious, of course. Gollum had not eaten since the crossing of Limlight; he must be nearly mad with hunger. Aragorn knew better now than to try to offer Elven victuals, but something else had caught his eye as they had moved to sit. He got up onto one knee now, reaching over his captive's head. Gollum craned his neck in an attempt to see what he was about, but Aragorn was back on the ground almost too swiftly to see. In his right hand he held his prize: a clump of little oyster mushrooms plucked from their perch on the tree's wizened trunk.

He placed them on his palm, stretching back his fingers and tucking in his thumb as if holding a carrot for an unruly horse, and offered the food to Gollum. Glinting eyes narrowed and the sharp nostrils flared. Aragorn was favoured with one more long distrustful look, but he could see spittle frothing at the corners of his prisoner's mouth and he knew that there would be no refusal this time. Sure enough, Gollum hesitated only a moment longer before lunging forward. Harsh, ravenous sounds choked up around his sparse teeth, busy for once with something other than mischief. Aragorn kept his hand still despite the urge to jerk it back in revulsion when half-chewed chunks of the bluish fungus fell back upon his palm only to be slurped up again by a desperately questing tongue.

At last Gollum shrank back as far as Aragorn's hold on the rope would let him, smacking his lips greedily and watching the Man out of the corner of his eye. Aragorn wiped his hand on the ground, thoroughly but without showing his disgust. Then he tucked away the water bottle and sat, returning Gollum's glare with a mildly thoughtful expression.

He did not dare to hope that his prisoner was tamed: he would not make that mistake again. But certainly he seemed cowed at least at present. Unwillingly Aragorn's eyes fell upon the rags still wrapping the creature's fingers. The lingering sore spots on his neck protested against lenience, but reason told him that it was time to try again. At the very least Gollum would move more swiftly if he might lope along on all fours as he seemed fond of doing.

He released the rope from his fingers, waiting to see whether Gollum would take the opportunity to retreat to the end of the lead. The pale eyes followed the motion, but he did not move.

'Come,' said Aragorn firmly. 'I will loose your hands.'

Almost without hesitating Gollum hopped forward, still crouching low to the ground. He paused for a moment, and then extended his arms towards the Ranger. He shrank but did not retreat as Aragorn drew his knife from its new sheath and took a firm hold of one wrist. He slipped the blade carefully between Gollum's arms, undeterred by the whimper of terror that welled up in the creature's throat. His heart whispered uneasily that it sounded more like a whimper of pain, but he knew that he had not nicked the bony limbs with the blade and he set about carefully sawing through the bonds.

Gollum's hands came free with a snap, and he howled – half tormented, half triumphant. Swiftly Aragorn grabbed one palm and unwound the strips that wrapped each finger. The stink of shed flesh and old sweat was strong. He reached for the other hand, but Gollum pulled away, retreating at last to the end of his tether. There he scrabbled at the rest of the wool with his free hand and his teeth, and huddled, whining softly and licking at his fingers. The ropy muscles beneath skin like greyed vellum jumped and twitched and Aragorn, remembering the complaint of his own limbs after only a day so restrained, felt a weary prickle of remorse. Necessity was not without its price, exacted most often against the conscience.

He let Gollum rest for two hours, most of which he spent biting at his fingernails and muttering blackly to himself. When the sun was well past its zenith in the overcast sky, Aragorn got to his feet and set about exploring the little grove with his prisoner crawling resentfully after him. He was looking, of course, for more of the mushrooms, and his efforts were rewarded. He found half a dozen other patches, and he helped himself to a share of each.

He packed this little harvest away in his burgeoning bag. He carried enough of the food of the Galadhrim to last for ten lean days: more than that he could not carry without weighing himself down or abandoning the second blanket. The mushrooms would do well for Gollum, who seemed in his own strange way to enjoy them, and that would save him the trouble of foraging further at least for a little while. He was anxious to move swiftly through this country. He had not only to make up the two days' rest he had taken under Celeborn's care; he was also anxious to get this leg of the journey behind him as quickly as possible. For they walked now near to Dimrill Dale, the valley basin onto which the East Gate of Moria opened.

A shiver ran up Aragorn's back and out across his shoulders. It was nothing to the cold hand that gripped his heart at the thought of Dol Guldur, nothing to the blind despair that he had felt before the Morannon, nothing to the soul-chilling savour of death that surrounded the very name of Minas Morgul… but it was enough. Once, only once had he ventured into that last and darkest road through the Misty Mountains. He had escaped in the end with his life and his limbs and the greater measure of his sanity, but that had been a near thing. Rationally he knew that his peril then had been nothing when measured against others he had faced, in the long errantries of his young-manhood, in his decades of safeguarding Eriador, and even in the last bitter weeks of this hunt. Yet in his heart there was a dread of Moria that the rational mind could not explain. As he had sensed ancient insight and deep, drowsing curiosity in Fangorn Forest, so he had felt something in Moria. Evil, deeper than the deeps of the earth that the Dwarf-lords had plundered; hot and timeless in the blackness. A brooding malice greater than any he had felt in all his long travels, save only in that dread hour long ago when he had stood in sight of Barad-dûr itself. Yet where the wrath of Sauron had been blatant, cast out in the Shadow across the sky, the hatred hidden beneath the glittering halls of Khazad-dûm had been insidious, almost intangible – certainly without reasonable explanation.

Yet he feared Moria, and would not willingly walk there again.

He did not even wish to wander near it, though his senseless foreboding was not the only reason. Orcs had been known to frequent Dimrill Dale, and it was not so long ago that they had hunted in the pass above. Although he was much the better for his rest in Lórien, and his hurts were all but healed, he did not relish the prospect of stumbling across a band of wandering goblins. There was another thing that worried him, too. Gollum had dwelt for years uncounted beneath the Hithaeglir, thriving after a fashion in caverns far from the light of day. If he sensed or suspected the nearness of such a place, and its relatively easy access through the great Dwarven doors, it might drive him to attempt an escape. Although he might expect it and even prepare for it, Aragorn did not want to run the risk of some random mischance allowing Gollum to elude him and slip beyond that gate. Even if it might have been possible to find him again in the shafts and chasms and tunnels of Moria, Aragorn was not at all certain that he could find the will to follow.

So when he set out again he bent to the northeast. The hills rolled onward, but though they rose and fell Aragorn knew with the instinct of a practiced traveller that his progress was overall into higher lands. When he felt them begin to fall away again he stopped his eastward cant and strode on to true north. So with the Vale of Anduin away to his right, and Dimrill Dale far off to his left, he made steady progress into the evening and on through the night.

He walked until the sun grew high the following day, and then found shelter. He ate, and offered Gollum some of the mushrooms, and sat for a while with his back to an obliging boulder and the blanket he wore as a cloak gathered snugly around him. His breath frothed frostily from his nostrils, and he watched it with quiet interest for a while before allowing his mind to wander off in restful memory.

He thought this time of his boyhood, and his first crossing of the mountains at seventeen. They had strode the High Pass, sons of Elrond by blood and by choice, and Elrohir had taught him how to track a falcon by the winds. He wondered if the Peredhil had imagined then what prey he might come to chase in time, for much less reward than watching a proud bird circle down to rejoin her young. He thought not.

That afternoon the rain began to fall; a steady, oppressive and bitterly cold shower that first rolled off his shoulders, then dampened his blanket and what remained of his cloak, and finally seeped through his cote and the shirt he had been given to chill his very bones. Gollum seemed all but unaffected by this unpleasant turn of the weather, for he scrabbled after the long, level footfalls of the Ranger's boots without a sound. Now and again he would halt for a moment, long fingers scrabbling in the mud, and then he would scuttle onward almost nonchalantly, as if he truly thought that his captor could not hear him chewing on whatever he had found.

By nightfall the air was cold enough that the rain began to freeze as it fell, stinging Aragorn's cheeks and the backs of his hands. He wrapped the wet blanket tighter and bowed his head so that his dripping hood could shield his face. When he stopped in the shelter of a pine to eat a little, he began to shiver almost at once. After that he walked on, and the ground grew harder beneath his heels as the northward miles slipped by.

It was on the fourth day out of Lothlórien that he came upon the first straggling strands of snow clinging to the low places or lying in the shadows. By then he had either outlasted or outpaced the rain, but though his cloak was dry his linen was still damp and cold against his skin. Gollum's only concession to the pale harbingers of things to come was to scoop up the occasional handful of snow as he walked and suck noisily upon it. He began to shun the water from the vessels of the Galadhrim, though he still seemed inclined to take the mushrooms when they were offered.

On the fifth day Aragorn ate the last of his bread. He slept for a little better than an hour that noontime, binding Gollum's feet and wrists and lying as he had lain in the Emyn Muil, with one leg across those of his captive so that he would know at once if he tried to move or flee. The earth was frozen here, and frost had lingered on the dead grasses well into the morning. Though he kept a vigilant eye for signs of game, Aragorn saw nothing.

Just before dawn of the sixth day, the wind rose.

All morning Aragorn walked with one wary eye to the west. Dark clouds loomed low over the distant blue ghosts of the mountains, spreading out great tumbling tentacles across the empty land towards the two travellers. They had been walking through shallow snows for hours, and Aragorn's boots were glossy to the ankle with wetness. Happily his feet remained dry enough within, but the air was bitter and his fingers were beginning to ache with the cold. He tucked a hand beneath each arm, despite the uncomfortable tugging of the rope about his wrist, and he kept his uneasy watch on the skies.

The first snowflakes fell like petals cast from the basket of some maiden in the sky: their delicate loveliness a strange and pleasant surprise. Like a child greeting winter as an old friend, Aragorn put out his hand to catch one. It lay inviolate on his upturned palm for a moment, and then shifted into grey shapelessness as it melted away. Gollum paused in his four-limbed shambling to look up at the sky. Apparently immune to the quiet wonder of the moment, he shook his head blackly and waited for his jailor to move on.

This Aragorn did soon enough, for despite his brief delight he was weighted with the knowledge of the trouble snow would make for them through all the leagues ahead. A light dusting was one thing, but as the clouds rolled onward and the snowflakes thickened he began to struggle to see more than half a mile ahead. This shortened soon enough to a quarter-mile, and then a hundred yards. By this time the snow was coming in thick swarms that settled over his hood and the rags that straggled from his shoulders, where it clung in stubborn wet clumps until he grew weary enough to reach and brush it off. Gollum did not seem to have this problem, for he was constantly wagging his head to and fro, getting up on his legs to stamp his feet and cursing blackly under his breath.

The day grew colder and the sky ever darker. Blinking against the slivers of ice forming on his eyelashes, Aragorn could not pick out their path more than a few feet ahead. The snow was drifting now, swirling about his legs and settling into contoured heaps over the slumbering earth. It took a heavy wind to do this, for it was thick and it was wet, and breaking a path became a labour instead of an incidental consequence of walking. He knew that he was not imagining this when Gollum suddenly shifted from moving beside him to hopping in his tracks. He shortened his stride a little, almost without thinking.

Night fell and the snow let up a little, sifting down from a heavy ceiling that hid the light of the moon. Aragorn walked on cautiously through the dark, placing each step with care and listening under the wind for any untoward sound.

Gollum made a petulant snivelling noise and tugged on the rope that joined them, and Aragorn halted to look at him, his sharp eyes just picking out the faint outline of his prisoner against the marginally paler black of the snow.

'What is it?' he asked impatiently. Then his conscience tugged at him. He had not considered it, for his captive had proved so hardy through rain and wind and even the icy depths of Anduin, but Gollum was all but naked. If this weather chilled his own hands and left his nose stinging, how much worse must it be for his captive? Swiftly he pulled his hood and the remains of his cloak up over his head, shaking them out and checking that the makeshift wire staple that still held the neck closed was in place. Then he bent and wrapped the ragged garment around the emaciated body beside him. He gripped one bony shoulder for a moment, surprised that the creature was not shaking with cold. Then he stood.

'There,' he said, far less harshly now. 'We will walk on: it will only be worse if we stop moving.'

He started off again, awkwardly hitching up the blanket pinned about his shoulders so that it provided at least some shelter for his ears. He folded it about his arms and tucked his hands back against his body. Gollum was back in his tracks again. They walked on.

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In the deepest blackness of the night Aragorn had to stop at last, lest he should stride right into a tree or fall upon a pit among the hills. Not relishing the thought of sitting down in the snow he stood, resting one foot and then the other by planting his toes on the opposite boot and tucking the sole against his calf. He ate a little dried fruit while he stood, and gave Gollum the next-to-last portion of the mushrooms. When morning came he would endeavour to hunt: there was nothing like fresh tracks in new snow to take the guesswork out of finding game. He was still too near Moria, and indeed the river, to risk a fire, but he doubted very much that Gollum would mind and in this cold meat would keep for several days.

He stretched his fingers slowly and then cupped his hands over his mouth to warm them with his breath. He should have asked Celeborn for a pair of gloves. What he really wanted were mittens of thick fulled wool such as the ladies of the Dúnedain produced in great quantities for their winter-wandering men, but he doubted many of the Galadhrim had even seen a mitten, much less carried one out on sentry duty. Yet even a pair of thin riding gloves would have been better than nothing, which was what he was left with now. He buried a hand in each armpit again, shuddering a little as the cold of them seeped through to his ribs. He had missed the worst of last winter travelling southward with Gandalf; he was not acclimatized to nights such as this.

Dawn came at last, painting the world in indistinct greys that brightened a little as Aragorn set out again. Behind him Gollum plodded on, jerking on the rope now and again as he turned or hesitated. The Ranger paid little mind to him: he was sharp on the lookout for spoor. Most of the game in this land would be tucked away to sleep until spring, but there were winter hares that roamed even in the snow, and birds from Forodwaith for whom this was the balmy south. He might even see a hart, though he had neither the means to bring one down nor the leisure to dress it nor, truth be told, the means to carry off any more than a haunch. A hare would be perfect, he thought as he walked; and he might even be able to stretch the hide and in another week fashion himself a pair of raw but furry mitts.

Good fortune was not with him, however, and he saw no signs of game. The snow was still sprinkling down, only lightly now although the clouds were still thick and dark enough that Gollum was not complaining of the sunlight. Indeed, Gollum had been extraordinarily well-behaved all since the middle-night. At once suspicious, Aragorn turned to look at his captive.

He was crouched there, one hand in the snow and the other raking at his ear, his halter untouched and a look of studied innocence upon his face. It was this alien expression that quickened Aragorn's pulse and sent a wary hand reaching for his knife. So accustomed had he become to the appearance of his strange companion that he did not immediately notice what was amiss. Then it came to him; the same thought he had had the previous night, and with the same abrupt dismay. Gollum was all but naked.

His first unworthy urge was to kick the creature. There he squatted, within easy reach of an angry boot. But though rage rose from his viscera into his eyes Aragorn resisted the impulse. Gollum squirmed a little under his gaze, but that same look of calculated virtue remained upon his face. I? that face asked wonderingly. What wrong have I possibly done?

It was that expression that told the Ranger it had been a deliberate act. True, Gollum might have lost hold of the tattered cloak as he loped on through the night. He might have been frightened to halt or to give any sign of what had happened. But then, surely, he would have been afraid when his captor turned on him with fire in his eyes. Afraid or ashamed, not cannily blameless. He had cast it away willfully, though it had been offered to ease his suffering on a cold night.

Suddenly Aragorn thought of the water that Gollum had flung in the dust when first they had emerged from out of the Dead Marshes, when he had had too little even to clean his wounds and no hope of more for many miles. Wanton waste of resources that could not be replenished was sedition at its worst. The loss of the water had been the harder blow, but this was still the same streak of defiance. The cloak had been torn almost to nothing, but it had still been enough to cover the twisted grey body, and it had been enough to shelter Aragorn's head and shoulders against the snow before that. Gollum had cast it away out of spite. Aragorn had, in the wake of his own gentle treatment even as a prisoner, resolved to be kind. He had been repaid with nothing but malice.

In that long, furious minute as he glared at Gollum and Gollum stared back with rehearsed stupidity, he considered his options. He could strike the creature, as had been his first wish, but that crossed the line from harsh discipline to cruelty. He could upbraid him, but that would only serve to make him look foolish in the eyes of his prisoner. He could walk on wordlessly, as if there had never been a cloak to cast away. The one thing he could not do was mend what had been done, doubling back to look for the thing and losing a day's journey for a bit of woollen rag.

He hardened his eyes still more and at last Gollum shrank, pressing his shrivelled body low into the snow and making a noise somewhere between a sob and a growl in his phlegmy throat.

'I offered what comfort I could,' he said, his voice like the very breath of the winter wind around him; 'and you wasted it for spite. Next time I will have nothing to give you.'

Then he turned as sharply as a soldier on parade and set off again at the greatest pace his long legs could make through the snow.    

Chapter XXXVI: Birthday, Precious

Despite its long, steady fall, when the snow ceased at last it reached but halfway up Aragorn's plodding boots. That was something to be thankful for, at least; storms out of the mountains could often be far worse. He trudged onward into midmorning, the sun nothing more than a pallid area of the brooding clouds above. He would have kept on through the day save that as he passed amid a bluff of bare trees, their skeletal branches laden heavy with snow, he saw at last what he had sought since first light. The smooth whiteness of the earth was pitted with tracks: two long hind paws nearly parallel, and two small round forepaws dotted in a row behind. These markings of landing and springing followed the course of a faint depression in the snow, where the run had been tramped down before and only recently covered.

Careful not to disturb the path, Aragorn withdrew to where a fallen log jutted up over an old stump. He brushed it off with the toe of his boot and sat, tugging his pack into his lap and feeling inside until his cold fingers closed on the coil of wire that Celeborn's folk had given him.

He broke it swiftly into half-ell lengths and began to fashion each into a simple snare. First he shaped small a loop of wire through which he fed the tail to form a larger one, testing it for size by trying to push his off-hand through. He wanted a snare that would tug tight against the knuckles of his clenched fist without slipping over onto his wrist. Then he twisted the wire to close the first loop, leaving only enough space for the other side to slide through if tugged. The remaining length would be attached to bracken or fallen branches when he laid his traps. All this Gollum watched with sharp and thoughtful eyes. Aragorn wondered whether it had ever occurred to his captive to try this sort of hunting.

When he had half a dozen snares ready he got up to follow the tracks, reeling Gollum in right next to his boot so that he had no latitude to disrupt the trail. Only a few yards along he found a place where the run passed between two stems of a gorse-bush. In the narrow place he set his trap.

He continued onward in the same fashion until all of the snares were laid, taking care each time to note landmarks that would make easy his return even if the snow started up again. When he was finished he retreated back amid the trees. Now there was nothing more to do but wait, and since he must wait it seemed only sensible to rest.

Aragorn took some water and ate a handful of hazelnuts and two pieces of dried fruit. He offered the cup to Gollum, who shunned it, and then held out the last shell-like mushroom caps, which were snatched resentfully away. Then he found a place at the foot of a twisted oak where the snow was not too deep. He cleared away what he could in an area large enough to accommodate him, and took the second blanket from his pack. He shook it out and folded it into a pad to keep his backside dry and sat upon it with his back to the tree and his makeshift cloak drawn around him. Binding Gollum was a simpler task than he had hoped, for his prisoner did not struggle even when he fastened the bony wrists behind his back instead of before.

With his cargo secure and the wood silent about him, Aragorn decided that the relative safety of midday made this as good a time as any to take a little wary rest. He tucked his hands against his body and inhaled deeply of the cold air, then shifted his spine against the trunk of the oak until he was as comfortable as he was likely to get. At last, cautiously, he let his chin droop to his chest as he fell into a shallow slumber.

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He slept for three hours, longer than he had dared since departing Lothlórien. When he awoke evening was creeping down over the land and in the orange light of sunset Gollum was crouched beside him, bound feet beneath him and bound hands behind, muttering senselessly under his breath. Aragorn looked about, scenting the air and listening for any signs of change in the forest about him. There was nothing.

Despite his best efforts the damp had seeped up through the blanket beneath him, and the backs of his thighs were wet and cold. He gathered up his belongings and loosed his knife in its sheath before unbinding Gollum's limbs so that they could move on.

He found the run again with ease, and though the first two snares were empty the third held a large white hare, the wire tight about its neck and its long feet curled to one side. Little enough of the snow had been disturbed: evidently the animal had perished swiftly and with little struggle. Glad of that, Aragorn bent to gather the carcass and moved to collect his other traps. One had twisted and another had broken; the last was empty. On the whole it was a successful hunt; he had what he wanted, anyhow, and there was no surer measure of success.

Returning to the log where he had sat to make the snares, Aragorn set about dressing his prize. He got the pelt off in one smooth motion and then slit open the belly to dig out the organs. Gollum watched greedily as he sorted the edible parts from the offal. As with the partridge he had caught near Fangorn, Aragorn ate the liver raw out of the body without so much as a pause. He was not so desperate as he had been then, but neither was he at the very height of hardihood. The heart, lungs, kidneys and tongue he offered to Gollum, who slurped them down in great haste and then eyed the rest of the carcass with a covetous gleam. Finally Aragorn lopped off the head and paws and cleaned his knife with a handful of snow before wiping it carefully dry on the edge of his tunic.

Wistfully he thought about building a fire and roasting a hot dinner, but of course he could not do that. He was still within rage for watchers in Dimrill Dale, and Anduin could not be more than two score miles to the east. The risk of a fire was enormous, and neither his hunger nor the cold were great enough to justify it. Besides, he yet had a little of the food he had borne from Lórien and the purpose of this hunt had been to provide something he could feed to Gollum. So he cut off one of the forelegs and tossed it to his captive, then with the wire from the broken snare affixed the carcass to the strap of his pack so that he could carry it with ease.

After that he cut four straight sticks from a nearby sapling and made of them a frame. With needle and thread he stretched the rabbit skin with care and scraped its underside as cleanly as he could manage. He had not the means to tan it, but the raw hide would stiffen in a few days and as the cold deepened with every northward mile he did not doubt that he would be glad of it soon enough. Already the water he carried was frozen almost half through; he tucked one bottle inside of his cote where the heat of his body might keep it fluid and took care that the other was not full enough to risk splitting.

By the time he had finished all this the twilight was thick around him. Above the clouds were dispersing a little, and he walked under sickly, filtered moonlight. The terrain was falling away again; it seemed he was drawing near the river Gladden.

All that night Aragorn pressed on, though Gollum grew ever more restive. He would halt suddenly so that the tether between them was jerked taut, and he would look around with eyes that glittered eerily in the gloom, lips moving soundlessly as though over words he did not dare utter. Now and again he would cringe forward as if to burrow down into the snow, long fingers scrabbling at the crown of his head as he made a horrible keening noise deep within his throat. Aragorn watched this behaviour with mounting apprehension, and he kept ears and eyes alert for any sign that foes were near. He had walked in fear of pursuit over all the long leagues since Dagorlad, and he had grown accustomed to his own wariness. Gollum's inexplicable distress redoubled it now.

At last, in the dead of night while the west wind howled, Aragorn could bear no more. He halted beside a towering boulder, doubtless cast down from the heights long ages ago before the world was changed. In its lee the ground was less densely covered with snow, and he scraped down to the earth with his boot. Then he knelt, ignoring the wet that seeped through his hose, and tugged the blanket he wore around his left flank so that he could lie down with an ear to the frozen ground. He kept a firm grip on Gollum's lead with his left hand, and his right palm he pressed to the dirt beside his head. Scarcely breathing lest the sound should deceive him, he listened.

There was nothing but the creak of the frosted groundwater far beneath him and far away the distant rumble that was the mighty roar of Anduin. He could hear no echo of hobnailed boots upon the patient soil; no thunder of horse-hooves; no noise of creeping scouts. He closed his eyes, listening with his heart as well as his ears, and although he heard no sound of pursuit it seemed to him that the earth wept, remembering ancient sorrows and mud mixed with blood – the slaughter of an army on a bitter night when the Age was new.

Swiftly he rose; so swiftly, indeed, that Gollum leaped in startled fright and began to gabble senselessly.

'Takes us and hurts us, precious. Hurts our pretty handses, gollum. Hurts us and pinches us! Drives us away! Hateful, precious. Hateful folkses. Hateful, hateful, gollum.'

He had said folkses, not manses, but Aragorn did not think much of that. His own pulse was beating more swiftly than it ought, and his head was filled with the old tale of massacre and a captain's folly. That he was not yet down upon the broad flat land where the triumphant army of Arnor had been taken unawares and slain almost to a man made little difference. He was near enough, and he had scarcely thought about it until this moment when the earth had offered her mournful reminder.

He took off at speed, his strides so long and swift that Gollum very nearly had to gallop to keep from being dragged along by the halter around his neck. Aragorn had walked these lands before, but tonight – still haunted by the fear of pursuit and bearing danger with him all the way – he could not bear their passage. He did not wish to tarry even one breath longer than he had to. He would press on with all the haste he could muster, across the lowlands where the hopes of the North had first been laid low and down to the river that had run red with the blood of his kindred. He would make a crossing as best he could and he would leave behind this empty place where the bones of his folk had lain bleached to rot beneath the open sky and Isildur himself had been felled in his attempt to swim the Great River, his corpse borne away to the Sea.

All his life the account of the slaying on the Gladden Fields had haunted him; even as a child it had been presented to him not only as a memorial to a tragedy long-past, but as a stern fable. Isildur, overconfident after his victory in Mordor, had taken the homeward road at last and had taken it without due care. He had moved his army in merry haste, all his folk bent only upon the end of their journey and the triumphant homecoming that awaited them in fair Annúminas. In their joy and their arrogance they had thought little of the hazards of their road. They had set a poor watch and they had slept the sleep of victors, and for many hundreds of miles they had travelled unharried. Yet at last came a night when their unwarranted good fortune had abandoned them at last, and orcs had come unlooked-for, and of the host of thousands only three Men had escaped to bear the tale and the Shards of Narsil to Imladris. Isildur, occupied with private matters, had failed in a general's duty to safeguard his army, in a captain's duty to care for his men, and in a king's duty to protect his people.

As a child Aragorn had not been told what private matters so consumed the eldest son of Elendil. As a young man made newly aware of his heritage he had often wondered. Now, knowing what he did of what had passed between his foster-father and his puissant ancestor on the slopes of Orodruin, he had little doubt. Bearing the Ring that he had cut from the hand of Sauron as he threw him down, Isildur had come north with a mighty host that trusted him to lead them. How dearly that trust had cost them, and those who waited in the North for sons and sires and husbands and brothers who came never more to the shores of Evendim.

The fear of Isildur's folly had followed him since first he had ventured out into the Wild to lead his own men. It had chased him to Rohan and the éored of Thengel King. It had haunted him in Gondor when he rode at the head of Ecthelion's army in his black mail and bright helm. It had gnashed at his heels whenever he held the life of another in his hands; whenever the price for his misjudgement or his indecision or his wandering thoughts might be exacted from someone who looked to him for leadership. Even the thought of the stolen Ring itself had paled in his mind against the sin of distraction.

But now, he wondered; now, when it was possible that the One was not lost at all? Now when he was dragging behind him the one being in all of Arda who might be able to confirm or refute Gandalf's suspicions? Now which of Isildur's transgressions was the greater?

It mattered little, if at all, he decided as he came down from the last of the snow-dusted hills into the frozen marshland that stretched in the crook of the two rivers. Mayhap the two sins were one; he could not say. All that he could do was pass as swiftly as his legs would bear him through this blighted vale of memory.

Gollum was whimpering again, scrabbling and struggling to keep pace. Drawing in a swift breath that burned deep into his lungs Aragorn forced himself to let up his strides a little. Gollum was as much beneath his command this night as any who had followed him for love or loyalty, and despite the hatred that lay between them he had a responsibility – neither to lie down unwary that the creature might be slain, nor to run him to death escaping a pursuit that, if it was coming, was not near enough to trouble the earth they trod. The line slackened a little, but still the captive's progress was halting and whenever Aragorn turned to glance at him he saw the heavy head swaying from side to side like a dancing serpent, and the bony hands wringing at one another as if each hoped to strangle his mate.

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They were still plodding on when dawn broke behind the ragged ribbons of the storm-clouds now retreating to the east. Uncharitably Aragorn hoped the snows would fall heavy on southern Mirkwood, choking the roads and entrapping the Nazgûl in their fortress of Dol Guldur. In a fit of gallows humour he wished them chilblains as well.

His heart was still uneasy with the night's grim musings, but he could not help but smile a little to greet the day. He was wont to forget, amid the worries and toil of his daily life, that each new morning was its own little gift – and that he lived each day to see another morning despite the hard paths he walked was its own little miracle. Justly he ought to have been delighted and astonished to have survived what he had these past months. His right hand drifted down to rub against his leg where the new scar coiled beneath his hose. His encounter with the great spider alone was proof enough of good fortune. And where he had begun the year believing himself haunted by a hopeless hunt, he now strode northward with his quarry beside him and the better part of the journey behind. He was cold and he was weary and he was heartsick, but he had achieved what he had then thought impossible and found the creature. Even if he had long and labouring leagues still ahead, he had cause to feel a moment's quiet pride.

His strides had slowed with the advent of this unlooked-for line of thinking, and Gollum was skittering to and fro at the end of the rope, licking his thumbs and grousing indistinctly to himself. Aragorn supposed that he would have to find shade for them soon, or suffer through a fit of tormented shrieking as the Sun continued in her march across the sky. He did not want to halt, but he would be wise to eat a little and it would be a welcome boon to mark the day if he did not have to cope with a madly obdurate Gollum.

'Wants it, Precious. Wants it, gollum,' his companion was whining. 'Give us that, we wants it!'

'Not now,' said Aragorn wearily, thinking of the rabbit that was swinging from his pack. 'We shall halt soon enough and then you may eat.'

But of course Gollum said nothing in reply: that would be to admit he had been speaking to the Ranger, which both would understand to be a sign of a weakening will. They were entrapped, captor and captive alike, in the bitter war of attrition that would not truly end until the moment they were severed and the door of Thranduil's dungeon slammed closed. However remarkable the feat of finding Gollum might be, Aragorn would not be satisfied now until he was rid of him. That was all he had to wish for today.

Then Gollum spoke again, hissing hoarsely. 'Birthday, precious. Birthday, my love… birthday…'

Aragorn stopped dead in the snow, whipping around so quickly that the blanket slid off of one shoulder and the bronze pin pressed uncomfortably against his collarbone. He knew his eyes were wide with alarm, and bewilderment and fear both clambered up his throat. The strange thought struck him that this must be akin to what Gollum had felt when he had spoken a riddle aloud and so revealed he had unimagined knowledge of the creature's past. A startled question swam to his lips and he clamped them close before he could speak. He had learned long ago never to speak before he thought.

How had the creature known? How could he have known? Celeborn had spoken his right name at their parting, and it was possible – however improbable – that Gollum had recognized it, but the matter of his birth had been the most jealously guarded secret in Eriador for long decades, and even if it was not, it was not as if the date itself would have had much significance. It's only significance, really, was to him and those few who loved him. What matter to the rest of the world that he had been eighty-five yesterday and was eighty-six today? It was only another day on another wearisome journey – the most wearisome journey that he could remember in those eighty-six years, certainly, but a journey nowhere altered by the passing of the anniversary of his birth. What did it matter to anyone but him? Why should Gollum care? And how had Gollum known? Who had told him, and why?

Yet Gollum did not even seem to see him, or to notice that they had stopped. He was clawing at his temple with brittle fingers, and he was weeping as he shrieked, 'It's my birthday, my love, and I wants it!'

Aragorn let free the breath that had been burning unawares in his lungs. A coincidence, he thought. A strange and troubling coincidence, but a coincidence nonetheless. He closed his eyes and drew his right hand across his jaw, his cold palm grounding him. He pressed his thumb into the corner of each eye and felt the distraught tension ebbing. If what the creature said was true, it was surely the strangest convergence of circumstances he had come across in all his travels, but at least it was not some sign that Gollum knew truths he had no place knowing.

He wondered distantly why the creature was referring to himself all at once as 'I', when all through these weary weeks his mumblings had always been plural. He decided he did not care. He had long since given up hope of getting anything of use out of that foul mouth; the scars were quite enough. He twitched the rope and clicked his tongue impatiently.

'Come,' he said sternly. 'Have done with your complaints: we will both eat when I have found somewhere suitable to rest.'

He began to walk and Gollum followed like a sleepwalker, still scraping ragged nails against the side of his head, where he had now begun to draw thin rivulets of blood. 'Birthday,' he sobs. 'Wants it, wants it, it's our birthday, Precious. Gone, gone, gone, gollum. All gone…'

'Well, it's my birthday too,' Aragorn muttered to himself in the Bree-land accent that Strider so often affected; 'and I wants a spot of peace and quiet.'

Gollum was too lost in his own imagined woes to hear, and their passage was punctuated by his incoherent ramblings and the occasional tormented shriek.

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As he walked Aragorn searched his heart, trying to convince himself that his fear had been nothing more than the laughable paranoia of a man who had been hunted too long and now saw persecutors in every shadow. He did not succeed. It had never sat well with him that Gollum had apparently escaped the tortures of the Enemy alive. He had wondered in the early days whether the servants of Sauron might not have set him loose on some evil errand. For a moment he had wondered, however irrationally, whether seeking him might have been that errand. He did not think it was: if the Dark Lord truly suspected that he lived – and it would have had to be more than a suspicion if he had known the day of his birth – he would have sent forth more dreadful servants by far. Yet why, then, had Gollum been freed, and what mischief might he have been ordered to do?

Whatever it was, he could not do it while he was bound to Aragorn's wrist, and he would be unable to accomplish it from inside one of Thranduil's cells in the impenetrable prison beneath his halls.

At least Thranduil had assured them, many years ago when he and Gandalf had travelled to Mirkwood to make arrangements against the day they found their quarry, that his cells were impenetrable. Aragorn had had his doubts, chiefly springing from the jailbreak that Bilbo and his companions had effected on their way to Erebor. Gandalf's argument that the circumstances had been quite extraordinary had not entirely convinced him, nor had Thranduil's assurance that the keeping of the keys had long since been passed to a more responsible seneschal. In the end he had insisted on testing the surety of the dungeons himself, and only then was he satisfied that they had chosen a safe place to bear their prisoner if ever they found him. How Bilbo had laughed at his account of his unsuccessful attempts to extricate himself!

The Sun was high now, but Gollum seemed oblivious to its passage. His tears were frozen on his cheeks and his nose was running copiously, yet still he ranted softly about a birthday and my love and wants it.

Aragorn had not thought the word love would have even appeared in Gollum's vocabulary, and he wondered to whom it might refer. Certainly it was spoken without any tenderness, in a seductive singsong way that reminded him more than anything of a dishonest horse-trader trying to play upon a buyer's sympathy. He was growing more and more convinced that Gollum was walking in some dark delusion; perhaps a shadow of his torments in Mordor, perhaps some relic of his unknown past. His heart was uneasy and he longed to stop his ears.

At last he spied a copse that looked a likely place to stop, and he made for it with great haste. He sawed off another leg from the rabbit, which was frozen now, and held it out to Gollum in the hope that the sight of food might tear him from his reverie. Gollum only stared down at the meat, shaking his head and mumbling incoherently. At last with his long fingers he tore off a brittle piece and sucked at it noisily. The scratches at his temple stood out starkly red against his wizened grey skin. Aragorn, whose own head was aching with the cold and the morning's unrelenting cacophony, took a long draught of water still floating with shards of ice and forced himself to swallow the last of the Lórien-fruit against the grumbling of an uneasy stomach. Misery, it seemed, would pile upon misery.

He buried his chilled hands beneath his arms again, and wriggled his toes in his boots. The day was growing colder and the wind was in the north now. The crossing of Gladden lay ahead, and he did not know how he would manage it. His eyes were smarting in the sunlight and he closed them, but he did not sleep.    

Note: The lifeguard in me wants to remind everyone that you should never test ice by yourself. Always, always call the park ranger. Aragorn gets a pass on this because there is no park and he is the Ranger. Do not. Try this. At Home.

Chapter XXXVII: Who Crosses the Ice

When the afternoon was growing long Aragorn rousted Gollum and set out again. He had not had much rest himself, for the cold was deepening and sitting still upon the frozen ground only worsened his discomfort. He had stood for a while with his back to a tree. He had paced the two strides that the rope allowed him while Gollum skulked amid bare brambles until he lost count of the passes. He had sorted through the contents of his pack and he had tightened the threads that stretched the rabbit-pelt over its simple frame. He had run over the road ahead in his mind again and again despite the weary ache it put in his bones. He had even wrenched off each boot in turn so that he might stuff the toes with a thin layer of partridge-down to guard against frostbite. And always, inexorably, he had found his thoughts overtaken by the haunting chords of Ohtar's Lament, the roll of the dead who had fallen in the slaughter of the Gladden Fields.

It was a relief to walk again, though out of the shelter of the trees the wind was bitter and the tips of his ears grew numb despite the fold of the blanket drawn up to shield them. He cut a little westward, and that was better. In any case he would find the crossing easier upriver from the broadening of Gladden as it rolled into Anduin. The small joints of his hands were aching, and he found himself constantly flexing his fingers.

Gollum was quieter now, though the haunted look in his eyes did not fade. Nor was he especially cooperative as they walked. He kept halting unexpectedly so that the rope grew tight and the loop about Aragorn's wrist pulled painfully. Each time the orc-cord squeaked and the bones of his arm protested, but still he pressed on.

The clouds were thin this night, and the pale glow of the moon made it possible for him to move with some surety. It was wearisome work, trudging through the snow with the constant threat of slipping over patches of hidden ice where standing water had frozen. Once Aragorn heard the far-off call of an owl. He listened in vain for any reply, and then spent the better part of an hour trying to decide whether its mate was merely beyond his hearing or whether there were watchers about. In the end, of course, it made very little difference. If watchers there were they would find him, for he could not keep his pace and obscure his very obvious tracks at once, and if he moved more slowly he would only be easier to overtake. Sternly commanding himself to cease his fretting, he focused instead upon trying to induce Gollum to move more quickly.

This was a fruitless exercise. If he quickened his own strides, he only felt the yank of the rope more often and more painfully. He had learned before now that Gollum would not respond to any command of his voice. He might have cut a switch from a hedge and used it to drive him, but in addition to being cruel and unnecessary such an action would have forced him to keep a hand in the biting air. As it was, even tucked up against his ribs with the Lórien-blanket wrapped snug about him his fingers smarted with the cold. He thought again of mittens, wistful and cross at once.

The dark of the night had passed, but dawn was only a pale greyness over his right shoulder when the land dipped again and the Ranger found himself picking his way amid canted yew trees and huddles of blackberry bushes (bare and unhospitable, worse luck) that cluttered the riverbank. Gollum managed to get himself on the opposite side of one of the leaning trunks, and while Aragorn stood impatiently waiting for him to come back and around the creature tried to move forward again. He stopped, scowled, and then seized the knot of his halter with both hands and tugged at rope as if by doing so he could yank his jailor around to his side of the tree. Aragorn watched him for a moment, not quite crediting the creature's stupidity. When he dug his bare bony heels against a root and thrust his whole weight upon the tether it finally shifted, and Aragorn's arm was yanked painfully away from his body. His wrist protested and he lost his patience.

'Enough of that!' he snapped, seizing a fistful of rope with his right hand and yanked with all of the strength in his sword-arm.

Gollum overbalanced and flew forward into the snow, squealing and clapping a hand to the back of his neck. Aragorn twitched the line again and he scurried around the tree, making senseless noises of angry indignation in the back of his throat as he crouched by the Ranger's boot. Irritation and incredulity rose hot in Aragorn's breast, and he felt a sudden senseless urge to laugh. Malice and subversion and hatred he had come to expect, but this was nothing but foolish belligerence. It was the sort of behaviour one might expect from an ill-behaved hound or a small and petulant child; an inarticulate expression of frustration that accomplished nothing and presented no more than the slightest inconvenience to the one in authority.

'You might have expected that such behaviour would avail you nothing,' Aragorn said levelly, studying the craven form beside him. Gollum had given up rubbing at his neck and was once again mewling over his thumbs, the other long fingers writhing almost of their own accord. He supposed his captive's hands were every bit as chilled and painful as his own – quite likely more so, for he had been dipping them in and out of the snow all night. Then he reminded himself of the cast-away cloak and decided that he did not care.

'You will go as I go, or I shall bind you again,' he declared. 'We shall soon be crossing over Gladden and I expect no resistance from you. Certainly you shall never annoy me into setting you free, and so it is best not to try.'

He expected some incoherent rant about hateful manses, but Gollum merely stared up at him with blank glittering eyes until he cast his gaze back on the path he had chosen and began to walk again.

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At first Aragorn thought that he had mistaken his position, for though the undergrowth ended the snow went on, stretching out in a broad open plain in the half-light of dawn. Then he understood his mistake. Never before had he walked these lands at this time of year, and so he had not realized that Gladden might freeze over.

Having anticipated a bitterly cold fording at best and a difficult swim at worst, he was scarcely able to contain his joy at this revelation. As the Sun climbed and the lands grew brighter he looked downriver; far away he could see the dark places where the ice had broken, but where he stood it was still a level mass beneath the cover of all-but-unbroken snow. A little good fortune at last, he thought, restraining the desire to say it aloud. Gollum had halted some distance away, and the lead between them was tight. Aragorn looked back at his captive.

'Not here,' he said, nodding to the west. 'We will give ourselves another mile at least; we are too near the breaking-place.'

If Gollum understood what he intended he gave no sign. With his back to the dawn and his face to the distant mountains now hidden by the haze, Aragorn set out along the river.

Ice over flowing water was an uncertain thing, and he did not wish to cross too near to where the river widened enough that even its surface was not frozen. Even a mile upstream he would have to take precautions, and to that end he watched the trees as he walked. He had not gone far when he found what he wanted: a broken branch longer than he was high and thick as three fingers, still dangling from its knot on the tree. He snapped the last tenuous ties with a neat jerk, and stripped off the largest of the auxiliary boughs before continuing on his way. As he walked he used his knife to strip the smaller twigs and burs from a one-ranga section at the centre of the branch. Gollum, who had cringe and cowered when he had first taken the stick, now watched him in uncomprehending wariness.

In the end he went somewhat farther than a mile, hoping to see tracks in the snow over the river that might have indicated where deer had crossed safely. No such signs were forthcoming, unfortunately, but in the end he found a likely-looking place and stopped to make his final preparations.

From his pack he took the ragged remains of his old shirt, and he tore strips with which to wrap his wrists and palms. The cover of snow was worrisome, not only because it would make what he had to do exceedingly unpleasant but because snow had insulating properties that might weaken ice. Yet he could walk to Gladden's very source before he might find a place that was not snowed-over, and he preferred to take his chances on the ice than to go back to where the river had broken through and try to swim in the frigid waters.

He took off the blanket pinned about his shoulders and rolled it. However he tried he could not manage to affix it firmly to his pack, and so in the end he shook it out again, folded it twice along its length, and slipped it over one shoulder-strap. He considered whether he ought to remove his boots as a precautionary measure, but then decided against it. If all went well he would be in better straights on the far bank if he had not tried to propel himself barefoot over two hundred yards of fearsomely cold terrain. If all did not go well, the one thing he could not risk to lose of all his scant possessions was his boots.

At last Aragorn sat back on his heels and considered the question of what to do with Gollum. A cooperative companion of comparable size could have been simply told what to do. Indeed, had he been travelling with someone like Bilbo he might even have sent the smaller traveller across the ice first – not to test it, but because it was far more likely to break under his weight than that of a hobbit and if it did then at least one of them would be safe and dry on the opposite bank. Failing that, even a child would have understood the instruction to lie still upon his back while he bore him or her. But he did not trust Gollum to be so accommodating, and he was certainly not fool enough to let loose the halter and send him on ahead to wait. He reached into his pack again and drew out one of his lengths of wool, taking care to draw the cord and fasten the ornate silver buckles with care. He beckoned to Gollum.

'You will ride on my back as you did over Limlight,' he said. 'You will lie there unmoving and you will not place so much as a toe on the ice. You will not speak; you will not struggle. If you do not obey me then there is every chance that the two of us shall have a bitter ducking indeed.'

Gollum's eyes shifted, and he tugged almost pensively at the cord about his neck. Then he took three long, groping steps, still crouched low, and offered his wrists to the Ranger with his fists lightly closed.

This show of obedience was peculiar but not entirely unexpected. The creature had been quite the wanderer himself, and Aragorn did not doubt that he had at one time or another experienced something of the risks of late-winter ice. Likely while fishing, he thought. He bound Gollum's wrists quickly, though his cold fingers were not as nimble as their wont. Then, once again glad of and a little surprised by the lack of a struggle, he put his head through the loop of his prisoner's arms. Something deep in his heart protested this, and at the last moment he slipped his own left arm up as well. This way Gollum's hands were pulled across his chest from shoulder to armpit: if he changed his mind about sensible placidity at least he could not attempt to strangle his bearer.

Finally Aragorn moved down to the edge of the ice. This he did on his knees, carrying his pack in one hand and extending the staff with the other while Gollum, upright against his spine, shuffled awkwardly behind. Aragorn pressed the branch into the snow until he felt the split tip slide slickly. He adjusted the angle and applied more pressure. One of the broken splinters of wood caught in the ice and he pushed against the staff with all of his strength. There was a low creak off resistance, but it died swiftly away. Shifting the staff farther out, Aragorn tried again with the same result. The third time, he used the full length both of the branch and of his arm, and again the ice held.

'Fortune may be with me after all,' he murmured, not caring if his prisoner heard him. He pushed his pack out into the snow, using the branch to shove it some distance ahead. Then, steeling himself against the thought of the damp to come, he lay down on his belly and slithered down the last of the shore-slope and onto the ice.

With his left boot he propelled himself cautiously forward. Both hands now gripped the staff, each near one side of the space he had cleared. The remaining twigs elsewhere along its length broke the snow somewhat. Enough, at least, that he was able to exert a steady pressure along the length of his pole. Gollum shifted, his weight settling over Aragorn's spine. His arms were trapped between the Ranger's body and the ice, but that could not be helped.

'Your head,' Aragorn said. When there was no corresponding motion he pushed a little further onto the ice. 'Lay down your head and be still.'

The bony mass of the creature's skull dropped down between his shoulder blades, driving out a puff of air that billowed thickly before his eyes. Aragorn brought his right knee up, rotating his hip outward so that the inner side of his leg was flat against the frozen river. Digging his instep into the snow he began to push, sliding forward again. He let his elbows join in the labour, but kept his hands firmly on the staff and the staff firmly on the ice, spreading the weight of his body over the largest area he could. His shoulders too he kept down, though this hampered his arms somewhat.

In this way he slithered forward with care. The snow billowed up around the pole and heaped over his hands and into the sleeves of his cote. He reached the place where his pack lay and manoeuvred it to provide something of a plough before his face as he pushed it along in front of him, but it made little difference to his mounting discomfort. Already his fingers were ablaze with the cold, and where his ribs and stomach and thighs touched the surface below him the snow began to melt. Not twenty yards into his creeping journey his whole front was damp.

He kept his head as low as he could so as not to create a pressure-spot on the ice under his breastbone, but he could not help glancing up at the broad sea of white before him. It was better, he reminded himself as he gained another ell, than having to swim Gladden as he had Anduin, or even to ford it as he had Limlight. He thought of the ropes over Celebrant with jealous nostalgia, and then almost resentfully of the stone bridge at the Crossing of Poros that Gandalf had taken on his road to Minas Tirith. Still, he thought again, at least he did not have to swim.

Gollum's foot shifted, and Aragorn bit back an angry shout until he could discern whether the wretch meant anything by it. Some motion was inevitable; he could not expect a living creature to behave as if it were carven of stone. When the leg settled once more atop his own he was glad that he had not scolded. It could be no more comfortable for his prisoner than it was for him, this close contact with one so hated. He was already growing entirely too aware of the miasma that still engulfed his charge, so long muted by the cold and their mutual disinclination to get any nearer to one another than strictly necessary. He tried breathing through his mouth instead, but the chill rising off the ice made his teeth ache sharply and he closed his lips again.

A cautious sidelong glance told him that he was now perhaps fifty yards from the southern shore, but the distance before him seemed no less than before. He tightened his jaw and girded his resolve before bending his left knee for another shove. He would not look back again.

Onward he pushed, creeping like some strange lizard on his belly. It required a tremendous effort to move his body, growing colder and stiffer by the minute, in such an unnatural way. His breath came heavily and his heart hammered against his ribs. His hips were aching and his neck was tight. Despite the cloth he had wrapped about his palms his hands were aflame with raw nerves and the tips of his fingers felt bloated and strange. The tops of his boots were filling with snow that began to melt against his calves and soak into the wool of his hose. His back, at least where Gollum's stinking body did not shield it, was a mass of gooseflesh in the sharp winter air. Likewise his ears and his thighs and the crown of his head. Only his face, downturned and heated by his heavy exhalations, was not suffering in the cold.

Yet he was drawing near to midriver now, and beneath him the ice was still firm. He quickened his pace a little, still driving his pack ahead of him and still pressing with all his strength against the staff. The snow amassing before his pack broke over the top of it at last, showering down onto his hair and his shoulders. He snorted as some of it tumbled onto his brow. He pushed onward again.

Then it happened. There was a noise like the groan of the very earth itself, and a sharp report rang out in the frozen air. Aragorn's heart seemed to stop altogether, and his whole body tensed against its long bed of ice. His grip upon the staff tightened so that his fingernails dug into the heels of his hands. Gollum shifted as the broad muscles beneath him grew taut and the Ranger ceased all motion. He dared not even breathe, lest he should quicken his downfall. Frantic he lay there, waiting with grim dread for the ice to give way beneath him.

It did not.

When at last the tidal air began to rattle deep within his chest and he was forced to haul in a desperate mass of cold air, he began to realize that he was not about to be scuttled. It took another minute for his pulse to level off again, and several more before he dared to move his right foot. Yet move it he did, pushing warily forward. Next he shifted his left, pressing firmly on the staff. Then he was moving again.

He went more slowly now, easing his weight forward a little at a time. The front of his cote was by this time heavy with the damp and his teeth were chattering, but he was loath to move any faster. His knife in its sheath had begun to slide forward on his belt and the hilt was now pressing uncomfortably into his flank, but he dared not reach down to adjust it. Both hands were needed on his pole, to spread the strain he was putting on the ice. He fancied he could feel the waters of Gladden beneath his belly, rushing in their deep bed under the frozen cap to join Anduin in the place where Isildur had fallen. In his mind he could see those black waters, cold as the Void and swift as the winds, wearing away at the underside of the ice; weakening it little by little with the same slow inexorable force that could grind away mountains.

On his back, Gollum was blessedly still.

Aragorn's head was aching now, and the muscles of his arms and shoulders were beginning to cramp and twitch. He was yet more than a hundred yards from the far shore, his long legs far less efficient against the ice than they would have been over it. He forced himself to make another awkward shoving stroke, and then another. After all, he could not simply lie here waiting for spring.

When the ice moaned again he scarcely paused. The back of his neck was prickling anxiously now and he felt certain that he had to be about his business swiftly. Then he felt a tremor against his chilled pelvis. His breath caught in his throat and he went as still as a corpse.

There was another noise, like the far-off roar of a cracking kiln, and now there could be no mistaking the feeling of the ice shifting beneath his legs. His heart hammered in his throat and he writhed forward, dragging his feet after him as a fissure opened up beneath them. He could hear the rush of water below in the moment between one sharp crack and the next. There was an eerie slipping sensation along his left leg, travelling up towards his abdomen. It was the ice beneath him giving way.

A sudden burning wave struck against his knees. Water. Aragorn loosed his hold on the staff and dug his fingers into the snow, hauling with his arms while his legs kicked fruitlessly. His boots dragged across the fractured surface, but his ribs were now on solid ice again. In another moment he would be over the place where it had broken beneath his weight, and then perhaps he might win through to firmer ground.

In the critical moment, something shifted. A heavy mass came down over his left ribs, and his right shoulder was suddenly suspended in the air. Something was pressing against the side of his neck, and there was a fluttering against his breast that did not come from within. Before he truly understood what was happening, Gollum had brought his entire withered body down with sundering force on the ice between Aragorn's left arm and his flank.

There was no time to brace himself. There was scarcely time to draw in a sharp breath. Like a cloth pulled out from beneath a crystal goblet the surface between Aragorn and the water was present in one moment and gone in the next. Only one last desperate flailing of his arm against the sharp, shattered edge allowed him a moment of injured dismay before he plunged into the dark depths of the freezing River Gladden.

Note: Chapter title from "The Great River"; The Fellowship of the Ring; J.R.R. Tolkien.

It occurred to me after posting the last chapter that my warning probably wasn't necessary. Considering what happens in these two chapters and the next, who would want to try this at home?

Chapter XXXVIII: Too Clever a Waterman

First there was a brief and blessed sense of being engulfed, cocooned, in something hot and thick and heavy. This lasted no more than the span of a single sharp staccato of his wildly thundering heart, however, and then the shock struck him with all the might of a stone-giant's fist. Every muscle in his long body tensed. The blood pounded in his throat and his temples. There was a feeling of falling with impossible slowness. Sinking, he thought indolently; but he was powerless to do anything about it. Three precious bubbles of air burst from between his lips before he could even clamp closed his jaw.

Then the dreadful fire of cold unspeakable caught him in its web of anguish. His skin shrivelled and burned over bones that seemed so impossibly heavy. He could feel the water creeping with the speed of a scurrying insect into every tear and gap of his garments: up his sleeves and down his collar, under his belt and into his hose and downward, finally, past the snugness of his ankles to fill his boots. His hair blossomed out around his head like a black water-weed, and his arms – that only moments before had been scrabbling to haul him past the spreading cracks in the ice – flew up and outward as if they were wings thrust out to arrest his descent.

All of this seemed to take an eternity, though the small beleaguered voice of his rational mind told him it had surely been only a handful of seconds. There was something on his back, heavy and unwieldy and dragging him downward. Before slothful reason could remember what it might be, the thing began to move. There was thrashing in the water behind him and tugging against his collarbone. Then a long, bony foot planted itself upon his right shoulder, sharp nails and grasping toes digging into the cloth of his cote. Aragorn tried to reach for the thing, but his limbs would not obey him. A moment later something firm and narrow blasted against the side of his nose and there was a swoop of motion over his head.

His left arm flailed, bending at the elbow as if to stop the thing from slipping over it, but he was waterlogged now and sinking more swiftly, and his mind's frenetic efforts to induce his legs to move left no quarter for other thought. Flipper-like the feet flapped past his head, one toenail grazing his cheek. Then something was scrabbling at his wrist. There was a strange tugging sensation upon the bones at the base of his thumb, and he knew indistinctly that he ought to be alarmed.

The first great cloud of bubbles broke through the barrier of his teeth; his lungs were crying out for air and his ribs jerked and twitched with the urge to take quick gasping breaths. It was only through an extraordinary exertion of will that he was able to keep his mouth closed against the all-but-intolerable yearning to pant, and his right hand snatched hastily for his nostrils before they could betray him. Dimly Aragorn reflected that if he did not start trying to find the hole in the ice again he would surely drown. But his eyes were pasted shut against the searing cold of the water and he still could not make his legs do as they were told.

The pressure on his arm was worsening now. It dragged up into his elbow, and so to his shoulder, but the worst of it was still in his thumb. Then the wild groping fingers went still and he could feel the pressure of two palms and… something. Something else, something coarse and rounded; a stiff bracelet of… what? About his wrist…

He felt it roll under the force of the other hands, and there was a bright pain that ran up into his radius, and then swift sweet release as whatever-it-was slid over the widest point of his hand and drifted away.

Aragorn scarcely felt the current as the wiry legs kicked swift and sure and bore their owner away, for at that moment his own foot struck bottom, slipping in the silt in the bed of the River Gladden.

Clarity bright as the summer sun pierced the fog of terror and bewilderment, and he remembered. He had fallen. He had fallen through the ice, and he had to find his way back lest he should drown here and wash away as his long grandsire had into Anduin's turbulent flood and southward to the Sea never to return to his people. The frantic reflexive heaving of his chest stilled a little and he let himself sink farther, bending his knees and flexing both feet in the engorged leather of his boots. Like a great cat he sprang, pushing off the riverbed and taking long, strong kicks.

Forcing his eyelids to part was a more difficult task, but he managed it. His eyes burned, stung mercilessly by the cold, and for a moment he could see only darkness. He turned his face upward, and as he kicked again the gloom before him brightened into a pale featureless dome of ice. Panic gripped him for an instant and another shower of bubbles broke free from his throat. His lungs were labouring now; it seemed an Age since he had fallen through the ice, but he did not suppose it had been even a full minute yet. Nevertheless if he did not find the place where he had fallen through he was lost, for he had walked a mile or more along an unbroken river.

His legs whipped again, moving almost of their own accord to fight the current and keep him in place. Fool, Aragorn thought; twice and thrice a fool. In his sinking he had surely been swept downriver. Bending into the current with his long arms pulling at last, he began to swim. All the while he kept his face upturned though it hampered his progress.

At last he saw it; a dark ragged maw in the mottled brightness of the ice. The last sour trickles of air leaked from his lungs and he fought the primal urge to breathe in. His legs, numb now and weighted down with the water in his boots, put forth one last valiant effort and he broke the surface with an enormous, tortured gasp.

The frozen air seized in his chest and his head went under again amid a torrent of coughing. His body knew what to do even if his mind was floundering, and his legs abandoned their stiff straight kicking to bend and whip round like opposing cogs. The crown of his head broke the surface again, swiftly followed by the rest of it in time for the heaving intake at the end of a cough. Water streamed in icy rivulets from his hair and his shoulders as he blinked many times and swiftly to restore his sight.

The hole in the ice was larger than he had expected: better than three body lengths across in any direction. Broken floes bobbed all around him, creaking and crackling in the air that was so painful to breathe, and the surface was choked with shards and slushing snow. He tried to orient himself. If he was going to get out, he would at least win through to the proper bank. Startled, he realized he did not quite remember which bank he wanted. He had tumbled into Gladden, he knew, so it was a choice of north or south, but which did he want and why?

Then a horror far worse than the shock of his sudden ducking closed about his heart, and his left hand broke the surface of the water. He stared at his wrist, his bare wrist, and at the red rasped place that stood out fiercely against skin gone white with cold. He could feel the foot on his shoulder, the whacking of an arm against his nose, the rolling sensation as the rope – worried loose by constant tugging in recent days – had slipped over his hand.

He whipped around, sending up a spray of river-foam that began to freeze into sharp little shards of ice even before it struck the water again. There was nothing; no sign of the creature, no indication that he had surfaced. Aragorn forced his eyes to focus at the expanse of river as he made another quick, desperate circle in the water. He could not see the wretch on the ice or on the land.

Dread clawed at his heart and he very nearly sank. Gollum could not be drowned. After all that had been done to find him, to capture him and to bring him so far, he could not be drowned! If only he had managed a proper interrogation of the wretch. If only he had wrung out of Gollum whatever it was that he knew about Bilbo's ring; whatever he had told the servants of Sauron; whatever else he could say that might have been of value. If his captive was dead and his secrets with him…

There was a crash of breaking water and a high, hoarse gasp of air. Aragorn's shoulders jerked to the right and his body followed. There, bobbing in the water near the eastern edge of the ice, was a great emaciated head. One thin arm broke the surface in a paddling but effective stroke. A sharp, involuntary cry that was equal parts anger and relief broke from the Ranger's taut throat.

Gollum stiffened, looking back towards his captor. Something like a smile appeared on his hideous face; a rictus of dismay, but also of triumph. Aragorn could see the halter floating under his chin. Then with a trilling shriek the creature upended himself and dove.

There was no time for thought; no time for common sense. Aragorn gave one last mighty kick, raising his body up out of the water as far as his sixth ribs. Then he straightened his legs and let himself plummet downward, bending at the waist as he did so and letting his legs grow level with the rest of his body. His eyes smarted fiercely but he did not let them blink. He knew where to look, and he saw what he wanted almost at once: the gaunt, misshapen body of his erstwhile prisoner propelling itself with gangly limbs made suddenly graceful by speed and by skill. Gollum was swimming away from him at a great pace, bearing downstream – beneath the vast unbroken ice.

Aragorn stretched both hands before him, palms downward and thumbs neatly tucked. In unison he brought them outward, forming a shape in the water that was like a great bulb of garlic, like the elegant finialed domes of the ruined palaces of Khand. His palms turned outward as they moved around the edges of this invisible form, and when his elbows where bent they whipped under and pushed out again, arms straightening as his legs bowed in a long, froglike kick. He glided for the two heartbeats it took his momentum to reach its crest, and then began again.

Gollum had seen him coming, and he banked left, quickening his speed. He was swift as a trout, but the Ranger had the advantage of length of limb. Each of his own strokes covered thrice the distance of one of Gollum's, and he began to close the span between them rapidly. Still he had little hope of catching the creature quickly enough to find his way back against the current before he spent his air, and he might have been faced with the choice between abandoning his captive and abandoning his life but for one thing.

The orc-rope, still bound about Gollum's neck, was trailing behind in his slipstream.

His first attempt to snatch it failed. His eyes were unreliable in the gloom and the murky obscurity of the freezing water, and his right arm went wildly astray. His stroke faltered too, and Gollum gained another precious ell, but two swift kicks closed the gap and he tried again. This time his fingers closed over the rope, but they were chilled and clumsy and he did not trust them to hold. Somehow he got the loop around all four of them and snapped his fist around the cord like an oyster guarding its pearl. He spared no further thought as he turned a sweeping somersault to begin his swim upstream. He had no time to waste, for the air was burning in his lungs and he had strayed much farther from the hole in the ice than he had hoped.

There was flailing on the end of the rope as it drew taut between them. Gollum thrashed and tried to pull away, but he succeeded only in dragging Aragorn's hand towards his hip. His fist held fast, and his other arm and both legs were working well (if a little wildly) against the current. He kept his eyes fixed upward and ahead, looking for the dark place. Stale breath gurgled up and out of his nose. His lungs were ablaze with the effort of this second long plunge. Numbness crept with tingling fingers up from his feet and over his arms and down the length of his spine, and with it came a profound weariness. He knew that he was spending heat and strength more swiftly than he could afford to in this dire and foolish swim, but it was the air he had spent that worried him most.

His lungs were empty now. There was a burning in his viscera and his throat was palpitating. In his long years of wandering he had known the want of food; of water; of peace. He had known the want of shelter on a bitter night; and the want of friendship in a hostile land. He had known the want of shade beneath the burning southern Sun, and the want of sunlight in the caverns of the earth. He had known the want of sleep, which consumes all thought and feeling and sense of self. Yet not one of these yearnings could compare to the urgency or the torment of his need for air. It blotted out everything but the desperate desire to part his lips and take a deep, gasping breath. Even the fact that he was still immersed in the freezing water seemed a secondary consideration.

His failing eyes at last caught sight of the darkness he sought, and somehow he induced his feet to kick again. The rope dragged against his right hand; on the far end of it Gollum was still thrashing like a sea-serpent caught in a fisherman's net. Aragorn forced his chilled fist to tighten as he made his final push towards the surface. He felt the water give way around him and closed his eyes against the bitter blast of the air that his body so craved. It did not come.

Instead, something wet and heavy and suffocating slapped down across his face.

For a terrible instant he feared that the ice had somehow risen up to trap him, or that some devilry of the Enemy had snared him. Then with a lightning jolt of revelation he knew what had happened, and he swept his left arm up in a broad arc to claw the blanket away from his face. At last he could breathe, choking in the sharp and pitiless air that seemed to set his chest afire and yet was welcome despite the agony it brought. He flailed his arm again, and the mass of sodden cloth curled around it. His legs were whirling again, almost unbidden. He felt one last tug upon the rope in his hand, and then the line went slack.

For a brief and awful time he feared that Gollum had managed to get free of his own noose, but then the creature's head broke the surface, choking and wheezing and sputtering curses. At the sight of the Ranger his eyes – rimmed now with red but bright and malicious as ever – narrowed to slits.

Aragorn's wet face was burning in the wind, and a rime was forming already on his eyebrows and his hair and in the rough beginnings of his beard. He was no stranger to winter dangers and he knew that with each minute that passed he grew weaker; soon he would be too weak to pull himself out of the river. This was not the time to indulge in a pitched water-battle with one whose escape attempt he had only just managed to thwart. He worked his hand free of the bobbing blanket and slipped it down to grope for his belt. There was little feeling left in his fingers, but what lingered was enough. He found the hilt of his knife and drew it. He had to turn it, but he was terrified lest it should slip. He could not be without it and in his present state he did not have much hope of diving for it.

He brought it to his mouth and clamped his teeth down upon the blade. The cold was nigh to unbearable: it was all that he could do to shift his grip before quivering lips smacked down over his bared mouth. Then with his right arm he dared to release the rope, carefully out of sight beneath the water, that he might grab a higher handful. This he clamped behind his knee as he reached again, and in this way Gollum was towed swiftly towards him, spitting and seething and struggling furiously. The moment he was within arm's reach Aragorn let go of the rope and seized his captive by the jaw, fingers on the right and thumb on the left. He could not be sure of the grip of his stiffening hand, and so he dug in until he could see pale crescents where his nails pinched into the grey flesh. Ere conscience or self-doubt could assail him he raised his left arm high, sending a shower of freezing water from his sleeve, and brought down the butt of the hilt against Gollum's right temple.

The wretch went limp so swiftly that Aragorn lost his hold and the withered body slipped beneath the surface. Instinct thrust up the Ranger's knee and Gollum's midsection sank sluggishly against it, giving him the leverage to hoist the lolling head up out of the water again.

He took hold of Gollum's jaw again, this time with his palm cupped under his chin to tilt his head back. There was too little fat on the creature's body for him to float well, but float he did after a fashion, and at last Aragorn was able to consider how to extricate them both from these most undesirable straits.

By his best reckoning he had fallen through the ice not more than six minutes before, but he was not certain that number was to be trusted. In any case, if any man had ever managed to escape unaided after ten minutes in such waters Aragorn had never met him. In the tales of the crossing of the Helcaraxë it was told that when the Lady Elenwë fell her husband Turgon endured nearly twice that long in his fruitless effort to save her, but in addition to being of Elder race in the vigorous dawn of Arda he had also had to be hauled out all but swooning by his kindred. Aragorn was not so arrogant as to think he could last as long as the Lord of Gondolin, and there were no doughty Noldorin warriors at hand to help him. He would have to help himself, and swiftly, or Gollum's madness would kill them both.

It was not the first time in many decades of wandering that he had fallen afoul of unsafe ice, but never before had he been forced to mount a frantic river-swim – half of it upstream – afterwards, or to haul out an unconscious body with him. Already his limbs were weak and the flooded boots weighed down his beating legs so that far from forming neat opposing circles they were wandering in straggled ellipses that his knees could not uphold for long. He was shivering violently and his teeth were chattering in his head. Below the ring of water that bound his chest his bodily discomfort was mercifully muted, but in the stark winter air and the driving north wind his head and shoulders were a mass of stinging torment.

With the wrist of his knife-bearing hand he snagged the blanket again and gathered it to him, and then set out forcing his legs to drive him towards the northmost edge of the waterhole. It was wiser for a man in such a position to get out from the side on which he had gone in, but if he did that the whole miserable affair would be for nothing. The swim was slow and clumsy – far slower than his frenetic underwater chase – but in the end he reached the border where the snow-choked water lapped against its riven cover. With a tremendous effort, for it was sodden with thrice its weight in water, he hauled up the blanket and pushed it onto the ice. Then he let his arm fall so that the knife-tip drove through the snow and caught firm; a pick of sorts. Next he slid Gollum's head and shoulders up over the edge. Despite the cold the side of his head was already beginning to purple and swell where Aragorn had struck him. His eyes were closed and his breathing shallow. The noose was still firm about his neck.

Finally able to release his hold without risk of the creature slipping, Aragorn planted his right palm near the knife. Carefully he began to tilt his body forward, leaden legs kicking almost drowsily towards the surface behind him. When he was almost level he tried to push forward as if swimming. The edge of the ice shuddered and crumbled beneath his weight, sending him crashing into a wave of frigid water that slapped against his face and robbed him briefly of breath.

Gollum was sinking, and Aragorn hastened to haul him to the surface again. Happily his left hand had not lost its hold on the knife, but his makeshift cloak was scuttled again and he struggled to hoist it once more. He could see no sign of his pack.

The second time he tried to lift himself the ice gave way again; and the third. On the fourth attempt his arms were quaking with weariness and he did not think he would have the strength to try again. This time he managed to get his shoulders onto the ice, and then his ribs and the very crest of his left hipbone. But when he reached to drag Gollum after him there was a blasting crack and again he was thrown down upon his belly in the water. A harsh howl of rage and frustration tore from his throat, seeming to echo off the floes about him.

It was all that he could do to lift his arms and his garment and his prisoner onto the edge of the ice again, and he bobbed there, shivering violently and trying to keep his feet from sinking. He bowed his head forward so that his now-insensate cheek rested on the snow. He could not go on: it was too much. The cold was in his very heart now, and his weary limbs would not obey him. Soon even this small labour would prove too much and his arms would lose their hold and he would slip back into the water and drown. Either that or his sleeves would freeze to the ice, trapping him in the torment of the winter air until at last he perished for cold. That was a wretched death, and slow; it could take better than two hours for a man to freeze in water.

Over the crest of his arm he could see Gollum's profile. He had never before noticed, but his captive had a rather fine nose; straight and well-proportioned, neither too broad nor too narrow despite the otherwise grotesque features of his wizened face. His own nose was running copiously, and he felt something warm trickle against the side of his philtrum. The thought of moving his hand to daub it away was absolutely exhausting. The frost was thick upon his eyelashes now, and he let his stinging eyes droop closed.

He might have perished there, undone by the river that had ever been the bane of his people, had the weakened ice not once more decided to give way. It did so almost silently this time, the crack spreading under fingers too numb to feel it and opening in a web of small fissures as the loosened chunk disintegrated. Before he even realized that he was sinking Aragorn's head was under water again. His whole body snapped like a horsewhip, legs scissoring so fiercely that the joints of his hips crackled. His face, suddenly upturned, broke the surface in a series of shallow gasps, and he looked wildly about like a sleeper suddenly roused to find battle joined all around him. He came to himself even before Gollum could slip beneath the surface, and hooked the web of his thumb under the angular chin. His left hand had slipped off the knife but it was floating still, its point driven into a rough-keeled block of ice about the size of a quarto book. Aragorn retrieved his weapon and took a stilted stroke that brought him to the ever-retreating frontier that lay between death and grim, tortured survival.

In a blinding instant he was assailed by a memory. He had been climbing. No, learning to climb. He must have been very young indeed, for the recollection of the details was indistinct, but he remembered well enough the hard, sharp stones that bit into his knees and scraped his palms as he fell yet again. Discouraged and angry but determined not to weep he had picked himself up and stomped his small foot and declared, very loudly, that he could not do it; that it was impossible and unnecessary and he did not understand how a reasoning person could expect him to do it.

And he remembered eyes like glinting true-silver in the autumn sun, loving but unshakable, and a firm and gentle voice. 'It may well be impossible, Estel, but you must try again regardless.'

Up went the blanket, sloshing with water. Down went the knife, squealing as it bit into the ice. Forward now with Gollum, still blessedly beyond struggling. The right arm planted firmly. Weary legs kicking. You must try again regardless, he thought.

Tired little fingers had gripped niches in the rock-face. Plump baby toes in thin Elven leather had scrambled. Again the ominous crack; again the knowledge that he was about to fall. Then slender firm fingers closed about his right wrist and pulled him forward – no, upward… forward?

His knees were on the ice now; everything above had been dragged over the snow. His right arm, suddenly free of the warm, imagined hand of his father, groped back and seized the bone just beneath a sharp shoulder. He dragged and Gollum came after him, his legs catching a little on the edge of the ice but following as they necessarily must. He drew the creature up as far as he could, and then reached down to seize him by the leg instead. When he was near enough Aragorn hefted his loathsome prisoner to his breast, his elbow in Gollum's armpit and his hand awkwardly shielding the back of his head. Then, captive in one hand and blade and blanket in the other, he thrust his legs to the left and began to roll on his side; away from the water, away from the hole, away from the perilously thin ice around it. Water streamed from his garments and his boots. Snow choked his nostrils and matted in his hair. His long frame shook with concussive tremors in the ravaging wind.

Still he rolled. He rolled until a sudden jerking of his left arm forced him to stop with his back in the snow and Gollum's limp form sprawled over his chest. Bemused and bewildered, he looked down to see what had happened. The Lórien-blanket was spread upon the ice, stiff and motionless, frozen in place. Unaccountably, against all reason and in defiance of the desperate struggle that lay in his immediate future, Aragorn threw back his head and laughed at the cloudless sky above.

Note: Recommended while reading this chapter: a heating blanket and a nice cup of tea.

Chapter XXXIX: Stark Survival

There was no cause for laughter: truly there was not. He might be safe from drowning, but the slow frozen death would find him on land anyhow. He might have escaped the clutches of the river, but its waters still choked his hair and his garments and in the whipping wind the wet would kill him faster than it ever would have done in Gladden's depths. He managed to yank the blanket free and he got onto his knees. Awkwardly he crawled, his right hand once more dragging Gollum by the shoulder. He did not dare to stand. He doubted that his unsteady legs would hold him, and even if he had not seemed likely to go crashing down he would have been wary of placing such concentrated weight on ice already proved most unstable.

The remaining hundred yards to the bank seemed a greater distance than all the rest of the river. Aragorn was quaking with the cold that he could now scarcely feel, and his dripping hair began to stiffen with frost. When at last he reached the shore he had hardly the strength to haul his prisoner after him. He stumbled over a root and fell prostrate in the snow, frigid water pouring from the tops of his boots to puddle around his knees. Befuddled he lay there, uncertain at first why he had fallen and then unsure whether he truly wished to do anything about it. Exhaustion tight as a winding-sheet seemed to curl around his limbs, trapping them against the sodden clothing that was already beginning to freeze in hard ridges along its wrinkles and tears.

The dull thought that he had to get his boots off before his feet were done any permanent harm managed to grind its way through his weary confusion. With arms that shook with chill and fatigue Aragorn managed to get his head and shoulders out of the snow. His right knee slid stiffly up under his belly and then somehow found himself sitting back on his heels. There was a twisted greyish shape in the drift beside him, beads of ice forming along the sharp contours of ill-insulated ribs. Gollum.

The wind was wailing down from the crest of the riverbank, and a particularly spirited gust stung in Aragorn's eyes. The first thing to do was to find some sort of shelter for them both. Gollum was still unconscious; no doubt the cold would prolong the effect of the blow to the head. He had to be carried. Aragorn reached out only to discover that he was still holding his hunting knife in a hand fading from raw redness to a pale, sickly purple. He was gripping it with the pommel against his thumb and so did not have to turn it, he thought. It seemed to take a great effort to make his arm swing back towards the sheath at his belt, and when he tried to slip the blade into it his aim went wildly awry. The knife grazed against the side of his hose and landed with a soft thump in the snow beside his knee.

Irritated, Aragorn picked it up and tried again. This time he did not even get close enough to snag his garments. Wrathful now he grabbed the knife and rammed it bare into his belt.

Getting hold of Gollum was somewhat simpler, but when he tried to hoist him Aragorn found that his arms were not equal to the task. His cold desperate swim had robbed him of his strength and his wrists quivered and his fingers failed. For a brief moment he considered simply leaving the creature behind, but it seemed that there was some compelling reason that he could not do so – though for the moment it eluded him. So he staggered to his feet, bent low and swaying unsteadily, and he put a hand beneath each of the sinewy arms. Shuffling backward he dragged the unmoving body up the bare first slope towards the underbrush that teemed along the side of the river.

Some small fortune smiled upon him, for he found a hollow not far away where the angle of the bank offered some respite from the cruel winds and the underbrush was thick. Stumbling he sat hard upon a fallen log, his hold upon his captive failing. Only then did he realize that he had left his water-laden blanket where he had fallen. The brass brooch Aithron had given him glinted brightly in the growing light of day; the cloth itself was dark against the snow. Aragorn let out a shallow sigh of defeat. Let it lie there, then. He could fetch it later.

His hands were all but numb. With their last tremulous dexterity he took the end of Gollum's rope and tied it to a high branch of a nearby hawthorn. Then his thoughts turned again to his boots, still flooded to well about his ankles. Kicking at the thin layer of snow that had managed to filter through the tangle of branches above he found a stone half-buried in the earth of the bank. It took him four passes to strike his left heel in a cleft that would hold it, and by the time he managed to wrench his foot free he had half forgotten why he was doing it.

His body was still shivering, but he was far beyond feeling the cold anywhere but in his foot, lately removed from the water in his boot and suddenly chilled in its wet woollen wrapping by the bitter air. Soaked as he was Aragorn knew that he was losing heat far too quickly. At this rate he would be little more than a block of ice before he managed to get out of his other boot, never mind finding the means to thaw out. Stiff unfeeling fingers fumbled at the buckle of his belt. It was like watching a bear with its great clumsy paws trying to untangle a child's ring-puzzle: amusing and discouraging at once. A drunken laugh found its way to Aragorn's lips, followed by a slow but earnest oath. He bowed low over his lap, momentarily struck by the ridiculous notion that perhaps his teeth would be better suited to the job if only he could force them to reach. Then at last the tongue of the buckle gave way and the leather strap fell down about his hips.

He clawed at his cote, somehow loosing the lacing at his neck and then struggling with the sodden fabric without success until he realized that he was sitting on the tail of the garment. A rocking shift that almost sent him rolling onto his side managed to free it, and he struggled to hoist the dripping weight over his head. The bottle that he had been keeping between his tunic and his skin landed heavily upon the log and rolled off into the snow as he dragged the garment up against his shoulders. There was a creak and a groan and a series of sharp snaps as threads gave way and old tears reopened, but at the moment he cared for nothing but getting the infernal thing off.

His shirt was next, slipping away with some greater ease, and then he had to wrestle with the points of his hose where they met his braies. He stripped his left leg and huddled shivering over his lap, jerking arms hugged tightly against chest, his bare back rough with gooseflesh in the open air. His hair was still wet and it clung to his head and his neck and his shoulders, and his loins and right leg were still coated with soaked cloth. Somehow he found the will and the command over his limbs to move his remaining boot against the rock, and he pulled until his scarred thigh was afire to the bone before at last the leather gave way and he was able to finish stripping off his garments.

Almost at once the bite of the air was lessened as he gathered his long limbs in close to his body, crouching on the log and shaking wretchedly. His right boot, lately cast aside, was leaking its water into the snow and making a broad patch of slush that began to creep away downhill. It was curiously transfixing, and Aragorn might have sat staring at it until the shaking stopped and death crept upon him, but something deep within his mind would not let him alone. It was Gandalf's voice, jesting but underwrit with concern for his friend.

'Remember that if you get into such a state again,' he said; 'I shan't be here to scare up food and fire for you. You'll have to look out for yourself.'

Food was the least of his worries at present, but there was something to be said for fire. Bleary eyes blinked through the fine crystals of ice that were forming again on his eyelashes as Aragorn raised his head to look around. He was in an area of plentiful deadfall. Finding fuel would be easy; gathering it surely within the bounds of his failing strength. His flint was in his pouch, lying now in the snow behind the log on which he perched. If somehow he could get his fingers to obey him he might have a hope of warming himself.

He got unsteadily to his feet, which were numb beyond feeling the snow beneath them, and shuffled awkwardly towards the nearest tangle of fallen branches. They were not as dry as he might have hoped, but he dragged them back to his log regardless and then struggled to pick up his knife. He broke off bark and small twigs, meandering to and fro until he had a modest heap of fuel, and then went back to scrape away a clear space on the ground by the fallen tree.

The labour must have warmed him a little, for his mind was clearer as he reached for his belt and attacked the knot of his pouch with his teeth. Unable to feel what he was touching he upended the contents into the snow at his feet. There were half a dozen hazelnuts that he supposed he had stowed unthinkingly during one of his frugal meals over the last few days. A black, sodden mess proved to be the remains of the dried nailwort he had gathered in Harondor. His tinder was wet and swiftly freezing, but he must have known that was the case for he had gathered the bark. He picked up his flint and steel after only a few abortive attempts and squatted in the snow to attempt to light a fire.

He was still trembling violently and he could not make his hands obey him as they ought. Again and again he tried to strike a spark, succeeding only in scraping either the stone or the curl of blackened metal against the opposite finger. He braced one thumb against the piece of bark he was trying to catch, and tried again. His teeth were clattering too fiercely to allow him to cry out, but a discouraged whimper sounded deep within his throat.

Beside him Gollum stirred, but he did not waken. Trying to shake the frozen mats of hair from his eyes, Aragorn rounded his shoulders and bowed his head before making another ungainly attempt at striking a light. This time he did manage to produce a shower of sparks, but the bark beneath his hands did not catch them. He huddled lower, wondering wretchedly how his body could be shaking so violently when he could no longer even feel the cold. Around him his clothing was slowly freezing solid in the snow, and his fingers and toes were now quite blue. He supposed his quivering lips were, too. Gollum's grey pallor seemed remarkably unchanged, and save for the ugly mark upon his temple he might have been sleeping peacefully in the hawthorn's scant shelter.

His right hand fumbled and the flint fell onto the bare patch of ground. He tried to lift it, but his fingertips merely rolled across the rough surface, incapable of grasping. Fearful and irrationally cross, he tried again. He did not let his arm tell him when he had an adequate grip, but waited until he could see the blue of his flesh receding to white under pressure. He lifted the rock at last and struck again.

This time one of the sparks found a hollow in the rough surface of the elm-bark, glowing brightly as it bit in. Desperate that it should not fail Aragorn slid forward onto his knees, bending with his shoulders almost to the ground as he tried to blow gently upon it. His breath came out in shivering puffs. The first three were gentle enough, and the spark flared a little. The fourth was sudden and violent and quite beyond his control. The tiny flame flickered and went out.

The desire to cry out in his wrath and fling his treasured tools off into the underbrush seized Aragorn. He might have done it, too, so insensible was he becoming, but Gollum shifted again and snorted, mumbling something incoherent in his half-waking state. The brief moment of distraction dulled the edge of the irrational rage and when Aragorn turned his eyes back on his poor scavenged tinder he felt only a dumb dread of trying again.

Yet try he did, again and again until the paroxysms of his bone-chilled body grew so fierce that he could not even bring his vision into focus. He curled into a ball over his lap, panting shallowly and struggling with a will that seemed half-frozen itself to master his limbs. His eyes were stinging cruelly, even sheltered from the wind as he was, and the sparse new growth of his beard was stiff with little icicles. In that dreadful moment he would have given all that he possessed to have Gandalf beside him to wrap him in a dry grey cloak and take the steel from his fingers and lay the accursed fire before he froze to death.

Then, so abrupt that it was like the snuffing of a lamp in a windowless room, the shivering ceased. Bowed low to the ground with his hands bent like talons around his fire-tools, Aragorn could not even feel the relief in his tortured muscles. He was beyond any terror at the healer's voice deep within him that whispered that this sudden surcease was a very bad thing indeed. The only thought that managed to wade through the freezing slurry that was drowning his mind was that if his hands had stopped shaking then perhaps he could manage to get a spark to take at last.

Still they might be now, but his fingers were every bit as clumsy. He fumbled with his too-tight grip on the flint, and finally gave up trying to strike with it. He rapped his left hand against his right instead, the loop of steel over his knuckles barking against flesh and stone alike. Bright blood splattered against the snow, but sparks flew in every direction. Hastily Aragorn lowered both fists towards the piece of bark and struck with greater fervour. When the first shimmers of tiny flames appeared he tried to blow upon them, to coax them to take, but his lips refused to purse. He huffed sluggishly out of his left nostril instead – the right seemed clogged. One little yellow tongue lapped against another and a flame the size of an ash leaf began dancing against the bark.

Scarcely able to credit his luck Aragorn snatched out for another piece of tinder, feeding it gently against the first and watching as the glow began to spread. His fingertips were useless now, and so he closed his whole hand over a twig as he started building a tent of kindling around the growing flame. When at last he was able to add a small branch he let out a hoarse, croaking noise of victory.

At first the fire was small and gave little heat, but he huddled almost on top of it with his hands cupped over the flames, trying to thaw his fingers. They were lividly blue now, but at least they were not white with frostbite. Weariness such as he had never known before weighed down upon his bowed shoulders and rounded spine. He wished only to lie down upon his side in the gentle pillow of the snow and drift off into kind oblivion. Yet like a small child who has been sternly scolded for some mysterious transgression he could not understand, Aragorn knew that he must not do that. Somehow he managed to get his feet out from under him and close to the little blaze, and he kept feeding the fire until at last it was strong enough to take a stick as thick as his forearm. The first returning shiver tore through his body then, and he thought he had never felt such a welcome sensation.

Before the spasms grew too much for him he forced his tormented body away from the flames and managed to get a hamfisted hold on Gollum's ankle. He dragged him through the snow and the wet winter mulch, mindful of the noose that tethered him to the gnarled old tree. As carefully as he could he curled the creature on his side, belly and limbs turned in towards the fire. His fingertips traced the edge of the swollen mass on the side of his head, probing to be sure that the skull beneath was still intact. Aragorn did not think that he had struck the creature hard enough to do serious harm, but he had to be sure of that now, before he awakened.

It was impossible to tell: his fingers were still numb and discoloured and in the end he gave up and went back to curling over the fire. He managed to add two more good-sized branches before the shivering resumed in earnest, and after that it was a long time before he could do anything at all but crouch with his limbs bowed in and his tailbone anchoring his quaking frame against the fallen log.

The fire was settling into rich glowing embers when the first intimations of returning warmth found their way into his chest. He fed the fire again, this time managing to brace three goodly-sized pieces of wood against one another so that they would burn slow and hot. He could feel the cold at his back now, and he thought again of how he had sheltered beneath the wizard's cloak while his own mud-soaked clothing had dried on the hedges of Harondor.

He had no friend to cover his nakedness today, and so he had to contrive to dry his own things. The scattered garments lay about him, all but one of his underhose beyond easy reach. It was an awful wrench to tear himself away again from the small orb of warmth that surrounded his hard-won fire, but somehow he managed it. His legs shook and he stumbled, but he did not fall as he gathered his cote and his shirt, braies, hose and belt. Finally he picked up his boots, upending each one in turn so that the water that had not yet frozen poured out. While he was mobile he gathered five green boughs, then limped on unfeeling feet back to his rustic hearth.

His garments were frozen stiff, and he had to crack the ice between the threads to wring out what little liquid he could. With the boughs he shaped an ungainly three-legged frame with a doubled crossbar near the bottom woven awkwardly through the three upright posts. He placed this on the far side of the fire, driving each leg as deep into the frozen ground as his flagging strength would allow. Over it he draped his cote like the skin of a tent, its lining to the fire. The ice began almost at once to melt and droplets of water fell amid the flames, but the embers were hot and this brought no more than a steady sizzling. In this way the garment would dry more quickly, and its small shelter kept the heat of the blaze from bleeding off towards the river, reflecting it back instead to the naked Ranger and his treacherous companion.

The rest of his garments he set as close to the fire as he could. His boots he shook out again, cold fingers losing their hold more than once. He dared not set them too near the flames, lest rapid drying should crack the frozen leather. These labours done he was at last free to resume his miserable huddling as his exhausted body trembled and his mind grew fogged with weariness rather than cold. He felt as spent as one who had run for many days without rest, laden with a great weight and wracked with pain. He longed to sleep but he did not dare, and not for fear of freezing alone. Now that he was not so stupid with the chill he knew that he had taken a terrible risk in lighting a fire, even sheltered as he was. If there were watchers about he could not but draw their notice, and he had taken no proper measures against smoke. Yet what else could he have done? It had been, and still was, a choice between fire and death.

He was aware now of a terrible thirst, and he groped behind him until his hand lighted upon the fair Elven bottle. He dug out the stopper with his teeth and took a deep, frantic swallow. There was ice in the water and it burned against his teeth and redoubled the tremors in his chest. He longed for a dish of nourishing beef-broth, or failing that a mug of weak tea or even just hot water, but this was all he had. His cup was gone, scuttled in Gladden's bed with everything else that had been in his baggage. Only luck and a little laziness in packing had saved one of his blankets from the same fate, and he lacked the strength to drag his shivering body away from the fire to fetch it.

The desperateness of his situation began to settle its pall over his heart. He had lost all but a meagre handful of his supplies: his water-skins, his snares, the bandages Celeborn's folk had given him, thread and needles, the rags he used to bind his prisoner, and all that had remained of his dwindling rations. He might not be dead of freezing, but his hands and feet were still numb and blue despite their proximity to the fire. His prisoner had shown no earnest signs of waking, and when he did there would have to be some reckoning for his all-too-efficient escape attempt. By his best guess there were still nearly a hundred and fifty miles of Wilderland to cover, and if he could reach the end of that he would have to contrive to cross Anduin again before his last hopeless push to Mirkwood – and that assuming that the agents of Dol Guldur were not lying in wait for him on the river's eastern bank.

Fighting back the temptation of despair, he reached for another branch to feed the fire. The sun was beginning to sink low to his left, and the shadows of the trees were lengthening. Sensation enough had returned to his body that he could tell the temperature was still falling. Another concussive shiver shook him and he tried to inch a little nearer his small fire. He would have to focus on surviving this one night. That would be labour enough. In the morning he would do whatever he could to face the terrible trials before him.

A rain of melted river-water was falling from his cote now, and he stirred up the fire with a slender stick. He did not have nearly enough fuel to carry him through twilight and moonshine and the dark before dawn. He would have to roust himself to find more while the daylight lasted. Reaching out to feel the edge of his tunic he did not think that he would even be able to wait for his clothes to dry. Setting his teeth with dread he sought for the wellspring of will within himself and somehow straightened his long legs. The spider-scar was itching fearsomely, but his fingers were still too maladroit to scratch at it. Casting one last look at Gollum he tore himself out of the sphere of the fire For a third time.

Once again his toils warmed him, and by the time he had amassed a heap of deadfall and bracken sufficient to keep his hearth burning until morning his shivering had died down to the occasional tremor, though the lower parts of each limb were still insensate. He dared therefore to venture out of the shelter of his overgrown hollow to retrieve the Lórien blanket where it still lay in the orange of the setting sun.

The moment he was out of the lee of the trees the wind struck him like a hundred dancing whips of ice. The breath was driven from his lungs and his weary knees buckled. He fell crashing into the snow and had to struggle to his feet as if fighting against some sucking mire. He took the few staggering steps to where the frozen cloth lay and he fought to pry it free from the ground. His retreat was inelegant but swift, and as he stumbled back to the fallen log he had to pit his reason against his impulses to keep from crawling right in to the glowing embers of the fire. Again he huddled all but atop the flames, shivering pathetically and trying to chafe his unfeeling hands against one another.

As he began to warm a little he grew aware of a horrid crawling sensation on the back of his neck. At first he thought it was the ice in his hair, melting away. Then he recognized the churning unease in his innards and turned slowly to his left. Two eerily glowing orbs were fixed on him from the shadow cast over a back turned to the sunset. Gollum was awake.

Aragorn doubted his ability to speak, worn and ravaged as he was, and in any case he could think of nothing to say. His hands and feet were frozen but his heart burned with hatred for this loathsome thing he had tolerated so long. Too exhausted to bestir his better nature he let that odium rise into his eyes, fixing the creature with a gaze that would have made the greatest of Men quail.

And indeed Gollum shuddered, for a moment apparently overcome. Then he turned his head and leaned forward towards the fire and vomited. There was little enough in his stomach: water and bile and a few shreds of what had once been raw rabbit-meat, but the stink of it was terrible. Aragorn felt his own shrunken stomach roiling and he turned his face away. Gollum went on retching for a time and then gave a piteous whimper and was silent.

When Aragorn was certain he was not about to lose control himself, he dared to look back. His prisoner had drawn his rail-thin legs up to his chest and was hugging his knees to his body, his head in the snow as he shivered. He tried to draw nearer to the fire, but the noose around his neck tugged at his throat and he gagged again, clawing petulantly at it for a moment. Then he abandoned the effort and subsisted into shallow tremors.

Aragorn's eyes drifted along the stretched line of the rope to the place where it was knotted about a sturdy branch. He had only the vaguest of memories of setting the knot, but he was glad that he had. Certainly his hasty efforts to secure their survival would never have been managed with the tether about his wrist. He supposed that now the worst of it was past he ought to bring the rope nearer so that Gollum could warm himself properly. Then he looked down at his own hands, still curled into stiff purpled claws, and he knew that he would never manage it. Until his fingers thawed – unless his fingers thawed – he would never be able to undo the rope, much less tie it anew.

With a drowsy dawning surprise he discovered that he understood at last all of Gollum's sudden halts over the last few days. He had been trying to stretch the rope: to loosen the loop of cord about his captor's wrist so that as soon as an opportune moment presented itself he might drag it off and be gone. He remembered the business with the tree; Gollum trying to take the opposite path and dragging on the line between them. Yet again he was startled and secretly amazed at the creature's cunning. He had known that Aragorn would be alert to any tampering with the noose about his throat, but he had reasoned – all too correctly – that the Ranger would pay less mind to his own side of the rope. When the chance to escape by water had presented itself, he had seized Aragorn's moment of panic to make good his escape.

He still did not understand how Gollum had hoped to flee under a mile or more of solid ice, but he supposed it did not matter. Free or drowned the wretch would have foiled his designs, for he was useless either way. Only alive and safe in the halls of the wood-elves where a proper interrogation might be mounted would Gollum be put to any use. Whatever the perils, whatever the miseries, Aragorn had to drive him on through the bare winter lands even if it meant labouring on in want and bitter cold.

And it would mean that, he thought, his eyes falling on the few scattered nuts that had fallen from his pouch. He scooped them up with his rigid right hand. With his left he cast snow over the mess that Gollum had made, hiding it and masking the vile odour a little. He had spent in one day the strength of many, and he had to eat even if it was the very last of his provender. Bowing his head to his cupped palm he took the nuts, chewing as long and as slowly as he could. The poor mouthful was sufficient to send his stomach into ravenous cramps, and he thought of the wholesome meals in Lothlórien and regretted that he had eaten so well. He had foretold that such would only intensify the pangs of privation later, and already it seemed he was right.

The embers were glowing under a thick layer of ash now, so he stirred up the fire and banked it generously again. As the bright new flames licked up he shifted nearer, wishing unhappily that his clothes would dry and trying to quell the guilty thought that this must be much like what Gollum had been suffering since they had come into the snowy lands. He reminded himself of how the spiteful thing had thrown away the hood and cloak, and indeed how he had thrust himself down upon the ice at the most crucial moment in their deadly crossing. He could not lay by pity entirely, but his resentment was certainly stronger and borne of more substantial cause.

A bolt like the pricking of a dull sewing-needle shot up from the sole of his foot into his leg, and he kicked involuntarily against the damp ground. It was followed swiftly by another, and another, and then all at once his toes were afire with the merciless searing torment of thawing flesh. Tears of pain sprung to his eyes and he found himself panting thickly against the sharp waking anguish. Before he could even attempt to school himself his hands began to wake as well, stinging at first and then burning and finally bursting into crashing waves of agony. He bit down upon his lip, raising blood through an old fissure, and rocked a little against the log. Yet through the suffering that consumed conscious thought and clawed at his sanity came a stark, almost triumphant joy. They were not dead and frozen: he would lose neither finger nor toe. When at last they were thawed he would be able to go on.

Note: This was a difficult chapter to write. Indeed, it was in danger of being flung aside in frustration, and the story with it. Please weigh in, whatever your opinion.

Chapter XL: Nine Strokes

Long into the night Aragorn sat in a fever of torment, his fingers writhing nearly as much as Gollum's were wont to do in endless vain attempts to ease the pain of thawing. His feet, though no less wracked, were at least content to remain still, pressed deep into hard earth dampened by the ring of melt that surrounded the little fire. Despite the advantageous position of his cote over the fire it was his shirt that dried first, and he managed somehow to get it over his head. The delicate linen of Lothlórien did little to warm his back, but at least with something to wrap around his body he began to feel less savage. Even that small comfort did not last long, however, for as the agony in his limbs began to abate a little the capacity for reasoned thought returned.

He had to do something about Gollum. Thrice now the creature had tried to do him grievous harm, and thrice he had succeeded at least in part. The first time, when he had torn into the Ranger's arm with his noxious teeth, he had been acting out of the terror and necessity of the moment – beset from behind by an unknown and far larger assailant in debatable lands but a short march from the place where he had been imprisoned and tortured. Turin Túrambar himself had lashed out and slain a friend under slighter duress. That Gollum had subsequently been taken captive, gagged and tethered had been punishment enough for any fair hurts inflicted in the struggle. After the second time, the very nearly effective strangling on the edge of Eastemnet, Aragorn had contented himself with the measured response of entrapping the captive's hands so that such a thing could not occur again. Yet this time not only had Gollum once more done his utmost to destroy the Man; he had also actually managed to escape, however briefly. A moment's hesitation, or one swim-kick gone askew, or a single fickle eddy in Gladden's depths, and sixteen years' labour would have been lost: and with it any hope of gleaning what the creature knew about matters that might decide the fate of Arda itself. It was unacceptable, and while Aragorn might eventually be able to convince himself that his own suffering since emerging from the water was adequate punishment for the sin of carelessness, Gollum had to answer for the far greater crime of malice.

Yet although he understood the necessity Aragorn was reluctant to mete out the punishment warranted by his captive. He was weary beyond telling and the thought of striking the next blow in a battle of attrition that now seemed like a strange, unending nightmare filled him with hollow despair. And there was still some small part of his heart that whispered that the creature had suffered much: that whatever his spite and whatever his transgressions no living thing deserved to be used as the Black Númenórean with eyes like the Endless Ice had surely used Gollum. The wounds on his hands had long since healed – aided, no doubt, by the many days his fingers had been firmly wrapped as a deterrent against throttling – and the marks of torture were beginning to fade, but he would carry some of those scars until the end of his days, whenever that might be. In the firelight Aragorn could see one mark curling down the back of one hand to the emaciated wrist that was entirely too familiar, and the stinging in his thawing feet redoubled. Would a wretch like Gollum, having been so maltreated, even understand the distinction between the torments of Sauron and a just punishment?

The same questions had plagued him last time, Aragorn knew, and then he had erred on the side of lenience. A grievous error it had proved indeed, for here they were again and this time only luck and a lifetime of scraping survival out of any weather had saved him. A crafty gust of wind chose that moment to find its way into the hollow of the bank and a chill ran up his spine. He knew what he had to do, and still – still – he was loath to do it. He was weary of playing the part of the unyielding captor; weary of constant watchfulness without surcease or quarter for even a moment's weakness. He was weary of this road that had worn so hard already against his patience, his temperance and his pity. Yet here he was, called again to surrender his nature to his duty and to choose between walking beneath the threat of murder and struggling to quell the unwise stirrings of his conscience.

At least he could wait until sunrise. He fed the fire, stirring up the embers and closing his eyes against the welcome flare of heat. He was still far from warm, and comfort was an unattainable thing scarcely to be imagined, but he could not deny that he was no longer cold to the marrow. It had been a long while since last his tunic had dripped river-water onto the fire, and he reached to feel it carefully. It was as dry as he could reasonably hope, and he got up onto his knees to remove it from the ramshackle rack and stretch the blanket in its place. He resumed his crouching seat on the log and examined the garment.

He had ripped open several mended rents in his clumsy haste to remove it, and the stitching in the left armscye had given way so that the sleeve hung from a tenuous finger's length of stitching at the top of the shoulder. Here he picked one of the torn threads loose so that he could knot it securely against unravelling further. He would have dearly liked to put right the damage he had done, but the means to do so were somewhere at the bottom of the river. Instead he eased his arms into the garment and settled it around him. It was still warm from the fire and it smelled strongly of dry wood-smoke. Again he closed his eyes, imagining himself far away from this miserable glade and this murderous companion and the hated task that awaited him on the morrow.

He thought of the ruins of Amon Sul, and the caves and hills amid which his men might shelter on a snowy night. Stores of firewood were laid by to serve a wanderer at need, and at this time of the year there was often company to be had there to break up the loneliness of a long patrol. If three or more chanced to gather there would be short watches and restful sleep for all, bundled in cloaks and bedrolls and lying back to back for warmth. Rations would be pooled and shared out anew, that he who had a little might bolster the provisions of he who had nothing – never in the winter months could any man be said to have plenty, or even enough, but there was comfort in the most meagre meal when it was shared with a friend. There would be song and laughter about a well-hidden fire, and tales of hard labours made light with sardonic jokes and understatement that everyone understood. Though such simple respite could never last long, one went forth from it with greater resolve into the timeless toil in the defence of Eriador – the toil to which his Rangers were bending their blades tonight.

Aragorn had left his men in good hands, the best of hands with Halbarad to lead them and the Sons of Elrond to ride with them. He was not so vain as to believe that he was indispensable to his men and that they could not cope in his absence, but over the years as he had journeyed farther and farther afield and stayed away ever longer he had come to realize that his men were indispensable to him. His heart ached for their camaraderie in the secret places of the North; for a chance meeting on a lonely road; for a scrap of gossip about a friend caught in the market at Staddle or gleaned from a pedlar coming down to Sarn Ford; even for the knowledge that even if he walked alone there was another man somewhere within a three-day march, quietly and valiantly doing the same and thinking from time to time of his Chieftain as his Chieftain thought of him.

Instead he sat alone, many hundreds of leagues from the nearest of his folk, a chill at his back and an ache in his heart and only Gollum for company. The creature was retching again – natural enough after a stunning blow – and Aragorn kept his eyes studiously on the little drifts of ash that had formed in a ring around his fire. He stretched his right hand out towards the flame, feeling the tingling ignite anew in his nerves. His eyelids were heavy and he yearned for sleep, but the cold was deep behind him and there was no one to guard his rest. Too weary to call to mind a song to ease the emptiness of the night, he listened instead to the noises of the ice in the riverbed below, creaking and shifting and settling again where its thick hide had been broken by a hapless wanderer and his hateful burden. Blinking stubbornly against the urge to sink into slumber, Aragorn tried to resign himself to the long and bitter watch for a dawn he did not much care to see.

lar

By the time the sky began to lighten the heap of fuel had shrunk to a few broken twigs and scraps of bark, and the fire was a quiet bed of brooding embers. It would have been perfect for roasting a bit of venison or baking to softness a wild tuber or two, but of course there was nothing to eat. At least Aragorn's clothing was dry at last, though as the hours of night had dragged on his exhaustion had only deepened. There was an ache behind his eyes that would not soon dissipate, and he had little hope that the tasks of the day would do anything to ease it. He had put off until dawn what he had dreaded through the darkness, and he had to muster himself to it at last.

First, however, he had to contrive to put on his boots. His feet were thoroughly thawed and once more a healthy colour, but they were tender and they were swollen. Finger and thumb, an anxious calliper, pinched at his left ankle. Badly swollen, he amended, not quite able to remember his gratitude that they were not dead of frostbite. His eyes slid to his boots, lying on their sides with their tops to the fire. They too had dried well, but the leather would be stiff and shrunken after its soaking. One or the other he might have been confident of overcoming: bloated feet or tightened boots. Both together were going to make for a difficult and painful struggle.

He had not donned his hose as they dried, for he only would have soaked their soles through again on the melted ground of his hearth. So there was nothing to remove as he reached behind the log for a handful of snow. His fingers were suddenly alight with fiery protest, and again he was seized with a pointless longing for mittens. He packed a tight ball of snow and lifted his left leg so that his calf was propped against the opposite knee. Setting his teeth he took the fistful of snow and began to rub it vigorously over his foot and his ankle.

The pain was terrible and he had to fight with all the might of his will to keep from surrendering to his body's tormented pleas that he cease this wanton cruelty. Apparently of its own accord his foot jerked and tried to pull away, but his hand did not relent. After perhaps five minutes of intense misery he began to notice some small abatement of the inflammation. Finally he stopped, casting the snow aside and flexing his chilled hand. He dried his foot quickly but thoroughly with a corner of his blanket and pulled on his hose: wool over linen. He hooked his boot with his third finger and set about trying to ram his heel down into place.

The leather creaked and squealed, and there was an ominous groan from the thick linen sinews that held the sole to the vamp. The pressure upon his foot was almost unbearable, and his whole lower leg was afire with piercing pain from the cold-nipped flesh. He grabbed the cuff of his boot with both hands and leaned back over the log, straightening his long leg slowly but with all of his strength. The burden on his ankle grew so that he was not at all certain he would be able to bear it, and then with a sudden soft sucking noise the leather relented and his toes went sliding into place as his heel crashed down against the sole of the boot.

He let his foot fall to earth by the embers of the fire and his hands retreated into his lap, aching fingers curled in over smarting palms. He sat for a minute or two with his head bowed, breathing unevenly and trying to muster his courage before facing the ordeal of the other boot. Unable to endure it quite yet he tugged his hose up from where they puddled at his knee and tied the points with care to the band of his braies. Then he spent a little time looking at his bare right leg, foot resting quietly in the drifting ashes, seemingly unaware of what awaited it.

Gollum was watching him, pale eyes glittering in the grey half-light. His lips were twisted almost gleefully. The sour thought that at least someone was enjoying all of this rose to Aragorn's mind, and he was both dismayed and disgusted to find that it was almost satisfying to know that the creature would not be so smug for long.

The right boot proved the greater struggle, which was hardly surprising. In the end, however, the leather yielded before his tendons did and he was able to finish dressing. He spared the time to experiment with folding the Lórien-blanket about his shoulders to approximate a hood, or at least a collar. In the end he managed an awkward bunching that was something like a cowl: it would shelter his ears and the back of his head, at least. For the rest his tangled and overgrown hair would have to serve. When at last he was bundled as warmly as he had any hope of being, with his cloak gone and his tunic in rags and not a garment among them suited for winter even when new, he dragged himself onto sore, stinging feet and reassured himself that Gollum was still well-secured before hobbling away from the dying fire.

His mind was on the grim business of discipline, but he kept his eyes open for any sign of game. There was a chance of squirrel at least, though not much of one. Away from the fading warmth the air was perniciously cold; far colder than he had felt yet in his northward march. Aragorn's breath was thick and curdled before his eyes, and almost at once a fine frost began to form between the hairs over his lip. Absentmindedly he scrubbed at them with the back of his hand, and a dark clot of blood dislodged from his right nostril. It had been clogged all night, and now he knew why; when Gollum had struck him with his arm during the first frantic seconds after his fall he had done so with sufficient force to make his nose bleed. It started up again now, trickling maddeningly. Aragorn left the nostril alone and felt the cartilage of the bridge with care. Not broken; scarcely bruised. A minor discomfort and nothing more.

Still, his annoyance dulled the disappointment of finding what he sought. A drooping willow leaned out from the copse of trees towards the river. Aragorn shuffled over to it and began to explore its branches with care. When he lighted upon one that seemed a likely candidate he dug his knife out of its sheath and cut himself a slender stripling wand. He tugged off the smaller twigs and the few shrivelled leaves that winter's wind had not stripped away. Then he swept it experimentally through the frosted air. It whistled merrily; a hateful sound, but precisely what he needed.

In part because he was so near the river and it seemed sensible to take care of all his chores at once, but chiefly because he had no wish to hurry back to his prisoner, Aragorn moved towards the bank. He ducked under the willow-boughs, using one friendly bough as an anchor as he slid one foot towards the edge of the ice. He stopped short of it and scuffed with his toe in the snow. Soon enough he could see what he wanted, and he bent to retrieve it: a flat, smooth stone of a size to fit perfectly in his palm. He retreated to more level ground and leaned his shoulder against the obliging tree. Tucking the willow-wand into his belt he took up his knife again. He spat upon the stone and with swift practiced strokes set about whetting his blade.

When the edge of Elven steel glittered keenly again he sheathed it with care. He flicked his wrist as if to toss the stone away, but his fingers would not loose their hold. Reconsidering, Aragorn tucked it into his pouch. He had little enough by way of baggage now, and it would save him the trouble of finding another rock next time.

He had now delayed as long as he reasonably could, and in any case he was uneasy with the notion of staying too long apart from his prisoner. He trudged reluctantly back to the place he had passed the miserable night. Gollum was still lying on his side, licking now at his fingers and shivering as the embers grew cold. He did not look up at the Ranger's approach, even when Aragorn went to the hawthorn and began to untie the knot that secured his tether to the tree.

He tied the rope tightly about his own wrist, allowing only enough ease to keep the blood flowing through the veins of his arm. He had granted himself the paltry comfort of a loose loop before, and it had proved well-nigh disastrous. Grimly he reflected that he was as much a prisoner of Gollum's obduracy as the creature himself, and a great weariness of spirit settled like a lodestone on his shoulders. If at any time in these dreary weeks his captive had given the smallest sign of cooperation, if he had met him only partway in his attempts at a truce, if he had simply refrained from open hostility, how much more bearable the journey would have been! Had Gollum ever appeared less than belligerent, resentful, or outright murderous Aragorn would have been happy to be kind. Yet it could not be so, and their war of wills had come to this. He doubled the knot, dragging it to with his teeth. Then he squared his sagging shoulders and took the supple crop from his belt.

'On your feet,' he said. His voice was hoarse with the cold but his tone was unyielding. He was standing with his back to his prisoner, the cord between them coiled around the side of his leg. He stared fixedly at the rise of the riverbank and waited three measured seconds before repeating himself. 'On your feet at once.'

Gollum made a derisive noise deep in his throat. There was a noise of shuffling limbs in the snow, but he did not rise.

Aragorn felt his jaw tightening. His patience had been worn to its limit time and again on this wretched road, and the trials of the last day had left him wrung out on the verge of lunacy. Yet if he was going to do this as it ought to be done, he had to retain the smooth control of a consummate commander and the restraint of an emissary in a difficult arbitration. Brief pain and lasting fear were his goal. Both called for faultless control.

'On your feet, or I shall compel you,' he ordered sternly. Then he waited.

The rope did not stir. There was no sound of mustering feet. Gollum did not rise.

Swift and sure the Ranger turned, the blanket he wore sweeping with him. In a single fluid motion he swooped, his left hand flying out to close upon Gollum's right shoulder. In the creature's moment of slack-jawed alarm he was able to drag the wasted body up without resistance. Bare toes scrabbled against the border of snowmelt and wide, startled eyes fixed upward on the grim face above. A noise something like a keening whine started up in the captive's throat and then mounted to a howl as he saw the willow-switch. He quailed and tried to fling himself down into the snow again, but Aragorn held him fast.

'I have warned you,' he said, enunciating so that each syllable bit into the cold air and struck home with the full force of his will. 'Time and again I have warned you: such acts as you committed on the river yesterday cannot be tolerated. You are my prisoner, and my prisoner you shall remain. If you attempt to harm me I shall best you. If you run then I shall catch you. If you hide then I shall find you. Obedience I would have rewarded. Defiance I will punish.'

He released his grip on Gollum's arm and before the wretch could react he closed his left hand over both bony wrists. His fingers strained, but he held fast. His right hand tightened its hold on the willow staff, and the cold light of Westernesse shone out from shadowed eyes. He looked down where he had intended to strike, at the bare, ropey palms exposed by his stern grip. And he hesitated.

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It was a practice of discipline that he had learned in Gondor: a punishment for common soldiers guilty of minor infractions, meant to inflict memorable hurt without any true harm – a penalty that exacted greater humiliation than damage, and took its chief strength from that. A dozen quick, stinging blows with a supple rod upon the palms of the hands; at their very worst lightly bruising but always sharply painful in the moment. Most often a young man whose lieutenant chastised him thus would never again err as he had, and even those whose repeat offenses warranted a higher number of blows would be able to hold a sword the next day, though not always without some discomfort. It was the shame of being whipped before his peers that proved the greatest deterrent to a soldier. Even so, Thorongil had preferred less corporal means of disciplining green recruits, and he had meted out the blows only when all else seemed to fail.

Thus Aragorn had thought it would serve him here, where all else had failed indeed - reason, restraints, deprivation and threats. Though Gollum had no fellows to make him feel ashamed, the fear of the rod might drive him as for a time weeks ago the fear of Aragorn's boot had done. Certainly he expected that the craven creature would quail at the first bright pain, and might think of it when next his mind turned to hateful plots. Yet towering now over his captive, with the darkly scarred hands laid bare before him, he found he could not do it.

Swift and temporary the pain might be, but the toll upon Gollum's spirit when he was struck in the place that had been the focus of the tortures of the servant of Sauron would be dreadful and lasting. Still he writhed his hands through the night, and licked at cuts and blistering burns long since healed and faded. Still he whimpered and fawned over his hands. Still the terror of Mordor hung heavy on his heart. Whatever the need for discipline, whatever the desperate stakes of the struggle with his prisoner, Aragorn could not allow any act of his own to be so bound with the malevolent brutality of the Enemy. He could not compound such suffering; he would not stoop to such base cruelty. Had he but paused to think of it before, he never would have considered this.

Gollum was still watching him, startled terror in his eyes. The span of two scant breaths had passed and the spell of authority still held: it was not too late. With a flick of his wrist Aragorn sent his prisoner's body tilting away from him. He released his grip on Gollum's wrists, and closed his fingers instead around the wasted circle of his left arm, just below his shoulder. With this leverage he turned the shrivelled body, though Gollum's neck swivelled so that his eyes could still track the Ranger. Then, firmly and with perfect economy of motion Aragorn brought the willow-wand down across his prisoner's back, striking six stinging blows in swift succession where the shoulder blades met bare ribs.

He was careful to keep high enough that he avoided the tender flesh over the kidneys, where even such a modest beating would linger long in agony. From the sound of the slender stick against the lean flesh he knew that his charge was feeling it well; feeling and remembering, he hoped. Yet despite the unearthly yowls now tearing from Gollum's lungs he knew that he had not caused undue torment or any lasting harm.

He paused a moment, his tongue sliding along cold lips, and then dealt out three more passes of the switch; these somewhat lighter than the ones that had gone before. Then he let go of Gollum's arm and allowed the creature to collapse into a huddled heap, hands scrambling over the back of his skull as he wept and wailed and gnashed his few deadly teeth. Aragorn slipped the green willow stave into his belt again, feeling it bend with the contour of his body, and he stood immobile as he watched his captive.

'Beats us and kills us, precious!' he keened, twisting his spine and rearing back as he beat with one fist upon his breast. 'Whipses and kniveses and hateful handses, gollum! Hurts us! Kills us!'

There was nothing in the brief beating that warranted such histrionics. The thin discoloured back was not even showing a single stripe of red; certainly the skin had not been broken. Yet it seemed that the passing pain had achieved the desired result: Gollum was frightened and horrified and indignant, and it was certain from his gibbering that he now believed his captor capable of doing him harm. It only remained to drive home that he had brought this on himself.

'Three strokes for striking the ice,' said Aragorn, raising his voice to be heard over the shrieks and sobs and thrashing. 'Three strokes for attempting to fly. And three because you did not rise when I ordered you to do so. You would be wise to obey me in future.'

Gollum gave no sign that he had heard. Certainly he did not pause in his wild tantrum. He was hollering now about hateful manses and the various unpleasant ways they could be choked, blinded and disemboweled. Yet he did not bestir himself to retreat to the limit of the halter, nor even to roll out of range of the tall black boots. The consuming remorse that he felt at the thought of flogging his prisoner was beginning to retreat a little into the depths of Aragorn's heart. He was beginning to ache with nostalgia for the loneliest roads he had walked in far countries where even the stars were strange. At least in the vast empty desserts he had enjoyed a little quiet.

'Enough,' he said at last. When Gollum did not seem to hear, he cleared his throat with a shallow cough and repeated; 'Enough!'

With a shudder and a hiccough the creature fell silent, cringing in the snow and twisting his shoulder to ogle up at the Man.

'Be silent,' Aragorn commanded. 'Your wickedness has cost us a full night's march, and you will make up for it today without complaint, let Yellow Face burn you if she will. If you are cold, remember that you might have frozen us both; and if you are hungry, recall that what food we had is now at the bottom of the river.'

He crouched and picked up his one remaining bottle, packing it tightly with snow before tucking it between his cote and his body to melt. He made quick work of scattering what was left of the fire, but did not trouble to do much to obscure the signs of their presence. If there were any to see it the gaping hole in the ice and the deep, crawling trail from the bank would be proof enough of their passage. Then with a last cold look at his captive he set out into the merciless wind.

Chapter XLI: No Game

The sky was clear; a pale frozen dome upon the pale frozen plate of the world. High and remote and entirely without warmth, the Sun sailed in adamantine splendour. Gollum writhed and whimpered and clawed at his scalp, but he kept moving just ahead of the Ranger's boots, now and then casting a doleful look back at the willow-wand that clung to his captor's flank. Aragorn was grimly relieved at this reluctant obedience, however it galled him to know that the creature walked now in terror of him. He did not think himself fit to struggle against a belligerent captive today. The exhaustion born of his battle with the river and the long tormented night spent clinging to half-frozen life had taken a sorry toll on his body. He moved slowly, every step bringing with it daggers of pain from his thawed and then constricted feet, and he was shivering already in the blasting wind that blew determinedly from the very direction he must travel. He tacked into it as best he could, stumbling now northwesterly awhile, now northeasterly, but though that kept the worst of it from stealing beneath the blanket he clutched to his body and digging hateful fingers into every tear of his threadbare garments it did nothing to ease the sting in his eyes nor the ache in his chest as he walked.

His throbbing head continued to trouble him, and his right nostril persisted in trickling dark blood that froze in the bitter air and tugged at his lip. When this small irritation grew too much to bear he was obliged to dig his right hand out of its shelter beneath his left arm in order to brush away the carmine crust. His fingers blazed indignantly in the chill and the wind found its way through the gap in his improvised cloak, and his efforts were for naught anyhow because no sooner was his arm tucked away and his palm merely cold again than the slow, creeping rivulet would start up afresh.

Worst was the snarling of his empty stomach. His two proper meals in Lothlórien had done little to resolve the deficits of long privation, and each day since he had eaten only sparingly of the stores the Elves had given him, but still it seemed that he had managed to remind his body what it felt like to be fed. On his descent to Gladden he had scarcely taken any food, troubled as he had been in his heart, and in the last fifty hours all that had passed his lips was cold melt-water and the few hazelnuts that had survived the crossing in his pouch. Now his innards were cramping and his jaw burned and beneath his headache fluttered a dangerous giddiness. As he walked he kept both eyes sharply on the lookout for game, but he saw nothing. This was hardly surprising: he was out of the wooded country of the riverbed now, and the day was terribly cold. Had he been a hare or a squirrel or a dormouse with a cosy den to shelter him, he would not have ventured out into this wind, hungry or no.

Gollum was sobbing wretchedly to himself, scrubbing at his eyes and licking his thumbs in turn. His bowed back showed no sign of the punishment he had suffered that morning, but clearly the dread of it was still on his heart. For when Aragorn halted he flung his wasted body into a snowbank and huddled there, trembling. Wearily the Ranger took a heavy step to the right so that his shadow, brief but very dark in the glacial noontide light, fell across the creature. Knowing that he could not admit to halting because of his prisoner's behaviour, when he had so sternly stated that he must walk on without complaint, he loosened his desperate grip on his blanket and fumbled with the folds of his cote. He drew out his bottle and drank, taking small sips of frigid water that he warmed on his tongue before swallowing in the hope that he would not worsen his headache.

The bare, glittering landscape stretched out around him, unyielding and sharp despite the rolling contours of the foothills. He was well away from Anduin's bed now; that much was certain. Away to the west, like ghostly blue parapets huddled low against the horizon, he could see the line of the Hithaeglir. They looked so small, so deceptively delicate at this great distance. It was easy to believe that they were nothing more than an ephemeral border and not the towering ramparts of the earth thrust up between him and all that he loved. The urge to run towards them, to cut the cord that fettered his wrist and to cast aside his hateful burden and to fly westward as his long foremother had done on white wings of the Valar, gripped Aragorn's heart. For a single, awful moment he could imagine the sense of freedom; the lifting of a load laid too long ago on the shoulders of one who had not quite comprehended its meaning; the strange liberty to go where he wished and to do as he pleased with no thought for doom or duty or old promises.

But of course it was impossible. All larger concerns aside, Aragorn knew that he would be unable to live with himself if he walked away. The secret yearnings of his heart might lean as they pleased, so long as his will and his feet remained steadfast. He could not abandon his prisoner, any more than he could cast aside the responsibilities to which he had been born. There was no other path for him. Turning his gaze from the temptation of the mountains, he looked north along the way that he had chosen. He was obliged to squint into the driving wind. He raised his chilled hand to shelter his eyes from the Sun's unwarm glare, and his head nodded once, decisively. On the horizon, in the cleft between two snowy hills, was a mass of pale grey speckled with shadows: beech trees.

'Come,' he said, nudging the sole of Gollum's foot with the side of his boot. 'Perhaps we can take a little shelter until the wind dies down.'

Gollum twisted to look at him, pale eyes questing as ever for signs of weakness. Aragorn merely cast him a blandly disdainful eye and hid the weight of his weariness as he set out again on cold and aching feet.

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Beneath the trees the snow was not so heavy on the ground, and while Gollum skulked in the shadow of a tangled dogwood Aragorn crouched down to dig in the undergrowth. He had hoped perhaps to find some beechnuts, or even a cluster of roots that he might try to dig out of the frozen earth, but an hour's miserable foraging turned up nothing but rotting leaves and the bones of an aged lark that had evidently died around the time of the first frost. The little glade had long since been picked clean, and whatever had done the picking was gone as well. Discouraged but not surprised, he settled himself on one of the patches of ground he had cleared and set about trying to warm his hands.

It was useless, of course. His fingers were stiff and aching with the cold, and blowing upon them accomplished little. Even tucked close against his body they warmed only slightly – his right a little more than his left, because the torn sleeve of his cote allowed closer contact with his ribs. Finger and thumb of his right hand were rasped raw from the striking of his steel in his desperate attempt to make a fire the previous day, and the skin on his knuckles was red and swollen: the beginning of chilblains.

Aragorn expected that his feet were faring little better. They were throbbing in a steady unhappy rhythm against the leather of his boots, and his toes itched and stung quite maddeningly. He wanted to inspect them, if only to reassure himself that frostbite had not set in after all, but the thought of trying to pry them from his boots (much less to cram them back in again) was too much for his overtaxed courage. Instead he drew his knees up near to his chest and tucked his heels against the base of his thighs and tried not to fret about things beyond his control. He was shivering again, and he drew the edges of the blanket around his legs and bowed his head so that his face was sheltered in the resulting tent.

He did not even realize that he had fallen asleep until he awakened with a start at the touch of spindly fingers near his ankle. His head jerked up, exposing his cheeks and his brow abruptly to the stinging cold. At the motion Gollum gave a cry, flinging himself back to the limit of his rope and cowering there, gibbering senselessly. Aragorn watched him for a moment, torn between exasperation at his prisoner's behaviour and irritation at his own lapse in watchfulness. Dusk was falling over the land, and the brilliant orange of sunset hung low to the west. He had slept a little better than four hours, but as he was still upright he could at least assure himself that he had not slept deep or careless.

Apart from the fading light the landscape about him was largely unchanged. The ground amid the roots of a nearby tree had been further disturbed by clever, seeking hands, but whether Gollum had found anything worth eating could not be said. The snow was still unbroken at the edges of the copse, and the air still burned in his lungs. He stretched out his legs gingerly and Gollum tried to slink farther away, hindered by the rope which tugged at the skin of Aragorn's wrist. There was a glossy dark blotch on the cuff of his right sleeve: evidently his nose was still bleeding at whiles. His knees were stiff and his neck ached, and his innards were still knotted in a writhing nest of hunger, but the pain in his head had eased and the bands of exhaustion were gone from his ribs. Imprudent and unheralded his slumber had been, but it had also been sorely needed.

It troubled him that he had not taken steps to secure his captive before slipping away from the waking world, even shallowly, and it was still more unsettling that Gollum had dared to approach him, evidently with some mischief in mind. Aragorn had to stop his hand from creeping up to his throat. He slipped it in amid his garments instead and found his bottle. Here too there was evidence of how much he had needed a little respite; the liquid within was no longer a hair's breadth from freezing, though it was still cold enough to put an ache in his teeth. His body was warming itself properly again.

He did not offer the water to Gollum. For many days now he had been content with the snow. Walking with a young Ranger, Aragorn would have warned his companion how unwise this was. Eating snow was a sure way to squander one's strength and chill one's body, and it did not slake thirst as well as might be expected. Far better to melt it first, tiresome as this was. Yet if Gollum was content to wear upon his reserves rather than put his mouth to Elven leather, so much the better. Aragorn had little enough hardihood left in his tired bones; anything that weakened his uncooperative charge was to his advantage.

Gollum had fallen silent again, and was watching him with those unfathomable eyes. If he ever again had the opportunity for deep, unguarded slumber, Aragorn thought, those eyes would haunt his darkest dreams for many years to come. The glittering malice within them, the sly evasive scheming that always seemed to grind on behind it, and the eerie unyielding stare were unsettling enough, but there was something else there too. Something deeper, unreadable; like a shadow behind the creature himself. Or not a shadow, precisely – a memory? Some strange wight of the mind, buried far beneath the hatred and the avarice and the canny terror; and that, most of all, Aragorn could not read aright and did not understand. He was not at all certain that he wished to.

His worries about what his captive might have been after all but dissolved as he heaved himself onto his sore feet. The willow-wand slipped from his belt and fell to the ground: it had been tugged almost loose of his belt. Very nearly surprised into a laugh, Aragorn bent and picked it up, then flicked his wrist to strike it against the top of his boot. At the sound Gollum cringed, hiding those dreadful eyes behind scrabbling hands. The fear, it seemed, was holding.

'I would only cut another if you took or broke this one,' Aragorn said dispassionately. 'On your feet now: even if we were not so pressed I would be reluctant to stay still tonight.' He lifted his head to scent the raw air. 'It will grow colder yet, long ere the dawn,' he predicted grimly.

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Grow colder it did, until the breath from his trembling lips scarcely clouded about his mouth before settling in a frost over his new beard and the fold of the blanket that sheltered his neck. He had done what he could to rake his hair thickly over his ears and across his brow, but still the flesh of his face stung beneath a thin crust of skin all but numb in the pitiless night. The effort of cutting through the snow must surely be warming him a little, but if that were so Aragorn could not feel it. At least the wind had slackened a little and his forward motion was easier, but the air burned bitterly in his lungs. He could not draw deep enough a breath, and his side ached fiercely for want of it. Beside him Gollum shivered and clutched at his bare arms. His ordinarily pale lips showed dark in the moonlight, purpled with the chill.

Despite their misery they toiled on under the naked Firmament; there was not a cloud in all the vast sky. That was something, surely, for which he might be grateful: though terrible at least the cold was a dry one. Still, he would have gladly exchanged this one small grace for a fur cap and a heavy woolen muffler and a surcote lined in thick spring fleece. And mittens, he thought sourly, digging his throbbing hands deeper into his arm-pits. Half a dozen pairs, in which to bury his fingers until they were entirely useless and imperiled his very life by their immobility but were also, finally, warm again.

Wistful thoughts of winter garments and hot, wholesome food visited him time and again through the long night's march. By dawn his shrivelled stomach had stilled the worst of its disconsolate rumblings, but the other signs of a prolonged fast were stronger. The ache behind his eyes had returned, worse than before and at times almost dizzying. There was a tremor in his hands that was not entirely due to the chill. And the foul taste of famine was in his mouth, dulled only a little by the bite of the air. It was a vile flavour unlike any other, indescribable to one who had never before experienced it and instantly recognizable to one who had. It was sweet and rancid and utterly noxious. No quantity of water would rinse it away, and though the urge to spit was terrible Aragorn resisted. This too, he remembered, would avail him nothing, and it would mean exposing his mouth to the wind, which was once more rising.

Well into midmorning he walked on, watching for a likely stand of trees. The Sun had risen high enough to set Gollum whimpering before he found one. In this empty country the woods sprung up in isolated knots, most often at the southern foot of a hill. One might walk several miles between them, over bald hills covered in scrub grass – or snow. It was a tremendous relief to retreat into the scant shelter of the trees, where at least the wind could not plague him and he might try to think clearly despite his sore and reeling head. Certainly he was glad when his companion fell silent and settled down in an impossibly contorted position, the better to lick at his toes.

Trying to scrounge edible flora out of such frozen lands was an enterprise driven almost entirely by luck, and Aragorn's appeared to be running rather thin of late. There was lichen on the trees here, but he had no vessel in which to stew it and he was neither so foolhardy nor quite so desperate that he would try to eat it raw. Therefore his best hope was hunting, but he had little strength and less time. Alone and unhindered he might have tried climbing an oak or two: these were sturdy trees here, and likely homes for squirrels and other small game. But he could not bring Gollum with him and he feared to leave him below. His one chance, then, was catching some small animal driven at last to leave its shelter in search of food. The merciless cold had been unrelenting for three days now, and eventually even the most well-fed creatures would have to emerge.

He had missed his chance of stalking at dawn, but in any case he had no tool with which to bring down his prey. Once he had found a place where the snow was sparse he cleared a place and sat, taking his knife from its sheath. He studied the glinting blade for a minute, and through the haze of his headache he found himself reflecting that even if the rest of his fortune had forsaken him at least he had not lost this most fundamental tool. With the knife and his firesteel he had at least a real chance of survival, reduced though he was to the barest of necessities.

Gollum had caught sight of the knife, and he was squirming uncomfortably at the end of his tether. Leaden irritation weighed upon the back of Aragorn's neck. 'It is not meant for you,' he growled, laying the blade on a corner of his blanket. With stiffened fingers he fumbled through the tattered skirts of his cote and tugged aside the hem of the Lórien-shirt so that he could see the points that held his hose. He untied one from each leg, taking the innermost pair where the sag of the garments would expose less of his flesh to the violations of the wind. With the strong braided strings in his fist, he picked up the knife again and hesitated.

Again it seemed as if this journey was nothing but an ever-spinning wheel of repetitive labours, poor choices arising over and over again with no better option than they had presented the first time. When first he had cut cloth from the hem of his cloak in the passes of Ephel Dúath, needing patches for his knees, he had thought it a clever solution: a small loss of material from a generously cut garment. Yet again and again he had been driven to pare away at it until by the time he had reached Lord Celeborn's borders the thing had been all but useless for its intended purpose. He had been obliged to replace it with what was available to him, and here he was again, about to make the first small cut. He was not fool enough this time to think that it would be the last.

Smoothing out the edge of the blanket that hung from his shoulders, Aragorn cut off one corner in a neat, precise triangle. Giving himself three finger-widths of cloth, he lopped off the tip as well. Then with the point of his knife he drove a hole through each hem, where the cloth was strongest. Through these he threaded his laces, tying them loosely but securely. The free end of one he knotted; the other he shaped into a loop. He slipped the fourth finger of his right hand into it, and tested the length of his cords. Satisfied, he put away his knife and slipped the little corner-scrap of wool into his pouch. He had made a simple sling.

The quest for stones provided a welcome distraction, both from the insidious cold and from the loathsome taste that filled his mouth and choked his throat. Gollum seemed to think rooting through the mulch a worthwhile endeavour, because he followed behind Aragorn to sift through what the Ranger had overturned. There was a greedy gleam in his eye to begin with, but as morning waxed and afternoon began to wane he grew steadily more frustrated. Whatever he had hoped to find it seemed it was not forthcoming.

Aragorn's own search bore more fruit, though he found not a morsel of food. He gathered a dozen small stones, some smooth and nearly round and others rough and sharp. Heaping them into a fold of his cloak he got to his feet and brushed snow and mulch from the knees of his hose. Gollum was watching him warily now, cautious at the end of his lead.

'You had best get behind me,' Aragorn said, settling the sling in his dominant hand; 'and stay near to the ground. Its edges are not true and in any case I am out of practice.'

His prisoner obeyed with all haste, but still the unsettling pressure of his stare bit into Aragorn's back. He tried to put his unease from his mind as he set about familiarizing himself with his new weapon. As he had expected his first two shots went widely awry, but the next five struck their mark at the joining of two branches some thirty ells away. Satisfied that both his force and his accuracy were adequate, Aragorn gathered his spent missiles and then led Gollum to the far side of the copse, where the ground was undisturbed by their searching. There he sat down to wait for dusk.

It was unpleasant work, sitting still and silent, shivering even away from the wind, and feeling the hours creep by. His right nostril had resumed its sluggish bleeding, and now and again he had to bestir a hand to wipe the dark crust away. He passed the time with this, and with doing what little he could to keep his chilled fingers limber. Yet worse by far was the wait when the Sun began to set and the time came for small animals to be abroad searching for their supper. Aragorn supposed that such creatures might have better luck than he in finding sustenance, but he did not think it would be by much. Still he fervently hoped that at least one would have the temerity to try.

Yet the shadows lengthened and spread out into the blue of twilight that swallowed the snow, and the night-winds cried and the trees stood their silent vigil. Not a sign did the Ranger find of any living thing: neither sound nor movement nor scent. As night grew deep and the darkness too thick for shooting he was obliged to abandon his poor hope of a meal. He tucked the sling and the stones away in his pouch, and he turned to where twin orbs glimmered enormous in the gloom.

'It seems that you and I are the only creatures mad enough to be abroad tonight,' he said grimly. 'And who between the two is the maddest remains to be seen. Yet I cannot waste the hours until dawn, simply to try again. We will have to hope that we stumble across some likely place tomorrow.'

In the meantime, he thought unhappily, a swimming head and an odious mouth would have to continue in his bevy of unpleasant travel-fellows. He thought that even fasting he could keep himself on his feet for another day at least; quite likely two. The greater worry was whether his unfed body would be able to continue to warm itself in this deep, clawing chill. With all the care he could, he gathered the blanket about his ribs and burrowed his stinging hands away. Then drawing one last deep breath before stepping out to defy the wind, he dragged himself onto the open hillside again.

Chapter XLII: A Shift in the Wind

Aragorn's progress that night was not what it should have been. He still could not strike a straight course, for that meant toiling right into the cruel wind, and his pace flagged constantly. At one point deep in the middle-night he tried to force his legs into something like their normal stride. He sustained it for only a few minutes before his head began to swim and the world tilted dangerously about him. Terrible nausea broke over his body in a mighty wave that left him breathless and disoriented and covered despite the persistent cold in a thin sheen of perspiration. Fighting the impending swoon he somehow managed to sink almost gently to his knees. He knelt there long in the snow, lost in a fog of misery. When at last the fit passed and he was able to focus his eyes again he found Gollum squatting just beyond the reach of his arm, watching him uneasily.

With hands that trembled like a palsied old man Aragorn dug out his bottle and took several small sips of the frigid water within. He closed his eyes, letting the sting of the cold ease a little beneath the shelter of his lids. Then although it was almost more than he could bear he fixed his gaze on his spiteful companion and fought to keep his voice steady as he said; 'Perhaps a slower pace will serve us better after all.'

Gollum, of course, offered no comment on the matter. His narrowed eyes were filled with a storm of swirling thoughts that Aragorn had no wish to decipher. That he had been caught in such weakness filled him with dread, and as he struggled onto his chilled feet again he knew that somehow he had to find sustenance before deprivation undid him entirely.

It was not so long a fast, really; certainly he had been without food for greater single stretches in other journeys. But for many wearisome weeks he had walked the very border of starvation, scraping together only enough to keep him on his feet and his captive in the land of the living. His stores of strength were all but depleted, and the bitter weather only served to weaken him further. Many times the energy he spent in walking was wasted in his constant shivering battle to keep from freezing. Even properly victualed he would have struggled in this cold. He could not endure much longer without relief.

That Gollum was apparently unaffected by their privation troubled his heart. What fire of determined hatred drove him on so unflaggingly Aragorn could not guess. Yet though he whimpered and grumbled and rooted hopelessly against the frozen earth he walked on, doubtless waiting with grim patience for the day when his captor's strength failed him and the opportunity to strike the next blow presented itself.

Dawn came soft and grey through clouds brewing low over distant Anduin, but the sky above the Ranger and his prisoner remained mercilessly clear; the cold unrelenting. Stumbling on and watching for any sign of wooded land amid the barren hills, Aragorn prayed wretchedly for the wind to shift. Had this driving torrent come from the river through the night, the clouds might have reached them by now. The horrifying realization that he was wishing for an east wind almost failed to penetrate the pall of famine and exhaustion. He hitched the blanket higher around his shoulders, bowed his head, pinched his eyes to slits, and trudged onward.

'Bites and stings us, precious,' Gollum muttered disconsolately, pushing up onto his legs so that he could lift his palms out of the snow. His fingers were an unhealthy bluish hue of grey, and he snivelled as he licked at their tips. 'Freezes and shivers us; bites at our bloodses, gollum.'

'You might have had a hood and mantle if you had not thrown them away!' Aragorn snapped, his fortitude breaking against the urge to berate his hateful charge. 'Next you shall complain that you are hungry, though it was you who caused us to lose what little we had.'

For a time there was silence, and then the grousing started up afresh; quieter this time, but still deliberately audible. 'Hungry, yes, bad, nassty manses. Takes us and beats us, drags us away. Doesn't stop, no, in warm countries with nice rivers. Nice rivers and fishes, gollum. Takes us North, he does, foolish manses. North and North in bitter snowses: nothing to eat, gollum. Nowhere to sleep. Snowses and ice and wicked winds, precious. Blames us, he does, that his big feet broke the ice, gollum. Whips us and hurts us, thrashings and lashings and empty stomachses. Stupid great manses, lost in the snow. Starves us, he does, precious. And why?'

'Because he cannot even feed himself,' Aragorn thought bleakly, but he did not say it. In the end, was that any excuse at all? He had indeed dragged Gollum away – if not from a land of plenty, at least from somewhere that the wind did not steal the breath from his chest and the strength from his limbs. He had taken charge of the creature, and brought him northward against his will. And as obdurate and vicious and indeed murderous as he had proved, he was still Aragorn's prisoner and with that came the responsibility to provide him with the necessities of life. He might punish sedition; he might punish escape. But if he did not contrive to feed them both, and soon, they would not long survive.

Yet on and on he walked, and it seemed as if the earth itself was thwarting him. For he came across no sign of woodlands and when at last he was driven by weariness and the mounting Sun to halt, the only shelter he could find was a tangle of stunted bramble-bushes clinging to the hillside out of little more than habit.

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His nose was bleeding again, trickling tiredly onto his lip and plucking vengefully at his sanity, but Aragorn did not bestir himself to wipe the trail away. In a vain attempt to take the ache out of the joints of his hands he had loosened the lacing of his cote and tugged his arms out of the sleeves. He sat now with them hugged to his ribs with only the fine linen shirt between his palms and the poor warmth of his chest. Gollum, wondrously enough, had actually fallen asleep with his bony spine to the root of one of the bushes, and he appeared lost in some wistful night-wandering. Dreaming of fishes and nice rivers in warm lands, no doubt. Aragorn could certainly not fault him for that, when his own mind kept slipping quite against his will into thoughts of heavy-laden tables and roaring fires in his foster-father's house far away.

The loathsome taste in his mouth persisted, coating his tongue and clinging to his gums like a miasma of some unimaginable poison. Upon reaching this debatable haven he had broken off a twig from among the brambles, shredding one tip so that he could scrub at his teeth. This availed him nothing: though the enamel was now smooth and clean the foul flavour was as strong as ever. It seemed such a senseless thing to fret about, given the far more desperate troubles he was facing. Yet somehow he could not help feeling that it was in a way the greatest injustice. If he was destined to starve in these wide white wastes, or to fall prey to his weakened body and freeze in a snowbank, why must he also die with the stink of a decaying goblin on his tongue?

Unhappily he gave in to the urge that had been plaguing him for days, and spat into the snow. His spittle was heavy and flocculent despite the care he had been taking about his intake of water. It was another sign of progressing starvation. Suddenly he despised himself for sitting here, huddled beneath a hedge like some small and frightened animal, as his remaining hours of vigour were squandered. He ought to be out in the open, braving the wind if he had to but pressing onward in search of forage or game. He knew that his chances of the former were so slight as to be almost incalculable, and his chances of the latter would not improve unless the cold eased a little, but at least he ought to try! He ought to fight; to make some small effort to extricate himself from these miserable straits. He had travelled too many roads through fortune and misfortune to believe the Bree-land adage that a man made his own luck, but he did know that the Valar smiled on those who at the very least attempted to help themselves.

Aragorn disentangled his arms from their fierce grip on his ribs and eased them back into the worn woolen sleeves. The fragments of the left shoulder seam protested but did not yield, and he fumbled awkwardly to tighten his lace. He took a long draught of water before tucking the bottle back against his side. His belt was sagging low over the bones of his hips and he tightened it to the second of its new-made notches. Then he got his knees under him and tried for a moment to appreciate that the absence of a pack was not without its small consolation: at least he did not need to heft the weight of it onto his shoulders now.

Closing his left fist over the rope, he twitched it. 'Awake!' he commanded, managing to infuse some memory of strength into his chill-hoarsened voice. Gollum snorted and stiffened, but slept on. Aragorn tugged again on the rope. 'Awake: we will not linger longer.'

This time Gollum's eyes fluttered and the lines of his wizened face deepened into a scowl. Yet he remained unmoving.

The willow-wand had fallen to earth during the fussing with the belt, and Aragorn picked it up. With a swift swing of his arm he brought it down against the bramble-stalk nearest Gollum's head. Instantly the creature had his long feet beneath him, cringing and gibbering and clutching at his skull.

'We are moving on,' said Aragorn sternly. 'The Sun is still high and so I expect it will not be pleasant for you to travel, but you have no choice. There is nothing for us here, and I will wait no longer for death to find its prey.'

Then, with an agility he had thought his legs had left in Gladden's depths, he slid out from the cover of the hedge and stood. For a moment he swayed, the giddiness of hunger threatening to topple him, but his will was set and his balance held. The wind caught a corner of the blanket that he wore, and he was obliged to turn so that it whipped back against his body. He wrapped it snugly to him in what was now a well-practiced gesture, and set a steady, plodding gait into the snow.

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It was near sundown that the wind shifted at last, bending so that it blew from the northeast. It was still relentless and insidiously cold, but as twilight gathered there could be no mistake: the clouds from the river valley were drawing nearer. Aragorn was scarcely more than hobbling now. He doubted that he had covered even two leagues in what he judged to be well over six hours. It was all that he could manage, but at such a pitiful pace it would be high summer before he reached Mirkwood – and both he and his prisoner would be dead of cold and want long before then.

His stomach had resumed its wrenching, churning and snarling as if in a final frantic attempt to convince him to lay by this foolishness and eat. He wished for the power to silence it with greater fervency than he wished for the power to silence Gollum, who was passing the time in mumbled imprecations against the weather, his hunger, and his captor. Aragorn knew well enough his peril without constant painful reminders from his sorely deprived viscera.

The shadow over the Moon fell before he felt the change in the air. The ghostly blue shimmer of the unbroken snow before him dimmed and faded into a dark downy grey. Casting his face skyward Aragorn could see the thick tentacles of the clouds stretching out to shade the moonlight. He trundled onward, but he waited, and at last it came. As though someone had stretched a great flannel blanket over the world, the bitter bite lifted from the air. The wind was muffled and the sky brought low, and the temperature all at once lifted a little. It was not warm; the air was still cold enough to freeze water, cold enough to sting in his one open nostril, cold enough that the ice in his beard and his eyebrows would not melt. But it no longer clawed with pernicious fire in his lungs. It no longer put a crust upon the film of fluid that guarded his eyes. And, if there was any good fortune to be had upon this hard road, it would no longer keep small animals from venturing out to scavenge for food.

It was a small mercy, to be sure, but it sustained him through the long night of slow and famished labour. When the land began to lighten a little – for through the heavy woolly clouds there was not much of a dawn – he began the morning ritual of scouting for trees. It was over the next hill that he found some, clustered in the lowlands like beggar-children in a deserted alley. Gollum outstripped him in the descent, and fell to scrabbling in the snow and deadfall as soon as they reached the edge of the copse. It seemed that Aragorn was not the only one who, despite many days' failure, held out a fool's hope for a different result today.

The Ranger readied his sling with care, setting the loop and forcing his stiff and cold-chapped fingers to close on the knot. He even settled a stone in the pocket of wool. If his chance came he would not squander it.

Eyes flitting to and fro and ears on alert, he crept forward. Gollum squawked indignantly as he was dragged away from the foot of a bowed old elm, and Aragorn turned to glare at him. He considered the merits of ordering his prisoner to be silent and to obey him, but he felt certain that such a command would be useless. He knew that Gollum must be mad with hunger, for he was himself, and he doubted that the creature would think his captor's plan superior to his own. He had neither the time nor the patience for a quarrel, and in any case a reluctant Gollum would be the surest hindrance to a successful hunt that he could imagine. He had to unload his sling to loose the knot on his wrist, and he fixed it to a low branch of the elm so that Gollum could continue his fruitless foraging. Freed at least for the moment of his burden, Aragorn crept noiselessly towards the heart of the little wood.

The resetting of his sling was delayed for a minute or two as he rubbed at his left wrist. The snugness of the coarse rope had chafed the reddened flesh raw and it stung now, exposed to the air. He had just given up hope of easing this latest tiresome discomfort and reached again for the stones in his pouch when he heard a shrill chittering cry somewhere above. His heart caught in his throat with hope and an apprehension that he seldom felt even in the face of a superior foe, and he flung back his head, shaking the hair from his eyes as he searched the naked branches for the source of the sound.

He spied it almost at once: a small red squirrel perched at the crux of a branch on an oak tree some twenty ells away. It had one of its forepaws in the air, and it was looking about with an alert and intelligent tilt to its head. At this distance Aragorn could not tell whether it looked healthy or no, and if pressed he would have admitted that he did not care. His fingers found the saddle of his sling without the benefit of his eyes, and he raised his right arm carefully, shifting his weight onto one foot and leaning back as far as he dared. Much was riding on this first shot, and he tried to bury both his desperation and his terror of failure. There was no room for such things in the hunt.

The first sweep of his arm was feeble, and he upbraided himself silently. Above him the squirrel let out another high, scolding call as though it too was ashamed of his failing strength. Setting his teeth he swung again. This time he could feel the weight of the stone as it whipped about his fist. At the moment when it reached the proper tangent he released his hold on the knot. The little sharp rock whistled through the air and there was a heavy, hollow thump followed by utter silence. As his eyes focused on the now-empty branch, Aragorn's first bleak thought was that he had missed his target and struck the tree instead. Then his gaze was drawn down to the dusting of snow, in which a small red body lay limp and unmoving. Scrambling like a wild dog diving for scraps, he ran to collect his little prize.

There was a brief, dreadful span of time when Aragorn thought that Gollum had managed to free himself from the tether and escape, but then he realized that in his mounting stupor of want he had found his way back to the wrong elm tree. When he reached the place where he had left his captive, Gollum was still rooting about in the rotting detritus of the previous autumn. Aragorn laid the carcass of the squirrel across the branch that had held the rope as he bound it again about his wrist. The place where the knot had been sitting was worn and ragged, and so he was obliged to shorten the length between himself and his captive. Loath though he was to do it, it was better than taking the risk that the rope would break.

Ravenous as he was, Aragorn was tempted to skin the squirrel and simply devour it raw. But reason won out, and he set about gathering fuel and laying a little fire between the roots of the elm. When it was crackling merrily he took down his game and settled cross-legged with the flames between his body and the tree-trunk. He needed warmth almost as much as he needed victuals, and his tiny blaze would answer for both. He hoped, too, that a hot meal would put a little strength back in his blood.

At the sight of the squirrel Gollum abandoned his digging and came to crouch nearby, though still well out of reach of the fire. He watched with greedy eyes as Aragorn stripped off the fur and cut away the paws and head and tail. The squirrel was not large and it was very lean, confirming Aragorn's own experience with the scarcity of food in the Wilderland this winter. He split its belly carefully with the tip of his knife, and ate the edible organs at once, raw and fresh. His stomach moaned and seemed at first to protest, but he held his rising gorge and reminded his body unsympathetically that it had been begging for something, anything, to eat for days now.

A green stick and two split branches served as a spit, and Aragorn roasted the squirrel with care. He forced himself to take his time and to do a proper job, though his innards were now awakening and his mouth persisted in flooding painfully each time he swallowed. Gollum watched every move that he made, pale eyes enormous in his emaciated face. Twin streams of spittle oozed from the corners of his mouth, and twice he made abortive snatching motions with his spindly fingers.

At last the meat was cooked and Aragorn lifted the spit from the fire. He tried to restrain himself and to allow it to cool a little, but he found that he could not. His strength of will had abandoned him entirely, it seemed, and he broke off a leg and stripped it with his teeth, burning his fingertips and scorching his tongue.

What meat there was would have been little enough for one, and that as part of a proper meal with a bit of bread and a parsnip or two to hearten it. Yet Aragorn took his knife and carefully divided the small carcass into poor portions, the one larger than the other to account for the leg he had already eaten. He had scarcely held out Gollum's share than it was gone, vanishing with sickly slurping sounds amid the sharp, scanty teeth. As he chewed Gollum muttered about scorching and spoiling and foolish manses, but he ate with the wolfish abandon that only those on the very cusp of starvation can exert.

Much as he wanted to do the same, Aragorn forced himself to linger over his meagre meal. He broke his long fast with care, chewing as slowly and as carefully as he could and relishing each morsel. Even uncured and unseasoned squirrel meat had a pleasant, nutty flavour, and the animal's leanness could not entirely disguise it. He stripped every shred of meat from the ribs and spine, and then cracked open the long bones of the limbs to suck out the fine grains of marrow within. Finally he licked his dirty fingers until he was satisfied that every last drop of grease was gone.

The fire was dying already, and he did not dare to risk building it up again. He cupped his sore hands to the fading embers and tugged his legs out from under him so that he could plant a foot on either side of the ring of ash. It did little enough to warm him, but the joints of his fingers grew more limber and the numbness in his feet retreated enough to reassure him that he had lost nothing to frostbite. His head had ceased its pounding and now felt only heavy with fatigue, and already the vile taste in his mouth was fading into memory. His stomach was still complaining, startled by the sudden boon of food and disconsolately begging for more all at once, but he ignored it. His meal had been a frugal one, but it was enough to keep him on his feet a while longer. Enough, as Bilbo Baggins had once said, 'to keep body and soul on speaking terms for another night.'

Aragorn's cracked lips curled into a faint smile at the memory of those words, spoken over an array of victuals laid out in one of the most lavish of camp-suppers he had ever seen in all his years of wandering. Trust a hobbit, he had thought then, to travel with provisions sufficient for a small army. They had both eaten well that night.

But Bilbo was far away, and hobbit-feasts were the stuff of fevered dreams. The fire had burned itself out now, and Aragorn spread its remains with the side of one boot. He shifted to lean his back against the tree, and drew in the folds of his blanket before tucking his hands away. He would rest for a time, and then they had to move on. There were many leagues yet to travel, and many labours yet to endure, but at least he had eaten a little. That was cause for gratitude.

Chapter XLIII: Blessings of Kementári

It was with steady legs and a clear head that Aragorn set out again. Though his feet still troubled him and the ache had settled back into his hands almost as soon as they were deprived of the fire, he felt stronger than he had at any time since before his ill-starred crossing of Gladden's ice. Even Gollum's condition seemed noticeably improved by their scanty meal. The glassy fervour in his eyes was eased a little and he did not whimper as the Ranger rose. With the low, gravid grey clouds hiding the Sun he had no cause for complaint when they left the cover of the trees, either. Aragorn was not fool enough to hope that perhaps he had at last made some headway in getting his charge to trust him: that, he now believed, was impossible. They had started in animosity and they would loathe one another forever. Yet Gollum had tried for days to find his own sort of food, and with no measurable success. Need might compel him to obey where nothing else could.

Of course that would only hold true if Aragorn proved able to continue to provide sustenance, and he could not be sure of that. But this afternoon, at least, he had neither the wish nor the courage to worry about their next meal. The mad hound of starvation had been beaten back from the threshold, however briefly, and they would both have to be satisfied with this one small triumph.

The other mercy was that the weather was not so cruel today. The cover of the clouds had brought with it some respite from the cold, and the wind had died almost to nothing. Although both travellers shivered, they were no longer toiling just to keep from freezing. Aragorn found the hours until sundown almost pleasant, or what on this endless bitter road passed for pleasant.

That night the snow began to fall, soft and silent but constant. The moon was drawing on to full and even the clouds could not mask its light entirely, and so despite the absence of starshine Aragorn was able to find his way from one low hill to the next. At first, keeping a steady pace and walking with his head bowed so that the shaggy curtain of his hair shielded his face, he scarcely noticed the snow. Certainly it was nothing like the storm they had struggled through on their approach to the Gladden Fields. It was not even falling heavily enough to accumulate on his shoulders, at least not at first. Then slowly he grew cognizant of a wet, creeping chill about his neck, spreading down beneath the Lórien-blanket to soak the collar of his cote. He tried to shake out the folds of heavy wool, and to bend them inward so that he might guard against the gathering damp, but he did so in vain. The snow found its way around his clumsy substitute for a cloak and hood, and it melted against the heat of his moving body.

Aragorn did what he could to prevent the slow incursion of the snow into the folds and tears of his clothing, but before dawn he was wet to the skin and his occasional shudders had degenerated to constant miserable shivering. Had the night been any colder he would have been in grave danger indeed. As it was he was merely wretchedly uncomfortable and had lost most of the good of his little fire and his inadequate hot meal. Worst of all was the fiery itch in his hands, tormented by the damp after their many travails in the cruel frozen air. He tried chafing them together to generate a little warmth, but his skin was raw and brittle and the blisters now forming over his stiffened knuckles seared in protest. He cupped them over his mouth that his breath might soothe them, but this only served to leave his palms coated in a thin sheen of condensation that made matters worse. In the end there was nothing better to do than to tuck them away between the increasingly sodden cloth of his tunic and his sleeves. He might have given his good right arm for a thick, dry mitten to cover his left, but no one offered him the choice.

With the rising of the Sun, still all but invisible above the clouds, the wind picked up again. Now it blew from the West, dancing down out of the mountains and crying in the hollows of the hills. It was not so cold as the North Wind had been, but it was lively and it was tireless, swirling through the quiet snows and stirring up the land. As they crested the next rise the Ranger and his companion were buffeted by a mighty gust that snatched the blanket from Aragorn's clutching arms and drove a yowl of indignation from Gollum's throat.

'I agree,' Aragorn said, and despite his misery a certain wry lilt crept into his hoarse voice. He would have quite liked to give such voice to his own frustrations, but dignity and the need for dominance would not allow it. 'We may make less haste keeping to the low places, but I think that shall be our fate today.'

So he retreated from that bare height on boots that slipped and skidded in the wet snow, and after that wound his way about the foot of each hill. The contours of the land cut the wind somewhat, though still they stumbled through gaps and gullies where it blew relentlessly. Gollum kept carefully in his captor's lee, though Aragorn wondered how much his lean legs could possibly cut the wind. Still, he thought, that was all to the good: reliant upon him first for food and now for whatever poor shelter could be found from winter's vagaries, perhaps Gollum would not be so eager to attempt another escape.

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A little after midday they came upon a place where two hills met, their roots spreading to form a shallow place in the land which, while not quite a cave, provided some small shelter at least. Here Aragorn halted, huddling in his wet rags and trying to marshal his strength without yielding to the desire for sleep. Gollum, though not foolish enough to sit in the wind for spite, hung back as far from his captor as he reasonably could. Since the cold had broken his fingers and toes were a less unhealthy hue, but he spent an inordinate amount of time studying them and fawning, as always, over his scarred thumbs.

Aragorn knew that he ought to do the same. He had not dared to wrestle with his boots since forcing fresh-thawed feet into them on Gladden's bank. Today his toes felt numb and the balls and arches of his feet tingled petulantly. His heels were given over to a hot, grinding ache that he knew from long experience would not abandon him until he somehow found the all-but-unattainable luxury of a week's good rest. His ankles were stiff but compliant, and beneath the leather of his boots his calves felt very cold. Perhaps there was a small mercy in the need for wakefulness. If once those muscles were allowed to relax in the limpness of sleep, he would be wracked with painful spasms.

In the end the need to move his chilled body came upon him before he could screw up his valour to the task of removing his boots. He stood up, stamping his feet in an attempt to warm them, but a grating pain in his hips was his only reward for that. As he rose Gollum tensed, and when he took his first heavy step the spindly fingers clutched at the noose of the halter and the unwieldy head shook fiercely from side to side. Aragorn's right hand crept to his side, but his stinging fingers found nothing. At some point he had evidently lost the willow-wand. So he closed his left fist on the orc-rope instead, and fixed his most commanding stare upon his prisoner.

'We are moving on,' he said. 'The wind may be unrelenting, but so am I.'

Still when he stepped again Gollum sat firm, digging his heels into the snow. Aragorn stood still for a moment, his back to the creature and his eyes closed. He was so weary of this endless grappling of wills, and as he sought within himself the fortitude to press the issue the wind rose in a haunting howl.

Quick as a flash Gollum was on his feet, scrambling over the distance between them and pawing at Aragorn's knee. His eyes seemed almost to bulge from their hollow sockets and his mouth quivered in a soundless, gibbering circle. For a moment Aragorn was puzzled, and then the noise rang out again and the chilled blood seemed to freeze in his veins. It was not the wind after all: it was the cry of a wolf, somewhere away to the west and not more than four miles distant. Farther off another took up the refrain.

'Bites us and kills us!' Gollum shrieked, one hand scrabbling at his brow while the other clutched the top of the Ranger's boot. 'Gleaming eyes and glinting teeth, precious!'

'Hush!' said Aragorn sternly. He was trying to listen for the other members of the pack, the better to gauge their numbers. 'Wolves in the wild have no interest in us. Men make stringy prey, and you are even worse. If we do not trouble them we have nothing to fear.'

Even as he spoke he did not believe it. He had read all the signs of a hard winter here; his own failure to find more than a single squirrel to feed himself attested to that. A wolf-pack made desperate by thin hunting might indeed think them tempting prey, and at least consider waylaying them. Yet the greater danger was that these were not common wolves at all, but the wild northern wargs that had been a plague upon this land for years uncounted. Wargs would hunt a man for sport, and for the pleasure of hearing him scream as they tore out his bowels. There was no outrunning such hunters, and Aragorn was armed only with his hunting knife and the little sling. With a sword or a bow or even a pike he might have stood a fighting chance, but as it was his only hope was to keep from catching their notice.

'Come,' he said, resisting the urge to shake Gollum off of his leg. 'They are west of us; let us press northeast and stay in the low places. It is only sensible to put some distance between us.'

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Apparently Gollum agreed with the sense of it, for he scrabbled along at such a pace that Aragorn found himself hurrying to keep up. The creature seemed to possess a sound sense of direction, for at every turn he took the very way that the Ranger would have chosen. Through dusk they walked, and into the night. The snow was still falling and the wind still wailed, but they did not hear any further wolf-voices in the gloom. At last Gollum's panic seemed to abate a little and he resumed his usual sullen loping. Aragorn was only too glad to settle into an easier stride, for his weariness was mounting and as his body expended the last of the strength he had taken from his half of the squirrel he began to feel lightheaded again. The exertion had warmed him a little, but now he fell to shivering again. The wet linen of his shirt clung like a thin film of torment to his chest. He would surely have dared a fire, for comfort and as surety against any roaming wargs, if only there had been any hope of fuel in these barren hills.

With the eastward cant to their path, the land began to level a little. When at last dawn came the swells of the land offered little protection from the wild West Wind, but here and there a straggly fir tree stood lonely over the land. They were not frequent enough to offer much hope of small game, and Aragorn's pinched stomach grumbled disconsolately despite his efforts to silence it. Already he could taste the loathsome vapours of starvation brewing afresh in the back of his throat. He rinsed his mouth with water from the Elven bottle and tried to fight back his swelling despair. He had known that his small success would buy him only a little time, but he had hoped in his folly that the surcease of direst need might last at least another day.

He had done all that he could for himself, and even now he kept moving forward. Yet he walked unknowing in lands he had trod but seldom. On the other side of the mountains he would have been able to find his way to some likely place, somewhere the trees were bounteous and the game plentiful even in the harshest of winters. After long years of wandering he knew the western lands nigh as well as a diligent farmer knew his fields and orchards. Between Bruinen and Baranduin there was not a place of plenty that he could not seek out at need. But here, though he knew enough of the topography to travel with some surety, he lacked the intimate understanding of the land that came from long stewardship. If there were such places here he could not find them, save by chance or some greater grace.

Aragorn stayed his stride abruptly and fell still, scarcely feeling the impact as Gollum stumbled startled against his leg and fell back with an angry oath. The snow, still falling with measured persistence, swirled about him. The wind bit into his flank and his soaked clothes weighed heavily upon his tired limbs. All this was forgotten for a moment as he freed his mind from the fetters of mortal wretchedness and allowed himself to find within him the quiet spring of hope.

'Kementári,' he breathed, unaware of the cloud of heat that issued from his lips and dispersed in the unsettled air. He spoke in the High Elven tongue, his heart drifting back to the Hall of Fire long ago, and to gentle grey eyes and a low loving voice imparting the tales of creation itself to a wide-eyed child. 'Sower of forests, keeper of the fields. Lady of the woods and Mistress of Plenty, have pity upon me. If there is sustenance in this land then guide me to it. Help me, dear lady, for I know not how I may help myself.'

Then the moment of clarity faded, and he was standing once more in a drift just shy of the tops of his battered boots, weary and careworn and far from home; plagued by the cold and haunted by hunger; set upon the hardest road he had yet walked with the most hateful companion he could have imagined. In the snow at his feet Gollum was cringing and muttering blackly to himself, doubtless despising the fair words of the ancient language of the Noldor.

Blinking rapidly and trying to convince himself that he did so only to ward against the wind, Aragorn looked at the way that lay ahead. He stood at the base of a low, lumbering hill, with the feet of two more behind him. He could round this next obstacle to the right, northeastward, or to the left, northwestward. It was not a decision of great significance: either way he would come around to the same spot and find his best way around the next hill. Yet he could not help but hope to feel the hand of otherworldly guidance upon his choice, as a sign his piteous prayer had been heard.

He felt nothing, not even the stirrings of instinct. Left or right, it made no difference save to the way in which the wind would gnaw at him as he walked. Suddenly and unaccountably cross, he hitched the blanket closer to his ribs. He would spite the choice, then, and take neither. Without troubling to inform Gollum that they were setting out again, he started trudging straight – up onto the hill itself. Over it he would walk, and not around; not right and not left.

It was a stiff-necked gesture, and he had not gone more than a few ells before he was paying an uncomfortable forfeit for his stubbornness. Out of the scant shelter of the land the wind was merciless. His eyes began to water and his left side might as well have been naked to the cold. At his heels Gollum was weeping and mumbling senselessly. Aragorn could only hear him through his right ear: his left was deafened by the wind. The hill itself was steeper than it had looked, and his boot slipped under the poor guidance of a numbed foot. He bent forward, straining with his long legs and all the while cursing himself for a bone-headed fool.

When he reached the top at last he paused, panting and trying to bundle the mass of wet wool more comfortably around his shoulders. His right hand wandered out of his awkward wrappings, seemingly of his own accord, and scooped the ragged and ice-crusted tresses away from his eyes. The land before him was a pale grey swell that met a sky so slightly darker that the two seemed almost one. Hill after barren hill stretched out before him. From this height he thought he could see perhaps six miles to the horizon. He squinted, trying to gauge it although in truth it mattered not. As he did so a dark blotch just at the border of the visible world seemed to shimmer and solidify and to settle into an unmistakeable and most unexpected colour.

It was green; the dark and rusty green of a Ranger's cloak, or a tangle of seaweed washed up on the pale sands of Dol Amroth – or the green of a pine-copse under a harsh winter sky.

The wind seemed to abate a little, and Aragorn's breath came more deeply. He let his hand retreat back within its dank refuge. His back straightened a little and his shoulders squared. The worst of his weariness seemed to fall away as he started his slippery descent with Gollum skittering after him. Perhaps his plea had been heard after all.

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Though he kept the greatest pace that his flagging constitution would allow, Aragorn did not reach the trees before nightfall. Nonetheless he was near enough at sunset that he could see for certain that amid the towering, verdant splendour of the firs that spread on north and west to the mountains and eastward even unto Anduin there were indeed the sparser stalks of aged pines, clustered here and there among their mighty cousins. Something of the frenetic joy he had felt when he had laughed on Gladden's ice visited him then, and his tired unfeeling feet found they could move faster after all.

It was dark when he came at last to the edge of the forest, his side aching with exhaustion and his half-frozen body quaking. Gollum, who had somehow managed to keep his feet, flung himself amid the roots of the first fir with a tremendous groan.

'Not yet,' said Aragorn, overcome with hope fulfilled. 'We cannot rest yet.'

He moved carefully among the trees, for the night was thick about him and even his keen eyes could discern little. He found the one he wanted by its scent, distinct even in the winter air, and groped with outstretched arms until he found his way through the spindly branches to the bole. While his right hand dug for his knife his left settled against the rough bark with its palm outstretched, pressed to the trunk as he might have rested his hand against the breast of a friend in the breathless moment after the passing of some great peril. He bowed his head against the tree as he raised the knife.

'Thank you, old father,' he murmured in the language of his childhood; not the lofty words of Quenya now, but the gentle music of Sindarin. 'You have given me life; I pray I shall not hurt you.'

Then he set to work. With care he cut into the bark, deep enough to riven it but not so deep that he scratched the tender wood beneath. Next he made a second cut parallel to the first and at half a handspan's distance. His third cut joined the two at their tops, like the lintel of a door. With the tip of his knife he raised one corner of the bark so that he could grab it with his cold fingers. Slowly and with great care he peeled away the strip of rough outer bark. It broke away from the soft inner layer in a single long piece, and when he had reached the bottom of his marks he cut it away and let it fall to earth. He had no use for the rough hide of the tree: it was what lay beneath that he wanted.

Digging with his fingernails, he began to peel away the fibrous inner bark. Winter's cold slowed the flow of resin in the tree and made the bark brittle, so it came away quickly in small chips and slivers. The first few went straight into his mouth, tasting faintly of pitch but little else. Then, making a pocket from a corner of his blanket, Aragorn went swiftly about his harvest. When the cut patch was bare to the new wood he ran his palm along the wound. He closed his eyes against the darkness of the night forest and put forth thoughts of healing. He had no wish to harm the tree, which unlike a game animal must go on living with the pain he caused, and for that reason he had taken only a narrow strip of bark, but his need was great and this blessing of nourishment a mighty boon indeed.

He did not know if his efforts made any difference. The old pine stood silent and uncomplaining as it had through many years before. Still he whispered his thanks and stepped away, beginning his search for the next tree.

He repeated this ritual at four other pines before the weight in the crook of his arm began to feel adequate. Gollum followed him morosely, grubbing amid the litter of the trees and finding nothing. There was less snow here, for some of it had been caught in the canopy above, and out of the wind the air was not so unbearably cold. Still Aragorn fell to shivering as the heat of exertion left him, and he was glad when at last he had enough pine bark to ease his mind – and hopefully two empty stomachs.

Finding a fir that would serve his purpose was a somewhat more challenging matter, for though the great trees were plentiful he was looking for one with lower branches five feet long or more, that ringed its trunk thickly and drooped near to the ground. After some groping and several stumbles he found at last what he sought, and he did off with the Lórien blanket that he might leave it and his treasured harvest among the roots. From the neighbouring trees he cut several boughs, careful to choose those in which the vigor of life was waning. By spring they would be dead, and would fall off of their own accord, but now there was still enough life left in them that they were thick with supple needles. He dragged them back to the fir he had chosen and crawled about at its base for a time, amid Gollum's grumbled imprecations that the foolish manses had taken leave of his senses entirely.

In the end, however, the labour was done, and Aragorn picked up his wet blanket with care so that he should not spill the chips of pine bark. He crept back beneath the shelter of the low-hanging boughs where the snows could not find him. He had made a pallet of the cut branches and he sat upon it, his lean thighs cushioned for the first time since his brief nights on the fallen mallorn-leaves. He forgot his sore hands and his wet clothes as he tucked in to his supper.

The inner bark of the pine tree was not a flavourful meal, and it was hard work in chewing uncooked as it was. He might have laid a fire to roast it, but tonight he was too weary. He broke off small pieces with his fingers and gnawed at it instead.

'Are you hungry?' he asked Gollum, holding out his palm in the darkness. Grasping fingers found the bark and snatched it up. There were some unpleasant sounds that made the Ranger very glad he could not see his charge, and then a hand stole in among the folds of the blanket to find more.

Aragorn leaned his back against the bole of the fir and sighed. He felt as if a great weight of worry had been lifted from his shoulders. If he was right in his guess, he had reached the woods that came down out of the northern marches of the Misty Mountains. He could walk through them all the way to the road that led to the Old Ford over Gladden; indeed, past the road and on to the Carrock, where he had hope of a safer crossing. Even if he did not come across any game at all, he could survive on the harvest of the pine trees. It was not cheerful fare, and it took a great quantity just to keep a man upon his feet, but he need not fear starvation while he walked amid the pines. It seemed that Gollum too could eat it, though how he managed to chew the tough fibres with his six sparse teeth was a mystery. Closing his eyes as he broke off another shard and set it on his tongue, he offered up his silent thanks to she who had sung of the forests of the world; she who had imagined the trees that offered such blessed succour now; she who had in his moment of helplessness given him hope to bear him hither.

When the heap of pine bark was reduced to splinters, Aragorn shook out the blanket and spread it on the ground to dry a little. Then he stretched out on his narrow bed of evergreen boughs, feeling the welcome release of tension as his spine eased out of its hunched exhaustion. He tucked his right hand behind his neck and curled his left arm over his chest, bracing his foot against the ground to raise his left knee. He was still chilled through, and his damp clothing kept him shivering, but a night off of the frozen ground would do him no end of good. His belly was full if not truly satisfied, and he did not have to fear for tomorrow's barest survival. Beside him Gollum was rooting around to fashion his own nest. He would rest his waking mind tonight, and for the first time in many days he had sure hope of breakfast. The smallest of smiles touched his cold-chapped lips. Perhaps they would reach Mirkwood after all.

Note: 'Fifteen Birds' from 'Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire', The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter XLIV: Roosting in a Storm

Aragorn had wondered whether he would struggle to stay awake, stretched out upon the comfort of the boughs beneath the shelter of the fir. He need not have worried. His stomach kept him from any chance of sleep, churning and cramping as it tried to cope with what he had eaten. After too long without adequate food he had fairly glutted his shrunken belly, and upon the tough fibres of a pine tree at that. Still, the discomfort was bearable and he knew that he had done himself more good than harm. Only now, as nourishment began to clear it, did he recognize the fog in which he had been walking for days. The bark did more to ease his headache than the squirrel had done, and the vile taste in his mouth was gone now, replaced with the faint spicy tang of pine resin. Best of all was the knowledge that he had secured a sure source of food, at least as far as Anduin. He just had to be more careful to control his appetites.

He passed the hours until dawn peaceably enough, then rose and rousted Gollum. Dispersing the signs of his simple camp was quick work, and then he found a pine he had not touched the night before and helped himself to a portion of its bounty. He tucked the chips of bark into a fold of his blanket, which though no longer heavy with snowmelt was still uncomfortably damp, so that he might eat while he walked.

The forest was not as dense by daylight as it had seemed in the darkness. The snow was still falling, thicker and wetter than before, and it filtered in between the firs and gathered on Aragorn's hair and shoulders. Still he was mercifully out of the wind, and the drifts between the trees were easier to break than the ones on the hills. He kept a northeasterly course and made better progress than he had in many days.

Sometime after midday he came upon clutch of large stones in the shade of two great fir trees, and here he halted. A chore long-delayed was nagging at him, and this was as good a place as any to see to it. While Gollum sat behind him, quiet but malevolent, Aragorn settled on the tallest rock and braced his left heel against a smaller one. Setting his jaw and steeling his resolve, he began to struggle with his boot. It was time to check his feet.

He knew that something was amiss as soon as the leather gave way and yielded up his heel. The winter air seemed to clap his leg from the middle of his shin to the tip of his great toe in a burning fetter of misery. The sleepy numbness that he had accounted up to cold and weariness now took on a more sinister significance, and with his heart in his throat Aragorn reached both hands to clasp his ankle. His fingers settled against spongy wool suddenly chilled in the open air. His hose were soaked through; wet enough to be wrung out. Hastily he wrenched off the other boot, and found the same ill tokens. He stood and fumbled with the points that bound his hose, stripping off the woollen and linen layers so that his long legs were bare. Then he sat again and set about his grim inspection.

It was not as bad as he had feared. His feet were mottled; red from the wet, blue from the cold, sullen purple from fresh bruises and bilious green from old. There were blisters atop his small toes: the last three on the right, two on the left. On the others there were shallow open sores where the chilblains had burst, stinging bitterly and weeping clear fluid. His nails, carefully pared in Lothlórien, were snagged and ragged once more, but all but two were whole and none showed yellow. The thick calluses on his soles and at the side of each great toe were peeling, but still intact. His heels were blackened and beaten from his long road. But the skin between each toe was still smooth and healthy, and it was only the want of adequate provender that made the veins atop each foot stand out so starkly from the flesh.

Folding his bare feet under him so that he sat cross-legged on the stone, Aragorn picked one of his woollen hose and wrung it out into the palm of his hand. He sniffed at the water that gathered there. It held a faint stink of shed skin and the oily scent of leather, but little smell of perspiration. Even as he felt the small relief of knowing that he had not been a fool and unwittingly pushed himself dangerously hard, a knot of dread began to form at the base of his ribs. If the damp did not come from his sweat, then there was only one other explanation, and it was something beyond his power to help. His boots were leaking.

He picked up the right one, and turned it over in his lap. The heel, of course, was worn almost to nothing – but this he had known since passing into Eastemnet, for it was what was causing his own heels to be so bruised and tender. The sole was badly thinned, but still whole. He checked the double line of sturdy stitches that joined the vamp to the sole. There were breaks in the inner thread, but the outer one held. The rand, however, was cracked: at the instep, and near the base of his smallest toe, and thrice at the heel.

The left boot was worse. There was a gap in the outer stitching near the inseam of the vamp, and the inner threads were broken less than an inch behind. As he examined it, a piece of the rand actually came loose and started rattling around inside, and when he turned the boot to shake it out his eyes fell on a hole worn right through both layers of the sole where the inner ball of his foot bore most of his launching pressure. It was not a large hole: not much bigger than the tip of his longest finger, in fact. Still it was large enough to cause no end of misery, as his wretchedly itching feet were all too happy to attest.

He could not go on as he was, and so Aragorn slid off of the stone and set about gathering fuel for a fire with which to dry his hose. It was quick but unpleasant work, padding barefoot through the snow to find dead branches that were not too wet. He had little hope of avoiding smoke entirely, for the air was not much colder than freezing, but he did the best that he could. Gollum did not seem to appreciate his efforts, for he hung back as far as the rope would allow, and he grumbled to himself. Aragorn ignored him, except occasionally to wrap his right hand over the loop around his wrist so that it would not chafe him so painfully.

He laid his simple hearth between three of the stones that sat almost beneath the branches of one of the furs. In that way the needles might disperse the worst of the smoke. Aragorn wrung out his hose and spread them over the rocks to dry, then perched above the flames until he had restored some feeling to his toes. Then, deciding that he would not allow the fire to go to waste, he roused himself and his reluctant prisoner again and went in search of a pine.

A low, flat stone laid close by the embers provided a cooking surface, and soon Aragorn had the little strips of pine-bark roasting. Hot they soothed his stomach and put a little warmth in his chest, and cooking softened the tough fibres and left them with a pleasant smoky taste. He offered Gollum his share, and the creature sniffed sceptically at the food before slipping it into his mouth. He made a truly hideous face of disgust, but he ate what he was offered and did not shrink too far from the warmth of the fire.

When he had eaten Aragorn set about doing what he could to shore up his boots. Using the same flat stone, he spread the edge of the Lórien-blanket over it and placed his left boot on the cloth with care, as near to the seam as he could. Carefully he cut the wool, mindful that he did not scrape his knife along the boot, until he had two pieces precisely the shape of the sole. In a few weeks' time when the sap was flowing, he might have been able to harvest a little pitch with which to paint the cloth, but winter was still too deep for such endeavours and he had no stew-pot for boiling it out of chilled bark. The wool would have to serve as it was. Then he cut the end off of his belt, shaving the edges into a fine bevel so that they would sit almost flat against his boot. This he placed inside, to cover the hole in his sole. Then he slipped in the two woollen insoles, aligning their edges as neatly as his stiff fingers would allow, and settling them against the seam. It would not keep out the damp entirely, but at least he hoped that it would help.

There was little enough he could do about the right boot, though he cut a woollen lining for it as well. Now the bottom edge of the blanket was ravaged and tattered, but healthy feet were more important than a warm body, and he knew he had little choice in the matter. The work had dulled the point of his knife, and he was glad of the foresight that had driven him to keep the fine-grained pebble that he had collected at Gladden's bank. He whetted the blade with care and then found himself with nothing more to do while he waited for his hose to dry. He warmed his raw hands and he rested his sore feet near the flames, and his back grew cold with the softly falling snow.

When at last he was able to clothe his legs again, he did so with the greatest of care. Despite the tight and brittle leather of his battered boots he managed to work each foot in slowly and gently enough that he scarcely bestirred the wool within. The leather patch did shift a little, but he managed to tug it back into place with the tip of his knife. The cloth of his hose was warm from the fire, and for a while at least the pain in his broken skin and the small weary bones of his toes was eased. He waited until the last of the heat died from the stones before dispersing the signs of his fire and setting out again. As he walked he did what he could to avoid the worst of the snow, but there was only so much that could be done. He had to walk on, and so his feet were bound to get wet again. He would simply have to take the time each day to dry them out as best he could.

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Near nightfall the snow ceased and the clouds dispersed a little. The great waxing moon peered down through the trees, lighting Aragorn's way and making Gollum squirm. It seemed it was not only Yellow Face who plagued him, but White Face as well. Still he did not dare to impede his jailor's progress, and had to satisfy himself with trying to scramble from shadow to shadow as the tether would allow. Twice during the night Aragorn stopped to find a pine and take a small portion of its bark, which he chewed slowly and thoroughly as he walked. He never took enough to fill his stomach: he had learned that lesson well. Yet surely small and frequent feedings would serve better to keep him upright and aware, or so he told himself.

The forest was less overgrown here, and now and again Aragorn came across signs of Men: stumps cut clean and low, and deep ruts beneath the new-fallen snow where a woodsman's sledge had been hauled by two doughty oxen. There were those among the Beornings who dwelt just north of the Old Road and well west of their brethren in small rustic villages: chiefly those charged with setting the tolls and keeping the access to the High Pass safe for travellers. It seemed they sometimes sought their timber away to the south. But of the woodsmen themselves he saw nothing, and he continued through the following morning through the solitary forest.

At noon he halted, again laying a small fire and stripping off his boots and his hose so that his feet might dry. The itch and sting of the chilblains he could bear: it was nothing to that same discomfort in his hands. But the open sores worried him. Cold, wet feet might easily fester, and he had many leagues yet to walk. This was all that he could do, however, and so he did it and he hoped that it would be enough.

He walked through the afternoon, still making a good and steady pace, but as dusk gathered he decided to halt. He was laden with weariness, and he had walked unharried for many days now. There was no sign of the pursuit that he still feared, and it was time to truss up his captive and risk a little sleep.

As he had done before he built a simple bed of pine-boughs beneath the obliging shelter of a fir tree. The rags with which he had bound Gollum's hands before had been lost with his baggage in Gladden, so he cut fresh strips from the looted hem of the blanket. Gollum obeyed as the Ranger tied his wrists, and his glare scarcely even seemed to darken. Perhaps, Aragorn thought, the small gifts of food and fire truly had led the creature to decide that he was better off with his captor than he would be alone in these winter woods. Whatever the case, he was grateful that he did not have to struggle. With Gollum's hands secured and another modest helping of pine chips in his belly, Aragorn lay down upon his fragrant pallet and let himself slip into shallow, wary slumber.

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Even in his dreams Aragorn heard the wind rise. It was roaring down out of the mountains, swift and strong and cold, bringing with it the wrath of the high places. It whipped across the hills and churned in the valleys, and it set the fir-trees creaking. Far away there was a sundering crack as some old trunk toppled before the gathering storm. The Ranger awoke briefly then, shivering as the temperature began to fall around him. But he had wandered long and he was weary, and so he merely rolled onto his side and curled in his limbs beneath his blanket and dozed lightly again. There was a mass against his calves now, and he realized in his half-waking state that it was Gollum, driven by fear or by chill to huddle close to his captor. Above them the branches of the fir lashed and swayed, but it was a strong tree in the very haleness of its life and it stood like a stalwart guardian above them. All around the forest rattled, but in their little tent of drooping boughs they were as safe and sheltered as it was possible to be.

The mind of the long-hunted would not give itself over to sleep amid the noises of the night, and so Aragorn gave up trying. He sheltered his ear and the crown of his head under a corner of the blanket and lay awake, listening. At his feet Gollum was whimpering deep in his throat.

'Come here,' Aragorn said in a low voice that was almost lost in the percussion of the swaying trees. He was piteously glad that they had the shelter of the forest tonight. Out in the hills this wind would be a deadly thing. 'I shall sleep no more: I will unbind your wrists.'

Gollum moved quickly, scrabbling over Aragorn's drawn-up knees and very nearly landing on his forearm. Disentangling his hands and exposing them to air now nigh as bitter as that which had tormented him after the fall into Gladden, he groped until he found his captive's bonds. He loosened them quickly so that he could retreat back into the relative warmth of his wild bed. Then his weary conscience scolded him and he lifted the edge of the blanket again.

'Draw near and be warm,' he said to Gollum. 'I would not let even a servant of the Enemy brave the bare air unclothed tonight.'

He waited, scarcely daring to breathe. This was a moment that would decide the course of what was left of their miserable road. If Gollum accepted this proffer of comfort, he would give himself over at last to the care of his captor. Aragorn might finally lay by the burden of relentless command. Perhaps, in the end, he might even coax the creature to speak to him, to confide in him and to share the secrets that he so desperately needed to hear. If Gollum rejected it, they would continue embattled to the very doors of Thranduil's dungeons and perhaps even until Dagor Dagorath itself.

Gollum seemed to hang back, torn between suffering and surrender. No doubt he could feel the heat of the Ranger's body beneath the blanket, and the plummeting cold of the air was biting at his back. Then a great shrieking gust of wind tore through the woods around them and, with a hoarse ululation of terror, Gollum sprang out of his squat as swiftly as a pouncing cat. One emaciated foot came down upon Aragorn's hip and before the Man could react his prisoner had swung himself up into the lowest branches of the fir.

'What—' Aragorn began, sitting up abruptly so that the blanket fell about his lap. His question was cut off in astonishment as Gollum hauled upon the rope between them with such force that his wrist was yanked away from his body. As he clambered to get his feet under him that he might haul his charge out of the tree, he heard another sound, borne upon the wailing wind and enough to freeze his very heart without any help from the brewing blizzard.

It was the keening hunting howl of a warg.

Aragorn snatched up his blanket and felt his belt to be certain that his belt and pouch were where they belonged. He could feel the weight of his water-bottle at his side, and in that dreadful moment he was glad that he had lost his pack, for he did not have to grope to find it now. An answering howl came, horrifyingly near at hand, and the first cried out again. There was no doubt now that these were something more than simple hungry animals. They were the very hounds of Morgoth, and they were on the hunt.

Gollum had used the additional scope of Aragorn's rising to skitter higher into the tree, and there might have been some sense in this if only their scent were not all about its base, and the bed of pine-boughs proof that even a troll could read.

'Get down from there, you fool!' the Ranger hissed, not daring to raise his voice lest it should alert their foes. 'Do you want them to stalk among the roots until you fall out at last? We must run!'

For the awful, eternal span of one gasping breath Gollum hesitated. Then he came slithering down from his lofty perch. Aragorn did not wait for him to find the ground again, but seized his withered body from the lowest branch and dropped him unceremoniously on his feet. His hand closed on the creature's forearm so that if he stumbled the cord would not strangle him before Aragorn could halt. Then he broke into a run, stooped to his left with Gollum stumbling after him.

The night was black about them and even on the forest floor the wind was strong enough to steal the breath from their lungs. Aragorn could not see where he ran, and so he flew by instinct alone, obeying his body's frantic demands to dodge left or bank right or to leap over some unseen root before his boots. Branches heavy with winter needles struck at his shoulders and his hips and his face. Once he heard Gollum yelp and the bare paddling feet struggled to find purchase on an icy incline. Unable to halt, Aragorn merely dragged upon his captive's arm and Gollum was briefly airborne until they reached surer ground. The wargs cried out again, behind and to their left: three, four, five… six crazed voices in the storm, all of them ravenous and all of them wrathful.

They had run as far as they reasonably could. Aragorn's chest was heaving in the bitter, burning air, and Gollum's knees kept giving out beneath him. The snow was flying now, and might perhaps disperse the worst of their tracks, and in any case if they did not halt soon neither would have the strength to get off of the ground. Aragorn groped blindly in the blackness, praying that the grace that had brought him to these woods in the first place would stand him in good stead now. His hands found broad, bony boughs that prickled with needles: strong branches, the lowest of them level with his shoulders. He bent and grabbed Gollum under the arms, hoisting him up onto the branch.

'Now climb!' he cried. Flinging the blanket over his shoulder, he planted both his hands and swung his long leg to hook around the bough. Swiftly but carefully he made his ascent, sounding each branch to be sure it would hold him before entrusting it with his weight. It would avail him nothing if he tumbled and broke his leg, leaving him as easy prey for the questing pack; or his neck, ending his troubles forever. He mounted only as high as he could be sure of his safety. Gollum, as able a climber as Aragorn had ever known, retreated to the very limit of the rope, nesting as far above as his captor's arm would allow.

Below and westward the wargs called, nearer now. There was nothing to do but cling to the bole of the tree, one leg dangling and the other braced against a nearby branch to take some of his weight off of his thighs. Aragorn was perhaps twelve or fifteen ells off the ground, and at this height the wind was frightful. He had tried to put his back to it, but it swirled madly in every direction. He did not dare to wrap himself in the Lórien-blanket, for fear that it would be snatched away – or worse, catch like a sail and upset his balance. So he turned his face in against the trunk and closed his eyes against the stinging snow and ice, and held on with his elbows as his hands began to grow numb.

He did not know if the wargs were hunting him, but to be abroad in this weather they had to have sure hope of game – or else they were ranging for revenge. The folk of these lands had ever been a dauntless enemy to the wild things of the mountain wastes, and the hatred between the woodsmen and the wargs was great. Perhaps this pack was seeking after someone else entirely. It was not a very noble hope, but Aragorn thought that at least the other party (if there was one) might be better armed than he. The Elven knife still hung at his belt, and though he would have felt a little less helpless with it in his hand he knew he could not be trusted to keep from dropping it.

The tree was swaying, buffeted by the wind that was his torment, but where Aragorn sat the trunk was still thick and sturdy, and it shifted little enough. It was something like riding the mast of a great sailing-ship upon curiously calm waves while the wildest of squalls tore the air. An unsettling sensation, to be sure, but nothing to the horror of trying to fend off half a dozen wargs without even the aid of a fire.

The leader howled again, and Aragorn felt his innards clench. The beast was very near now; surely not more than a hundred yards from the foot of the tree. Forcing himself to breathe despite his apprehension and the fierce chill of the wind, he tucked his head closer between his shoulder and the tree-trunk. He was shivering violently with the cold, for his tattered cote offered no real protection from the driving storm. In daylight he doubted that he would have been able to see more than a few yards through the snow, and it found its way into every tear in his garments. The tips of his ears were insensate already, and his lips tingled as they quivered. The backs of his legs were aching where the branch dug against them, and in his boots his feet were swiftly losing all feeling.

It was strange, he thought absurdly, because he had always enjoyed climbing trees as a boy. Yet it was one thing to perch on high, swinging bare feet in summer's warm breezes and laughing at Glorfindel's attempts to coax him down before he had to lay by his dignity and come up in pursuit. It was quite another to sit here in what was surely a mountain blizzard driven down into the lowlands by its own dauntless force, shivering and half-clad with a pain in his spine, unable to come down because there were wargs about.

He knew that he was losing his grip on reason when a snatch of song snagged in his memory.

Fifteen birds in five fir-trees,
their feathers were fanned by a fiery breeze…

What a time to think of fire, when he was perched high in the air in the midst of a vicious mountain storm with wolves on the prowl and a tiresome captive to protect! He shifted the rope just a little to be sure that Gollum was still at the end of it. An irritated tug was his answer, and he tried to press his body closer to the bole of the tree as the wind whistled higher. He had always found that trees had their own quiet warmth – not at all what one felt when pressed against a horse or an ox, certainly, but nonetheless a tangible comfort at moments such as this.

Not, of course, that he had ever before experienced a moment such as this. There was another snarling yowl: the warg lieutenant now, marshalling the others. He found that he was holding his breath, as if the low whispers of his lungs could possibly be heard over the shriek of the storm. Slowly he let out his air, and then regretted it almost at once because he was obliged to draw in a fresh draught that chilled his teeth and seared against his ribs. They were very close now. He could hear the leader's low, resonating growl. It must be a huge beast indeed to make such a sound be heard in the cacophony of the forest. Above him a branch creaked as Gollum shifted his position. Aragorn wanted to call out to him to be still, but any words loud enough to reach his charge would surely be heard below as well.

Again, like a persistent child tugging at his mother's skirts, the song plucked at him. Its melody was sour, and it was sung in a nasal mocking tone by a voice that was still somehow beloved.

Fifteen birds in five fir-trees,
their feathers were fanned by a fiery breeze!
But, funny little birds, they had no wings!
O what shall we do with the funny little things?
Roast 'em alive, or stew them in a pot;
fry them, boil them and eat them hot?

And then it seemed that he could hear the same voice falling laughingly out of its put-on accent with a jolly little chuckle. 'Well, as you can imagine, Dúnadan, I was as frightened as I had ever been in my life – up to that moment, at least – and I was quite sure we were all going to wind up as supper for the goblins after all, and those horrid stalking wolves. But Gandalf didn't seem afraid in the least, for all he must have been, because he said…'

The desire to smile did not quite translate to an ability to shift his cold-stiffened cheeks and his trembling lips, but Aragorn felt his spirits lifting a little. Dear old Bilbo and his tales. His grip around the trunk of the fir grew stronger and the ache in his legs seemed to abate a little. As uncomfortable as he was, he thought, his situation could have been far worse. He was an experienced wanderer, no stranger to physical strain, foul weather or wargs. He had no hard proof that the creatures were even after him, and if they were they had not found him yet. The storm that was so tormenting him was as much an advantage as it was a curse: it had certainly hidden his tracks and it would probably throw off his scent as well. And Gollum, though at times a hindrance, had given him his earliest warning of their danger. Aragorn did not think that the wolves had cried out before the howl he had heard; his prisoner must have caught their musk on the wind.

And at the very least he was not a hobbit, uprooted from his quiet life and coerced into danger, running helpless from tree to tree until someone (Dori, perhaps?) took pity on him and came down to help. The perch in the tree must have been quite terrifying enough for one brought up to love the low, safe places of the world. The threat of fire, the menace of the goblin-song, and the fierce prowling beasts – it was a wonder that even so long afterwards Bilbo was able to laugh about it.

Perhaps Aragorn, too, would laugh, if he managed to extricate himself from this situation unscathed. Clumsy but almost noiseless he stretched his right arm around the tree so that he could pull his left in towards his body for a while. The bare skin of his hand was afire with the cold, and his fingers were dead and wooden. He wondered whether it would be the wargs who would finish him after all, or the weather.

Suddenly the tree shuddered beneath him, and with his right ear temporarily tucked away from the wind he could hear the screech of claws biting into the bark near the foot of the pine. There came a questioning snarl, and a sharp and wrathful reply: the wargs calling out to one another in their own loathsome language. Aragorn did not have a wizard's gift for understanding the speech of beasts and birds, but he could guess the meaning of this exchange. One of them thought he smelled man-flesh, and the other disagreed.

There were more of them below him now, circling in the darkness. He could hear them grumbling and growling amongst themselves until one gave a shrill high howl and tore off into the night, thundering northeastward through the woods. One after another the others took up the call and sped away.

Aragorn remained motionless for a long time, straining to listen with ears growing steadily more numb. He had given up trying to pick up anything in the darkness and had closed his eyes. His eyelashes were freezing to his skin. His shivering had gone right to the bone and deep, violent tremors kept tearing through his chest and spine and out into his limbs. As wary as he was of descending, he knew that he had to find some better shelter from the hateful wind before he lost himself to the cold and could not maintain his seat. So when he reckoned that a quarter of an hour had passed with no sound of the wargs he released his desperate grip on the trunk and shifted to begin his descent.

Climbing down was far more difficult than climbing up had been. His hands were unfeeling and not very useful, and his feet kicked often in open air before finding the next branch. At first Gollum did not seem inclined to follow him, for the cord that bound them grew very taut indeed. Aragorn did not dare to tug upon it, for fear of sending his captive falling to snap his neck on the halter, and he waited anxiously for Gollum to make up his mind. Finally the rope loosened and he could hear the crackle of the branches as the creature began to move.

Aragorn did not dare to alight, for it was possible that the wargs would circle back. Instead he halted amid the lowest branches, where the surrounding trees and the drooping boughs provided at least some better shelter from the wind and flying ice. He wrapped his blanket about him with one fold covering his head, and braced his feet on a nearby branch. His frozen hands he tucked beneath each arm, trusting to his sense of balance to keep him from falling the seven feet into the drifting snow below. Gollum settled just above his head, pressed against the trunk and shivering wretchedly. And so they sat: not fifteen but only two lean and gangly birds, roosting together in a blizzard and waiting doggedly for the dawn.

Chapter XLV: Over the Road and Up to the Town

When light came at last to the forest, it was nothing but a diffuse charcoal gloom through the tumultuous clouds and the wildly dancing snow. Still it was spreading distinctly from one side of the sky to the other, and Aragorn knew that he should muster his wits before it grew too late to orient himself. Somehow he could not quite manage it, as though his mind had warped and cramped along with his frozen body. He could no longer feel his feet where they pressed against the nearby branch, and his back was curled into a huddled stoop against the worst of the wind. His arms seemed melded to his ribs, and his tucked hands were curled into numb and yet burning fists. The edge of the Lórien-blanket was stiff where it curled up to his throat and around his head, and his eyebrows and his forelocks and his beard were all choked with rime. He blinked, and crystals of frost tumbled down onto his cheekbones.

He could not raise his head to look for Gollum. Though he tried, the muscles in his neck seemed carved of stone and they would not yield. He tried again to seek out the dim glow of dawn and found that by turning his shoulders he could scan a wider area. It seemed that he was perched on the southeastern side of the tree. Southeastern, and he wanted a northeasterly course. That was simple enough.

He moved his stiff and stinging lips, trying to form words that might be heard against the wailing of the wind. If dawn had brought any surcease in the storm he could not hear it. Still the snow whipped frenetically and still the trees rocked and groaned and cracked about him. He could not think why he had been fool enough to shelter in a pine: surely he would have been just as guarded by its boughs if he had bedded down among the roots, and then he would not have this frightening deadness across the backs of his thighs where his weight was pressed against the bough.

Then he remembered, as one remembers a fragment of ancient lore learned once and then long forgotten. The wargs. Howling, prowling, hunting even in the throes of the blizzard. Hunting him, perhaps – perhaps some other unfortunate. It scarcely mattered. It was enough that if they had found him and his captive there would have been bloodshed, and he doubted his ability to lie low an entire pack as poorly armed as he was.

Finally his left leg obeyed him, and slid free of the branch to dangle below. The motion rocked his chilled body and for a moment he was certain that he would fall. Yet somehow his balance held and he tried to make the right leg do as its partner had done.

There was a shower of thick clumps of snow, falling from the ends of the branches and thankfully not onto Aragorn's head. Gollum came slithering down to perch beside the Ranger's lodged boot. His lips were blue and his eyes rimmed in red, and he was shivering; but he seemed as limber as ever and not much the worse for his wretched night. He stared at the Man with his bright, malicious eyes, and Aragorn knew that he could not sit here any longer proclaiming his weakness to his captive. A final determined push into strained muscles caused his right foot to slip from its bracing place. He had intended to lower it gently beside the left, but it seemed that he lacked the strength or the control to do so. It fell, leaden and lifeless, and swung with the force of its own inertia.

It was enough to send him toppling from the tree.

He landed in the snow with stunning force that drove the breath from his lungs in a great hot cloud and left him for a moment utterly unmanned, unable even to draw in new air. Then he gasped, and the terrible cold that flooded through his chest brought him perilously near to unconsciousness and raised a flood of water in his eyes. He did not even hear the shriek as Gollum, tugged by the rope that bound them, came tumbling after him. Thankfully he had been facing Aragorn at the crucial moment, and the halter's knot had been dangling between his clavicles, for he was neither strangled nor hung by the force of the Ranger's fall. Still it was with murderous malevolence that he glowered at his fallen jailor as Aragorn lay in a crumpled heap in snow that had managed to drift even into the refuge at the foot of the pine, and struggled to fight off the swoon that wanted to swallow him.

In the end he managed it, by subsisting on slow, shallow breaths and reminding himself mercilessly that he had no intention of driving himself to death on this journey and that to faint away in such a storm with its dreadful cold would certainly be his undoing. When at last he somehow got his elbows planted beneath him so that he might lift his head out of the snow, Gollum's hatred had faded a little into a sort of skittish unease. No doubt he feared that if the wargs should return while he was tethered to this mass of bones and frozen flesh, he would be slain before he could manage to escape.

Aragorn tried again to speak, but though this time his lips moved no sound issued from them. His throat seemed locked with the cold, and it would not suffer speech to pass. He focused instead on attempting to gain his feet. The effort was inelegant and tortured, but he managed it at last despite the bright agony that flared up in knees and hips when he attempted to straighten them out of the narrow angles they had kept through the night. His back he could not wholly extend. It was as if the bones of his spine had frozen together like small floes of ice when winter deepens sufficiently to cover a lake in solid white glass. Bowed and in far more pain than he would have expected, Aragorn drew his arms back in to the poor protection of his makeshift and increasingly ragged cloak and forced his wooden hands into the shelter of his arm-pits.

He looked up at the tree, straining his neck agonizingly to do so. The branch from which he had fallen had lost all of its snow, clearly marking it from his fellows. It was a wonder that neither he nor Gollum had struck any of the others as they crashed to earth. If that branch was on the southeastern side of the tree, then he wanted to turn a little to his left before he began to walk.

If standing had been a trial, walking was a torment. Every step, scarcely felt in his feet and ankles, sent jarring anguish through his knees and into his hips, and so up in to the fiddle-curve of his stiffened back. He moved with terrible slowness at first, fighting the storm with every step, and somehow Gollum shuffled after him. He seemed reluctant to bury his hands in the snow, and in this air Aragorn could not blame him for that. It was frightfully cold; colder even than it had been on the night after their calamity at the River Gladden. The lashing wind only served to make him feel colder, but his exhausted muscles had little strength for shivering. Instead of constant steady shaking he was overtaken time and again by crippling tremors that seemed to thrum into the very fibre of his bones and left him breathless and tottering.

Yet somehow, miraculously, he did not fall, and slowly the strain of moving began to warm him a little. Not that he felt warm; no, not at all. But at least he knew that he was not quite so dangerously cold. He pushed himself as much as he dared, for he feared to raise a sweat almost as much as he feared to swoon from pain or enervation. If he managed to get himself wet on such a fearsome day as this, he would surely die of exposure.

With the blizzard still driving there was no trouble over Yellow Face, and Aragorn walked on with his charge hopping from one dragging footprint to the next. Though the Ranger tried to avoid the deep drifts, so much snow had fallen – driven not downward but at an angle nearly parallel to the ground – that this was almost impossible. Once he reached a clearing full of new growth, where there had plainly been a forest blaze two summers past, where the snow spilled over the tops of his boots and nearly reached his knees. In this Gollum was almost buried. If he had not had the Man before him, toiling to break a trail, he would have been unable to go on.

But go on they did, and finally Aragorn found that he could work his fingers a little, and open them out of their loose frigid fists. When this happened he began to look for a likely pine, and using the corner of his blanket to guard his hand from the deadly chill of the steel he drew his knife. He cut his marks clumsily and not at all straight, and chipped away with fumbling nails at the inner bark. He gave some to Gollum and took what he could hold in the crook of an elbow for himself. As he walked he ate, though at first he had to struggle just to force his jaw to work in the cold. A fine trickle of heat touched his lip as he did so: his right nostril, bleeding again.

Ere dusk began to gather the land began to rise, and Aragorn quickened his pace as much as he dared. If he did not reach the Old Forest Road before nightfall he would have to wait for dawn to be sure the way was safe, and he did not like his chances of remaining unfrozen huddled in a ditch. Gollum seemed resentful of the haste, but he did not balk and he did not protest. Like as not he, too, knew their peril in this unrelenting storm.

Aragorn came at last to a break in the trees, about fifty feet in breadth but running off both west and east in a gently curving corridor. It could only be the Road, but the snow had buried it in shifting unbroken drifts so that it was indistinguishable from the land about. Sheltering from sight amid a tangle of brambles Aragorn crouched, scanning the branches of the trees about him and then squinting against the swirling snow and ice to try to do the same on the other side. He could not see well even at so short a distance in this miserable storm, but that was in fact not entirely to his advantage. If his sight was hampered, so would be the gaze of any watcher that might have been set to guard the road. It was indeed possible that even such sentries would have laid by their duties to take shelter until the blizzard passed, trusting that their prey would have enough sense to do the same.

Before he could succumb to the cold or to his fears, he sprung up and scurried as hastily as he could across the swath of open country. His boots struck snow hard-packed beneath this day's loose cover, and he was on the road itself now. Gollum scurried after him, looking warily left and right himself. But next they were stumbling and slipping down a shallow slope into the far ditch, and then they were back in the shelter of the trees. The road kept a true west-east line, or near enough, and Aragorn took his bearings from it and struck out with greater confidence, still moving northeastward towards the Carrock.

lar

He dared not halt that night, for although the winds laid by their whirling madness with the coming of the dark and settled in to a steady westward gale the cold did not abate, nor did the snow. Aragorn tried in vain to be grateful, but though he knew that both would serve to bury any signs of his crossing of the road he yearned only to be warm again. Or if not warm, for he had not truly known warmth since departing Lothlórien, at least not so wretchedly, relentlessly, blindingly cold. He could not feel his arms to well above the wrists, though at last light he had checked his fingers and yet seen no signs of deep white frostbite upon them. He supposed this too might be counted a small mercy, but in truth it only filled him with a quiet, sickening fear born in his healer's mind. He could not even bear to think of Gollum's unshod feet in the snow; how the creature managed to keep on through these conditions he could not guess.

His latest attempt to harvest a little food for them both had failed. Though the knife was hatefully cold even through a woollen buffer he could use it, but his fingers scrabbled uselessly over the inner bark and he could not peel it away. He had tried to dig it out with the point of the blade, but had succeeded only in gouging deep into the tree and very nearly lopping off his own thumb when his hand slipped unexpectedly on a second pass. He had abandoned the effort. He would walk on hungry if he had to, but he could not risk an unwitting amputation.

For all that he had slept some hours before the storm and Gollum's agitation had wakened him the previous night, the urge to give way to slumber kept coming over him in deep somniferous waves that seemed almost too delicious to resist. This, he knew, was the alluring song of the cold, and he fought it with every shred of his will and every artifice available to him.

He scolded himself silently, his mind running through all those voices that had ever had occasion to upbraid him. Master Elrond chided tenderly, in the patient voice of a loving father who was trying all the while to impart some essential lesson. Gandalf blustered, hiding his care and concern in his lectures. His mother, startled and perhaps saddened, spoke very quickly and intently. Elrohir laughed, hoping to make his words stick with the paste of embarrassment, while Elladan kept a stern and sombre but very gentle face. Halbarad was quiet but unyielding in his disapproval, at times scathingly sarcastic. Barliman Butterbur of Bree gusted and huffed and let his criticism come out in long, rambling speeches which he clearly thought disguised his firm opinions. And Denethor, the other half of Ecthelion's matched pair of champions, dressed him down with the wrath of a prince belittling the lowliest soldier for some act of unthinkable stupidity. But all of them in their different ways were urging the same thing: to walk, to wake, to keep from giving in to the pleas of his weary body and the sweet song of the storm.

When this began to fail, he sought for a song. He wanted very much to sing of warm things: of hearths and warm drinks, summer nights and beds heaped high with blankets, of fur mantles and cosy hobbit-holes, of the bright brilliance of the Sun or the blaze of dragon-fire that had devoured Gondolin or of the fires of Mount Doom itself. Yet all that he could think of were the songs of ice and chill and cheerlessness: the Man in the Moon and his cheerless supper, the journey of the Noldor across the Helcaraxë, hoarfrost upon the beeches in Imladris, the cold stubborn heart of Queen Erendis, and dank and bitter mountain caves where strange creeping creatures dwelt.

So he tried running through mathematical problems in his head, but he could not muster enough intelligence to contrive or remember any truly difficult ones. The plodding pace of the numbers in his mind fell in with the rhythm of his feet and the bolts of pain that he could now only feel in his hips, and it threatened to lull him to sleep of its own accord without any help at all from the storm. After that he simply walked on, unthinking and increasingly unfeeling as the storm blew on around him and the snow continued to fall.

And somehow, remarkably, Gollum still walked with him.

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It was in the forenoon of the third day when at last the wind died away, having driven off the clouds and their steadily falling snow. The silence that fell then was both strange and terrible; as haunting in its own way as the dead hush of the Ephel Dúath. Above the trees the sun shone brightly, and where their branches allowed the light to fall upon the frozen crust of the drifts, the snow glittered like fields of scattered adamant beneath the frosty air.

Aragorn was too weary to appreciate this glacial beauty, and Gollum too weary to protest against the light. They toiled on together, the Ranger fighting to break his narrow path and the prisoner loping almost on his heels. They must have made a miserable sight, Aragorn thought. His back was still bowed like that of an old man, the chilled muscles unable to straighten his crooked spine. His stride had shrunk to a shuffling hobble. He had the blanket pulled snug about his chest, trapped near his sides by his elbows because his hands could not grasp any longer. One side was still drawn up over his head like a milkmaid's shawl, and the simple brass brooch clasped the whole arrangement in place near his throat. Behind him Gollum was a twisted wreck, whimpering as he went and taking it in turns to lift one of his four limbs out of the snow as he hopped along. The bright cruel gleam of his eyes was dimmed to grim resignation and dulled with the stupor of cold, and Aragorn was certain that his own eyes had lost their light. They were both worn ragged with exhaustion, unfed and ill-watered (for drinking from his cold bottle was a torment in such weather, and Gollum shunned his usual helping of snow), and frozen almost to the limit of what living flesh could bear.

Thus they came, wretched and driven beyond their endurance, to the edge of the first farmstead that bordered the Town at Carrock.

In the years of prosperity that had come to these lands after the fall of the Dragon and the restoration of the dwarves to their ancestral halls in Erebor, the scattered folk of northern Wilderland had gathered together. Beorn the skin-changer had been their leader in those days, and a little upstream of his ford had sprung a town. Placed so advantageously for travel and trade, it had flourished. More than once in his long travels had Aragorn passed this way, and the growth of the community and the increasing security and comfort of its residents had always been a source of hope to him. His own people were now as the Beornings had been: a dwindling and hidden race, dwelling in small villages scattered through the wilds. If such a place as the Town at Carrock could thrive even in a world besmirched by the Shadow, there was sure hope of rebuilding the cities of the North if ever the fall of Sauron might be achieved.

Aragorn had last come this way almost sixteen years ago, on the journey to Mirkwood to pick up the cold trail of the creature now staggering in his wake. Then, travelling with Gandalf, he had passed the night at a pleasant inn before making an easy crossing on the ferry to the Carrock itself, from which a clear eastward fording was possible over the far leg of Anduin where it spread about the isle. The Beornings he had found to be a stalwart and friendly people – a little suspicious of strange travellers, perhaps, but Gandalf was well known to them and his good words had carried much weight. Yet Gandalf was not with him now, and he did not have the comfortable purse of coin that he had carried on that journey. He knew he could not reasonably hope for such a courteous welcome this time.

Still he had to cross Anduin, and therefore he must somehow enlist their aid or else go back southward apace and attempt to swim the river again. This he did not dare do, for the cold was many times what he had braved in his more southerly crossing, and he was weakened by hunger and weariness. He did not think that he would have the strength to keep from floundering.

Thus he trudged onward, past distant farmhouses battened tightly against the cold, their stout chimneys blowing streams of pale wood-smoke. At last, when he was beginning to think that he had lost his way entirely, a dark mass appeared off to his right; far enough that he had to turn southeast to put it squarely in his path. As he drew nearer he could see the shape of the town wall. It was made of the trunks of great firs, bared of their branches but left with their bark and driven deep into piling-holes in the earth. The tops of the trunks had been cut to a uniform height and sharpened to tapered points. Scaling such a wall was all but impossible, and it stood sturdy against all weapons but fire. As the Beornings' chief enemies were the wild wolves and the mountain wargs, it was effective protection for their town.

The road that led to the gate wound off to the south, where it joined with the Old Forest Road somewhere east of where Aragorn had crossed it. He cut his way through the snow-drifts and climbed to the surer ground of the road. Its snow was not much broken, but at least one cart had passed this way since the storm's end that morning, and he settled his unfeeling feet into one of its wheel-ruts. It seemed a tremendous relief to walk without fighting for every step, and he managed a somewhat quicker pace here. It was drawing on to sunset.

The town gates were open, drawn in and tied off to the posts that supported the inner edge of the simple wooden allure on which no sentries walked today in the terrible cold. Sensible for their bodies, if not for the defence of the town, the guardsmen were gathered in the lower room of one of the wooden towers that flanked the gate. The door at least was open wide, and one man had his tall spear to hand. The others were lounging on the wooden benches or leaning on the walls. A deep charcoal brazier stood in their midst, its iron struts glowing orange about the edges with the heat of the blaze.

Aragorn halted some yards from the gate and bent to take up the greater length of Gollum's tether. It took him three attempts to make his frozen left hand obey him, but finally he had a grip on the rope that he knew was true only because it forced Gollum to fall into step close by his boot. Then he straightened his aching back as much as he possibly could and drew near. He waited for one of the guards to come out to waylay him; to demand his business in the town, to ask what arms he carried, to assure themselves that he was not a danger to their folk. But though the one bearing the spear peered out at him with scrutinizing eyes he said nothing. Aragorn drew nearer still.

He was straight beside the door now, and he could see that in the outward corner two men were sitting at a small table playing at draughts while the others offered their advice on the game and passed around an earthenware flagon that gave off faint steam from its mouth. Certain that he was about to be stopped, the Ranger hoped miserably that he could force his chilled vocal chords to work. If he could not speak to offer what reassurances he could, he might be forced to dig down in the snow for his night's meagre shelter, for he could not walk on without the means to cross the Great River. He took another step, and then another. The joints of his hips seemed to grind with the pain of the motion, and at his side Gollum shambled sullenly. But the chatting men did not bestir themselves, and the one with the spear merely looked him over from head to foot with a sort of pitying disdain and then turned back to remark upon the game in the corner.

Taken for a beggar, then, Aragorn thought as he limped past the threshold of the gate and into the town itself. He managed a few steps in appreciation of his remarkable luck before remembering in numb dawning surprise that he had not just been taken for a beggar, but was one. His garments were in rags and his boots were cracked and leaking. He had no pack, no food, no supplies of any kind, and he had not had money in his hand since his southward journey more than a year ago. He walked with a companion who was the very picture of miserable penury, and if they were to have any hope at all of continuing this journey it would be on the strength of the charity of these folk. It was not at all a heartening thought.

There were few people abroad in this cold, but those that were went forth warmly bundled in thick woollen clothing and hurried about their errands with little attention to spare for the tattered Ranger and his captive. Aragorn followed the road from the gate, trying and failing to recall whether it would take him all the way down to the east water-gate that opened on the ferry-landing. He did not know how he might possibly pay the ferryman, but he would have to manage something. He was certainly desperate enough to avoid another swim. He would manage something.

The street he was on opened up on the town square, neat cobblestoned space with a covered well and troughs for horses. There was more activity here: bearded men and ruddy-cheeked women moving from shop to shop, and sturdy healthy children running about in the snow with their scarves flying. Bright-mittened hands scooped up fistfuls of snow which they tried to toss at one another, but the cold was too great and the balls would not hold their shape. Instead the children sent off showers of glistening powder from their hands, uttering delighted golden laughs that seemed to ring in the air.

It was that sound that made Aragorn halt, Gollum shrinking in beside him and staring warily in every direction at once. That sound; the laughter of happy children. He could not remember when he had last heard it. Even sweet little Osbehrt and his bold sister Annis had not laughed in his hearing. It was the very noise of innocence, of elemental joy. It brought a hot film to his stinging eyes and put a cavernous ache in his weary chest. Loneliness so great that it seemed it would consume him entirely drained the last of the heat from his near-frozen body and left him an icy statue at the edge of the square.

Someone was speaking and he tried to muster himself. 'Your pardon?' he croaked, his lips managing to form the words after all though their noise was unlovely.

A broad-shouldered young man still wearing his first beard was standing with bolt of flannel on one hip and a firm hand on the other. 'I said you look lost, stranger. Can I help you along?'

'Help me…' Aragorn mumbled stupidly. A child laughed again and he tried to close his ears to the sound. The pain of it was too great. 'I am cold,' he whispered. He glanced at Gollum, cowering by his boot and looking up at the youth with wide, uncertain eyes. 'We are cold.'

The boy chuckled, a rich and hearty chuckle that was nonetheless not quite the torment of the children's happy cries. 'I should think you would be, dressed like that in this weather. Are you mad, or simply careless?'

Aragorn found himself looking down in spite of himself, at the frosty blanket tucked clumsily about his arms and the tattered hem of his cote which had never, even when new, been warm enough for such a winter; at his patched hose and his failing boots. 'I have not been fortunate,' he said. 'I have travelled far and I am hungry. Please, where might I find a little to eat?'

The young man took the hand from his hip and used it to clap Aragorn's shoulder. He was a tall lad, and this did so without too much stretching. 'It's Kvigir you want. Bakehouse just there on the left – see the shingle? Or if you've a spare copper or two you could always get a hot meal from Afvald down at the inn. I'm headed there myself if you'd like to follow.'

'Thank you, no,' said Aragorn, no less hoarsely than before. 'I have no coin to spare. I will go to see Kvigir.'

With a nod and a shrug the boy sauntered away, and Aragorn's eyes travelled to the tall, slate-shingled shop that he had pointed out. As he dragged his weary feet across the square towards it he was suddenly struck by the warm and almost overwhelming scent of fresh-baked bread, laced thickly with another sweet aroma that he could not immediately place. Together they set his mouth flooding and his shrivelled stomach roiling. Even Gollum did not seem wholly immune to its influence, for he stopped short until the rope tugged at his neck, and walked on when he had to with his nostrils flared and his eyes glinting greedily. Somehow Aragorn reached the door to the bakehouse and managed to get it open.

The warmth within struck him in a wave and the toothsome fragrances were suddenly overpowering. His right foot caught on the threshold and he stumbled across it with very little dignity at all. As the door swung shut behind the travellers, they found themselves in a large stone-walled room that seemed to occupy most of the first floor of the shop. There were shelves to one side, laden with baked goods that Aragorn did not even dare to look at. He focused instead on the far side of the room, where a huge brick oven glowed bright with the heat of the fire within and a muscular man with a bushy black beard stood with his feet planted wide before a high work-table. He was kneading a massive ball of dough, and beside him sat rows of new-shaped loaves waiting their turn to bake.

The man looked up with a broad, friendly smile on his face. 'What can we be getting for you today, sir? Some honey-cakes, perhaps, or some wee manchet loaves for the supper table? Or I have…'

His voice trailed away as he took in the dishevelled stranger and his curious companion, and the smile faded to a suspicious scowl.

'Here now,' he said, all the welcome gone from his voice. 'What do you want?'

Note: The popularity of Norse, well, everything around here has never been more useful. Who would have thought? Together we conquer after all.

Chapter XLVI: The Baker and the Ferryman

The heat of the shop had still not quite penetrated the first layer of pernicious cold that clung to Aragorn's flesh and bones and very heart, but the scent of the bread was almost more than he could bear. It tantalized his nose and it tormented his tongue and it seemed likely to be the downfall of his pinched stomach. Further, it kept encroaching on his thoughts – which were already muddled enough by cold and weariness and the overwhelming sensations of being inside a dwelling of Men for the first time in many, many months. The stone walls were at once confining and comforting. There was a sense of togetherness here, in this place where a family lived and worked and laughed together, that both eased and redoubled the ache of his heart. In the addled moments after the ungracious question had been uttered, Aragorn seemed to notice a dozen small details of the workroom all at once. There was firewood neatly stacked to either side of the great bake-oven: enough to burn for many days, and to fuel small campfires for weeks or months. Huge barrels of flour and sugar stood near at hand, along with a pair of large earthenware pots surely filled with milk, jugs of honey and a neatly organized spice-box. The baker's sleeves were rolled high above his elbows, and his strong forearms were dusted with flour. Even staring at the incomers as he was, his hands kept working the dough with the skill that only long daily practice can bring. There was a little desk with a set of counters and a money-box near the back of the room, and on the floor beside it – forgotten, perhaps, in its owner's eagerness to hurry out into the fresh snow after three days' confinement in the storm – was a rag doll wearing a trailing red gown.

The baker, Kvigir if the boy in the square had spoken rightly, was still watching Aragorn with hard, suspicious eyes. Trying to drive the distractions from his mind, the Ranger coughed shallowly in hopes of clearing his cold-stiffened throat.

'Forgive me, good sir,' he said. His voice was still hoarse, coarsened by the chill and by much disuse. He swallowed painfully against the resolute flow of spittle brought on by the alien aromas of wholesome, nourishing food. 'A young man without directed me here in hopes of something to eat.'

'Did he, now?' Kvigir said cautiously. 'What young man would that be, then?'

'I did not ask his name,' said Aragorn. 'He was a tall youth, broad-shouldered, with dark hair and a new beard.'

A guarded chuckle came from the baker's lips as he punched down the dough and turned it again. 'That description would fit half the young men in the countryside,' he said. 'The other half are fair or coppery. I'm afraid that recommendation will serve you little. Still, if you've coin to buy then I'm happy to sell. Can't be too choosey in dark times like these: more folk than ever taking the westward road, but fewer each month with money to spend, it seems.' His tone implied that he thought, and rightly enough, that this traveller looked like one of that undesirable sort.

When a man went a-begging, Aragorn had long ago discovered, it was best to be both forthright and brief. 'Alas, I have no money,' he said. 'My companion and I have travelled long by hard and lonely roads, and we have not eaten since the first dawn of the storm that has just passed. I had hoped perhaps you might have some old bread that you would see fit to give us in pity's name.'

Kvigir's heavy black brows furrowed perplexedly. 'You've a silver tongue for a beggar, man,' he said. 'And those boots have seen better days, but they've a fit you didn't take from a corpse or buy from a cobbler. Tell me who you are, and what sort of a creature that is you're leading, and we'll see if there's any old bread going. I'll save my pity for my own people, thank you, but for a good tale on a cold day I might find a crust to spare.'

'A tale I can give you,' said Aragorn. His voice was faltering, for now at last the warmth was starting to find its way through his rags and deep warning tremors had started in his chest. In another few minutes he would be quaking uncontrollably, teeth chattering and hands shaking as his chilled blood began to move again. 'But not that one. I am a stranger born beyond the mountains, and my companion is my affair. As you have rightly said these are dark times, and I cannot be free with my name.'

The look of intrigued puzzlement darkened into a deep, resentful scowl. 'So that's how it is,' the baker grumbled. 'I'm to be generous with my hearth and my wares, while you keep your secrets and give nothing in return. I think you'll find them that has to grovel for their daily fare are more successful when they don't act as if they're the ones doling out favours!'

Aragorn's tired mind was struggling to find the words for a fitting apology that would not place him under any obligation to betray himself when the door to the shop opened and a pair of little girls came tumbling in. They were dressed in warm woollen kirtles and the short sleeveless overdresses that the women of this land favoured, and over these they had thick hoods and capes lined with wolf-fur – for the Beornings as a rule hunted only those beasts that meant harm to them or their flocks. One had red mittens and the other yellow, and despite their matching mufflers their cheeks were rosy from the cold. They were perhaps a year and a half apart in age: Aragorn would have made them six and not-quite-eight.

Suddenly the room was aflood with laughter and eager gabbling as the girls stamped the snow from their sturdy felted shoes and unwrapped one another's scarves and tossed their little capes in a heap by the door. Kvigir gathered his dough into a mound and covered it with a damp napkin, then brushed his floury hands and rounded the table so that he could kneel and take a girl in each large arm.

'Is that so, now?' he asked, speaking in response to something the younger one had said over her sister's happy prattle. 'And did you tell him how he ought to be using it?'

The child giggled and bobbed her head so that her unruly black curls danced. Her sister donned an impish smile and leaned forward to whisper in the baker's ear. He frowned thoughtfully for a moment, clearly playing upon her anticipation, and then nodded.

'Aye, go on, then,' he said. 'But don't tell your mother or she'll think I've put you off your supper.'

'Don't be silly, Da,' the girl laughed. 'I'm hungry enough to eat a wagon.'

'She means a dragon,' said the smaller one. 'I said that: I said "I'm hungry enough to eat a dragon!".'

'I do not either mean "dragon",' said her sister. 'I mean "wagon", hitching-pins and all! I'm hungrier than you are because I'm older.'

'I'm hungrier than you are because I'm littler! I've got a smaller tum, now haven't I?' the other contradicted. Their father laughed and got to his feet, one broad hand upon each small head.

'Now, now,' he said; 'after tumbling all afternoon in the snow I should think you're both near as hungry as this saucy fellow, and you had best start quarrelling before your mother comes down and insists you wait for your meal!'

When he said this he jerked his head in Aragorn's direction, and the girls seemed to notice the stranger for the first time. They both looked up at him, brown eyes wide as millstones. Then the older one looked down at Gollum and shrieked.

'What is it, Da?' she cried. 'Oh, what is it, what is it? It's horrid!' She bolted like a startled hare and hid herself behind the money-desk, peering out from around it with one frightened eye.

The younger girl wrinkled her nose and smoothed her skirts primly. 'It stinks,' she said in a very matter-of-fact tone.

Gollum, who had been tense and wary since Aragorn had first drawn near the town, now glowered fiercely and bared his sparse teeth at the child. Affronted, she planted her hands on her hips in a gesture oddly reminiscent of the young man in the square, and stuck out her tongue at him. Gollum goggled at her, utterly taken aback by the girl's temerity.

'Now, Dryffa, that's not a comely face for a maiden to put on,' her father scolded fondly. 'It's true that it does stink, and it's certainly not welcome here, but you must remember your manners anyhow. Now go and fetch a cake for yourself and one for your sister, and you can go back into the storeroom and eat them before you go upstairs.'

'Yes, Da,' little Dryffa said sweetly. She stood up on the tips of her toes and Kvigir leaned down for a kiss, then tickled her cheeks with his whiskers and sent her trotting towards the shelves of wares with a gentle tap in the small of her back. With tremendous solemnity and almost exaggerated care, she took two sticky-looking honey-cakes from a tray heaped high with them, and rounded the desk to offer one to her sister. Then the pair of them retreated through a door in the wall to the left of the entrance and the two men – and Gollum – were left alone in the front of the shop.

'You have b-beautiful children,' Aragorn said, softly and with all his heart. His teeth were starting to click now as the shivering began in earnest, and he tried with what was left of his strength to keep from shuddering visibly.

Where a similar remark to the lady of the Rohirrim had softened her eyes, it seemed here to harden those of the bearded baker. The kindliness he had offered his daughters vanished entirely and he glared at the Ranger.

'See here,' he said. 'You've come into my shop without means to buy anything, wasting my time and putting on airs about your name, and that I can just about excuse because a man's not himself when he's starved and I can see you've not had much to be going on with for some time now. But that thing you've got with you has frightened my Katrín, and that I can't abide. What's more it's putting a reek in the air, and you're not so fair-smelling yourself. Day-old loaves are a copper each, and two-day bread's three for a penny. If you haven't got a penny that's none of my affair: anything left beyond two days I give to old Einarr's widow and her little grandsons, whose father was killed by bandits three years back. I'm not taking food from the mouths of my own folk just to give it to a worthless vagabond, so I suggest you get on your way before I lose my patience and turf you out!'

Aragorn's back straightened by several degrees more than he would have thought possible five minutes before, but it was not the stern words or the refusal of his ignominious request that made him do so. He felt more ashamed now than he had at any time since the terrible day when he had despaired of the hunt and turned defeated eyes to the north. He lowered his eyes and bowed his head.

'Your pardon, good sir,' he said softly. 'Whatever my need I would not take that which was meant for a poor woman and the orphans in her care. I thank you for your courtesy and for the warmth of your fire, and I bid you good day. May your daughters grow in health and beauty, and your shop always prosper even in dark times.'

He turned, rather awkwardly because Gollum seemed reluctant to shift, and hobbled on feet that were still numb and frozen for the door. His clumsy chilled fingers fumbled with the latch, but he managed somehow to get it open and tried not to flinch as the bitter air struck his face and a core that had only just begun to warm a little.

'Wait—' Kvigir barked, and Aragorn looked back over his shoulder. Strange, muddled emotions were warring on the baker's face as he stared at the intruder as though he had only just truly seen him. No doubt he had expected angry words and fierce imprecations to follow his refusal of alms, and when they had not come he seemed at a loss. But at last he shook his head and wafted an uneasy hand and said gruffly; 'Go on, begone, and take that wretched thing with you.'

Aragorn nodded quietly and stepped back out into the ache of the winter evening.

lar

Not wishing to force the man to drive him away again, Aragorn stumbled down the two stone steps before the shop and shuffled away to the mouth of the alley beside it. There was a barrel here, positioned to catch the rain from the eaves in more clement months but now half-filled with ice. He bent his weary knees so that he could brace himself against its rim and take some of his weight off of his legs. Those few minutes in the heat of the bakehouse had been worse than no warmth at all, for the parts of him that had begun to thaw now rebelled with all their might against the cold to which they had almost become accustomed. His eyes, all but used to being rimmed in fine ice, watered afresh and stung him cruelly. The tremors in the muscles of his chest and the deep ache in his ribs redoubled so that he had to clutch himself not only to keep the blanket in place, but to maintain an upright position. The tip of his nose was tingling fiercely, as were his lips and the lobes of his ears. And the little rivulets of melt-water from his hair and his beard began to freeze again, tugging at the skin of his face and neck.

At his feet, Gollum seemed to be undergoing similar torments. He squatted so that only his toes and the balls of his feet were in the snow, and he wrapped the twigs of his arms around bony legs so that the great knobs of his knees were drawn up over his chin. He rocked there at the end of his lead, muttering miserably to himself. Though he did not want to listen, Aragorn found himself picking out the words anyhow.

'… nice eggses, precious, all in a row and wanted by no one. But does we get them, gollum? Does we take them and break them and suck out their insides? No, no, we're tied and we're trapped and we're hungry, preciousss. We works so hard, walking in the snow and the ice and the cold, and nothing to show for it, no, nothing at all. Nothing but cold toeses and cold noses and poor cold handses, pretty handses, gollum, all blue and hurting. Stupid great manses, takes us away into the cold again, curse him. Nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep and no nice dark holes to hide in. Nothing but snowses and Yellow Face and poor empty bellies, gollum. Nothing, nothing at all…'

Yellow Face at least was sinking: the square was stained in hues of gold and orange and crimson, and the shopkeepers were beginning to shutter their windows for the night. Aragorn watched these simple, homey chores because he dreaded to think about anything else. He was too exhausted to face his troubles, and yet face them he must. With dark coming on he had no chance of meeting the ferry that day, which meant he would have to spend the night in the village. He did not expect any of the other merchants would take more kindly to him than the baker had, and he in any case he was not of a mind to try. The mention of the old woman and her grandsons had struck him deeply: it was as well that the man had proved suspicious and reluctant, for Aragorn would never have wished to deprive her of her bread. Though his need was great there were others with greater needs and more pressing responsibilities. He might be obliged to feed his belligerent prisoner, but that was nothing to the duty and the worry of keeping small children fed and healthy.

Still, he thought, begging for little boys was surely easier than begging with Gollum. Alone he might have gone in search of the inn. He had known a landlord or two willing to give a hungry traveller the leavings from the plates of paying customers, particularly in exchange for performing some hard or menial task they did not want to bully their own workers into doing. On a cold night such as this there were surely such chores in abundance: drawing water or hewing wood, mucking out the stalls of the stables or climbing the roof to put right a leaking slate. But with Gollum in tow Aragorn was not much use as a labourer, and he would certainly not be welcome in the chimney-corner of a cheerful common-room. He might try knocking at the back doors of the more prosperous homes in the town, but though his chance of a crust or a helping of pottage would be slightly better there than at the inn, the chance of a warm place to rest would be less. And it was warmth he needed more urgently than food, or he might not last the night penned up in the town walls with nowhere to walk to keep himself from freezing.

Above him a shutter in the upper story of the bakehouse came flying open with a bang. He did not trouble to look up, but he could not help but hear the effervescent laughter from within and the low hum of a chiding voice.

'But Mam, it's so hot in here!' Dryffa's merry tongue protested. 'The oven makes it ever so hot!'

'That's as may be, but close the window and come and sit!' a woman argued with loving impatience. 'Letting in the night air is all very well when it's not likely to freeze the water in the washbasin, but tonight—'

The sound was cut off abruptly as the shutter was pulled closed again, but Aragorn had heard what he needed. He was a fool for sitting here, stupid with the cold, on the wrong wall of the bakehouse. If he was going to loiter about grappling with his troubles, he might at least do so in a better spot. He dragged himself back onto his unfeeling feet and took a hamfisted hold on the rope again.

'Come along,' he mumbled, though he knew his words were wasted on Gollum. Then he turned his back on the little town square and started down into the gloom of the alley.

The snow had drifted against the wall of the building, and Aragorn walked where it was shallowest. He rounded the corner and had to fight the urge to sink to his knees in abject relief. The stone façade of the building was broken by a large dome of brick that protruded out from the rest of the wall and rose into a fat, towering chimney. It was the back of the baker's oven and the stack that vented its lower chamber where the wood-fire was laid. All about it was a ring of bare packed earth where the snow could not take hold because of the heat that bled through the brick day and night.

Aragorn moved to where stone and brick met, and lowered his weary body to the ground with the aid of the wall. He drew into the corner as snugly as he could and he twisted his body so that he could press his shoulder and his flank and the whole length of his right leg against the rough surface. The oven was well-made and doubtless insulated with a double layer of brick, but the embers within burned so hot that it could not help but radiate some measure off the warmth within. Aragorn felt exhausted muscles releasing a little as his body curled instinctively around the wall of the kiln. He turned his face inward that he might rest his brow and his right cheek against it. The blanket he tugged as close about his exposed left side as he could manage, and then let himself rest, sheltered from the faint twilight wind and warmed a little at last. He longed to press his frozen palms to the bricks, but his hands were curled into blue cold-stiffened talons and try as he might he could not quite force his fingers to uncurl enough to allow it. So he set his knuckles to the wall instead and felt the awful numbness retreat a pace or two.

At first Gollum had been staring at the Ranger as if he had at last taken leave of his senses. Then, when he recognized what the Man was doing he too came near and curled against the bricks. So they sat as night gathered. Soon Aragorn was shivering violently and incessantly, and the waste-heat of the bakery was not enough to do more for him than that. But he could feel the ache in his hands again, and that meant they had thawed at least a little, and the numbness below his knees retreated almost to his ankles.

He meant to rouse himself, truly he did: to solve the problems of food and shelter and to seek out some better place to pass the night. But after so long in the cold emptiness of the wild this simple warm wall was too much comfort to abandon merely so that he could wander out into dark and friendless streets. So he huddled there, drifting in and out of half-waking dreams filled with the laughter of children – not the dauntless merry children of the Beornings, but small grey-eyed darlings all his own; little daughters with their mother's silken hair and her graceful dancing limbs, one tall maiden with wise and knowing eyes and the smile of her grandsire, and a strong and noble son with the courage of his kindred.

lar

Daylight came at last and found the pair of strange beggars still sheltered in the alley, gleaning the warmth of the bake-oven. It was torture to force his sore limbs to lift him and to tear his body away from that blessed heat, but somehow Aragorn managed it. His stomach was snarling wrathfully, egged on by the scent of the morning's loaves upon the cold air, but he did his utmost to ignore it. Another day's hunger would not be his death, and today he had harder labours to see to than begging for food. Somehow or other, he had to talk his way across to the Carrock, when he had no more coin to pay the ferryman than he had had to spend on bread the night before.

Gollum snarled when Aragorn began to walk, just as reluctant as his escort to abandon the small comfort of the wall, but he came before the rope could draw too tight. The morning's business was just commencing in the square, and Aragorn waylaid a prosperous-looking man in a heavy fringed coat to ask for directions to the water-gate.

'Just down that street; follow it all the way to its end,' the man said, looking from Aragorn to Gollum and back. 'But he'll not be abroad at this hour, and in any case he'll be wanting to know you can pay for his services.'

'Yes, of course,' said Aragorn with far more confidence than he felt. 'I thank you.'

It was not a long walk, and the water-gate was open. Like the other entrance to the town it was flanked by two little wooden towers, and the lower door of one was braced ajar. Inside, a gangly man with a long brown beard was sitting by a brazier with a mug of ale. He did not even look up as the travellers passed him and moved under the arch of the gate.

It opened on a narrow way carved between the cliffs over Anduin. The path wound down to the river's narrow shore, where a sturdy wooden pier had been built, and upstream of it a cofferdam to break Anduin's current and prolong the life of the pilings. In the calm of this barrier the ferry was moored: a shallow-bottomed vessel with a deck of planks and only a low rim about it to keep the worst of the water away. Oarlocks were set on two sides, and there was a rudder, but it was a simple boat indeed, and light. It was meant for men and perhaps a horse or two: any who travelled with wains or caravans or large quantities of livestock had to cross away south at the Old Ford, which the Beornings also tended. But this was the simple way, the quieter way, and the way least likely to be watched if the servants of the Enemy waited on Anduin's far bank. It was also the way that brought Aragorn nearest to the gates of Mirkwood where the Elf-road cut the swiftest path to the haven of Thranduil's halls through otherwise debatable country.

The ferryman lived in a sturdy stone cottage perched up on the cliff overlooking his dock. There was smoke in the chimney and candlelight behind the costly glass windows, but Aragorn did not venture up the path to rouse the man to his labours. He would find it difficult enough to gain passage: he did not want to begin that negotiation by dragging his needed patron away from his breakfast. So he descended the rocky steps that led to the dock, and sat upon the edge of the pier. It had been cleaned of its snow the night before, and though there were patches of ice where wet feet had trod he was able to find a dry place to settle himself. At another time he might have let his legs swing out over the water, but his feet were still numb and his knees ached, and so he brought his legs up near his chest and drew his blanket around them and shivered until the chill settled deep in his bones and his limbs resigned themselves again to the calm, cruel cold.

For once Gollum was uncomplaining. He lay down on his belly with his head and shoulders out over the water, hands gripping the edge of the peer while his fingers grasped and released and greedy eyes searched the waters below. Aragorn supposed that he was looking for fish, but how he hoped to catch one if he saw them the Ranger could not imagine.

They had been sitting for nearly an hour when the door of the cottage above opened at last, and the ferryman and his sons came down. All three were broad-shouldered and thick with muscle. They wore stout leather boots and thick woollen garments under layers of oilcloth. The two younger men went straight past Aragorn to the shed at the end of the pier, and began unloading oars and poles and coils of heavy rope. The ferryman himself stopped short of the strangers and looked down upon them with a critical eye.

'You're abroad early on a cold morning, aren't you?' he asked, then clapped each hand to the opposite arm and gave an exaggerated shiver. 'Colder even than yesterday, and like to be colder tomorrow. Do you suppose spring will ever come?'

'The Sun must rise, and spring must come,' said Aragorn, unfolding his limbs and struggling to stand up with dignity; 'and each shall do it in their own time. The Sun has risen at least, and that should cheer us.'

'Should it, indeed?' the ferryman grunted. 'Well, you'd know more about it than I. Riding for Carrock, I suppose?'

'Yes,' said Aragorn; 'unless your boat can bear me all the way to Lake-town, over the dells and through the forest.' He had no wish to travel so far, of course, and in any case it was not a journey that could be made by water alone, but he could not take the same tone here as he had with the baker. To begin, he had better chance of swaying watermen if they thought him jolly company, and for another his efforts with the baker had failed.

As he had hoped, the ferryman laughed. 'Would that I could, for then I should be the richest man in all these lands. Folk would pay any price to be spared that road. Is that where you're bound, then?'

'Away in that direction,' said Aragorn; 'but this morning I will be content if you can take me as far as the Carrock. I might have crossed yesterday, save that I came too late to the town and tarried too long.'

The ferryman chuckled. 'Afvald and his ale, no doubt. It's a wonder you're not sporting a sore head.'

'Sore enough,' said Aragorn, putting on a rueful face. If his head ached it was from hunger and the constant stream of frigid air he had to draw in through his nostrils. 'But tell me, what are your sailing times?'

'In autumn I sail every hour,' said the man; 'more often if I've a full load waiting. In summer, every two, wither or no. In a few weeks' time, if only this cold will break, I shall sail as I can – not at all on some days, if the river's too high. But in winter I sail when I have me a fare: if you're ready to go I can take you as soon as the lads have her trimmed. Here, lads! Hurry it up: this good man wants to be on his way!'

The two young men were down on the ferry now, setting posts into holes in her bulwarks and stringing rope between them. One straightened his back and grinned, waving affably to his father in a gesture of assent. The older man grunted again, more contentedly this time, and turned his attention back to Aragorn.

'Have you much for baggage? Any horses?' he asked.

Aragorn shook his head. 'No baggage and no steeds: only my companion and I. Perhaps we ought to wait until you have more passengers.'

'You might wait an hour, or you might wait a week,' the ferryman said, plucking at his beard with the air of a shrewd businessman mourning the slowness of the season. 'Not many abroad this time of year. The roads are dangerous, and the mountain passes deadly. You'll not be well-travelled, I suppose, if you don't know that.'

'Oh, I am quite well-travelled,' Aragorn said simply; 'though I do not often come this way. I rode your ferry once before, sixteen years past, though I'm sure you've had too many passengers over the years to remember one such as me.'

'There you're right, I'm afraid,' the man said, squinting to study the Ranger's face. 'Though if you looked much like this last time you passed through, it's a wonder I don't. You'll forgive me for asking, but you've not got the wasting sickness, have you?'

'No,' Aragorn assured him. 'But I have had a hard journey and I am weary.'

'Hard journeys are one thing, but you've a… that is… well…' The man jabbed one gloved hand under his own nose and made an awkward grimace.

Understanding at last, Aragorn brought his arm out from the shelter of the blanket and blotted at his right nostril with the side of his hand. It came away streaked with dark half-frozen blood. 'I took a blow to it,' he said, once again striving to sound full of good-natured regret. And it was true, but the blow he had taken twelve days ago, and it should not still be causing his nose to bleed even with the added strain of the bitter winter air. He swallowed the flutter of worry, for there was naught to be done about it.

The ferryman chuckled. 'Afvald and his ale,' he said again. 'Who did you run afoul of?'

'I cannot say,' said Aragorn, honestly enough. Beside him Gollum was shifting from one foot to another.

The planks of the pier shook a little as the taller of the two young men hopped up onto the ladder and came to join his father. 'We're ready to sail,' he said, then stopped as he got a good look at Aragorn and the creature on the end of the rope. He frowned in bewilderment. 'Da…' he mumbled uneasily.

If the ferryman heard, he gave no indication. Instead he gave a little sweeping bow and flung out his arm towards the vessel. 'This way, sir: your proud ship awaits! Ordinarily I ask a silver piece a passenger this time o' the year, but seeing as your friend there is such a small one I'll let him ride free.'

'That is most generous,' said Aragorn. The moment was upon him at last, and he could only hope that what rapport he had been able to build with the man would be enough to win him a favour. 'Yet I fear I must trespass a little further on your generosity, for I have no silver to give you. No coin at all, in fact. I am on an urgent errand and I must cross the river, but I have not the means to pay.'

'That's all right,' the ferryman said cheerfully. 'I take payment in kind as well. Cloth, chickens, jewels, goods. Why, I once carried an Elf who left me a strand of his hair. Sold it at market for a gold piece, I did. Good-luck talisman, you know. What d'you have to trade?'

Though Aragorn knew the answer he could not help but run through the meagre catalogue of his possessions. There were his garments: shirt, braies, cote, two ragged pairs of hose. The blanket and his boots and his belt. His knife and its sheath, his pouch, a handful of stones and an improvised sling, flint and steel, and the orc-rope. And there was Gollum, of course, but even if he might have parted with him surely no one would be mad enough to want him.

'I have nothing,' he said, drawing back the edge of the blanket to show his tattered tunic. 'I am destitute, and I must cross the river. Would you have me swim it?'

'That's a fine looking little blade,' the ferryman said, nodding to the knife. 'Let me see it: it might do.'

'I cannot be parted from my knife,' Aragorn said. 'I carry no other weapon, and if I am to walk through Mirkwood I cannot go unarmed.'

'Seems near enough to unarmed to me,' the man said. 'I'd not walk that way without a stout yew bow and a brace of sell-swords to guard me! But I take your point. What about that pin?'

Aragorn's hand crept up to his throat to the ring-brooch that Aithron had given him. He had all but forgotten it, but now he remembered the labour of clutching an unclasped cloak to him after his escape from the orcs in Ithilien. Were his frozen fingers even capable of such a task? If he could not keep the blanket snug about his neck then he had no means to guard his throat from taking a chill in the bitter air. Yet here Anduin flowed swift and deep, and in such fearsome cold as this he would not live long enough to light a fire even if he reached the far bank.

Fumbling, he freed the little fold of wool. The blanket slithered off of his shoulders and his left hand caught it before it could fall to the planks. He held out the little piece of jewellery.

The ferryman took it and turned it over in his hand. He frowned. 'Why, it's only brass,' he said, sounding very disappointed. 'Light brass, at that. Strong, though?' he asked hopefully.

'Sufficiently strong for its duty,' said Aragorn. The muscles of his back were beginning to jump and twitch in the cold, and he struggled to arrange the blanket over his shoulders again. He tried to pinch the edges together at his throat, but had to settle for taking a clumsy fistful further down his chest.

'Pretty, though, with these vines cast into it,' the man mused. He handed it to his son. 'What d'you suppose it might get us?'

The younger man did not seem to think much of the work of the goldwrights of Lothlórien, for he shrugged and said, 'Its weight when melted? And that's not much. Might be enough of a fare for one among a crowd, but for a whole run on its own, and in this cold? I say no.'

The ferryman took it back and sighed in exasperation. 'Have you nothing else?' he asked.

'Nothing,' said Aragorn, but before they would believe him he had to turn out the contents of his pouch. The ferryman's son seemed enamoured of the ornately shaped firesteel, but his father shook his head.

'Can't take that any more than we could take the knife. Weather like this you'd die without a fire at night.' He exhaled heavily and scrubbed a hand through his beard, looking Aragorn over from head to toe and lingering overlong at the loose fit of his threadbare cote. 'I'll tell you what,' he said, handing the brooch back. 'If you'll wait until we've another passenger – a paying passenger – then we'll carry you and that curious pet of yours if you'll trade your steel for Makan's, since he's taken such a fancy to it.'

Aragorn did not want to wait, but he knew this was the best bargain he would be able to strike and he was lucky indeed to strike it. Still he would not agree until he saw the steel that he was to change for his own. Though it was an ugly thing in comparison to the one made in Imladris by the Noldorin smiths who delighted to bring beauty to even their humblest creations, it was whole and sound and it produced a strong spark. He consented, and the ferryman offered a hand to shake on the agreement. Then there was nothing to do but sit back down on the bare wood of the pier and try to keep from freezing while he waited, hoping that more custom would pass this way soon.

While he sat he struggled to fasten his makeshift cloak again. The ferryman and his sons spent some time sorting through the contents of their little shed, and then went off to a place near the foot of their homeward path where there were signs of frequent fires. They built one and sat around it on broad flat boulders, holding their hands to the heat and laughing together. Aragorn longed to get up and beg leave to join them, but he knew that he was pressing their good graces as it was. He got up to pace instead, hoping to warm himself a little, but all that he achieved was to send his hips throbbing again. The day grew colder as the Sun climbed higher, and a thick mist began to rise from the water. It was coming on to noontide, and Aragorn was beginning to fear that no one might come to use the ferry that day when he heard a sound of whistling on the descent from the water-gate.

He scrambled to his feet again, and closed his fist about Gollum's rope. The ferrymen, too, rose at the noise and Makan banked the embers of their fire. Down onto the pier came a man with a bundle strapped to his back, a covered basket over one arm, and a bolt of cloth balanced on the opposite shoulder. As he drew nearer Aragorn recognized the youth he had met in the square the day before.

The boy cried out greetings to the ferryman and his boys, and they relieved him of his bundle and the cloth. While the younger son and the youth walked together, talking eagerly like two old friends who seldom meet, Makan beckoned to Aragorn and held out his ungainly firesteel.

'He always pays well, and so we'll turn a good profit even with you to carry,' he said grudgingly as Aragorn handed off his own tool and tucked the other into his pouch in its place. 'Don't you pester him: he's worth more than you and all your longfathers put together. My old da may take a liking to any jesting traveller, but I know a beggar when I see one. And keep that thing—' Here he jabbed a disgusted thumb at Gollum. '—by your boot where it belongs. Any trouble and I'll tip you both into the river.'

'I understand,' said Aragorn humbly. 'I am grateful for your generosity. I will not abuse it.'

'See that you don't!' the man snapped.

He led the way down to the ladder. His father, his brother, and the prosperous passenger were already on the ferry, with the baggage settled on a raised platform near its centre. Makan went first and Aragorn hurried after. He had feared that there would be trouble in getting Gollum to descend, but there was not. He scuttled down the ladder like an accomplished sailor and leaned against the low bulwark, watching the water intently.

The ferryman took the rudder, and his sons loosed the moorings. Makan took a great, heavy pole and dug it deep into the riverbed, pushing off out of the shelter of the cofferdam. The current caught the vessel and drew them out into Anduin's swift-flowing breadth. There was no work for the two apprentices after that: only the ferryman worked, guiding the rudder to keep them on a true course. For the upstream journey there were heavy oars laid by: then the two young men would have hard rowing. Instead they stood amidship with their favoured passenger, while Aragorn stayed near the prow with Gollum by his side. The cold was less terrible here, where the relative warmth of the river water rose in misty tendrils. Grateful for that small grace, Aragorn kept his eyes fixed ahead upon the rapidly-nearing mass of the Carrock. The long western leg of his journey was over. The last and perhaps most perilous road lay ahead.

Note: Longest chapter yet! Be sure to comment, 'cause my handses are sore, precious. Chapter title from "The Houses of Healing", The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter XLVII: A Beggar at the Door

The ferryman cut a crisp course that kept them safely away from the rapids that swirled by the western side of the Carrock. Soon it was looming above them, like a tableland carved of a single great stone. For all his hunger and his weariness and his trepidation about the path ahead, Aragorn could not help but wonder at the sight. Manifold were the marvels of Arda, yet surely the Carrock must be accounted high among them. Even the simple truth that it had stood here so many centuries, apparently impervious to the grinding incursions of Anduin, was something to inspire a man to awe.

Around the northwestern foot of the Carrock was another dam and another dock, this one set at the mouth of a small cave near the stones of the ford. Makan dug in his pole again and guided the ferry into its berth, where he and his brother tethered it swiftly. Their father shook hands bracingly with the other passenger, who gave him a handful of coins and an affable grin. He ascended the ladder to the docks, and the two young watermen handed him up his baggage.

Aragorn stood aside, understanding his place and waiting for his turn to disembark. He would have done so as soon as the way was clear, but suddenly there was a tug at his wrist and a quick, quiet splash, and Gollum was over the low edge of the ferry and into the water.

For a stark, startled second Aragorn had no idea what to do. Then he dropped to his knees on the deck and tried to catch the slippery wretch by one bony ankle. The motion, however, also brought his end of the rope nearer to the water, and Gollum dove out of reach so quickly that Aragorn's right hand went plunging into the still water before he could stop it. Below the clouded surface he could see the shape of his prisoner bobbing near the end of the rope. His arms were occupied with something, but Aragorn could not discern if he was working the knot of the halter or not. His cold-stiffened fingers fumbled to get a strong hold on his end of the rope, and he was just about to draw upon it with all his strength when Gollum resurfaced, feet flapping beneath him and nimble hands held out in triumph. Gripped between each finger and thumb he had a small silver fish, no longer than Aragorn's forefinger. They writhed and wriggled in their death throes, perishing either from the surfeit of air or the sudden terrible cold above the surface. The one in Gollum's teeth was certainly already dead: its eyes were goggling and its gills were punctured. Aragorn found his eyes shifting to the water again, where he could only just make out the small dark speckles where the rest of the shoal was dispersing.

All at once astonished and relieved and irritated, the Ranger sat back on his heels and gawked at his prisoner. Gollum's tongue was flicking against the spine of the fish in his mouth, but he seemed reluctant to swallow it whole. Doubtless he wanted to savour his small catch, and in his own famished state Aragorn could understand nothing better. Gollum took a pair of wide, whipping kicks that brought him bobbing almost against the side of the ferry, and with a low resigned sigh Aragorn reached down to fish his prisoner out of the river.

It proved more difficult than he had expected, for his near-frozen hands could not grasp and Gollum was slick and not especially cooperative. After two failed attempts to get a good hold Aragorn had to bow down right over the bulwarks and hook his arms right around the emaciated chest, drenching his sleeves almost to the shoulder and setting burning bands of gnawing cold about both limbs. He heaved, and Gollum came up in a shower of river-water with his feet still kicking. Aragorn dragged him onto the deck and dropped him there. At once Gollum let go of the fish in his right hand, and used those fingers to turn the one in his mouth. He bit down and then tugged, and the small shimmering body was ripped in half in a spray of pink-orange ichor.

Aragorn was shaking the water from his hands and trying to cease the pounding of his heart with repeated silent assurances that his prisoner had not escaped him, had not even been attempting to escape, in fact, when Makan came up suddenly behind him. Expecting harsh words, the Ranger closed his eyes and struggled to level out his breathing to form a meek apology. But the ferryman's son swooped down with a hard cupped hand and boxed his right ear.

Stiffening against the blow, Aragorn managed to keep his battle-instincts from getting the better of him. His right hand jerked but did not get near enough to his knife to alarm his assailant. He let it fall against his thigh instead and swallowed against the ringing in his head. Nearby the ferryman cried out in alarm, and the other son made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a shout.

'I warned you if there was any trouble…' Makan was saying, his voice filled with the menace of a bully who believes he has his chosen victim utterly in his power. Then he bent and closed his hand on Aragorn's arm.

This was too much. Swiftly as a sparring swordsman Aragorn sprung onto his toes, whirling as he rose and drawing himself up to his full height despite the needles of protest in his tired spine. He tossed his head so that the matted and frost-stiffened hair was flung away from his face. He let something of the fire of his spirit, all but forgotten after weeks of toil and misery, blaze out from his glinting grey eyes. Makan, now finding himself forced to look up into the fearsome face of one he had taken for a mere wretched beggar, quailed visibly despite his efforts to keep his own expression hard and angry.

'Your father has been generous in my hour of great need,' Aragorn said. He did not now employ the easy vernacular that he had used on the western pier. He spoke as general calling out to the foe, as a great captain marshalling reluctant troops, as a lord of men revealed in his might before a hostile throng. 'In gratitude for that I will forgive your insolence, and I will forget that you struck me. Yet if you attempt to make good upon your threat to cast me overboard, be assured it is not I who will be swimming home this day!'

Makan's jaw slackened and his eyes grew very wide. His shoulders drooped and his knees trembled, and for a moment he looked likely to swoon. Then Aragorn shaded the light within him and eased back into his tired stoop beneath the dirty blanket, and he turned back to Gollum. The creature had finished with the first two fish and was sucking at the tail of the third, apparently unaware of what had transpired above him. When Aragorn twitched the rope he hopped onto his heels like a well-trained hound and shot a disdainful look at Makan.

The ferryman was staring at them, and Aragorn stopped beside him on his way across the deck. He extended his hand to the man and managed a tiny smile that made one of the fissures in his chapped lips crack. 'Thank you, good master, for consenting to bear me,' he said. 'When next I pass this way I hope I shall have coin enough to compensate you for your troubles.'

The ferryman gripped the Ranger's fingers so tightly that Aragorn could almost feel his grasp despite the bone-deep numbness. 'Who are you?' he whispered. 'Who are you?'

Aragorn shrugged his shoulders and took back his hand. 'Only a traveller,' he said. 'And one who did not fancy a ducking on a day when such a thing is like to kill a man. Teach your son to be charitable to those less fortunate than he. I thank you again for your kind aid, but I must be on my way.'

Then he strode to the ladder and climbed, watching with care where he placed his feet because they were all but useless on their own. Gollum clambered after him, bolting down the last of his impromptu meal as he reached the planks of the pier. Aragorn did not look back as he strode away, past the mouth of the cave and onto the path that wound down from the top of the Carrock high above to the broad, smooth stones of the ford. He heard the ferryman barking hoarse orders, and the creak of oars eased into the rowlocks, and the soft swish of the waters as the vessel began to move. Only when he was certain that he was out of sight of the ferry did he halt to wring what water he could from the sleeves of his cote and to blot his hands dry on a corner of his blanket. Deep, anguished tremors of cold were starting up again in his ribs and his viscera as the wet cloth chilled him.

Gollum was crouching by his boot, picking at his teeth with torn and filthy nails. He had a smug, self-satisfied look to him, but if there was aught to fear from that or from his sudden cooperation Aragorn had not the strength to fear it. Away to the east he could see the prosperous young man by whose grace he had ridden striding off the last of the ford-stones and onto the east bank of Anduin. He had his basket on his elbow, his bundle on his back, and the bolt of white wool slung over his shoulder again. He walked with the jaunty good cheer of one secure in his place in the world, untroubled even by the cold as he strolled homeward. Aragorn surmised that he had seen nothing of the exchange between Makan and himself. It only made sense: the waterman would not have dared to strike a passenger, paying or not, in the sight of one of his best customers.

As though his show of strength had drained away the last of his will Aragorn stood there for a time, swaying a little and feeling the meagre heat of his body draining away through his sodden arms. He wondered whether Gollum's actions warranted punishment, and decided wearily that they did not. The miserable wretch had for once meant no malice; no harm to anyone, unless it be the little fish. He was near enough to starving, and he had seen a chance of food and taken it.

'And so now must I,' Aragorn breathed, unaware that he spoke aloud. His own chance of food was not as good as Gollum's had been, for it relied upon the memory of a brief meeting many years ago, and it lay still some ten miles distant. Yet it was all he had to hope for, he knew as he surveyed the banks and saw only oak trees and hawthorn. Not a pine in sight, and with the cold sinking deeper by the hour he would find no game today. At last, though it took the last shreds of his will to do so, he raised one unfeeling foot and brought it down on the path before him. He descended to the first stone of the staggered causeway and began his careful crossing of the ford. The thin soles of his dying boots slipped and skidded on the icy rocks, but he managed somehow to keep his feet. He did not, after all, fancy a ducking on a day when such a thing was like to kill a man.

lar

The Sun was setting in a blaze of majesty behind him, and Aragorn shuffled onward. Since leaving the Carrock he had not dared to halt for more than the few moments it took to dig out his bottle and take one or two freezing swallows. Now, when the first stars were beginning to show themselves against the rich blue of twilight, he was beginning to believe that if he could not contrive to keep his leaden legs moving he would simply tumble into the soft drifts of snow that lay all about him and slip into the last frozen sleep before death. If he had ever before been so insensible with cold he could not now name the circumstances. The air itself was crisp and bitter, anguish to breathe and a torment to the few patches of his skin still capable of feeling, but that was not the whole of it. His tattered clothes, his weariness, the lingering damp of his sleeves, and the long weeks of frigid labour in these winter lands all conspired to render him little better than a bundle of frozen marrow-bones wrapped in a thin ice-covered layer of flesh. His hands were useless knots of misery, and only the occasional downward glance assured him that his feet were still attached to the rest of him. He could not feel his nose, and his ears had long ago ceased to trouble him. There was one spot near the very crown of his head where he still had something like normal sensation, but he knew that was only because it was through this channel that the last shreds of warmth from his innards were bleeding away.

Beside him Gollum struggled. He too was at last succumbing to the relentless incursions of the weather. He limped now, whimpering deep in his throat but too far gone to manage even a moan of 'Poor precious!'. There were small icicles dangling from his sparse eyebrows, and he kept rubbing at his nose in a way that told Aragorn he was not the only one with frost forming in his nostrils. Ten miles, such an easy distance when one was properly dressed, or adequately fed, or even moderately rested, seemed an impossible journey in their present state. By rights they ought to have come to the end of it by now, and yet on they toiled without reward.

In his addled state, when even his mind seemed cast in ice, Aragorn had feared he might lose the path. He had checked many times in the early hours of this pitiless trek, kicking aside the snow with a clumsy foot until he could find the borders of the well-worn way beneath. At some point he had realized that the other pair of tracks, the one he kept stumbling in, was set steadily upon the road he wanted, and now he followed those instead. If they had left the path then he was lost indeed, but he did not think that they had.

The urge to sleep grew deeper with every plodding step. He knew it was the voice of winter, wooing him to his death, but he was so very weary and the smallest motion was a torment. He thought he might grow warm again, if only he stopped. Yet the muffled but persistent voice of wisdom told him that such warmth was an illusion, and it was only the sparse heat created by his moving body that kept him from slipping away entirely. He had not quite lost the struggle to heed that voice when at last he saw a light.

It ignited as a small core of gold far off in the blue of the dusk, as feeble as the closely-guarded candle of hope within his frozen breast. But it grew until it was the size of a cherry, then an apple, then a fist. And there were other lights, too, set off to either side of the other in two neat rows and perfectly regular intervals. Lamps, he thought, finding the word at last. Lamps on a low stone wall.

The sight gave strength to his spirit, but there was none left to send to his limbs. He staggered onward at his stilted pace, vacantly grateful that Gollum came with him. Despite the wet sleeves he had long ago resumed his desperate clutching of the blanket to his ribs, and his arms could thus not swing to aid him as he came through the snow to the break in the wall. The beautifully carved wooden gate stood wide, and looked as though it had done so all winter, for the drifts were high against it and the hinges speckled with rust. Aragorn passed between the lighted posts and found himself suddenly surrounded by large shapes in the gloom: outbuildings and stables.

Growing more certain by the moment that he had found what he sought at last, he pressed on in a straight line, tripping and falling suddenly to his knees as the heavy drifts gave way to a path that someone had cleared to the cobblestones. Aragorn scarcely felt the pain of the impact in his knees, but his hips protested miserably and it was with some difficulty that he got himself back onto his feet. Without the snow to fight at every step he moved somewhat more quickly, though not quick enough by far for his liking. Nonetheless he soon found towering walls thrust up to his left and his right: he was in a courtyard surrounded on three sides by the house. He limped on until he reached the third wall and the great dark door within it. Then, reluctant to break the folds of the blanket and so expose his chest to the hateful winter air, he turned a little and thumped his right shoulder against the wood.

The noise was feeble, or his ears were choked with ice, and so he tried again – but with little better result. Shuddering, not with a chill he could no longer feel but with the tremendous effort of keeping faith with his fortunes, he straightened his body as much as he could and then let his whole weight fall against the door. This time the resulting crash was surely audible within the farthest recesses of the building. Somewhere a dog barked, not the harsh threatening tattoo of a watchdog nor the frantic yipping of a pampered pet, but a single clarion sound like a sentry calling out to his commander. Satisfied that his presence had at last been made known, Aragorn rolled back off of the door and leaned against the post to wait.

He did not have to wait long at all, as it turned out, for there was a sound of scraping wood and a whisper of well-oiled hinges, and the door swung inward. Golden light spilled out in a widening trail from the bottom of the doorway, trapping Gollum in its welcoming river. There he crouched, one hand raised to his craven mouth, looking up in startled terror at the figure whose shadow swiftly fell over him.

Aragorn, pressed against the wall, was not at first seen by the tall and enormously muscled man who had come to the door. He frowned, a bemused hand stroking at his luxurious beard of black liberally frosted with age. Then a slow chuckle welled up in his throat.

'You're a mighty small thing to be making a great noise like that,' he said. His voice was deep and rich and melodious, and it sent Gollum quaking. 'Who and what are you and what do you want? It's a cold night to be out in nothing but a napkin.'

Gollum made a hoarse trilling shriek deep in his throat and scuttled out of the light, looping widely around to cower behind Aragorn's canted legs. Following him with dancing dark eyes, the broad-shouldered householder spied the Ranger at last.

'Oh, I see,' he said, though it was plain he was still puzzled. 'It wasn't the little one raising that racket after all. Well, I can see what you are, at any rate, or they're making Elves to a very strange pattern indeed nowadays, but who are you and what do you want?'

It took all of Aragorn's faculties to induce his vocal chords to move. When they did, the words sawed and shuddered out from lips that could scarcely bend to form the sounds. 'Grimbeorn son of Beorn,' he said.

The man grunted and plucked again at his beard. His other hand was now planted upon his hip in a gesture that, while strangely and most recently familiar, eluded Aragorn at present. 'No,' he said solemnly; 'that's me. Who are you and what do you… or were you answering the last question first?'

Aragorn tried to nod, but the bones of his neck gave an ominous creak and his chin drooped down towards his chest. 'Grimbeorn son of Beorn,' he repeated. Speaking took a tremendous effort, and choosing the words to say was nigh on as difficult. 'I cannot hope that you will remember me. I am…'

He halted, trying to recall it all himself. He had found himself in quite the debate with Gandalf, he remembered, when last he had walked the path that now lay behind him. Habitual caution on his part had been met with the wizard's vexed insistence.

'Of course you must tell him your right name!' he had declared at last, planting his hat back onto his head in a most decisive gesture. 'To begin, I assure you that he is worthy of your trust, and if you can't take my assurances then you've no business travelling with me at all. Furthermore, he will be most disgruntled and insulted if you are not forthright with him, and he is not the sort of a man you want to see disgruntled. And last of all, he's as much lord of his people as you are of yours, and that makes the two of you peers of a sort. As you've few enough of those, I would think you'd welcome the opportunity to befriend one!'

'I am Aragorn,' he breathed, the name coming out in a cloud of condensation that briefly obscured his view of the man before him. 'Aragorn son of Arathorn, Chieftain of the Men of the West and—'

'Yes, yes, of course: Gandalf's friend!' said Grimbeorn cheerfully. 'The quiet one with the dark hood.' He reached out a large hand thickly corded with strength and plucked at the edge of the Lórien-blanket where it was drawn up to shelter Aragorn's bare head. 'Though this isn't dark, nor much of a hood at that. Come in: you must be chilled to the bone, abroad in such weather. Coldest we've had all year, and just when spring ought to be starting to show, too. Here, come in, man, and bring that little naked fellow with you!'

Before Aragorn could wonder how he was going to force his overtaxed body to abandon the support of the post and right itself, Grimbeorn flung an arm around his shoulders and hauled him over the threshold and into the hall. His frozen flesh could not feel the warmth of the room, but his lungs could, and he dragged in the first proper breath he had had since his brief sojourn in the bakery in town.

Without relinquishing his hold on his guest, Grimbeorn closed the door and latched it. While Aragorn's eyes were still adjusting to the glow of many candles his host threw back his head and called out merrily; 'Come, my girls, and bring cakes and some of your finest mead: we've a guest!'

He strode up the length of the hall, bringing Aragorn with him. Not quite able to raise his head, Aragorn saw only the smooth, worn planks of the floor and a great sunken fireplace blazing with logs. He wanted to sink to the floor beside it, but Grimbeorn's grip and momentum held him thrall and he was dragged past in a stupor. Someone was moving very near them, and there was a scrape of shifting furniture. Then Grimbeorn let go and Aragorn sank down into a sturdy chair with a seat of woven rushes. Out of long habit he looked first for Gollum, who was cowering as far from their imposing host as possible, and kept shooting furtive anxious looks at the huge hearth behind him. A lean grey hound with intelligent, questioning eyes came to sniff Aragorn's boots. Apparently he thought well of what he smelled, for he curled up at the Ranger's feet and rested his head on his paws.

'You've missed your chance to sup with the family, but Sigbeorn will break bread with you and we'll all be happy to drink to your health,' Grimbeorn was saying. 'Nothing's the equal of a jar of steaming mead on a cold night. Better this way, anyhow. If the little ones knew we had company you'd never have a minute's peace.'

There were other people all around him now, it seemed. Aragorn could feel their eyes on his back and his bowed head, but he could not bestir himself to seek them out with his eyes. The exhaustion he had felt as he toiled against the endless snow was nothing to the stupor that was laid upon him now. He felt certain that he was going to slip from consciousness at any moment, and he would just have to trust to Grimbeorn to guard him and to keep his prisoner from effecting an escape.

The thought that Grimbeorn knew nothing of Gollum and would not think him dangerous roused him a little, but only enough to twitch one finger of his twisted left hand and mumble, 'Guard him… please, will you guard him?'

'There, there, you're both safe enough here,' said Grimbeorn, patting his shoulder heartily. 'You haven't come bringing wolves on your heels, have you? Or spiders out of Mirkwood? Or worse? Not that we won't fight them off for you if we have to, but it would be better to have the gates closed and the bows at the ready before they arrive.'

'No,' Aragorn whispered, unable to find the strength to shake his head. 'No, though I may well be hunted I do not think I have brought foes to your door tonight: I came from the Carrock, and if my passage has been marked I have seen no sign. There were wargs in the woods south of the Road, but they at least cannot have followed me across Anduin.'

'That's all right, then,' said Grimbeorn. He gestured at someone else in the room and made a noise of good-natured annoyance. 'Come, lad, don't be so solitary. Bring your cup and sit by our guest. You can have your supper together. You'll have to excuse my youngest, Aragorn,' he said in a confidential tone that lacked none of the volume of his other pronouncements. 'He's a mite spoiled and doesn't always like to be roused once he's settled.'

There was a chorus of laughter and a voice that Aragorn had heard before said; 'Now, Father, I've walked many miles today with a heavy burden, and I've earned a chance to sit in peace.' But footsteps drew near and the young man exclaimed; 'You again! Are you truly a man, or are you a wight that's taken a fancy to haunting me?'

At this Aragorn's curiosity accomplished what the wish to ensure his safety could not, and he raised his head a little. A youth with broad shoulders and his first beard was settling into a chair at the long table beside him, grinning affably. It was the boy from the market-square; the prosperous passenger from the ferry; and, so it seemed, the youngest son of Grimbeorn.

'We met in town,' he explained, looking first to his father and then off in two other directions. 'Asked me where he might find a bite to eat. Then this morning who should I see when I come down from the water-gate, but this same ragged fellow. And here he is again, lounging in my own father's chair like a dispossessed prince come into his own. It's a curious world, and no mistake.' He picked up a mug, without a handle but beautifully etched with geometric shapes, and took a long draught of it, settling back with his sturdy legs stretched before him.

'It's a shame you didn't ask him his business, or you might have had company on your long walk,' another man said, off behind Aragorn's right shoulder. 'Though what that thing he leads might be I can only guess. Some sort of a strange cur out of the far countries, maybe?'

'If it's a cur, the other dogs do not like it,' said yet another. Aragorn tried to look at Gollum again, and saw out of the corner of his eye a hound to match the one resting at his feet, standing some distance from his prisoner with ears pricked and hackles raised. Gollum was watching it warily.

There was a sound of a door swinging open and a woman's voice was heard, pleasant and hardy and every bit as resonant as any of the men's. 'Now, husband, what's this Ufrún tells me about a wild man come to visit?' she asked. 'You know you shouldn't be putting ideas into young girls' heads, or they'll start having ill dreams.'

Grimbeorn laughed. 'I told her no such thing: they're always fanciful at that age, and you know it. No, love, not a wild man: the Chief of the Men of the West, it seems, come over the mountains and across the River to bring his salutations. He's got a strange companion with him, too, though what it is and where it's come from I haven't been able to ask yet. Aragorn, no doubt you'll be remembering my wife Eira?'

Aragorn tried to push himself straighter in the chair, but though his hands moved his arms had no strength. He managed to track Grimbeorn's gaze with his eyes to a sturdy and curvaceous woman of perhaps sixty-five years, silver hair twisted into a coronet around her head. She was dressed in the fashion of the Beornings: woollen kirtle and short overdress clasped at each clavicle with intricate gold brooches. He exerted all his will and managed to bend his head and shoulders a little in an awkward approximation of a bow.

'Verily I remember you, my lady,' he murmured. 'I rested here once with… with…'

'With Gandalf the Grey, yes, of course you did,' said Eira wife of Grimbeorn. She was near now, and she pushed past her husband in order to round the chair occupied by her youngest son. 'You've come a long way just to bring salutations – what's wrong with him?' Her eyes narrowed and she rounded on her husband. Though she was at least a head shorter than he, she seemed to tower before him.

'Now, love, he's only weary. Took the ferry with Sigbeorn, it seems, and—'

With a scornful snort the lady whirled back upon the Ranger and reached out to grab his wrist. Her other hand slapped firmly down upon his forehead as if to check for fever, but she drew it back almost at once, pressing it next to his cheeks and his temples, and finally pushing aside the brooch that held the blanket that she might touch her fingers to the side of his neck. Then she clasped his right hand in both her own and she blanched.

'Why, Grimbeorn, he's frozen!' she cried in indignant dismay. 'How long have you let him sit here in these frosted clothes? Harlbeorn! Get into that kitchen and tell your mother to never mind about the mead! Bid her brew up some tea instead and make it thick with honey, and send Una up to fetch the warmest blankets and get them heating in the oven. Urdbeorn, you go and fill my biggest kettle with snow and start it boiling; your father can help you. Randbeorn and Sigbeorn, build up the fire! Don't you argue with me, young man!' she said, before Sigbeorn could protest. 'If he took the ferry with you, why didn't you see he was in such a state and bring him home at once, hmm, tell me that! There, now, dear,' she added, her tone abruptly gentle and far quieter as she patted a hand that could not feel her touch; 'we'll have you thawed in no time; never fear.'

Then she was unfastening Aithron's brass brooch and pushing back the blanket – now heavy with melting frost. 'Grimbeorn, see to his boots!' she exclaimed.

Aragorn tried to protest, but the aged lord was already getting down onto his knees and planting a firm hand on his left ankle. Dragging off the frozen and brittle leather was no small chore, and although he could not feel it in his feet or calves or knees Aragorn's hips ground agonizingly in their sockets and he had to clench his jaw against the cry of torment that wanted to break free just before the right one finally yielded. By that time the lady had unlaced his cote and his hose, and was easing his arms out of the sleeves of his shirt. As she rolled it up over his shoulders and off past his head there was a patter of lithe footsteps.

'Here you are, Grandmother,' a young woman said. 'I've got four more heating, but I thought perhaps you'd want one at once. I got it off the girls' bed, so it's warm enough, and—blustering bumblebees!'

'Now, don't go acting the fool when you've just been so sensible, Una,' scolded Eira. She flung Aragorn's shirt after the rest of his clothes and took the thick woollen blanket from the arms of a girl of no more than seventeen summers with dark wild curls tied back beneath a scarf. Her eyes were wide with astonishment, and there was a flush on her cheeks as she looked at Aragorn. He supposed he ought to be ashamed to be sitting there before her unclad save for the linen around his loins, but he could not muster the presence of mind to do it. Her grandmother was shaking out the blanket and she turned to her husband.

'Lift him up, Grimbeorn, so I can wrap him,' she said. 'Not for your benefit, Mistress Dainty, but because the poor man's near dead of the cold: he's not even started shivering yet!'

Una's expression hardened out of its drooping surprise into the lines of pragmatic common sense. 'What else shall I do?' she asked.

Eira proceeded to give a string of brisk instructions, but Grimbeorn had his hands under each of Aragorn's arms now and as he lifted a wave of terrible dizziness swallowed the Ranger's senses. He was dimly aware of the sound of the lady's voice, coming from far away in indistinct syllables, and he could feel the blanket as it was spread over his spine and tucked about his thighs. The useless weight of his body was lowered into the chair again and he braced his flank against its side and tried to fight off the swoon that threatened him. When the worst of the spots had cleared from his vision the girl was gone and Eira was at his side. One arm laid over his chest in something like a motherly embrace, while the other hand traced firm, consoling circles into his spine. On the other side, Grimbeorn was crouching over Gollum, who was cowering under Aragorn's chair and whimpering in terror.

'Well, this one's shivering at any rate,' said Grimbeorn, hefting himself back onto his feet. 'Here, man, what are we to do with this thing of yours? It won't let me touch it.'

'Him,' mumbled Aragorn thickly. He was lost in a fog that only seemed to deepen as the chill began to retreat a little from the very centre of his chest. 'He… he does not seem to suffer much from the cold. Offer him a blanket if you have one to spare him, but I think… think… think…' He could not think.

'Hush, hush,' soothed Eira, reaching to stroke his hair and catching her fingers amid the tangles. She gathered it into an untidy bundle instead and lifted the chilled, dripping mass off of his neck. A fold of the blanket was tucked over in its place and she lowered his hair onto that. 'Give it, or him, Sigbeorn's cloak, husband. And you two go and see how that water's coming on. We'll need two basins and the big washtub as well.'

Shapes that surely belonged to the men who had been stoking the fire moved past at the blurred border of Aragorn's sight, which had shortened alarmingly so that even Grimbeorn's features were softened and indistinct. He heard footsteps again, and Una's voice said; 'She didn't know how many helpings you'd want, but if six isn't enough I can go and fix more. Svala's awake and she went to nurse her.'

'Yes, yes; six is plenty,' Eira said. 'Put one down for the other guest, but don't get too near. He looks like the sort to bite if he's startled.'

The desire to laugh tugged at Aragorn's consciousness. Wise was the wife of Grimbeorn! But it was easier just to float here, helpless and unfeeling, in this place where at last his belaboured limbs and beleaguered mind could rest a little.

Something struck against his lip, and he recognized the warm textured surface of a glazed mug. His head wobbled and a firm hand cupped itself around the nape of his neck. The vessel tipped, and a tiny wave of fluid broke against his riven lips. Somehow they parted and a sip of something hot and very sweet slipped over his teeth. He swallowed, his throat tightening painfully, and felt the trickle of warmth as it migrated past his tonsils and through his gullet and all the way down to the shrunken knot of his stomach. Off in the half-forgotten world beyond his own weary thoughts he could hear someone murmuring encouragements, and the jar was tipped again. He drank, and it seemed as if he could taste a winter night in Rivendell: crackling logs in the Hall of Fire, Elven voices singing, the scent of rich carmine wine in silver goblets. He was too young for wine so late at night, but a goblet he had, and his mother kept it filled for him; sweet and wholesome and soothing. Chamomile tea.

The third time he drank greedily. There was honey in it, and the taste seemed to overpower his tongue, but he cared most of all for the warmth. He could feel it spreading now, thawing one rib after another and bringing him slowly back to life. The hand behind his head shifted a little, gently, and he was allowed to drink again.

Then the first tremor struck him, starting in his diaphragm and rippling outwards, up into his chest and down towards his legs. It died before it reached a limb, but the second one came close upon its heels and spread well into his shoulders. There was a brief moment's respite before the third one struck, and then he was wracked with a series of concussive jolts that left him breathless. He could feel the cold of his arms and his legs leaching in towards his heart as the frozen blood began to move, and when an attempt to master himself brought a white bolt of pain that shot to the very crown of his head he abandoned his struggle and gave himself over to the shivering.

He shook so violently that his head bobbed and the chair beneath him creaked. Gollum darted out from under it, leaving behind the cloak he had been given, and two of the dogs barked their alarm at this sudden movement. A third, the one who had rested at the Ranger's boots, began to whine his sympathy as the quaking deepened. All but insensate, Aragorn was scarcely aware of any of this. He felt strong hands on his shoulders, and he knew that Grimbeorn was bracing him, no doubt hoping to prevent him from sliding down onto the floor. He bowed his body over his lap, arms quivering helplessly where they crossed over his abdomen, and leaned into the support of the other man's grasp. His bare feet slipped and skittered against the velvety wood of the floor, but he could not feel them. He thought he heard someone say; 'Good, that's good; he's warming!', but he could not be certain. His teeth were rattling in his head and the muscles of his neck and shoulders jerked and twitched and danced of their own accord. He spared a moment to hope that he would not bite his tongue.

Then the worst of it seemed to pass, and he subsisted into shallow shaking that rippled only occasionally into the marrow of his bones. Someone hoisted him up into a half-standing position again, and the blanket was taken away and replaced with one that was so deliciously hot that he wanted to weep for gratitude at the feel of it against his skin. As he was settled back into the chair another one was laid over his lap and tucked snug about his legs. Then the cup was raised to his lips again. He tried to drink, but his teeth were still chattering and his lips trembled, and most of it spilled down over his chin. A gentle hand with a linen napkin wiped the tea away, and patient fingers made another attempt. This time he managed to swallow a little, and he found himself coming slowly back to his senses.

Someone had drawn up a chair for Eira as close to his own as possible, and it was she who had her hand behind his neck and the mug of tea in her capable fingers. Grimbeorn was standing nearby, carefully offset so that he did not block the glow of the hearth, which had been stacked with enough wood for a bonfire and was heating the hall with the strength of a forge. A matched pair of men both drawing on to forty years stood behind him, arms crossed over broad chests and bearded faces grave. Young Sigbeorn was sitting again, but he was leaning forward with his arms on his knees, watching Aragorn with dismayed concern. The girl, Una, stood nearby with her arms heaped high with towels. Beside her was a boy about a year her junior. He wore an avidly curious expression tempered only a little by the embarrassment of one who knew he should not be staring. And there were two women, one small and dainty with a six-month infant slumbering on her shoulder; the other tall and great with child. Behind him he could hear small voices whispering: children, he guessed, marvelling at the strange spectacle that had overtaken their home.

Aragorn found his gaze shifting back to his host, who was wearing a sympathetic smile. 'Well, Aragorn,' he said; 'it seems you've roused the whole family after all. Apart from little Svala, there. When her belly is full it would take a horde of goblin drummers to wake her.'

He tried to speak, but his throat was tight and his exhaustion seemed to rob him of the capacity to form words with his mouth. He felt Eira's hand upon his arm, but then it moved down to his fingers and only his eyes told him it was still there. 'You're a brave man indeed,' she said; 'and I'm sorry to say it will take a good deal of courage for what comes next. You see, when a body gets as cold as you've been—'

'You m-must th-thaw my hands and f-feet,' he croaked. It seemed he could speak after all, when the need pressed him. 'I can b-bear it. I have no wish to lose them.'

'Oh, there's no fear of that,' Eira laughed, and he blessed her for the sincerity in her voice. 'They're cold enough to chill cream, and you've a few patches of the nip on your fingers, but I think we'll put them right. Still, it's bound to be painful and I'm sorry for that. And we have to do off with that rope. Should we tether your friend off to a post, if he's best kept bound?'

'He is n-n-no friend of mine,' Aragorn muttered. He looked down at his wrist, at the broken and bloodied skin where the orc-rope had chafed him raw and the purpled palm and his blue frozen fingers curled like the legs of a dead spider. Then he turned his gaze on Grimbeorn's two elder sons. 'W-Will you guard him for me?' he implored. 'He is swift and sl-ly. Even bound…'

'We will guard him,' the oldest one said solemnly. He came forward and took the knife from his belt, cutting the knot at Aragorn's wrist before the Ranger could protest. At his startled expression, the man said; 'I am Baldbeorn heir of Grimbeorn son of Beorn, and I give you my word that I will guard him.'

Aragorn bowed his head. 'My thanks,' he whispered, glad that for that brief span at least his voice did not quake.

Gollum squealed as he was led away to the far side of the hall, but the grandson of the great skin-changer appeared impervious to his cries.

'Now that's settled,' said Eira, turning to her daughters-in-law; 'perhaps the two of you could see about feeding this crowd? When all's done I think we shall all be glad of a little food in our bellies, and our two ferry-travellers haven't eaten at all yet,' she added with a smile at her youngest son. 'Urdbeorn—' This was addressed to the sixteen-year-old. '—you take the children upstairs and see about getting them dressed. If they're going to be abroad all night they'll be better off out of their nightclothes, and the poor man certainly doesn't need them watching this. You put those cloths down, Una, and you can help me. Time you learned how to do this anyhow. Grimbeorn, you and that spoilt young son of yours can pour the water.'

Sigbeorn dragged up a large coopered washtub, and his father drew Aragorn's chair nearer to the table, where a large basin sat waiting. Steaming water was poured from an enormous copper kettle, and cool water added from a waiting bucket. Eira felt the temperature in each vessel and bade Una do the same. Aragorn would have liked to have done so himself, but short of dipping his face into them he did not know how he might get an accurate feel. Instead he chided the healer's voice within him and bade it be still, reminding himself that surely he could trust to the capability of his gracious hostess. Then at Eira's gentle prompting he lifted his feet over the rim of the tub and lowered his hands into the bowl. And after that, for a long while, he knew only anguish.

Chapter XLVIII: Kindly Lodgings

When the worst of it died away into a fearsome itch and the constant fiery prickling as if a thousand tiny thorns were being driven in and out of his flesh, Aragorn sagged back in Grimbeorn's chair and screwed his eyes tightly closed. He was panting shallowly and his upper arms burned with the mammoth effort of keeping his hands immersed in the water against their most insistent protests. His feet had mounted less of a struggle, largely because his legs were too weary and sore to lift them no matter how terrible the pain. He did not know how long he had struggled against the torment, fighting for mastery over his body as the agony of thawing tried to rob him of his will and to strip away his dignity, but he had come through to the other side at last and the effort left him feeble and utterly spent. There was as sound of falling water as someone tipped a little from the kettle into the tub that held his feet. This time there was no blinding flair of pain, no force within his mind begging him to jerk back out of the water, no jolt of terror as he began to doubt that the limbs were salvageable after all. When the same addition was made to the basin, it brought a small but discernable measure of relief to the aching joints of his hands.

A tender hand, wrinkled with age and skilled with long practice, blotted at his fevered brow with a soft, cool cloth. Beneath the cover of the blankets, which had been changed again for warm ones at some point early in the proceedings, he was perspiring – something he would have scarcely imagined possible that morning. The cloth moved to his cheekbones, smarting a little against the places where winter winds had burned the skin or fir-boughs had left their shallow stinging marks. Aragorn tried half-heartedly to open his eyes, but accepted his failure with quietude. Then he felt the same hand take hold of his right wrist and lift it gently from the water. His hand was eased onto another palm covered with a warm linen towel, and the lady Eira began to pat it gently dry with a corner of the cloth.

'Dry his feet, Una love,' she said. 'Dab lightly: don't rub. If you rub you're liable to take off a layer of skin.'

Aragorn fought to find his voice so that he might protest that he did not want an inexperienced young maid to be responsible for the health of his feet, but then she took a strong and steady hold of his ankle and his fears in that quarter dispersed. She worked as carefully and kindly as her grandmother, and soon his feet were dry, nesting in another clean, warm cloth that seemed almost to dance with the prickling of his awakened nerves. Eira was still at work on his hands, her thumb running over each finger in turn and pausing to press upon all the most painful spots.

At last Aragorn managed to lift his head and to open his eyes. The sight that met him was disheartening indeed. His hands were red and swollen, the skin cracked in fine webs over the backs. The burst chilblains were suppurating – and they had all burst now. Where the first layers of flesh had frozen, tight shiny blisters were already rising under Eira's careful touch. His left wrist had been stripped of most of its skin by the constant chafing of the orc-rope in the many days since crossing Gladden, and here and there the wound was weeping thick, dark blood. The nail of his left forefinger was purple and discoloured: he was likely to lose a good portion of it, and no doubt that too would be painful. Though eased at last out of their loose desperate fists, his fingers were still not straight and as he tried to extend them he was met with stony resistance and a faint dull ache. The sole comfort in the whole unhappy picture was that there was no sign of black rot. Only a small flap of loose skin on his right forearm had shrivelled and darkened, and it stood out from the tangled scars that had grown up to cover the ravages of Gollum's teeth.

The lady's hand moved there next, probing cautiously about the old wounds. She trapped the tag of dead flesh between thumb and fingernail and tugged slowly, looking up to study Aragorn's expression as she did so. 'I think we'd best just cut this off,' she said. 'It's only a little strip, and it must have been beyond saving even before it froze. What happened here?'

Aragorn shook his head helplessly. 'The creature I lead,' he whispered hoarsely, unable to bring any strength to his voice. 'When first I came upon him we struggled, and he bit me.'

A small horrified noise came from Una, who was sitting by the trestle of the table with her legs curled beside her. Aragorn tried to smile at her, but the flesh of his lips was brittle and strained sharply against the motion. 'It was not such a terrible hurt,' he assured her. 'I might have fared worse.'

'Hand me the knife, love; you needn't watch,' said Eira. Her granddaughter rose and found a little steel blade nesting among tidy rolls of new white bandages, but she did not look away. Nor did Aragorn: he had every intention of supervising the procedure, and would have performed it if only he had been able to trust his hand with the task. 'Now, I don't suppose you'll feel much of this, and if you do it's not likely to be much to what you've just endured,' she said. Then she smiled at the girl. 'You'll find it doesn't usually go so easily, Una. Most men will groan and bellow; I've known many to weep. Why, when your grandfather and I were first wed he froze his feet chasing after Beorn one winter's night. Forgot, I suppose, that he hadn't a bear's hide himself. And when I set to thawing them—'

'Now, dearest, there's no need to go telling the child such tales,' Grimbeorn huffed, straightening from hauling away the washbasin and bristling a little. 'It wasn't as loud as all that.'

'You woke the cattle in the north barn!' his wife protested, laughing. 'I knew when I took him to husband that he'd never change into a beast like his father, but I didn't realize that he could still roar like one.'

Una smiled, and from their seats further down the side of the table Sigbeorn and Randbeorn chuckled softly behind their hands; reluctant, so it seemed, to laugh aloud at their mighty sire. The lord of the house squared his shoulders and crossed his arms, affecting a deeply indignant posture, but his dark eyes glittered with mirth. 'It's lucky I wed your grandmother, lass,' he said, smiling at Una and reaching to chuck her beneath the chin. 'She has plentiful good sense and more patience than I've deserved over the years. Are we just about finished?' He turned his gaze on his wife. 'The girls will be waiting to lay the table.'

'Near enough to finished, anyhow,' said Eira. She reached for a cloth and pressed it to Aragorn's arm where a small bright spot of blood was showing. She had cut away the dead flesh while his attention was engaged elsewhere. At his startled expression she laughed. 'You may have the will and the courage to sit still while I work, but I'm not sure I've the courage to do it while my patient is watching. Better this way.' Deftly she wrapped a length of bandage around his arm, and then reached across to begin dressing his opposite wrist. 'Can you move your fingers?'

Aragorn obliged. The riven skin grated and the blisters tugged, and blood began to show in the worst of the sores, but he had most of his dexterity – provided he did not try to stretch his fingers too straight. The piercing prickles redoubled with the motion, but he could bear it. His nurse nodded in satisfaction.

'Then what's say we wait to dress them until you've had something to eat?' she asked. She felt the bones of his elbow and her eyes were tender with pity. 'You look as though you could do with some fattening up.'

He wanted to protest that he was far too weary to eat, but then a side door opened and the wives of Baldbeorn and Randbeorn came in, followed by a boy and a girl each about twelve years of age, each of them carrying a tray laden with food. Sigbeorn and his brother got to their feet and relieved them of their burdens, only to have the ladies turn about and disappear again, returning forthwith bearing still more dishes. The fragrance of warmed bread reached the Ranger's nostrils and his stomach clenched wretchedly. He knew now that he would never manage to sleep, even enervated as he was, without taking at least a little nourishment.

'Is the way clear?' asked Urdbeorn, peering out from another door and seeking his grandmother's eye. 'I've a brood of curious ducklings all wanting a bite of cake and another glimpse at the wild man.'

'Tell them they may come in,' said Eira cheerfully; 'but there's to be no troubling the guest and the next one who calls him a wild man will be sleeping in the stables and taking their breakfast with the horses.'

The boy ducked back behind the threshold and relayed the instructions. There was a merry little giggle and a disbelieving snort, and then the door was flung open again and four children passed under Urdbeorn's arm. The oldest was a girl of nine; next was a boy only a little younger. And then one of each, both five years old and so, he supposed, twins. Urdbeorn vanished again, and then came back out with little Svala sprawled sleeping in his arms. He jiggled her expertly and settled her against his chest as he took one of the rush-bottomed chairs. Una was settling the children on stools made of hewn logs with beautiful carvings on their tops. Sigbeorn took his own chair and carried it down to the far side of the room, where his eldest brother had secured Gollum to one of the posts that flanked the hall. Baldbeorn thanked him and sat, carefully within arm's reach of the cowering prisoner. Aragorn felt his heart ease still further. Whether the man believed him dangerous or not, he seemed intent to guard the creature on the strength of his pledge.

'No, no, my boy; I can take a stool,' said Sigbeorn, returning to the table to find the twelve-year-old offering his own chair. 'I'm the youngest in my generation, anyhow, and perhaps it will sweeten Mother's temper and help her to forgive me for walking straight past an honoured guest and leaving him to find his own way.'

The boy grinned and moved to sit, but the delicate little lady cleared her throat pointedly. 'Harlbeorn,' she said in a clearly instructive tone.

'You ought to take it, Uncle,' the boy said earnestly. 'For you are far older than I, and I have younger knees.'

There was laughter all around the table and Sigbeorn cuffed the child's arm playfully. 'Come to that, you're older than Ufrún,' he said. 'Though I suppose as she's a young lady you must be courteous to her as well.'

'She's worked harder than me tonight anyhow,' said Harlbeorn, taking the stool and settling between the two younger boys. He turned his eyes to the head of the table, where Aragorn realized uncomfortably he was sitting in his half-clad disarray – in the seat of the master of the house. 'She coddled the eggs for you, sir, and took up the cream.'

Aragorn wondered helplessly which one was Ufrún, but his discomfiture did not last long. The girl who was of an age with Harlbeorn was blushing brilliantly and looking down at the spoons she was laying. He still could not manage a smile with his lips, but he raised one in his eyes. 'Thank you, young mistress,' he said courteously. 'I am most grateful for your labours.'

Beside him Eira made a small approving sound and rose to her feet. She gathered up the wet towels into a knotted bundle and then whistled softly. From the kitchen-door a snowy ewe came trotting obediently. The burden was placed on her curly back and with a pat on the head and a soft word of thanks the lady sent her off again. The other cloths she whisked away, and then moved her chair around the corner of the table so that she could sit on Aragorn's right. Grimbeorn took the arm of the great dark chair and shifted it so that his guest was seated more squarely at the table, and then took the place at his left – likely where Baldbeorn habitually sat. The meal and the dishes had been laid out and the rest of the family found their seats: adults nearest the head, older children to the middle, and the little ones down at the foot on their beautiful stools. Svala's mother reached to take the baby, but Urdbeorn shook his head and smiled.

'She's no trouble, Auntie,' he assured her. 'I'll enjoy it while I can. No doubt my own little brother will be no end of trouble.'

'We might have a sister,' Una pointed out. She leaned forward in her chair to look up the table at Aragorn. 'What would you like best to eat, my lord?'

'Anything,' whispered Aragorn. He was beginning to feel quite ill as the rich scents made his innards ache. 'Anything at all.' Then he recalled himself and added; 'If you will spare some of your bounty for my prisoner, I think he might partake of the eggs.'

'I'll take them!' the next-to-youngest boy volunteered, leaping a little in his seat and hooking one woollen-shod foot beneath him. 'What sort of a beast is it, anyhow?'

His grandmother clicked her tongue. 'What did I say about troubling our guest?' she said. 'He has travelled far in the bitter cold and he is tired and he is surely half-starved by now, waiting so patiently for the cakes he was promised. No more questions.'

'In any case I shall take them,' said Randbeorn, who had been heaping a plate with an assortment of victuals and now took a little wooden bowl and spooned four of the soft-cooked eggs into it. 'I don't want any of you children going near that thing. Torbeorn—' This to the boy who had spoken. '—your father will tell you the same. Whatever it is, it must be dangerous or this good man would not have been obliged to drive it over the mountains on a rope. Stay well clear of it.' He broke off the end of a loaf of lofty white bread and planted it atop the eggs, then carried the two dishes down to the far end of the room. The plate he gave to his brother, and the bowl he set on the floor for Gollum.

His responsibility satisfied, Aragorn was able to focus solely on his plate as Una passed it to her mother, who gave it to Grimbeorn, who set it before his guest. The young lady had apparently taken anything to mean everything, for there appeared to be a helping of each dish laid out for the Ranger. There was bread and soft new butter, a small round cake drizzled with honey, two eggs, slices of dried roasted apple covered in clotted cream, a heap of berry compote mixed generously with chopped beechnuts, parsnips stewed with savoury herbs, and a slice of seed tart also richly baked with honey. Even in Lothlórien he had not been offered such an abundant variety of wholesome provender, and for a moment he could do nothing more than stare in quiet awe.

Only for a moment, however, because if this was a dream he wanted to eat as swiftly as he could before he wakened, and if it was real then he did not want to take the chance of his hosts changing their minds. He reached for the spoon that had been laid for him, mouth aching with spittle, but his thawed fingers fumbled and he could not quite grasp it. When at last he contrived to take a proper hold, his hand trembled so violently that he could not manage to negotiate it into the food.

Nimble fingers plucked the utensil away, and he looked sidelong to find Eira smiling pleasantly at him. 'Just use your hand, dear,' she said quietly. 'No one will notice.'

At another time he might have striven harder for careful manners, but by now he was lightheaded with hunger and it seemed as if his whole body was crying out to be fed. He fumbled with the honey-cake and managed to break off a piece and to raise it to his mouth. His tongue curled protectively around the morsel as its impossible sweetness made his eyes water. The cake itself was light and rich and nourishing, and fresh enough that it must have been baked that very morning. Somehow he managed to swallow. The roof of his mouth was tender, scraped by pine bark and wearied by cold air, but the wholesome food of the Beornings brought nothing but pleasure as he took another bite.

Around him Grimbeorn's family was tucking in to their midnight meal as if this were an everyday occurrence. The little ones were chattering quietly but happily as they munched on their honey-cakes or spread cream on their bread. The older children managed between their own mouthfuls to keep their siblings' plates full. At one point Una rose and went to fill Baldbeorn's plate for him again, and soon after that Sigbeorn came out of the kitchen with one pitcher of mead and another of hot milk sweetened with honey and spiced with nutmeg and cloves. He began to fill squat round mugs, which were passed from hand to hand until each person had a libation befitting his or her age. Ufrún and Harlbeorn were offered a choice between the two, and both chose milk.

Grimbeorn chuckled. 'They've only just taken their chairs, those two,' he explained to Aragorn, who was taking a small and cautious nibble of the bread. 'Old enough to sit up with us of an evening; old enough to train a colt of their own come spring. But the head for mead? That they need to learn.'

Aragorn looked at his own cup and wondered whether he could find his own head for mead. He had had no more than half a dozen mouthfuls of food, but his stomach was churning uneasily and a faint nausea was settling in the back of his throat. After so long subsisting on the barest gifts of the land his stomach seemed unable to cope with such rich fare. His eyelids felt weighted with millstones, and the chair was doing almost all the work of keeping him upright. At the far end of the table, the littlest girl was nodding sleepily over her milk, and he found himself inclined to drift after her towards the land of slumber.

Someone plucked the bread from his fingers, and his chair was dragged back from the table. He was dimly aware of skirts swirling past on both sides, and of swift orchestrated motions behind him. He felt Eira's hands on his, wrapping narrow strips of soft ribbon about each finger, his palms, and his thumbs to shield his ravaged hands. Then a strong grip took hold under his arm, and Grimbeorn was helping him to his feet.

'There, now; just a few steps and you can rest,' the man said, his deep voice reverberating through his broad chest as Aragorn leaned helplessly against him. Those few short steps sent bolts of fiery tingling torment up from his bare feet, but he was too weary to care. He stumbled as the blanket that had covered his lap puddled about his ankles, but someone – Una, he thought – bent swiftly to pick it up. Then, blessedly, the pilgrimage was over and Grimbeorn was lowering him onto a thick soft mattress crackling with straw and smelling faintly of dried lavender and rue. The blanket laid upon it was oven-warm, and the one around his shoulders was drawn gently away so that he could be tucked under another that had been heated for him. The pillow beneath his head was stuffed plump with clean wool, and his heavy head sunk deep into its inviting embrace. More blankets were heaped over him, tucked snugly under the corners of the mattress. Through the slits that were all he could manage to shape when he tried to open his eyes he could see the glow of a bed of carefully-banked embers: he was lying on his side close by the great hearth, which was nearly as long as he was tall. He would sleep warm and safe indeed this night.

Far, far away there were murmured voices and the shuffling footfalls of drowsy children being herded off to their beds. The glow beyond his lids began to fade as candles were snuffed and lamps shaded. He felt a questing hand upon his brow, and he heard Eira's gentle voice floating above him.

'You've a touch of fever, lad,' she said. 'Likely nothing but weariness and cold, but we'll keep a sharp watch.' She clicked her tongue and then said; 'You two keep him warm, and fetch me if he takes a turn.' Of someone else, farther off, she asked; 'Are you coming to bed?' There was a pause long enough for the shake of a head. 'Well, then, you can fetch him something if he wakes thirsty, and help him if he needs aught else. But if he takes a turn, send them to fetch me.'

There was a murmured reply and Aragorn heard her move off. Something long and living and warm settled against his spine, and another similar mass curled behind his legs. One of them huffed quietly and sneezed, and he felt his body relax: the lady Eira had set two of the dogs to watch over him. The soothing heat of their bodies comforted him, and he settled deeper into the chrysalis of sweet-smelling bedding. His weariness had all but overcome him, and he was just slipping away into blessed floating slumber when he remembered with sudden horror that he was not travelling alone. He tried to sit up, but weary muscles and the snugly tucked blankets hampered him and he managed only a little feeble thrashing that exhausted him utterly. As he was trying to marshal his strength for another attempt, a low deep voice sounded from somewhere past his head.

'Peace, Chief of the West,' said Baldbeorn gravely. 'Your companion is here, and he is secured, and he has eaten. Whether he shall sleep I do not know, but I promise that I will not. I will not fail in my charge, whether I understand it or no. Rest now, and do not let your dreams be troubled.'

Aragorn wanted more than anything to give voice to his gratitude, but he found such a task utterly beyond his strength. The warmth and the soft bed and the slow, steady breathing of the hounds at his back were enticing him away, and their promises – unlike the sibilant song of the snow – were truthful. He slept.

lar

It seemed he awoke once in the early morning, or else he trod very lightly in dreams of the world around him. For he heard low murmured voices and detected the soft sounds and scents of a very quiet breakfast, and it seemed that two husky shadows built up the fire before him into a cheery blaze. But he did not linger long so near to wakefulness, forsaking it for the deep wellspring of slumber so long denied him.

When he woke at last it was to the stirrings of an empty stomach and the noises of Grimbeorn's daughters by marriage laying the table for nuncheon. He rolled onto his back, and the dog who had been resting there shifted docilely out of his way without even troubling to rise. His eyes were crusted with heavy sleep, and he rubbed at them with a bandaged thumb, then stared in wonder at his hands in their careful dressings. For a moment he could not quite remember where he was or how he had come to be so cared-for in a strange hall with a high smoke-stained roof through which the sun sparkled by way of a vent-hole almost directly above him. Then he recalled what had come to pass the night before, and he let himself burrow again beneath the welcome weight of the bedclothes. He lay there for a while, content to let his turbulent thoughts do battle far beneath the surface of his mind, until he heard two whispered voices close at hand.

'Do you suppose he wakes?' the first voice said. It was a girl, and young enough that she still had the lisp of babyhood about the ends of her words.

'I do not suppose he will ever wake,' said the second, a boy no older than she. 'Mayhap he has died and will lie here until spring, when we may bury him and build a cairn like the one that houses Beorn.'

'He has not died: he rolled over and he moved his hands,' the girl insisted.

'Well then he is awake!' the boy said eagerly. 'Let us ask him where he comes from and whether there are still dragons over the mountains!'

'He may still sleep,' argued the girl. 'Halla rolls about when she sleeps, and she moves her hands. She kicks, too. And she sings.'

The boy giggled. 'Sings? Does she truly?'

'You mustn't tease her, or she'll know I told you,' said the girl. Then she sighed wistfully. 'Mayhap when Svala is older and the new baby is born we can each share a bed with our own sister and I can sleep in peace!'

'Mayhap the new baby will be a boy,' said the boy wisely. 'Then Torbeorn and I will share with him, and you will be caught with Halla on one side and Svala on the other!'

'I do not think that likely,' said the girl, rather sulkily. There was a shifting of soft shoes and she said; 'I wish he would wake.'

Aragorn supposed it was time to oblige his little hostess, and so he turned his head to the left in the direction of the voices. He was met with a mound of blanket-ends, and worked his hand out into the air again to paw them down out of his line of sight. On the opposite rim of the fire-pit with their feet in the hot sand below sat the two youngest children; the five-year-olds he had taken for twins. Now he saw that he was mistaken: the girl had pale blue eyes, and the boy's were rich green. Grimbeorn and all his sons had deep brown eyes, and Eira's were a pale hazel, so these they must each have inherited from their mothers. Both pairs of eyes were tremendously wide now, as the children realized that the guest was indeed awake.

He wanted to wish them a cheerful good morning, but his throat had closed up in the night and all that he could manage was a croak and a heady cough. It was enough, it seemed, to make the little boy jolt like a startled rabbit and the little girl clap her hands delightedly.

'He is awake!' she cried. Then she clapped both hands over her mouth and looked furtively towards the long table somewhere beyond Aragorn's feet.

The damage had been done, it seemed, for light footsteps approached. 'Awake, is he?' the strong, fair voice of young Una asked. 'You'd best hope it was not the pair of you that wakened him, or Grandmother will be cross. Go on: run and wash your faces and maybe Sigbeorn will tell you a tale before we eat.'

The children sprang to their feet like dancers mirroring one another's steps and scampered away. A moment later Aragorn found the young lady looking down at him with a smile upon her face and an appraising glint in her eyes.

'A merry morning to you, my lord,' she said, folding her skirts neatly as she knelt beside him. 'Or a merry noontide would be nearer the mark. I hope you have slept well?'

'Very well,' said Aragorn. His voice was hoarse but at least he was able to form the words. 'I thank you. There was no need to drive the children away.'

'There was every need, for their sakes if not for your own,' said Una with a grin. 'They have been told seventeen times in the last two hours alone that they are not to trouble you, nor to ply you with questions, and how do I find them? Doing the first, and warming up to the second. If Grandmother or one of the mothers had caught them, they'd each get a swat on the rump with a wooden spoon and no cream with their apples at supper!'

She reached over the dozing dog beside him and planted her palm on Aragorn's brow. He stirred beneath her touch, wanting to assure her it was not necessary, but she shot him a sharp look. 'They're not the only ones who have had strict orders from Grandmother,' she said. 'I may be young, but I'm the eldest of two very busy broods and I know what a fever feels like! Let me check you and give my honest report, for I am quite partial to cream with my apples.'

'There is no fever,' Aragorn said. He was looking again at his wrapped hands and wondering whether the damage beneath the linen would look better or worse in daylight. For that matter, he wondered how his feet were faring. He had not managed to examine them at all before losing himself to the balm of sleep.

And balm it was, he knew as he managed to dig his elbows against the mattress and lever himself up into a sitting position. His body still ached and his chest was tight, and the merciless itch in his feet was equalled only by the raw prickling pain in his hands, but his mind was clear for the first time in many weeks, so it seemed, and the worst of his headache was gone.

'No,' said Una, dusting her palms together and rocking back onto the balls of her feet. 'No, I don't believe there is. Grandmother will want to see to your hands, but if you've tired of lying there I can help you to the chair.'

Aragorn looked down the long hall. The table had been laid with dishes and baskets of small round bread-loaves, but the women had disappeared again, and it seemed that he was alone with the granddaughter of Grimbeorn. He looked doubtfully at her. She was a tall maid, and sturdy of bone, but she was slender and she was only seventeen. He would have towered two heads above her at his full height, and his lean body was despite long deprivation still hard with dense muscle. His feet might not hold him, and if he stumbled he might hurt her.

She seemed to know what he was thinking, for she winked at him. 'I'm strong as a wild pony, I promise you!' she said. 'My great-grandfather was the mighty skin-changer himself, you know, and there's a bit of the bear in my blood.' She got up into a firm squat and offered her fisted forearm. 'Stand, Chief of the Men of the West: I challenge you!'

Before her untrammeled spirit Aragorn felt his spirits rising. His feet would just have to hold him, then, for he would answer her challenge and he did not intend to fall. He raised his left knee and set his foot against the straw of the mattress, and laid his bandaged hand upon her arm.

It was then that he realized that he had been put to bed as he had sat beneath the blankets while he thawed: bare-legged, bare-chested, with only his nether-linen to cover him. He withdrew his hand and shrank back, hastily gathering up the lowest blanket to hide his unclothed body. He managed to get one corner flung over his left shoulder and he clutched the rest of it to him as best he could without the use of his fingers.

Una gawped at him for a moment, and then laughed the wild laugh of her grandsire. She planted her fists on her hips and got to her feet, shaking her head. 'Oh, very well,' she said. 'Cover yourself if it pleases you, as if I have not two brothers, two he-cousins, two uncles, a father and a grandfather, all of whom think nothing of whipping off their tunics at the least excuse and wrestling half-naked in the dooryard. Though I do admit,' she added with a playful toss of her head as she turned to leave him; 'that for all the dirt and the ragged hair you're better-looking than the lot of them.'

Then she took flight and sprinted away as swiftly as the two children had done.

From behind Aragorn came a rumbling chuckle. He twisted to see Randbeorn sitting where his brother had been the night before, an insensible Gollum curled up on the floor at his feet in a nest made of a brown woollen cloak.

'Fear not,' he said. 'I'll tell neither her father nor mine what she said. You want to watch out for Una: she's coming up on marriageable age, and if there was ever a girl wanted marrying it's that one! She'll have a brood of bonny babes before Freya's finished with her own nest.'

'Freya is her mother?' Aragorn asked. It had been many long years since he had been the object, even in jest, of such a young girl's attentions. The last memorable occasion had been during his sojourn in the court of Ecthelion. He found that despite himself he was rather embarrassed by it.

Randbeorn nodded. 'Freya wife of Baldbeorn. Una's her eldest, then Urdbeorn who herds the young children as skilfully as he herds his beloved cows. Ufrún next, who was so pleased when you remarked upon her eggs last night. Then Halla, who's a handful, and little Delbeorn who supposed we might bury you up by my grandsire's cairn. They'll have another in the brood before the snow all melts away, if the weather doesn't take a turn soon.'

'I see,' said Aragorn, trying to tie all the names together in his mind. He recalled the little girl had said Halla kicked in her sleep, but he could not place the girl's face. One of the middle children who had not yet 'taken her chair', he supposed.

'My wife's Clothilde; Harlbeorn's our eldest. Then Torbeorn, who has been hankering to ask if you're a great warrior and if you have a sword; then little Otkala who runs about with Delbeorn, and Svala's our baby.' Randbeorn stroked his beard thoughtfully. 'Grimbeorn and my mother, of course, and Sigbeorn the Spoilt. That's all of the family you're likely to meet if you're headed east. My sister Heidra keeps a bakeshop in the town with her husband.'

Suddenly Aragorn remembered a sturdy little girl perhaps a year older than the two who had been sitting watch over him, her hands on her hips in precisely the manner of Grimbeorn himself. 'That would be Kvigir,' he said. 'And they have two girls: Dryffa and…'

'And Katrín; that's right! So you know them?' asked Randbeorn with the eager grin of a man who enjoys gossip and genealogy in equal measure, and preferably as often as possible.

'Not well,' said Aragorn carefully. His encounter with the man's brother-in-law had after all been less than pleasant, and he was not eager to discuss it. 'Your brother was kind enough to direct me to the shop when I asked where I might come by something to eat. I met Kvigir, and I saw his daughters.'

'Pretty little lasses, aren't they?' Randbeorn said proudly. 'All the girls of our family are. There never was a man with such a charming daughter, nor such beautiful brother-daughters and sister-daughters as I. When they're grown there'll be broken hearts a plenty from the east ridge of the Vale to the foot of the mountains. It's as well for the young men that only Una's even close to that age.' Beside him Gollum shifted in his uneasy sleep, and the man frowned. 'But what is this thing? No friend of yours, you said. He is not your own child, I hope?'

It was said half in jest, but there was a note of doubt to the question as well. Aragorn shook his head. 'He is a creature I have sought for many years. Since last I enjoyed the hospitality of your home, in fact. Gandalf the Grey has hunted him with me, and I have found him at last. He is my prisoner and I am leading him to a place he can be secured.'

'And his crime?' asked the man. 'From the look of him, he's capable of any number of horrors.'

'That he certainly is,' muttered Aragorn, and for a moment he almost thought that he could feel the scrabbling hands against his wrist as he sunk in Gladden's freezing depths. 'Forgive me; I can say no more, and in sooth I would rather lay by those worries today if I might.'

'That you certainly may do,' said Randbeorn; 'and I think it prudent that you should. You have the look of a man who has carried his cares over-hard. But tell me this. I remember that when you last graced our halls Gandalf put you forward as a great traveller. A huntsman unrivalled, he said, and the lord and leader of the wandering guardians of the western lands. If that is true, why have you come over the High Pass in the dead of winter dressed for hard labour in the heat of July? It's no wonder you were frozen through, wearing those rags without a cloak to your back or a hat for your head or even a pair of gloves.'

Aragorn considered dissembling, but he found that he could not. These folk had shown him nothing but the utmost trust and kindness: he owed them at least as much of the truth as he dared to share. 'I did not cross the mountains on my road to the Carrock,' he said. 'I have come from the far south, where I had thought to pass the winter, such as it is in those temperate climes, in search of he that now rests beside you. After so long seeking fruitlessly I had scarcely thought to find him, but when I did it seemed prudent to come north with all haste, ill-clad or no. My cloak I lost ere I came to the River Gladden. The rest I did not think to carry with me when I left my home on a southward road long months ago.'

Randbeorn made a sound that might have been a grunt of assent or a hum of puzzlement, but at that moment Una returned. In her arms she carried Aragorn's ragged cote and his shirt and belt, but his hose and his boots and the Lórien-blanket were missing. Instead she handed him a pair of soft felted shoes. These surely belonged to Grimbeorn, for they were nearly long enough for Aragorn's feet and rather too wide. He could not deny that, for indoor use at least, they would be kinder on his tender feet than old cracked leather.

'Hurry and dress,' the girl said merrily. 'We'll be bringing in the midday meal soon, and you will surely want to join us. While I'm not opposed to seeing a man's strength traced in lines down his arms, I don't think we're meant to be able to count your ribs.'

She whisked away before Aragorn could think of anything even remotely like a dignified reply. Raucously but without spite, Randbeorn laughed.

Chapter XLIX: The Wanderer's Tales

With his bandaged fingers, Aragorn was obliged to wriggle awkwardly into his shirt, which someone had taken the trouble to wash for him. His cote had been aired and dried, and with great care he eased his arm into the dangling left sleeve, tugging with his thumbs until the cloth on both sides of the rent was settled into place. He reached into the right sleeve with less trouble, but with his burning hands wrapped he could not lace the garment, and fastening his belt was impossible. He settled the cloth low about his hips and drew his legs out of the cosy cover of the blankets that he might study his feet. The skin was a raw and livid red to well above each ankle (at least where it was not dark with bruises) and there were open sores on the joints of each toe that stung and tingled fiercely, but there was no sign of deep frostbite and no infection in the wounds. With some fumbling he donned the soft felt shoes, and then sat with his legs half-crossed and his hands in his lap, fighting the urge to sink back down against the comfort of the straw mattress and drift off to sleep again.

The floorboards creaked as Randbeorn came to crouch beside him. 'If you have need of an arm to bear you up, I am happy to offer mine,' he said.

Aragorn shook his head. 'I can stand on my own, I think.' He paused, reluctant, then sighed and gestured with his restricted hands. 'If you would consent to buckle my belt I would be grateful,' he murmured.

The other man nodded and fixed the length of leather about the Ranger's waist, buckling it more loosely than Aragorn himself would have done, but snugly enough to keep his clothing in place. With a soft word of thanks Aragorn curled his legs and got up onto one knee. His left foot he planted on the floor at the side of the mattress, and the two dogs who had slept so faithfully at his back shifted to give him room to manoeuvre. Carefully and steadily he transferred his weight onto his foot, breathing into the pain of putting pressure upon the tender thawed sole. His right thigh straightened, straining a little along the scar-line, and when he reached the tipping-point of his weight he managed to rise almost smoothly, his head reeling only a little. He stood unmoving for a moment, both to let the dizziness pass and so that he could arrange his shirt and cote to cover himself more decently. The lacing-edges of his tunic, meant to meet with only a little ease, lapped over one another from the base of his breastbone to well below his waist, and though the ragged lower edge provided little modesty the shirt beneath was whole and long, reaching well down his thighs. It was not an elegant mode of dress – indeed he fancied he looked quite foolish with his gangling legs bare beneath the fine linen hem and the fringe of cut and fraying wool – but it would serve until he had the opportunity to ask what had been done with his hose.

'Are you well? Should I help you to—'

'I am well,' Aragorn sighed. He had not realized how long he had been staring down at his body. He raised his head and tried to straighten his back out of its lingering sag of weariness, and fixed his gaze upon the long table perhaps ten strides from where he stood. Cautiously but with firm resolve he took the first tortured step. Jolts of cold fire shot up into the muscles of his calf and along the bones and up towards his hip, dispersing there into fine tendrils of harmonic prickling. The second step was just as miserable, with his other leg responding as its mate had done, and then after that he found that he could bear it after all and he hobbled onward.

Randbeorn hurried ahead, pulling his father's great chair aside. Aragorn shook his head.

'Not there,' he breathed, surprised to find how shallowly his breath was coming. He drew in a deeper lungful and tried to beat back the pain. 'Not in the place of the master of the house: it is not fitting.'

'Take my brother's place, then,' the man said, moving to shift the chair in which Grimbeorn had sat the night before; third in precedence and more suitable for a guest, however honoured. 'He will not be dining with the rest of us.'

Gratefully Aragorn eased himself off of his protesting feet, bracing his elbows against the armrests as he shifted into an almost comfortable position. Below the sharp, brilliant anguish from his lately-frozen extremities he could feel the low sawing protest of a hundred aches in his limbs and his back and his chest and in the loop of muscle that worked his jaw. Even the root of his tongue was sore.

'I trust he has gone to his rest?' he asked, trying as much to distract himself as to hide his misery from his host. 'Even a single night of guarding my captive is a wearisome chore.'

'I've scarcely had three hours of it, and I agree,' said Randbeorn; 'but no; my brother is not sleeping. Having given his word he would not lay by his charge for anything so petty. He has gone to bake the travel-cakes to send with you when you are well enough to move on. The making of them is our grandsire's great secret, and of all the family Baldbeorn has the largest measure of his talent. He will dine in the bakehouse sooner than leave them unattended.'

Aragorn found himself unable to speak. He had no claim upon the aid of these good folk, and yet it seemed their generosity was without measure. He bowed his head and struggled to find the words that might serve to express his gratitude. Yet ere he could do so firm footfalls approached and he raised his eyes as Eira wife of Grimbeorn rounded behind him and sat in her husband's chair. She had a basin of water balanced on one hip, and the other arm held towels, fresh rolls of bandages, and a little earthware crock with a waxed linen cover. She smiled earnestly as she arranged her tools and spread one of the towels over the corner of the table, which was covered now with a beautiful cloth embroidered with brightly-coloured animals.

'Time to have a look at your hands, Aragorn,' she said. She glanced up at her son and nodded towards the kitchen door. 'Go and tell them we will be ready to dine in a quarter of an hour.'

The man moved off and Aragorn laid his hands upon the towel. With careful practiced movements the lady unwrapped the lengths that bound his right thumb, tugging gently when she came to a place where the cloth was pasted to the skin with the pale crust of a chilblain. When it did not come away of its own accord she lifted his wrist and eased his hand into the water. It was very warm and as it soaked through the bandages the fire in Aragorn's nerves began anew. He screwed his eyes tightly closed against the urge to moan, but forced himself to look again as the last of the wrappings came away.

His hand looked much as it had the night before, save that the sores were crusting over and two of the blisters had broken. He tried to move his fingers, and found that the knuckles were so swollen that he could not make a tight fist. The motion caused fresh cracks to open up in the brittle skin and a little pink cloud of blood came up from one of them.

'Easy, now,' said Eira. 'They'll heal in good time, provided you keep them warm and dry.' She lifted his hand with care and skimmed her thumbnail lightly along each fingertip in turn. 'Can you feel that?'

Aragorn nodded. She started to pinch them instead, blanching the nails and watching as the blood rushed back. 'You know well your craft, my lady,' he said in honest approval. He shied from the thought of what might have befallen him without such a capable caregiver.

She clicked her tongue against her teeth. 'You're not the first such sufferer I've treated; it's a hard life in these lands, and the weather can turn swift as a diving falcon. Though I meant what I said last evening about you being the most uncomplaining. You've suffered through this before, haven't you?'

'Once or twice.' Aragorn's breath caught in his throat as his left hand slid into the water. 'Never quite so dramatically.'

Eira rolled one shoulder in a ghost of a shrug. 'The longer we live, the more life surprises. But how long have you been out in the cold with nothing to cover them?'

'I first met snowfall three days' south of the River Gladden,' Aragorn said, equivocating a little. The truth was that he did not remember quite when his hands had first begun to trouble him, but he thought it was almost immediately out of Lórien. 'That was… a little over a fortnight ago, I believe.'

'Too long,' said Eira mournfully. 'Far, far too long. You've a fire in your blood, and no mistake: by rights you ought to have lost a finger or two.'

'Good fortune has found me, then,' said Aragorn. She looked questioningly at him as she tested each finger, and he nodded. 'I can feel them. The third finger spikes sharply, but that should mend with time.'

'Will you give it time?' she asked him, fixing him with a firm insistent eye. 'You are welcome to tarry as long as you wish: will you stay until you are healed?'

The temptation was terrible. To rest here three days, or four – perhaps even a week – until his hurts were eased and his weariness salved and his belly grown used to plentiful wholesome foods seemed a boon scarcely to be imagined. Yet he had come so far in such dreadful haste, and he was now once more on the east bank of Anduin. Here he had to fear not only the ordinary risks of the Wilderland, but the watchers of Dol Guldur who might well be seeking for the craven little captive that had escaped, or been allowed to escape, from the dungeons of Sauron himself. The last leg of the road was brief but perilous, and the longer he lingered the greater the risks.

'I cannot,' he said. 'I must press on: time is a luxury I can ill afford. I have slept; when I have eaten again I will see what can be done to prepare myself for the road ahead, and then I must depart.'

'There is no question of departing today!' Eira exclaimed. In her fierce expression Aragorn could see the woman who was the equal of Beorn's renowned son. 'The cold is worse than yesterday, and if you chill these hands again so soon then you are bound to lose fingers.' She put her hand on his right forearm, feeling the hard lean muscles of a swordsman. 'How shall you wield a blade then?'

She was wise, and yet Aragorn found himself chafing against the delay. He looked down the hall to where Gollum was still curled in a tight ball with his head tucked under one brittle arm. Another night's rest would do them both good, and he could be on his way in the morning. Even if he might have braved the chance of pursuit and remain here longer, he could not ask his hosts to continue to harbour such a sly and dangerous creature in their home – among their children. One more night, to allow the inflammation in his hands to ease a little and his feet to regain some of their strength, and then onward in the last rapid push to Thranduil's halls.

'I will stay tonight, if you will have me,' he said. 'Longer than that I do not dare. My errand is a pressing one and not without peril. I have travelled many hundreds of miles to bring my charge this far, and I am so near the end of my journey that I dare not delay.'

'Then I do what I can for you,' said Eira. She took the cover off of her little dish and took up a fingerful of a smooth golden salve. She held it out so that Aragorn could catch the scent of it: fennel and lavender, honey and the rich warm scent of beeswax. 'Thinned with beechnut oil,' she told him, doubtless noting the calculating look in his eyes. 'It will soothe the sores and ease the ache, and it will keep the water in your skin while sealing out the damp. You ought to rub a little on your lips as well; the cold wind has done them no favours.' She spread the balm over the first two fingers of each hand and then began to rub it gently into his left palm.

Aragorn took a little with his right forefinger and dabbed it against the rough riven surface of his lower lip. There was an initial burst of stinging discomfort that dimmed almost at once into quiet relief. He pressed his lips together to spread the unguent and then felt with his small fingers to find the places where his face had been burned by the bitter air, that he might cover them also. He finished just as Eira did, and allowed her to minister to his right hand in its turn. Then she bandaged his hands again, winding the wrappings tightly to ease the swelling but leaving his fingers separate and their tips bare. Then she cleared away the cloths and the basin and called out into the kitchen that it was time for the noon meal.

The dishes had been laid, and bearing out the food was a swift task for the many members of the family. Soon they were sitting as they had the night before, save that Grimbeorn had his rightful place again and Aragorn sat on his left. Again Una filled a plate for him, and again she heaped it with generous portions of each sumptuous dish. Again he ate but little, nibbling slowly at first one thing and then another as he tried to keep his disused stomach from protesting against the food. Having slept, he was better able to drink in the joyous amity of this charming family. The children were merry, laughing and chattering and teasing one another playfully. Freya and Clothilde kept the conversation shifting pleasantly among the adults and the older youths. And on the floor under the table baby Svala crawled amid the shifting feet, now and then planting a plump little hand on someone's leg or tugging at the hem of a kirtle. Her burbling laugh could be heard from time to time, as though the very floor of the house was rapt with innocent mirth. All this Aragorn attended in rapturous silence, his wayworn spirit feeding upon the warmth and love of this wonderful place.

He realized presently that Torbeorn was speaking to him, leaning forward over the table and gesturing eagerly with his spoon. '… and in Beorn's day there were hounds that walked on two legs to lay the tables and light the lamps!' he said. 'Our hounds are clever enough, but they can't do that now.'

'No, indeed,' said Grimbeorn with a chuckle. 'For I lack Beorn's gift of knowing their speech, and his skill in teaching them. In any case your grandmother was not fond of such servants.'

'I've no objection to the dogs!' his wife protested. 'And goodness knows they can be useful, but waiting at table? Such things may be well enough for a man dwelling alone, but there's no need for it when we've a whole family to share the work! Besides which, the table was far too short for comfort in those days. You'll appreciate that when you grow into those feet of yours, my lad.'

'Did you know Beorn?' asked the boy, still focused on Aragorn. 'Did he dwell here when you last stayed with us?'

'I met him once, long ago,' said Aragorn, reaching for his mug and taking a small sip of the rich warm mead within. The brew was strong and the heat of the liquor on his tongue was at once bracing and painful, as it stung in the fine scratches on his palate. 'He was as noble and courageous a man as any I have ever known.'

Randbeorn frowned. 'I do not remember such a visit,' he said. 'When was this?'

'When you were no bigger than Svala is now,' said Grimbeorn. 'And when last Lord Aragorn rested here, it was Una who played amongst our feet, and Sigbeorn was an impudent lad of seven asking endless questions and perching in the walnut tree to toss its green fruit at a rather disgruntled wizard.'

Aragorn found himself smiling at the memory, his lips softened enough by Eira's salve that they protested only a little against the stretch. Sigbeorn flushed to the tips of his ears and took a long draught from his jar while his brother roared with laughter and slapped him between the shoulder blades. 'Now, that I do recall!' he chortled. 'Gandalf threatened to roast you if you took another shot.'

'And so you took to throwing them at the other guest instead,' said Grimbeorn. 'He proved considerably more patient, and when several true strikes failed to raise any reaction you grew bored and went off to worry their horses.'

The reminiscences continued, punctuated now and again by questions from the children, until the diners were satiated and the time came to clear away the meal. Again the family made swift work of this, though Baldbeorn's wife hesitated before taking Aragorn's plate.

'You have eaten so little, lord,' she murmured, low enough that only he – and perhaps Eira, who was watching him intently – could hear. 'Does our fare not agree with you?'

'It is wonderful,' Aragorn assured her with another small but earnest smile. 'It is only that my capacity is somewhat reduced. I have not eaten so well in many a day, and I am beholden to you for the chance to do so now. I thank you.'

She returned the smile, eyes warm with compassion, and took his dish. But when the table was cleared and the cloth whisked away she brought a small platter with half a dozen honey-cakes upon it and set it near him. 'In case your capacity should return to you,' she said.

lar

'What is to be done about your boots?' asked Sigbeorn presently. The family had dispersed, leaving only the two younger sons of Grimbeorn in the hall with the guests. Randbeorn had taken out a handsome box of carving-tools, and was working on a small piece of beautiful wood that seemed to be shaping itself into a wondrously detailed ram. His brother was relishing another mug of mead and looking at Aragorn thoughtfully. 'I had a look at them this morning, and they're not fit to be worn as they are. You've got a hole in the left sole, and the leather's so worn and cracked I don't see how they can keep the snow out.'

'They cannot,' said Aragorn. 'Or not very well. I had hoped they would keep in better condition than this, but they were soaked and then frozen, and that has taken its toll.'

'I could ride for the cordwainder and see if he has anything on hand that might fit you,' said Sigbeorn. 'Though we do not slaughter our own cattle he does a lively trade with the tanners in Dale, and his work is as good as any you'll find. Unless you can wait for a week there's no chance of having something made to order, of course, but just about anything would be better than you have now.'

Aragorn shook his head. He did not fancy trying to break in new boots with his feet in their present state, for even the exquisitely-fitted ones furnished for him by the shoemakers of Imladris could raise a blister or two at first wearing. Shop-window boots made to another man's last would be many times worse. 'The final leg of a journey is not the time to be changing boots,' he said.

'The cobbler, then,' said Randbeorn. 'He might be able to re-sole them, and at least he could fit you with clumps. That shouldn't delay you more than a day.'

This was a better suggestion, and a skilled cobbler if hurried could likely patch a pair of soles in an evening. But Aragorn had no means to pay for such services, and while it was one thing for the lord of the land to feed and shelter a traveller who could give nothing in return a simple craftsman with a family to feed could not be expected to labour without remuneration. 'It is unnecessary,' he said, hoping to keep the regret from his voice. 'If you will spare me some pitch and a length of strong thread I can mend them myself. It is not the first pair of boots I have worn through in the course of my life.'

So it was that some time later he found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor by the hearth, a pitch-pot hung from one of the iron hooks over the fire and his boots in his lap. Sigbeorn had found him a sturdy needle and a skein of heavy linen thread, along with an awl and a tooling-knife and a small piece of aged but well-oiled leather for patching. He had brought a dish of beechnut oil, which though not as viscous as tallow would serve well enough. There was even a lump of coad with which to wax the string.

Aragorn did not dare to try turning the boots, and so he set about repairing the stitches from the outside. It was hard work for sore fingers, but he knew it would help to loosen his stiff knuckles. He did have to curl the thread about his fourth finger when it came time to tug, in order to avoid sawing through one of his many blisters, but he managed well enough. Sigbeorn had taken up the post beside Gollum, and though he watched with interest he seemed content to let the visitor work in silence. Aragorn did so for some time, until he realized that other observers had crept upon him as he laboured.

Otkana and Delbeorn were crouched by the far corner of his side of the hearth, studying his every movement avidly. A little behind them was Torbeorn, his young face fairly bursting with questions that he did not quite dare to ask. Halla stood past him, hands behind her back, and beyond her – making every effort to appear aloof and quite incidentally present – were Harlbeorn and Ufrún. Taking in this straggled parade of curious onlookers, Aragorn could not help but smile.

This was all the invitation the little ones needed. They hopped up and scurried forward, planting themselves just past the border formed by the small row of tools. They sat with their knees turned in and their ankles on either side of their hips; save for the colour of their eyes and the fashion of their garb as like as two dishes made to the same pattern. They wore identical expressions of eager expectation.

'Good day to you,' Aragorn said, nodding his head to each of them in turn. 'Have you ever watched a man mend a boot before?'

They shook their heads. Behind them the older ones, encouraged it seemed by the fact that he made no move to chase the children away, began to inch nearer.

'I am putting right the stitching,' he explained as he drove the needle carefully through an old hole and drew the thread snug. 'It is careful work, for if I do not put the new ones in precisely the right place it will change the fit of the boot and my foot will suffer for it.'

Harlbeorn seemed interested in this, but Otkana certainly was not. Her eyes glazed a little with boredom as he spoke and the moment he finished she burst out with; 'Tell us a story!'

Delbeorn nodded, and Halla said; 'Oh, yes!' before she could catch herself. Torbeorn scurried up and sat behind his young cousin and the oldest pair inched nearer.

'A story?' asked Aragorn. He laced back the thread and drew it through an old stitch before cutting it loose.

'Yes!" insisted Delbeorn. 'Uncle says you told stories when last you came. He says they were marvellous.'

Aragorn cast a querying look over his shoulder at Sigbeorn, who was suddenly much occupied in studying the roof-beams high above. He found himself smiling again as he turned back to the eager young faces before him. 'Very well, then,' he said. 'I am happy enough to pay for my lodgings with a tale or two. What manner of story would you like to hear?'

'A tale about a warrior!' said Torbeorn. 'A mighty man and brave!'

'About a maiden,' argued Halla. 'Beautiful and strong and clever and wise.'

'And a wicked king!' said Delbeorn. 'With monsters to guard him.'

'A wolf,' said Otkana breathlessly, shivering with delicious dread at the very thought.

'A tale of lands far away over the mountains,' said Ufrún, coming to join the others. Harlbeorn hung back, but his eyes were just as avid as any of the others'.

'Have you no request, young master?' Aragorn asked him kindly.

The boy coloured a little and shook his head. Then he said; 'A story with a hopeful ending.'

Aragorn nodded solemnly, though he wanted to laugh with delight at the task laid before him. There was only one tale he knew that would meet the demands of each of his listeners, and it was one that he cherished above all others. Turning his right boot carefully to the next worn place, he looked from face to face and began.

'This is a tale of lands far away indeed,' he said. 'Not only beyond the Misty Mountains, but away beyond the Ered Luin in a time long ago when they stretched north to south on an inland way and the lands beyond them had not yet sunk into the seas. In those lands, now lost to time, there was a forest laid under the enchantment of a mighty Elven lord. And there dwelt the fairest maiden ever to walk upon the earth, and she was beautiful indeed, and strong, and clever and wise, and she sang like the nightingales of the slumbering woods, and she danced with the grace of starlight on the water. Lúthien was her name…'

lar

He told them the tale, or as much of it as was fitting for small children to hear, and they listened enraptured. When he spoke of the rescue of Beren from Tol-in-Gaurhoth, Halla let out a great cheer, and when he came at last to the battle of Huan and Carcharoth six pairs of eyes grew wide with breathless wonder. Then because he had promised a hopeful ending, and such things were accounted differently by children, he said nothing of Beren's departure to Mandos, nor of Lúthien's quest to follow him, and skipped forward in the tale. 'So Lúthien and Beren were wedded at last,' he said; 'and in joy they dwelt in Doriath, and a son was born to them. Dior the Fair he was, the first of the Half-elven to walk benath the stars. There are those descended from Beren and Lúthien still living in Middle-earth.'

'Where?' asked Ufrún breathlessly, as the spell of the story broke and the children began to shift out of their entranced poses.

'Here and there,' Aragorn said simply. He had his hand deep inside his left boot, holding the patch of leather in place while the pitch with which he had painted it cooled and hardened. With his ragged clothing and his bare legs and their grandsire's shoes upon his feet he did not suppose he looked much like an heir to the heroes the children were envisioning. He watched their shining eyes, imaginations running blithely through the fertile fields off story and song, and he felt his heart grow lighter. It had been too long since he had been able to forget, even for an hour, the burden of his journey and the brooding malice of his prisoner. To lay that by, however briefly, was a blessing unlooked-for.

'Now you had all best run along, and leave the man in peace,' said Sigbeorn, who until that moment had been listening just as raptly as any of his brothers' offspring. 'And what do we say to one who has been so generous with his storytelling?'

There was a chorus of thanks and the children rose, the girls following Ufrún's lead and dipping little curtseys, and the boys bowing neatly before scampering away. Aragorn watched as they scattered, disappearing through the various doors. Then he let out a soft sigh and turned back to his work, dipping a rag in the oil and rubbing it into the old, worn leather of the boot.

'That was a remarkable story,' said Sigbeorn. 'Did you contrive it yourself?'

Aragorn shook his head. 'The tale is a true one. There are those among the Elvenkind who knew the beauty of Lúthien when she danced in Doriath long ago, and still the Firstborn mourn her, who took the Gift of Men for love and passed forever from the circles of the world.' He knew that his gaze was drifting far away, and the curls that his fingers traced as they worked became mere echoes of the first as he began to slip into his own cherished memories of dancing feet and hair like a shadow in the twilight.

Then there was an ugly snort and a series of gollums, and he was jerked back into the present by the unhappy realization that his prisoner was awake. He turned to look as Gollum raised his great heavy head and pawed curiously at the cloak on which he lay. For a moment his expression was one of guileless bewilderment, almost like a child who wakes after being borne in his sleep to some strange place. Then his eyes flashed and his face hardened into a scowl and he glowered first at Sigbeorn and then at his captor sitting some distance away.

'Hateful manses,' he spat, curling his arms about his knees and crouching. 'Nasty wooden walls and great noisy brats, houndses and wicked old women, gollum.'

'Be silent,' Aragorn said sternly. He would not suffer the creature to insult his gracious hostess, and having wandered a little while in happier thoughts he found himself cross and rather embittered to be dragged back to his tiresome labours. Gollum shot him a look of scathing hatred, but he fell silent, watching warily as one of the dogs padded across the room and paused to stare at him.

lar

There was a lull in the household during the hour before the evening meal. Some of the family was in the kitchen, preparing the night's feast. Others went out, warmly bundled in layers of thick woollen clothes, to see to the evening's chores. The youngest ones were upstairs resting after a hard afternoon of chasing one another throughout the house, playing at Beren and Lúthien. Aragorn had long since finished his repairs, last of all painting the sole and vamp and heel of each boot with a thin layer of pitch. This was not considered to be a clever way to mend one's footwear, for it would ruin the leather completely, but the boots had been beyond salvaging since their mistreatment at Gladden. He hoped that this simple waterproofing would hold long enough to get him dry-footed through Mirkwood. After that he would have to contrive something else to bear him home, but the truth was that he could not think so far into the future. He would rest tonight, and on the morrow he would strike out again. He had perhaps a hundred and twenty miles left upon this road, and he meant to put them behind him as swiftly as he could.

He was alone now with Gollum, who was curled up again with a corner of Sigbeorn's cloak drawn up over his face. Whether he slept Aragorn could not say and did not in truth care. It was enough that his huge haunting eyes were not fixed upon him. He stared into the fire, lost in indistinct ponderings of the road behind and the labour ahead, and might have sat there until the ladies came to lay the table had not the far door of the hall swung open to admit Grimbeorn and his eldest son.

Careless of the pleas of his troubled feet Aragorn rose, fumbling with fingers now wrapped in resin-smeared bandages to arrange the skirts of his cote. He wanted to stand to greet gracefully his hosts, who had treated him with honour from the moment he staggered to their door. But his head reeled and his sight blurred and he felt himself swaying, and then Grimbeorn had a firm hold on his elbow and was leading him to the tall dark chair at the head of the table. Aragorn sank heavily down upon the woven rush seat and braced his arm upon the board, fighting the fit of dizziness and cursing his traitorous body.

Grimbeorn sat next to him, and Baldbeorn took the chair on the other side. His expression held none of his father's kindly concern, and Aragorn found him far easier to look at as his vision grew clear and the worst of the weariness passed. Grimbeorn's hold on his arm was withdrawn at last and the master of the house said; 'I had hoped to hear your tale while the rest of the household is occupied, but I see perhaps that is too much to ask of you now.'

Aragorn shook his head, trying to swallow against a throat gone dry. Baldbeorn reached out for a pitcher set upon a tray of jars, and he poured out a measure of milk before setting the vessel by the Ranger's hand. Murmuring hoarse thanks Aragorn lifted it, his wrist trembling a little as he tipped the mug to his lips and drank. It was sweet and rich and wholesome, and he took a long draught before setting it down.

'I will be glad to tell my tale,' he said; 'or as much of it as I dare. You have given me tremendous grace, and you must be puzzled by my state and my choice of companion. I have no coin but the truth to offer in exchange for your hospitality, but that you may have if it is in my power to give it. Ask what you will, and I shall answer.'

Baldbeorn, who had nodded as Aragorn spoke, now crossed his arms upon the table and leaned forward over them. 'The creature,' he said in a low voice that could not likely be heard any more than a few feet away. 'You bade me guard him; you keep him bound. As you passed into sleep you startled as if in fright and calmed only when I assured you he was secure. He is such a little thing, and withered; yet clearly you believe him dangerous. For a man of your measure to fear such a being fills me with unease. What is the threat in him?'

'He is a thing of no small malice,' said Aragorn. 'For all his size he is swift and he is ruthless. When first I came upon him I thought to make an easy capture. This proved not so. We grappled long and violently, and he set his teeth into my arm in a wound that festered for many days afterward. On the marches of Rohan away to the south, I denied him eggs from a poor cotholder's hen; that day as I slept he attempted to strangle me and might well have succeeded, such is the strength in his wasted body. As we crossed over Gladden, creeping on the ice, he scuttled us and very nearly made his escape in the swift-flowing waters. Then too he came near enough to meting out my death. I have cowed him since with fear and with need, for I do not think he would fare well in the winter wastes alone, but I dare not trust to his cooperation and I dare not leave him unwatched.'

For a moment there was silence as Baldbeorn considered his words. Then his father spoke with an uneasy chuckle. 'You fell through the ice at Gladden?' he asked. 'That is a mountain river! You must have the fortune of a widow's son, to survive that.'

'It was there I lost my pack, and such supplies as I had,' said Aragorn. 'I have managed without in the days since, but it has not been easy.'

There was frank respect upon Baldbeorn's face now, but his father frowned. 'I do not understand,' said Grimbeorn. 'What induced you to undertake such a journey with so dangerous a companion? What is his worth to you?'

'Long have Gandalf and I sought him,' said Aragorn. 'We labour, we two, in the long war against the Shadow in the East. We came to believe that the creature bore with him information that might aid us in that fight. What that might be I cannot tell you, for the need for secrecy is great. Few even among the Wise were aware of our search; still fewer of the reasons behind it. When last I was blessed with the comfort of your hall we had only begun our search. Sixteen long years we hunted at whiles, when our other toils would permit. As last winter waned we took up the trail again, following it far into the south. What is your knowledge of the lands beyond Sarn Gebir?'

'Only what I know from old tales and moth-eaten maps,' said Grimbeorn. 'That way lies Rohan, the land of our distant kin who rode south long ago; still we sing of their passing, who left behind many who loved them. Beyond that there is the great kingdom of Men. Gondor it is called, a land of cold warriors and long-dead kings. But the Men of the West are of that kindred: surely you know more of them than I.'

'I do,' said Aragorn. 'I dwelt amongst them once, long ago. Yet on this journey I went in secret, and in secret Gandalf and I passed into the far southern wastes of Gondor; once fair and fertile, now deserted and debatable. It was there the trail led, but it was long cold. Fifteen years and more we had searched then, in those last days of autumn. Gandalf wearied of the hunt and turned his mind to other matters, but I in my folly supposed there was still hope, and so we parted.'

'It cannot have been folly,' said Baldbeorn in a slow and ponderous tone; 'for it seems you have found what you sought.'

'I have, but there was folly enough;' Aragorn told him. 'I walked in dark places and I took many injudicious risks, and in the end my labours weighed too heavy upon me and I despaired of ever retrieving the trail. Northward I turned, and in that moment when my failure seemed most bitter I found at last what I had sought these many years: fresh tracks in the mud. I followed them and I came upon him at last, alone and far from any aid. I took him, though he bit me, and began the long journey back. I have travelled not much less than eight hundred miles since that night, and I draw near at last to the end of this hard road. All the way I have feared pursuit by the servants of the Enemy, for I believe the creature was in their keeping almost until he fell into mine. If he escaped them, which scarcely seems possible, they will want him back. If he did not, but was sent forth on some errand, they will not wish him hindered by me. I have had no sign of watchers in many long leagues, but it seems scarcely possible that my passage has not been marked.'

He looked from one grave face to the next. Grimbeorn looked wary and thoughtful, and Baldbeorn's solemn eyes could not be read. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out under the table.

'I say this not to engender your pity, but so that you may understand the danger I bring with me,' Aragorn said. 'If I am indeed hunted, I may bring the thralls of Dol Guldur to your very doorstep. If by some improbable chance I am not, still I carry with me a being twisted by hatred and long torment. I should never have allowed him to pass beneath your roof, where dwell your children and your grandchildren. Had I been quite in possession of my faculties I would not have done it. I must ask your forgiveness for that, and I must know that you understand the peril I have brought you.'

Grimbeorn made a dismissive noise in his throat. 'What was I to do, leave you to freeze in the dooryard?' he asked. 'You have been commended to me by Gandalf, and that makes you a friend. You labour against the Shadow, and that makes you an ally. Your toils are clearly greater than mine, and that places me and all my folk in your debt. Shelter and victuals are small enough gifts to offer, whatever dangers you bear.'

Aragorn gazed upon him, studying the aged face with its lines set deep in courage and kindness. 'I thank you,' he said, finding his voice at last. 'Would that there were more men of your valour and nobility, Grimbeorn son of Beorn. It is only those such as you that give us any hope at all of prevailing against the Enemy.'

Then Baldbeorn spoke, sombre and pensive. 'This creature,' he said. 'Has he given you what you sought? Was the information he had worth all this bitter labour?'

'I do not know,' sighed Aragorn. At once he felt weighted with an immeasurable burden, and it seemed his shoulders sagged. Certainly his head drooped low, shaking itself slowly from side to side. 'I tried to question him, and more than once. He will not speak to me. I had hoped…' He stilled his tongue. He had hoped that he might prove himself worthy of the creature's trust; had tried to win him first with courtesy, then with coercion and finally with direst need. He had failed in those efforts, and the one triumph left to him was to bear Gollum to the agreed-upon place, that others might strive to do what he could not.'

'And where are you taking him?' asked the younger man at length. 'Not to the Dwarves, surely, and if your quest is a secret one you will find little confidentiality in Dale.'

'To the Elven-king in Mirkwood,' Aragorn said. 'Long ago that too was arranged. It is there Gandalf will come when he learns the wretch has been found. I have come so far and the last leg of my journey lies before me. By the straightest road I judge I might reach the halls of Thranduil in five days' time.'

'Five days? I think not,' said Grimbeorn. 'Through Mirkwood, and on foot? And those feet so hurtful that you can scarcely cross a room without paling from the pain?'

'They will be less painful tomorrow,' Aragorn said, colour rising sharply to his cheeks. He had thought he had managed to hide his discomfort better than that. 'If, that is, you will still permit me shelter after what you have heard. If you will not I understand, and I shall bear you nothing but goodwill for the grace you have given to me. Yet I would esteem it a mercy if you would let me rest at least in your stables or cattle-bier with my prisoner if you would not have us in the house..'

Grimbeorn chuckled, and the sound seemed to disperse some of the grim atmosphere that had gathered about the three men. 'My wife would beat me with her distaff if I sent you out to bed down with the animals!' he said. 'And there is no question of denying you shelter. You shall indeed bide here tonight; I would gladly house you for many nights more if you wished it. We can put you up in a proper bed for one night at least. A pallet on the floor is little enough comfort for a great lord of men, but we did not think you had the strength to mount the stairs last evening.'

'That I had not,' agreed Aragorn, a little rueful; 'but the bed by the fire suited me wondrously well. Rarely may I rest in such comfort and such rich warmth. I shall rest there again, and gladly. I would as lief remain within sight of my charge in any case, and I would not have him upstairs amongst the children.'

'We shall set a watch over him again, then,' said Grimbeorn. 'There are men enough among us that it should not prove too great a labour, though my son took it upon himself to sit through last night.' He smiled with fatherly pride at Baldbeorn, who made a small deprecating gesture.

'Five days, say you?' he asked. Aragorn nodded firmly and Baldbeorn jerked his chin in tacit agreement. 'I have baked cakes enough for eight, if both will eat it. More than that I think would weigh a walker down. No doubt my mother will have other provisions to send with you, and I think it wise to take more than you look to need. Unexpected things befall travellers walking the road you have chosen.'

'I have had little but the unexpected since parting from Gandalf,' said Aragorn. 'And the richness of your generosity not the least. I thank you. I cannot hope to repay your many kindnesses, but know that you may ever call upon my aid.'

Baldbeorn met his eyes and nodded briefly. Grimbeorn clapped a companionable hand on his forearm. And off on the far side of the hall Gollum sat, watching them with cold loathing in his pale glinting eyes.

Note: This is the last of the ready-to-go chapters. Apologies in advance for the longer break between updates. I'll try to keep them coming in a timely fashion!

Chapter L: Making Ready

The evening meal began as a pleasant affair. There was food aplenty, of course, and Aragorn found that the first stirrings of his appetite had returned to him at last. He managed a modest portion of his bread and a taste of everything else he was offered. There was a rich barley soup, thick with vegetables and redolent with fragrant herbs, and although he could not finish his bowlful he did drink most of the broth and found that it soothed his stomach wonderfully. The little children were making eager plans for building a snow-lodge as soon as the cold abated a little, and Sigbeorn was soon engaged in lecturing them on the principles of construction underlying such structures. He appeared to be in possession of endless anecdotes of successful and disastrously flawed endeavours, and everyone laughed at his comic gesticulations as he illustrated his salient points. Only Baldbeorn was absent, having retreated once more to the bakehouse to oversee the second baking of his waybread.

The mead was being poured and a platter of fresh honey-cakes being passed from hand to hand when Aragorn's eye was drawn by a movement to his right. The baby had apparently tired of exploring the forest of legs beneath the table, for she had struck out across the hall with her sturdy arms crooked and her palms splayed to grip the smooth floor. At once the dogs rose from their various places around the hall and moved to take up sentry-posts by the fire, doubtless to keep the child from tumbling into the sunken hearth and the fire within. Yet Svala appeared to have no interest in the flames, for she moved steadily past and then stopped, sitting back to bounce against her heels and survey the room. Then she started up again, intent upon her chosen destination, whatever it might be.

Aragorn started to turn his attention back to the conversation: the babe's mother and her aunt and her two all-but-grown cousins had all glanced after her and seemed unconcerned with her wandering. Certainly it must have been a regular occurrence if the dogs knew to guard the greatest hazard in the hall. But as he shifted his head a penetrating yellow gleam caught in the corner of his eye and he remembered that the fire was not after all the worst danger in the room. He twisted in his seat and felt his heart grow cold within him. Gollum was crouching in the midst of the coiled cloak, still bound to the post but with room enough to move a little, and his long fingers flexed and curled repeatedly in a ghost of a strangling gesture. His eyes were glittering with malice and avarice, and his gaze was fixed on the small child. Svala, an eager welcoming grin displaying a pearly half-sprouted tooth, was crawling eagerly towards him.

Almost before he realized that he was moving, Aragorn had pushed back the chair. He sprang from it, not even feeling the torment in his feet as they took on his weight. Not even thinking to cry out he ran, long strides bearing him swiftly past the startled hounds. He swooped and caught the child beneath her arms, swinging her into the air and onto his shoulder just as Gollum's grasping hands reached out to grab her. With Svala clutched against his chest with his left hand, he brought down his right in a forceful slap that struck the side of Gollum's head with force enough to send it snapping to the side. The sound of the blow was muffled by the bandages on his palm, but he felt the impact up into his elbow. Gollum froze, for a moment stunned into unmoving silence. Then he let out a thin, piercing shriek that bit into Aragorn's ears and seemed to fill the whole hall.

Svala, who had taken the sudden seizing with a small playful gurgle, now buried her face against Aragorn's tunic and burst into frightened tears. At the table the children were clapping hands to their ears, and the adults were rising startled to their feet. Aragorn let his right foot swing, threatening a sharp kick.

'Silence!' he commanded, thrusting all of his will into the word. With a gasp and a deep, throaty hiccough Gollum obeyed, cowering in his nest of wool and scrabbling at his head with his wretched hands. Aragorn stepped swiftly away from him, letting his right hand rest on the baby's heaving back as he jiggled her small body. 'Hush, hush little one,' he murmured soothingly, humming a snatch of an Elven lullaby.

Beneath his touch she calmed almost at once, turning her head to look up at him with brimming brown eyes. Her small hand patted his chest, and then she straightened her back and reached to grab his beard. Finding his whiskers considerably more sparse than those of her own men, she abandoned the effort and snatched at his hair instead. She waved her entangled fist and laughed effervescently.

Clothilde was at his elbow now, arms outstretched for her child. Aragorn bent to hand her off, and then reached to gently loosen her grip on his hair. She went peaceably enough, babbling excitedly as her mother held her close.

Grimbeorn snapped his fingers and pointed at Gollum. 'Guard him!' he said sternly. Aragorn was about to assure him that he would when the dogs trotted away from the hearth and closed in around the creature. Gollum's eyes grew enormous with alarm and he sat stiffly, limbs close-tucked and body wary. The lord of the house reached to grip Aragorn's shoulder, smiling reassuringly. 'Surely he would not have harmed her,' he said cheerfully. 'I expect she thought he was a new friend to play with.'

'He would have,' Aragorn said breathlessly. Now that the moment of crisis was passed he was once more feeling the hurts of his body. 'He would surely have harmed her, given half the chance.' He shook his head, trying to clear it of the giddiness that came from wariness and weariness and pain. 'I should never have brought him hither. I should not have allowed him to shelter in your home. He is dangerous, he is deadly.' He whirled despite the bracing hand still holding him, and he cast anguished eyes on Eira, who was on her feet now and watching him intently. 'Give me the rest of my clothing, dear lady, and we will be gone. I will… I must…'

She shook her head and hushed him, and such was his bewildered dismay that he obeyed her without thought. 'You cannot,' she said, nodding to her husband and helping him to guide Aragorn to the nearest chair. 'You are in no fit state to be travelling at night, and certainly not on a night such as this!'

She looked down the table and Aragorn followed her gaze. Halla and Ufrún and the smaller boys sat pale and frightened in their places. Harlbeorn stood with his young shoulders squared, though he looked terrified. Urdbeorn was as straight and wary as his uncles, while Una was watching her grandparents and the agitated guest with concern. Freya wife of Baldbeorn was sitting stiffly, almost regally, in her chair, green eyes pensive. But Clothilde, her baby on her hip and gripping Otkana's hand, had retreated to the door that led up to the sleeping quarters. She looked only an unwary breath from panic. It was Randbeorn who broke the silence, scrubbing at his beard with one strong hand.

'It is my fault: I should have stayed near it,' he said. 'It was my turn to watch it, and I should never have left its side.' He moved to leave the table, but his younger brother held out a hand to stay him.

'I will guard it now,' he said. 'You go to your wife: she has need of you.'

The two men moved off in opposite directions, and Clothilde was led away with her daughters. Sigbeorn sat down upon the platform that ran the length of the hall. He fixed a cold stare on Gollum, who was still eyeing the dogs with fearful apprehension.

'There, you see?' said Eira, brushing her hands on her overgown and nodding at Aragorn. 'No harm done. It's the strain you're under that makes it seem a calamity, that's all.'

'No,' Aragorn said woodenly. His eyes were fixed on Gollum and he feared to take them away, but take them away he must if he was to explain himself. There was a trickle above his lip: his right nostril, bleeding again. Dabbing at it with the edge of the bandage about his wrist, he forced himself to look up at Grimbeorn. 'It is best we do not bide tonight in the house,' he said. 'He is a danger to the children.'

'The children have sense enough to stay well away from him,' Grimbeorn assured him, looking down the table towards young heads that bobbed their fervent accord. 'It is only the baby who doesn't know better, and she'll be up in her cradle already. We shall see that someone is at the creature's side at all times, as we should have done this evening. You warned us of the risk, but perhaps we did not take heed enough.' He motioned broadly at the family. 'Sit down and finish your meal,' he said. 'The thing can do no harm with Sigbeorn sitting almost on top of him.'

Freya smiled a little, and smoothed her skirts as she sat. The boys followed her example, but Una remained standing. 'Grandmother, shall I fetch anything?' she asked, concerned eyes still upon Aragorn. He wondered how ghastly he must look in the wake of his flight, to worry the maiden so.

'No, child: sit and finish your meal,' said Eira. She reached across the table and picked up Aragorn's mug. 'Have a draught, my lord; it will lend you strength and put some warmth in your chest.'

Aragorn drank, but only a little. His stomach was churning and he felt the purged fatigue that he ordinarily associated with the most desperate of battles. He twisted in the chair so that he might watch his prisoner out of the corner of his eye. He had grown too incautious, resting among these good people. Gollum was a craven wretch with murder in his heart. He could not be trusted, even trussed to a post in a home where he had been sheltered and fed and treated with far more courtesy than he deserved. What pity he still felt for his hateful captive was buried now in loathing, and Aragorn's only wish was to be done with this odious duty at last.

lar

Aragorn slept little. Despite his perpetual anxious imprecations that he should sleep, that he must sleep, that this might well be his last chance of sleep before he reached Thranduil's halls, he did no more than drift in and out of a shallow uneasy slumber. In part it was the torment in his hands and feet; the perpetual prickling, painful itch that his desperate exhaustion had dulled the previous evening. In part it was the crawling feel of Gollum's eyes upon his back that neither the comforting presence of the dogs nor the knowledge that the wretch was guarded – at first by Grimbeorn himself – could wholly disperse. Each time the watch changed he woke with a start and had to settle his quickened heart before he could even attempt to rest again. His spine ached despite the soft malleable surface of the mattress beneath him, and he longed to take his teeth to the fresh bandages that covered his fingers and tear them away that he might scratch at his blistered hands until they bled. When the first faint grey light began to show in the smoke-hole above, he tunnelled out of the cosy bedding and turned his gaze on Gollum.

'Would you like something to drink?' a quiet voice asked. It was Sigbeorn, leaning forward over his lap in the chair by the support-post. He had his head in one hand and was obviously fighting off sleep. 'Or if you need…'

'No,' said Aragorn. He slid from the mattress onto the floor, and one of the dogs raise a drowsy head to look at him. 'It is time for me to make ready. My road awaits, and it has been calling to me all through the night.'

'You did seem restless,' the youth admitted. His shadowy shape shifted as he looked down at Gollum. 'I do not think your charge slept at all.'

'That is his choice,' said Aragorn. He lifted his right hand to his mouth and found the knot in the dressing with his teeth. He unwound it carefully, scarcely heeding the sharp tearing discomfort when it parted from the weeping sores. Baring his left hand was quicker work, and then he moved on his knees to the small heap of inadequate garment that lay beside his boots. He dressed with care, lacing his cote tightly and tying his hose as neatly as he could. He had recovered the laces that he had used to make the sling, for he did not think he would need that particular tool again. Still he kept the pierced strip of wool and the small stones: he could always reassemble it at need. It was a dreadful task to ram his feet, still inflamed, into his stiffened boots – dragging upon them with fingers that ached to the bone, covered in skin so chapped and brittle that it cracked with the force of hauling on the leather. He fastened his belt to the third of the notches he had made in Lothlórien. He had only one left. His knife settled against his side, and his pouch at his back. He shifted it around to the other flank where it would be more easily accessible. His drinking-bottle and the blanket lay lonely on the floor now. The former he would fill afresh and slip inside his tunic before he departed. The latter he would don as he left the house. It was warm enough here that he had no need of it, and in any case he knew that it only served to make him look even more the pauper.

Thus arrayed he rose, rocking each foot to test the repairs he had made to his boots. His toes burned and his bruised heels protested, but he was certain that they would carry him where he needed to go. Almost certain, anyhow.

Sigbeorn left his chair, drawing back from Gollum as though the creature sickened him. 'Can I turn him over to you, then?' asked the young man. 'Since you seem determined to set out on your journey before the Sun begins hers.'

'She has begun it already,' said Aragorn. 'Hours ago she rose over distant wilderness and strange cities and men who speak in unknown tongues. I cannot wait for her to overtake me. Yet I thank you for guarding my captive, and I release you from your duty.'

Sigbeorn nodded and padded barefoot across the room, disappearing into the shadows at the far end of the hall. Aragorn drew near to Gollum, and the noisome stink that still clung to him despite river-crossings and snow and long leagues of travel in free lands rose upon the air. He had stiffened as the Ranger approached, and the pale eyes glinted as they shifted evasively to one side. Aragorn sighed, flexing the fingers of his left hand to loosen the joints. The torn flesh of his wrist tugged and stung beneath the bandage that still wrapped it. The prospect of binding the coarse rope over those hurts again put a weight on his heart. Two nights of freedom from his constant companion made the burden heavier to bear.

At least he could wait a little longer. His hosts were not yet abroad from their beds, and the provisions they had promised him had not been laid out the night before. Aragorn was inexpressibly grateful for the offer of travel-fare. Without it he had little chance of reaching his destination at all, much less in the five days he had allotted himself. Having taken this road before he had thought the estimate a reasonable one, but with his tender feet and his strained constitution he wondered now whether he had not been overly optimistic. It might be wiser, he thought, to linger here a little longer so that he might regain some greater measure of his vigour. He would travel with greater ease then, and likely with somewhat greater speed – though of course there would still be Gollum's reluctant pace to contend with.

He closed his mind against the temptation. It would certainly be better for him, if he chose to delay, but it would not be better for his generous hosts. The previous night's conflagration weighed heavy in his heart, and although no harm had been done he could not quite keep his mind from the terrible image of Gollum's wiry hands, strong as pincers, reaching out with eager fingers for the baby's plump little throat. No, they would be gone this day if it meant a fortnight's limping journey through Mirkwood.

There were footsteps at the far end of the hall, and he looked up to find a glow of candles. Grimbeorn's two eldest sons and his four eldest grandchildren were coming through the door. All but Una were dressed in heavy outer garments, tugging on mittens and wrapping woollen scarves about their necks. The young lady drew away from the others and went to light a hooded lantern, which she handed to Ufrún. The girl led the way out the door that opened on the broad back porch, letting in a swirl of snow as her followers trooped after her.

Una set about lighting the candles in the hall, pausing when she had enough light to see the traveller's face. She smiled. 'Up and eager to be gone already?' she asked with a teasing tilt of her head. 'Has our company proved so onerous?'

Aragorn stepped away from Gollum, his feet protesting much less violently than he had expected. He shook his head. 'Surely after what transpired last evening you can see that I cannot linger here. I must be gone with what haste I may.'

'What I can see is that the thing you lead must be gone,' said Una, resuming her round of the room. The long taper flared as a drop of wax fell from it. 'As I suppose you are unlikely to simply let it go its own way, then you must go with it. What is it, may I ask? I have never seen such an ugly thing. I know that is hardly a gracious way to put it, but as there's no one else to hear perhaps you'll forgive my rudeness.'

Aragorn cast a weary look over his shoulder. Gollum was watching the young woman closely, resentful indignation on his face. 'I do not know, precisely;' he said. 'Yet I think that whatever he is, or was, he has been so twisted by evil and long torment that he little resembles the form to which he was born. It is enough to know that he is a danger, and must be secured.'

'In Dale?' asked Una. 'Or perhaps deep within the Lonely Mountain? I have heard the Dwarven-king has great vaults in which to lock his treasure. They might serve to secure a prisoner.'

'They might,' said Aragorn. She was moving towards the door that opened on the courtyard now, still lighting the sconces hung where once there had been brackets for torches. Taking the surest, firmest steps he could Aragorn moved to the table. The pot of salve had been left for him with a pitcher of water, a basin and a towel. He bathed his hands carefully, jaw set against the spiking stings, and then anointed them liberally with Eira's unguent. It was indeed soothing, and it left a thin faintly oily film that he knew would protect his harried skin and help it to heal. As he worked he studied the sores on his knuckles and the blisters where the flesh had frozen, but he saw little enough to concern him. Of far greater moment was the worry of how he was going to keep the appendages warm and dry.

'Poor hands,' a voice at his shoulder said, and for a moment he stiffened. It was one of Gollum's favourite weeping imprecations, wanting only an echo on the closing sibilant. Only when Una reached out to smooth a blot of the salve across one of the worst cracks did he fully realize it was she who had spoken. 'Are your feet any better today?'

'They are,' said Aragorn, lifting his left heel and then pressing it down again. Only the dull deep ache and a flurry of fresh itches accompanied the motion: no sharp lancing anguish or fierce fiery pain. 'I must thank you for that, lady: it was you who bathed them for me.'

'Well, dried them,' said Una. 'They can't have been too far gone: I'm only learning, and Grandmother still sets me the easiest tasks. You seem to know a thing or two about leechcraft yourself. Was your mother a healer?'

'Nay, my father;' said Aragorn, sparing her the longer explanation of his relationship to the one who had taught him his art. 'I have some small measure of his talent. You seem to be learning well. Keep on with it, and press your grandmother to challenge you. In dark times there is always need of healers.'

Una laughed. 'You sound like my aunt Heidra's husband. He never does anything but moan about dark times and lost custom. Yet the Sun still rises, and the cows give milk, and the children are healthy. We shall manage to thrive however many bandits walk the roads!'

An earnest smile, tempered only a little by the knowledge that the days would only grow darker, found its way to Aragorn's sore lips. 'That I do not doubt,' he said. 'Remember to carry that dauntless spirit with you, whatever comes to pass.'

Una laughed and gathered up the towel. 'Are you finished with the water?' she asked. 'I've got to go and stir up the fire for breakfast: they'll be a crowd of hungry bears by the time they've finished with the chores.'

'I am finished: I thank you,' Aragorn said. As she bore away the dishes he took the chair to the left of Grimbeorn's place, turning it so that he could look headlong at Gollum. What he could not cure he must endure, and there was no use in pretending that he could forget his duty. He wished wretchedly that he had not had the need to strike his prisoner the night before. Undoubtedly there would be a reckoning for that as soon as Gollum could contrive it: the next bitter blow in their long battle.

He did not languish long in dark thoughts, for there were feet on the stairs again and Eira came into the hall with her elder daughter-in-law. Freya set a bundle of folded cloth upon the table before disappearing into the kitchen to aid Una in laying on the breakfast. The mistress of the house stood for a moment or two with her arms crossed thoughtfully, then moved to clap Aragorn on the back.

'There now, dressed already?' she asked. 'Are those rags warm enough, do you think, to keep you from freezing on the road?'

'They will serve, my lady,' said Aragorn, trying to keep the heaviness from his voice. 'They will have to.'

'Indeed they will not,' said Eira. She took the first piece of heavy wool and shook it out. Turning in the chair, Aragorn could see it was a tunic: faded from its original walnut brown and left long between shearings, but thick and warm and whole. 'It'll be a bit broad,' the lady said with a regretful shrug. 'You're not as thick in the chest as Grimbeorn, and even if you were there's not a scrap of fat on those bones. Still, no harm if the shoulders droop a little: the sleeves are bound to be a touch too short for your arms, so it will help the cuffs to meet your wrists. Stand up, now, and let me have a look.'

Aragorn stood, but in a hasty deprecating way. 'Mistress, it is most—'

She cut him off with a sharp wag of one finger, holding up the garment to his front and judging it with a critical eye. 'Don't you start to tell me that it's most generous, but you cannot possibly accept,' she scolded. 'You can't go back out into the cold and the wind wearing naught but those rags: you'll freeze yourself again in no time at all. It's an old coat and Grimbeorn was never fond of it even when new. Still it's warm and it has a good flannel lining as well. Are you going to put it on yourself, or shall I dress you as I do Delbeorn?'

Meekly Aragorn took the tunic and hung it over his arm while he removed his belt. He settled the heavy garment over his cote, settling the unravaged hem below his knees. It was indeed too broad in the shoulders, and much too large through the body, but he gathered the fullness into pinched folds across his front and belted it in. The reassuring weight of the wool across his back seemed to lighten the burden of his worries. His palm settled upon his breastbone. He exhaled slowly. 'I thank you,' he murmured. 'I am more grateful than I can hope to express. After the care you have given me, such a gift is… it is princely, my lady. I thank you.'

She laughed, but reached up to pat her hand to his cheek. 'You're welcome to it,' she said. 'The girls and I had a merry adventure sorting through the chests to find suitable things for you. I think Freya would have liked to make you something new, for she's been seized with the stitching spirit now her time's drawing close, but of course the hurry is too great. She did whip these together, though.'

She handed him a pair of soft flannel mitts, cut in two halves and stitched all around in blue yarn. They were light, rather than warm, and looked to be cut of cloth intended for a baby's clouts. 'They'll keep your hands clean and dry, and they'll prevent the salve from smearing all over these.'

Eira picked up something else and swung it into Aragorn's hand: a ball of something knitted in the fashion of the Beornings. Uncurling it he found a pair of heavier mittens, made of thick worsted looped and knotted into shape. He felt the ache in his knuckles as if for the first time, and he could not remember how many times since leaving Lothlórien he had wished for precisely such a gift. 'Thank you,' he whispered.

There was also a cap, made in the same fashion, and a long woven muffler with thick tassels on the ends. These both looked well-worn, which eased Aragorn's conscience a little. Still his wonder at the generosity of these good people mounted. Having sheltered him so willingly they now seemed determined to send him off outfitted with the same care with which they would have dressed one of their own men.

'I would have given you a set of wrappings for your calves, but I don't think they'd fit under the boots and they're no use over them,' said Eira. She picked up the pair of soft felt shoes he had worn the previous day and wagged them at him. 'Though I'm sending these with you, and I want you to pull them on at night, even if you don't take your own off. You need to take care of those feet, for all they're not as badly off as your hands. She shifted a satchel stitched of heavy wool and lifted the last large garment. This too she shook out: a cloak of dark blue.

Aragorn shook his head. The colour was deep and the nap still rich. The edges still had the roundness of the turning where they had been stitched, and there was very little wear at the hood or the hem. It was almost new. 'That I cannot take,' he said.

'Nonsense,' said Eira. 'You can't go on with a blanket over your shoulders and nothing to cover your head! You'll take it: you need it. We've plenty to spare.'

'No,' said Aragorn. 'That is not an old garment unearthed from a chest. That was made this autumn, and it has been worn only gently and not even for a full season. The dyes alone are worth more than all the rest together. It is too costly a gift to offer a stranger, though it is a testament to your grace that you do so. These other things will suit me well enough; far better than anything I might have hoped for. I will not take your husband's cloak.'

This last had been mere guesswork on his part, having seen Baldbeorn and his brother dressed for the weather only a little while before, but from the look in Eira's eye he knew that he had guessed aright. She hesitated for a moment, no doubt rousing herself to another firm gainsaying speech, but she was interrupted when Sigbeorn came into the room.

'Then take mine,' he said. 'If you don't I'll only burn it. That thing has been lying on it for two nights now: it will stink of him forever.' He grinned and embraced his mother. 'I said he wouldn't take it.'

Eira looked most displeased, but she turned her eyes back on Aragorn anyhow. 'Will you have his, then?' she asked. 'If you can endure the smell of that little creature, that is.'

'I can endure it,' Aragorn said grimly. He had, after all, borne it with little surcease for many weeks. 'That gift I can gladly accept, for I fear you are right, Sigbeorn son of Grimbeorn. It will smell of him always. In the winter air it should be bearable, and I will be glad of the warmth.'

This satisfied Eira, and she took the satchel and went off into the kitchen. Aragorn folded the blue cloak with care and laid it upon one of the platforms that bordered the hall. Then he sat, slipping on the mittens and testing the dexterity of his hands when so clothed. He was able to move with reasonable ease, though not quite withour pain, and to draw and grip his knife. Such coverings always hindered the fingers a little, but the protection they provided from the cold outweighed the inconvenience. They were quick enough to tug off if something went amiss.

The children began to trickle down into the hall, some alert and excited and others sluggish and drowsy. Grimbeorn himself came in with Otkana seated upon his shoulders, hands slapping the crown of his head as if it were a drum. She cried out eager greetings when she saw Aragorn, and pleaded to be let down. As soon as her feet hit the floor she was running, skidding across the floor and climbing up into Aragorn's lap before anyone could do a thing about it.

'Will you tell me a story?' she asked. She looked over her shoulder and said in a confidential and very grave tone; 'He tells wonderful stories, Grandfather.'

'I know that he does, my poppet,' said Grimbeorn with equal solemnity; 'but he has a long road ahead of him and he must rest while he can.'

Her face fell, but Aragorn had already made up his mind. Her little weight upon his knee and the way in which she was tucked in the crook of his arm were such a simple delight. 'I can tell you one more tale,' he promised. 'But not such a long one as I told yesterday: it will be time to break our fast soon, and then I must be gone.'

Hurriedly the other children gathered, even sleepy-headed Halla perking up considerably. This time Aragorn told an old hobbit fable about a fox and a fieldmouse, raising his voice for the latter into a shrill falsetto that sent his audience laughing. Even Grimbeorn, seated now in his dark chair, roared with mirth and slapped his hand to his knee. The ladies came out to lay the table and bring the food, casting curious glances at the spectacle but not lingering long enough to hear much. He had just come to the end of it when the others came in from the morning's chores, laden with milk jugs and stamping the snow from their feet.

'The weather has broken,' Randbeorn said. His scarf, so tightly wound when he had departed, now hung loosely draped over his shoulders, and there was only the faintest frost in his beard. 'Still cold enough to keep the troughs frozen, but it won't steal the fight right out of a man.'

'There you are,' said Grimbeorn, cuffing Aragorn's elbow and grinning. 'It's as well you didn't set out yesterday. You'll go in more comfort, and leave us all with less worry.'

'Far more comfort, thank you,' Aragorn said. Otkana twisted in his lap and then slid down onto the floor, running off to beg a taste of the new milk before it was carried into the dairy pantry. 'When I came to your door I hoped only for pity in my greatest need. Instead you have given me all the bounty of your home. I can do nothing in return but thank you.'

'Thank us and fight on, as no doubt you must,' said Grimbeorn, and his smile was tinged now with sorrow.

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When breakfast was eaten Baldbeorn brought out the satchel that Eira had taken. It was packed now with the travel-cakes, cut into blocks and wrapped in linen. It was made with honey, dense and twice-baked so that it would last a long while unspoiled. There was also a bag of beechnuts and another of walnuts, a small earthenware jar of dried fruit, and half a dozen eggs hard-boiled. These last he could not have carried far at any other time of the year, but while the weather was still cold they would keep for a few days.

'He seems to eat little else, that creature,' said Baldbeorn. Gollum had taken the eggs offered to him that morning, but left his honey-cake and his jar of milk untouched. 'You shall have to feed him something.'

'Verily I shall,' said Aragorn, and thanked him. All through the preparations to depart he uttered his thanks, time and again and to each member of the family. Una brought him rolls of fresh bandages and a new pot of her grandmother's salve. Urdbeorn put together a little book of needles and linen thread on an acorn-cap winder. Randbeorn had fresh tinder to give him, and Ufrún and Harlbeorn were set the task of wrapping the ends of a length of new rope (far less coarse than the orc-stuff Aragorn had carried with him from Ithilien) with rags. From this Aragorn fashioned a new halter for his prisoner, knotting the free end over the dressings on his own wrist. With the protection of the linen he hoped it would not chafe, but there was nothing to be done about the far more terrible discomfort that came from being once more bound to Gollum.

Then he put on the warm outer garments, covering his head and wrapping his throat, tucking the Lórien blanket around his shoulders and using the brass brooch to hold Sigbeorn's cloak in place. It did indeed smell strongly of Gollum, but Aragorn knew that he would be grateful for its protection soon enough. The satchel he settled at his left hip, where it would not impede him. He had the elven bottle tucked away under his tunic, and Halla had brought him a light wooden vessel, also filled, to sling across the other shoulder.

'You might want these,' said Torbeorn, offering a little bundle. Aragorn took it and discovered within several short and rather irregular little candles. The boy beamed proudly up at him. 'I dipped them myself,' he announced.

'I thank you,' said Aragorn with all his courtly courtesy. 'A candle is a precious thing indeed in the wild, and I do not doubt these will serve me well in the gloom of Mirkwood.'

Through all these preparations, Otkana and Delbeorn had been hanging off to one side, half-hidden by one of the great wooden pillars. Now they darted out together, each with one small hand held up to the Ranger. As they did Aragorn took a firm hold of Gollum's rope just before the knot about his neck. This earned him a vile glare, but the creature made no move as the children drew near. They each had a little glass bead on an upturned palm: hers bright blue with curlicues of white, and his deep green with speckles of yellow.

'For you,' said Otkana.

'For luck,' said Delbeorn.

Aragorn tugged off his right mitts and picked up the beads, studying them solemnly. 'I shall treasure them,' he said. 'I thank you.' Then he tucked them carefully into his pouch, gripped each small shoulder in turn, and rose.

Eira took the mittens from him and slipped them on again. 'Keep dry and warm,' she said. 'You may be in a hurry, but be sure to take your rest. And when you come to the forest, don't leave the path.'

Aragorn smiled and nodded. 'Yes, my lady,' he said.

Grimbeorn pulled him into a hearty embrace. 'I hope you will grace my hall again when next you pass this way, Aragorn son of Arathorn. In need or in danger, you are always welcome.'

At the door Baldbeorn offered his hand. 'Good fortune go with you,' he said soberly. He did not smile.

Once more Aragorn thanked them, each one by name. Then he set his resolve and laid his hand upon the door, and stepped out into the mists of a hoarfrosted morning.

Chapter LI: The Eaves of Mirkwood

For a brief and wondrous moment Aragorn could not even feel the cold of the day, such was the change from the night of his arrival and the relief of being properly clad. It was not a truly clement morning: his breath still came in a cloud over the top of the scarf, and there was certainly no chance of melting. Yet the chill was tolerable and not unreasonable for the season. Even when he stepped out of the shelter of the courtyard his eyes did not sting, nor his nostrils catch in the winter air. And with his wealth of cosy wrappings it was only upon his face that he could feel it at all.

By daylight he could see something of Grimbeorn's establishment: long stables and barns shut up snugly; storehouses with steep slanted roofs; a henhouse that was a veritable palace when compared to the one in Eastemnet that Gollum had tried to burgle. The great beehives stood along the border-hedge, thatched roofs dusted with snow. A sleek tabby cat, crossing the yard with fastidious care, paused to stare at the departing travellers before continuing on its way. Tugging lightly on the rope when Gollum began to lag behind, Aragorn made his way down to the gate in the stone wall that surrounded the hedges. He hesitated for a moment on the threshold, and it took a tremendous outpouring of will not to look back wistfully at the house. He had had his day of rest, he told himself sternly, and two nights with it. It was time to be on his way.

He had not taken half a dozen steps down the lane when he was stopped by a laughing young voice calling his name. Turning after all, he saw Una running down the path. She had a red woollen shawl thrown carelessly around her shoulders, and one hand was upraised in a gesture of urgency. Hastily Aragorn strode back to the gate so that she might meet him without leaving the safety of the dooryard.

'I forgot!' she huffed, skidding to a halt in one of his footprints. She paused for a moment, drawing in a deep breath, and then smiled enormously, holding out a hand full of linen. 'I forgot to give you these!'

Aragorn took them, his mittened thumb shifting to separate a hem. He found himself smiling even before he could think of doing so. Handkerchiefs.

'Mother says…' Una was still panting a little from her wild dash down from the house. She quirked a sheepish eyebrow, inhaled again, and went on. 'Mother says one should never leave home without a handkerchief. As you're so very far from your home, wherever it is precisely, I thought you might want a spare.'

'Thank you,' said Aragorn. His smile broadened a little at the expense of his cracked lips. 'It is a luxury I do not often enjoy. I have no doubt I shall make good use of them.'

'You'd best do that,' said Una. 'I made them, you know, and it was an exercise in tremendous patience.' She grinned ruefully. 'I confess I'm not much of a needlewoman.'

'Then I must honour you all the more for your gift, if it was a toil to make,' Aragorn said. He bowed to her. 'Again I thank you, my lady. You and all your folk have been exceedingly generous to me.'

'Well, you must do as Grandfather bids and visit again whenever you pass this way,' she said. She swayed her hips in a playful coquettish way. 'Only do try not to let sixteen years pass first this time. I'll be of marriageable age soon, after all, and if you were to make an offer I'm sure my father would not refuse you!'

At his astounded expression she roared with laughter, clapping her hands to her knees and throwing back her head in the frosty air. 'Oh, goodness, your face!' she cried. Then she cuffed his elbow lightly and winked. 'Fear not, my lord: I shan't pursue you! I'm just a girl, but even I can see you're not free to wed. Tireless and mysterious labours notwithstanding, you've plainly given your heart elsewhere. Still, I can't help but envy her just a wee bit.'

Then before he could muster himself out of his startled but not entirely unpleasant embarrassment she had turned on her heels and was running back up to the house with the rangy grace of a yearling colt. Shaking his head a little in quite disbelief, Aragorn turned back towards the road. Gollum, who had been gawping up at the exchange, fell into sullen step behind.

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He followed the road until he came to the end of the cultivated lands. The farms and cotholds of the Beornings were clustered all about the holdings of their lord, and he had no wish to trespass. He had made quite enough trouble for Grimbeorn and his family without plaguing them with the complaints of worried tenants. Sufficient time had elapsed since the last snowfall that the way was tightly packed with wagon-ruts and the marks of booted feet. It was a mercy not to have to break through drifts, but Aragorn's heels were soon sore from the constant impact with the hard-trod surface. It was something of a relief when at last he came to the wild country and was able to strike off on his own way.

His plan, in as much as he had ever considered what he would do when he finally reached this last stage of the journey, had been to cut north to the Elven road that led straight to the heart of Thranduil's realm. Over the last day, when he at last had the leisure to ponder his path, he had come to the conclusion that this presented something of an unnecessary detour. The forest-gate was a four-day journey north of Grimbeorn's halls, through open country doubtless patrolled by watchers from Dol Guldur. By cutting directly northeast he might reach the forest before nightfall on the second day, and among the tangles of ancient trees he would at least be more difficult to locate. It was true that the dangers of wandering through the depths of Mirkwood were great, but there was much to be said for haste – and still more for secrecy. He had taken perilous shortcuts through deadly places before this, and at least in northern Mirkwood he would have as much chance of falling in with the wood-elves as he would with the servants of the Nazgûl.

He walked until the mists lifted, laying bare the white rolling lands beneath a cover of woolly grey clouds. By that time the pain in his feet, alleviated a little by leaving the road, was beginning to return in force, and he could feel the cold in his toes. So he found a little copse of beeches and dug for bare ground, and laid a little fire. He slipped the felted wool shoes over his boots and crouched near the cheery flames to warm himself. While he rested he ate a small piece of the dense honey-cake, savouring its deep sweet flavour. It left him thirsty, but he was well-supplied with water and in any case too grateful to have ballast for his belly to complain. To Gollum he gave one of the hard-boiled eggs, which the creature bit into at once and then chewed noisily, spitting out shards of shell as he did so.

When the fire died down Aragorn hid its traces and went on again. He was well-supplied and adequately clothed for the first time in all this wearisome journey, and he walked in relative comfort. Had it not been for the ache in his feet and the persistent itch in his hands – and the loathsome company he kept – he would have been quite content to be abroad on a winter's afternoon just on the cusp of spring. Even the fear of spies seemed distant here, in these quiet lands just east of the vales of Anduin, though he kept a sharp lookout all the same. He saw the occasional rook, inky black against the pallor of the clouds, and once far in the distance a nimble stag loped across a hilltop, but for the most part all was quiet. Even Gollum seemed to have little cause for complaint, though a brooding storm was brewing in his cruel glittering eyes.

They stopped again about an hour before dusk, and again Aragorn made a little fire to warm his hands and feet. The mittens were a blessing almost beyond his comprehension, but still the chill seeped through eventually and set his fingers blazing with warnings of torment to come. Frostbite was an ugly thing and he had no wish to court it further than he already had. Eira's salve he reapplied with care, studying each sore and blister and flexing the many joints of his fingers. He ate again, sparingly, and filled his bottle with fresh snow. He offered Gollum a piece of the waybread, but it seemed it was not to his liking. He took a couple of the nuts instead, but the remaining eggs Aragorn reserved: he would have to feed the creature every day, after all, and it was the only thing among the provisions that he seemed eager to eat.

The clouds had thinned a little through the day, and the faint glow of moonlight guided the Ranger's feet as he moved on into the evening. His night of deep slumber, and even the previous evening's sporadic sleep, had done him great good and he felt able to press on with only the little thawing rest. Time was pressing upon him, and he went in haste: anxious to reach the cover of Mirkwood before his passage could be marked; anxious to be about his business with all speed; and anxious above all to reach the wood-elves at last and be done with this hateful toil and the burden he had carried so long. While he had the light to move onward he did so, and when at last the clouds thickened and the moonlight was snuffed behind them he found a hollow of the land, and set another modest fire, and tended his hands again.

When dawn came he set out again amid a drowsy snowfall. The flakes were enormous, banding together into clumps long before they found the earth, and the snow upon the ground was wet and clung in clumps to his boots. Aragorn was glad indeed for the coating of pitch he had put upon the leather, for without it he would surely have been soaked to the skin. Despite the stink he raised the hood of Sigbeorn's cloak, grateful for its protection as he shuffled on. He might have wished for a heavier flurry to obscure the deep tracks he was leaving, but there was little use in such efforts. By now he was certain his passage had been marked: it remained only to speculate whether the spies of Dol Guldur would be on the lookout for Gollum and his tall, nameless captor. If they were there was no help for it. If they were not, surely it was only a matter of time before their reports of activity in Rhovanion came to the eyes of someone who was.

The land was very quiet today. He saw no sign of beast nor bird: not a fallen feather on the snow, not a track or a scrap of spoor, not the chatter of a questing squirrel. He was drawing near to the eaves of Mirkwood, shunned by the creatures of happier lands. Long ago, it was said, Taur-en-Daedelos had been a place of wild untrammelled beauty. Certainly the wood-elves of Imladris sang wistfully of the ancient forest untainted and free. Yet with the coming of Sauron to Amon Lanc and the building of the dread fortress of Dol Guldur a darkness had come to the woods. From its bed in the south that shadow had spread, until the tangled trees themselves seemed choked with peril. With the overthrowing of the Necromancer some measure of peace had returned to the lands north of the little girdle of mountains that marked the southern edge of Thranduil's country. Aragorn remembered his earliest journey to the forest as a curious but not unpleasant experience; a young man in the company of a wizard, roaming afar for the first time. Since that time, however, the influence of Dol Guldur had begun to spread again – this time merely under the influence of the Ringwraiths, but sufficient nonetheless to make the way dark and dangerous.

It seemed the surest way to travel in his present state: to walk on until his discomfort grew too great, and then to halt and rest and eat a little close by a small fire. Aragorn was irritated to discover how limited his endurance was, but as he had not halted for more than five hours the previous night he told himself that he could not begrudge the occasional brief rest. Despite his warm garments he began to feel a chill in his bones, and his lower ribs ached. Time and again he found his thoughts wandering back to the warmth and welcome of Grimbeorn's hall, and the kind and boisterous family therein, and the comfort of the pallet by the hearth. He drove away these reminiscences as fiercely as he could. Not even two full days out of a pleasant waystation, and he was pining already for leisure and luxury? Had he grown so soft that he could not set his mind upon his road and have done?

Yet though he scolded, Aragorn knew that such admonitions were not entirely fair. The truth was that he was weary to his very soul, worn down by hardships and the long and bitter road. Three days' decent food notwithstanding, he was malnourished almost to the point of illness, and the hurts of his body wore still further on his stamina. Even well-provisioned and properly clad, it was likely that the final stretch of this hard campaign would call upon the last of his strength. So he rested as he could, and he ate what his uneasy stomach could bear, and he went on at a gentler pace than his restless spirit wished to. And all the time he dragged Gollum with him.

He had hoped to reach Mirkwood that day, but as darkness fell he was still out in the open country. There was no moon that night with strength to penetrate the clouds, and as his evening fire was dying he lit one of Torbeorn's little candles and walked on by its light. There was a grinding ache in his ankles now, but he ignored it. Many hundreds of leagues had worn upon his legs, and it would take more than a little stolen rest to set them right again. It was better to press on, so that surcease might come sooner. Taking his bearings from the tireless West Wind, he continued onward.

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Dawn came high and pale over a dark mass clinging like a miasma to the horizon. Relief and dread warred within Aragorn's heart as he picked himself up from the ashes of his fire and bestirred a reluctant Gollum. Mirkwood was in sight at last. He limped badly for his first few steps, weary feet reluctant to take up the burden of his body, but then he fell into a long, steady stride that stripped the two miles easily away. The Sun was climbing now, and his captive began to writhe and whimper and weep. Aragorn paused long enough to shoot him a disdainful glance.

'Fear not,' he said dourly. 'Soon enough all you shall see of Yellow Face is a thin gloom amid the trees.'

Gollum said nothing in answer, but he glared suspiciously up at the Ranger and lapped disconsolately at his nimble thumbs. Once again Aragorn found himself lost in fruitless speculation about just what, precisely, was going on behind those sharp, cruel eyes. There had been no resistance since leaving Grimbeorn's hall; no retaliation for the incident with the child. Surely Gollum was hatching some seditious scheme, but Aragorn could not think what it might be. The rope was new and sturdy, and the knots were snug. He had no intention of laying by his vigilance at any time between now and the moment he crossed the low stone bridge and entered the halls of the Elven-king. Yet as surely as he knew he would not walk that path unchallenged he knew that Gollum would attempt to thwart him again.

They were not twenty ells from the edge of the forest now: near enough to see the lichen on the trees. Aragorn turned slowly, surveying the land all about. Not a single living thing did he see, on the rolling hills or amid the scattered birches or in the dark mass of the forest itself. Cautiously he approached, still looking from the left to the right and back again as he listened and he tried to scent to winter air. Gollum lurched after him, halting when he could to make his own leery study of the trees before them. Oaks and elms and twisted ash trees crowded together, upper branches enmeshed in barren snarls amid the thick boughs of fir and hemlock. About the boles the undergrowth clambered like a riotous army besieging tower after tower in turn. It took the sharp eye of one long experienced in woodcraft even to espy a place where the brambles and ivy-roots were sparse enough to admit a cautious walker. Yet spy it he did, and with three awkward loping strides he was out of the sunlight and into the dim shaded depths of Mirkwood.

Aragorn had expected Gollum to calm himself once they were out of direct sunlight, but he did not. He balked like a frightened mule, digging his heels into the mulch and scrabbling to get hold of a trailing root. The Ranger twitched the rope in what they had both come to understand as a summoning gesture, but Gollum did not obey. When Aragorn tugged more firmly, the creature threw back his head and let out a high, keening shriek.

About them there was a chattering of small, scrambling feet as the unseen inhabitants of Mirkwood mustered to the horrible noise. Aragorn came swiftly back in the way that he had come, taking care to reel in the rope as he did so. He knelt and seized Gollum's shoulder, shaking him urgently. 'Be silent!' he hissed. 'Do you wish to make known our presence from here to the Bight?'

Gollum closed his mouth, looked up at his captor with narrowed eyes, and slowly licked his lips. The mittened grip on his arm eased, and Aragorn was just about to muster the reassurance that no harm would come to either of them when Gollum cried out again. This time it was a harsh howl that rattled the bare branches of a stunted blackberry bush and seemed to pierce clear to the core of Aragorn's brain. Involuntarily he clenched his jaw, and his back molars squeaked against one another. He tightened his hold again, digging his fingers into the joint despite the buffer of the mitten. This only served to intensify the yowling, and so he let go of the rope and grabbed a corner of his cloak and rammed it far into Gollum's mouth.

There was a startled choking sound deep in the creature's throat and his eyes bulged enormously. Aragorn's temper flared and he had to bury the urge to shake the wretch until they came popping out of their sockets. He drew in a long, thin breath and fixed his prisoner with the coldest and most wilful of stares.

'If you will not be silent,' he said, slowly and most intractably; 'then I shall not hesitate to gag you again. If I am driven to that you shall have neither food nor drink until we reach our destination. You have spent my patience long ago, and I will not suffer you to endanger us both with theatrics now.'

He remained unmoving for a moment, holding the pale haunted orbs with his gaze. Then carefully he drew the knot of wool out from between Gollum's teeth. He let his hand hover there, ready to drive it back in at need. But Gollum only worked his jaw in a broad shifting motion, smacked his lips resentfully together, and tried to shrink back against the roots despite the hand still closed on his shoulder. His head jerked to the left as if he wished to look away, but Aragorn's eyes held him and he could not.

'Keep close and do not tarry,' he said; 'and I will see that no harm comes to you. I have not brought you so far to lose you to the perils of Mirkwood.'

Then he released his hold and stood again, and started off through the underbrush. Whether Gollum trusted his promise or was merely cowed by the threat of thirst and hunger, he came scrabbling after with all haste. Now and then the rope caught on a branch or a bramble, but for the many hours of that march Gollum did not lag behind again. Still, as the forest grew deeper around them and the faint haunted sounds within it grew more numerous, Aragorn could not help but wonder whether the damage had already been done.

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When each step began to bring a piercing agony that bolted up through knee and hip into the root of his spine, Aragorn began to look for a secure place to halt. Beneath the dense canopy only the lightest dusting of snow lay upon the earth, with heaps here and there where an upper branch had let fall its burden: he walked instead on a thick layer of rotting leaves and the springy wood-moss beneath. Yet though dry places abounded he could not find anywhere he felt comfortable resting. There were too many blind twists in the pathless forest; too many thickets where a watcher might linger or an enemy hide. As he had walked the sense that something was watching them had only mounted, until the fine hairs at the nape of his neck were standing stiff against the muffler. The oppressive stillness of the air was terrible, also. Only the winter chill kept it from being entirely unbearable, and still Aragorn found his mind slipping back to the stifling tunnels beneath the Ephel Dûath where he had slithered on in hope of some small sign of his long-sought quarry.

'Well, that I have at last,' he muttered, daring to let his voice fall amid the eerie forest rustles. 'Much joy though it has brought me.' He cast a brief bitter glance back at Gollum, who had paused mid-step to rifle through a layer of decaying detritus. Aragorn quickened his pace despite the torment it brought from his feet, and the creature was forced to fall back into step.

At length, unable to stumble on any further without risking his watchfulness, Aragorn was forced to halt beneath a stooped black maple with a trunk that had grown in three thick shoots clustered together to form almost a little cave. He pressed his back into this shelter and lowered himself carefully to earth, stretching his legs before him. His fingers were chilled and aching, but he had no wish to draw attention and so did not risk a fire. With Gollum drawn close by his knees – as near as Aragorn could bear, and as distant as he dared – he drew his knife and tucked his left hand beneath the opposite arm. He knew that he ought to eat a little, but his stomach was roiling and he feared that it might reject even the wholesome cakes of the Beornings.

When the fire in his feet abated a little he took a mouthful of water before offering the vessel to Gollum. Warily the creature drank, slurping unpleasantly and swallowing many times over a single draught. Then Aragorn gave him an egg and let him retreat to the end of the rope to eat it. He had threatened deprivation for disobedience: while Gollum obeyed he must be fed. Still Aragorn had to fight rising nausea at the hideous sounds and the faint gummy smell of the food as it mingled with Gollum's stench and the sickly scent of decay that rose from the forest floor. Forgetting prudence for a minute or two, he closed his eyes and tried to take his mind away.

There was nowhere to send it, he quickly discovered. The usual comforting memories eluded him, and there was nothing else to distract him from the discomforts of the moment. The only other thought he could hold for long was the deep and painful yearning to be done with this wearisome chore. Now that he was within the forest itself it seemed he would go mad if he delayed even a little; if he made any choice that would prolong this last stretch of the journey.

So as soon as his heels had dulled their protests a little he hoisted himself up with the help of the tree-trunk and set off again with Gollum on his heels. He pushed on doggedly, wending his way through the matted thickets and the slick piles of damp mulch. In any other forest he would have been obliged to pause every few steps to disperse the signs of his passage, but here the shrubs and brambles and low-hanging trees were so set in timeless habit that they seemed to spring back almost as soon as the disturbance was past. Turning to look behind him, Aragorn could but seldom even recognize the way that he had come. It would have been an easy thing to become lost in this labyrinth of ivy-laden boles and their fawning attendants, save that his woodscraft was so deeply ingrained after a lifetime of wandering.

When dusk fell the forest sank swiftly into impenetrable darkness. For a while Aragorn pressed forward by feel, groping from one tree to the next, but this was slow and excruciating work. When he found a thick hedge of whortle-berry he halted and crept beneath it, tugging Gollum after him. Working by touch alone he found the bag of beechnuts, and gave a few to his captive. He took two himself, chewing them slowly and trying to determine whether his belly could endure them. He was tempted to light one of his candles, for the perfect blackness seemed almost to smother him, but he did not. He had only four of them, and one was half-burned. If he could not bear to wait out the dawn he would need light by which to walk.

With his knife he cut strips from the hem of the Lórien-blanket, far less confounded by the sacrifice now that he had a cloak and a whole tunic on his back. When he gave the whispered order Gollum skittered forward and submitted to having his hands bound. Then with his captive secure and his blade in his hand, Aragorn curled upon his side with one knee braced so that he might quickly rise if the need overcame him, and tried to take a little shallow slumber. All around him the nightly noises of Mirkwood thrummed and chittered and creaked, and nearer at hand he could hear his prisoner's shallow wheezing breath. Still his heart slowed and his eyelids drooped and although his instincts clung fast to the waking world his mind slipped cautiously away.

Note: A joyous Yuletide to all my wonderful readers! Your interest and your feedback have been such a wonderful gift these past weeks (and years!). May your holidays be filled with love, merriment, and an abundance of good hobbit-foods!

Chapter LII: Harried and Hunted

He did not slip far. Scarcely it seemed had his breath levelled and his eyes closed, but some strange movement in the night yanked him back to wary wakefulness. Almost before he knew that he had wakened Aragorn was upright, knife at the ready. In the staring darkness of Mirkwood's night he could see nothing, but he heard a stuttering intake of air as Gollum startled at his sudden movement. There was a scrabbling sound of small clawed feet above him and a faint rushing of the still air. He listened, eyes wide and watchful despite the futility, but aside from the uneasy wheezing of his prisoner he could hear nothing save the eerie but expected noises of the forest. Gradually his heart slowed its frenetic pounding and he began to sink out of the rigid battle-ready posture into a weary slump. Something hot and sticky was trickling down the side of his face: a thorn had grazed his cheekbone as he sat up. He tugged one of Una's handkerchiefs from his pouch and dabbed at the scratch, ears still alert for any change in the timbre of the night.

There was no use in trying to sleep again, and perhaps he had been foolish even to try. Still his feet were throbbing and the ache in his knees and hips had not subsided enough to allow him to walk on. So he lay down again, twisting awkwardly until he was flat upon his back and as comfortable as he could manage amid the stalks of the bushes. With the weight of the knife across his ribs he settled into an uneasy silence as Gollum's breathing quieted and the startled squirrel returned to its nest.

For a long while Aragorn could only lie there, listening warily and wondering what it was that had roused him so abruptly. The speculation was fruitless, and served only to heighten his anxiety about the leagues left to travel, but though he tried it was no simple thing to banish it. He could think of nothing soothing or encouraging or even vaguely distracting, and so in the end he merely drove away all semblance of thought and bent his concentration simply to the reckoning of sightless time and the slow rise and fall of his ribs.

When Gollum spoke the sound seemed to rent the very fabric of the woods, hollow and feeble under the great weight of blackness about them. He gurgled deep within his throat and said; 'Asleep again, nassty great manses. Tall wicked lumbering brute, preciousss. Such an easy thing, to scratch out its bright hard eyes, gollum, and leave it blind and bleeding. Ties our hands, it does, but we could manage it.'

Then he whimpered and there was a shuffling sound near Aragorn's boot. Careful to keep his breathing slow and level the Ranger closed his mittened hand more securely about the knife as he listened.

'Use our thumbses, precious, and dig them out, yess. Scoop them out, wetness and jelly and thin strings and all. Maybe we eats them, gollum. Eats them while it watches.' A deep burbling rumble that was a travesty of a chuckle came up from far within him. 'The first one, anyhow, preciouss. Eats it while it watches, then the other while it screams.' There was another whine and the familiar rasp of ragged nails on desiccated skin. 'Oh, but it would wake again, it would, gollum, if we drew too near. Wake quick as an eel and grab us, precious: hurt us with its strong handses. Beat us, precious, slap us and strike us and kill us too!'

Now he made a noise that was something like a sob. 'We know what it wants now, horrid cruel manses. We do, we know it. Know where it's going, gollum. Back to the Elves, more Elves, other Elves. Must be other Elves, precious, living in quiet dark forests. Nice dark places where Yellow Face can't see. Hateful Elveses spoiling it, shining eyes and sharp knives and quick piercing arrows, precious. Elf-friend it said, wicked manses. Takes us to them, it does. Wants our secrets. Wants to know… no! No, we'll never tell! We'll never tell you; hurt our hands! Poor darling handses, burning, bleeding. No! Ack! No!'

This last rose almost to a shriek of panic and Aragorn shifted his left leg, bending his knee and dragging up his ankle a little. The motion was more effective than any reprimand might have been. Doubtless fearing that he had disturbed his sleeping captor, Gollum swallowed the tail of the scream and hiccoughed twice before resuming his soliloquy in a low burbling mutter.

'Mustn't allow it, preciouss. Mustn't go to the Elveses. For how shall we find it then, eh, gollum? How shall we ever find it then?' he moaned. After that he fell into low mournful sniffles punctuated by the occasional murmur of 'Poor precious!' and fading at last into miserable silence.

lar

After that there was no question of sleep, now or at any time before he reached the safety of Thranduil's subterranean palace. Aragorn lay still for another hour or more before mustering himself, but he passed the time in watchful waking. It was best, he knew, that Gollum remained unaware that his malicious ramblings had been overheard. If he had at least a little knowledge of what was passing through his captive's mind, it was an advantage not to be squandered. When he could remain unmoving no longer he stirred at first as if rousing from a deep sleep, shifting amid the rotting leaves before he sat at last. He took a little of the honey-cake and drank what water he dared. Food he had aplenty, but his store of drink was limited and there were no streams to be trusted between here and the end of his road. Feeling blindly he tucked arranged his gear and drew out his flint, steel and tinder. He managed to get a piece alight without removing his mittens, and with it ignited one of the small candles. The sudden brilliance blinded him for a few dangerous moments, and then at last he could see again after long hours in perfect blackness. Gollum was squatting some distance away, the rope slack between them. He blinked ponderously and glowered at Aragorn.

'Come,' said the Ranger. 'The night is yet longer than the day, and I cannot waste it. Stay close by me and we shall fare well enough.'

Then he crept out of the shelter of the whortle-berry bushes, forced his weight onto feet that seemed to moan in mournful protest, and started off again.

Walking in the night of Mirkwood was a disconcerting thing. The small glow of the candle lit only three paces about him, but it seemed to draw staring eyes from every quarter of the forest. They gathered in the undergrowth and the lower boughs, always just beyond the border of the light, and they fixed all the strength of their gaze upon the flame. Most were the eyes of small animals: the black squirrels that abounded in these woods, no doubt, and badgers and stoats and other harmless things. There were tiny glittering beads too that he knew to be the eyes of birds. Crows and magpies were many here, their sleep disturbed by the walker and his alien light, and there would be owls in abundance and nighthawks also. Any of these creatures might be a watcher, but the stronghold of his enemies was far away to the south, and seldom did the patrols of Dol Guldur pass the girdle of the mountains to dare the dells patrolled by Thranduil's folk. With luck, by the time any tidings of trespassers reached them Aragorn and Gollum would be secure among the wood-elves. And certainly such tidings could be sent by day as well as by night, and the swifter his progress the lesser the risk.

It was the other eyes that filled him with unease. Some were large, round and staring and inscrutable. Of these most had the coppery gleam of ungulates: harts or does or yearling fawns, perhaps. From them he had little to fear. Such animals were not easily bent to evil – or indeed to any will other than their own – and they certainly would do no harm to a man set upon his own business. Yet there were other large eyes, lower to the ground or high up in the trees, that glinted with a strange and haunting light. There were things that dwelt in Mirkwood unswayed by the influence of the Nazgûl and yet still unfriendly to Men. The gloom and menace of this ancient place seemed to breed varieties of life twisted and altered from their original forms. The black squirrels were one, sly and cruel little things with flesh unfit for eating; but there were many others, and some large enough to pose a true threat to travellers.

As the night wore on and the candle burned low, the occasional bead of wax falling to cool upon the spiral-knitted mitten, Aragorn began to think that there was one set of eyes in particular that was following him in earnest. Most of the others fell away as he passed, or moved along with the light for a time before falling away to be replaced by others, but this pair did not. High in the trees, just beyond the border of his globe of light, two pale narrow orbs tracked him. There was a greenish gleam to them that he caught now and again out of the edge of his sight. He could not be certain, of course, for his focus had to be on the way before him and on keeping a true course through the meandering woods, but he thought – he felt – that it was the same pair of eyes all the time.

It was a mercy indeed when dawn broke far away in lands where the sky could be seen, bringing once again the dull gloom of day to this stagnant land where the trees were so intertwined that even the bare branches were enough to blot out most of the light. He was walking now in places that even the snow could scarcely penetrate. What he saw of it were only little grubby heaps, fouled by the forest floor and disturbed by many scuttling feet. It was unfit to melt for drinking, and so he took only sparingly of his water despite his steady thirst and the ache in his head. Aragorn's feet were tired and tender, and every step brought pain, but he strove to bear it. He did not wish to waste the daylight hours, and the need for haste drove him against the protestations of his weary body.

All that day he walked, unharried save by Gollum's periodic lagging and the occasional scolding of a scurrying squirrel. He made two halts before dusk, both times stopping only when he could go no farther for the pain. Then he would stop and rest until his nausea subsided enough that he could take a mouthful or two of food. He gave Gollum a ration of water and another of the eggs, which were still half-frozen in the chill of the forest. This earned him no thanks, of course, but after that his prisoner moved on with a little less reluctance. When darkness began to gather he found shelter among the spreading roots of a massive elm, and sat there with his overdriven legs stretched before him and his knife in his hand. He watched the canopy above while the dimness lasted, keeping a lookout for the thing with the green-tinted eyes. He saw nothing of note, and soon could see nothing at all as the night set in.

This time he made no pretence of sleeping, but sat watchful and wary and uneasy in his thoughts while Gollum rooted and snuffled and finally curled up in the mulch and fell silent. The hush of Mirkwood was not a perfect silence, but it was quiet enough that when a cry went up far off in the woods it seemed to fill all the night with its noise.

It was a terrible cry: a warbling ululation that echoed off the trees, a hoarse and mighty yowl like the wails of a woman put to unspeakable torture. In the first shocked moment Aragorn very nearly sprung to his feet that he might follow the sound and offer what succour he could to their unhappy architect. But then his sense returned to him and he listened again as the chilling noise redoubled. It was a cry not human but bestial after all: the nocturnal call of a great cat far away in the forest, chanting victory over its prey or calling a warning to a challenger. He knew that there were such beings in Mirkwood, though he had never seen them: wild feline things such as those that hunted in the unsettled eastern lands. Smaller they were than the huge striped cats of Khand or the lions of far Harad, but they were large enough: big as a mastiff and swift as a hunting tom. It was said that those dwelling in Mirkwood were darker and larger than their kin from less shadowed places, and that they were bolder as well. They might range many miles in a single night, and they were fierce and they were merciless.

Aragorn had no wish to tangle with such creatures, but this one at least sounded a long way off and he did not think it was the season for a lynx to have new young to guard. If he kept on his way and made no move to threaten the sanctuary of the forest he had nothing to fear.

Still the wailing put a chill in his heart and he could not quite keep his imagination from conjuring up an image of a noble lady wracked with torment, writhing beneath the ministrations of some servant of the Enemy bent on an unknown end. In his mind's eye, made clear and all-seeing in the absence of more tangible sight, he envisioned the torturer: tall and gaunt and cruel, features that once might have been accounted handsome twisted into lines of haughty hatred, and mouth set in a sneering smile. And eyes, pale and expressionless as the muttering ice of Forochel, fixed with unyielding demand upon his victim. Then, as the cat howled again the vision shifted and Aragorn realize that he recognized the face of the woman as well. Fair and once flawless skin was marred with blood and bruises. Eyes bright as quicksilver in starlight were dimmed with anguish. Long silken hair was straggled and matted with filth…

He shook himself, driving one heel hard against a root to anchor his mind with the tangible pain of the present. Sternly but not without terror he drove back the dreadful images conjured up in his troubled mind. It was not a woman, but a lynx, he knew, and it was not even suffering but merely speaking in the fashion of its kind. There was no place of torment within a hundred leagues of where he sat, and even if there were both the torturer and the lady were many hundreds distant from here. The thought was nothing more than the product of his fevered brain, worn upon by strain and sleeplessness and the shadow of despair that clung, even here, to lands too much beneath the sway of the Nine. For a moment his heaving lungs stilled, breathless as he took the scent of the air and tried to discern whether perhaps there was something darker and more terrible than a lynx abroad in the night. He felt nothing but the still, cold oppression of the winter air of Mirkwood, and the weight of Gollum's presence in the gloom. Of course he was too far north for the masters of Dol Guldur to be roaming; the dark thoughts were his own and it fell to him to master them.

Aragorn sat only a short while after that: just long enough for his hands to cease the worst of their trembling so that he might light a candle. Then he set out again; a pilgrim with his strange companion treading with heavy feet among the hosts of the forest.

lar

With dawn came the unhappy revelation that he was on the edge of spider-country. There were cobwebs here, slung from branch to branch or tree to tree, still and lifeless in the unmoving air. Most were old and tattered, and that was good, but now and then he passed one that looked to have been abandoned only days or weeks before. Aragorn walked with still greater wariness now, watching not only the way ahead but the boughs above and listening always for the telltale clicking of pincers in the woods. Gollum had taken to rapping at the base of a tree when they passed near enough to it, sounding perhaps for soft places that might harbour something edible. In an attempt to discourage such loitering Aragorn fed him upon their first halt, sharing out the last of the water in his Lórien-flask. The vessel the Beornings had given him he transferred beneath his tunic, for it was more than halfway frozen. The cold seemed to be the only force of the world beyond that could penetrate Mirkwood's mass with impunity. Had it not been for the warmth of the garments Grimbeorn's family had given him, he would have been in wretched straights indeed. As it was he was merely chilled, though the burning prickles in his fingers and toes grew intense enough that morning that he decided to dare a fire during his second rest.

It drew less attention than he had feared from the forest-dwellers. The occasional curious squirrel drew near for a minute or two before flicking a bushy black tail and hurrying off among the trees, and a small brown bird lingered for a while. Aragorn watched it as he warmed his hurting hands, but there was no way to tell whether it meant him ill or no. He tried to put the speculation from his mind. He had been altogether too imaginative since entering these woods.

He struck out again as twilight began to fall, and he had not gone far when Gollum suddenly balked. This was not the disinterested dawdling in which he ordinarily indulged, but a sudden freezing that yanked the tether and sent Aragorn's torn wrist blazing. Irritated the Ranger turned. He was met not with the obstinacy he had expected, but with a noiselessly gibbering visage of fright. Instantly on the alert, Aragorn looked about. He could hear nothing unusual, and the undergrowth was too thick to allow for a proper survey of the area. Yet something had clearly startled Gollum, and remembering the wargs Aragorn was not inclined to dismiss his prisoner's behaviour out of hand.

'What is it?' he whispered, taking back his last two steps to stand nearer to the creature. 'Have you heard something? Tell me the danger that I may guard us both.'

Gollum looked up at him, frightened but reticent. After a minute's silence Aragorn grew impatient with waiting and turned to walk again. He took three strides and was forced to halt when Gollum did not move. Then with long spindly hands the captive yanked upon the rope, drawing it in towards him. Startled by this temerity Aragorn found himself following the motion. The toe of his right boot caught on a root as he did so, and he wavered a little before he could right himself. He opened his mouth to scold his charge – and then he heard it.

Some distance north of where they stood the underbrush rustled and there was a low snorting sound. Then out from beneath a tangle of low-growing hedges came a small snuffling creature with a narrow snubbed nose and a bristly caramel-coloured hide striped along the back in dark and light hues. It was a wild piglet, not more than two months of age and small to be rooting for food: the product of a winter litter. Aragorn scarcely had time to wonder at the sight when two more came into view, trotting after their sibling and pawing at the forest floor. Hastily he took hold of the halter and drew a long and slow step backward, pulling Gollum with him. The piglets were young: too young to wander far from their den.

His suspicion was confirmed a moment later when there was a snap of a broken branch and a great dark mass came crashing out at a hasty trot. It was the mother boar: huge and solidly built, heavy as a man and armed with tusks that could snap a leg in two. She nudged at her young with her nose and then turned, pawing the mulch with one foreleg while she fixed glittering black eyes upon the Man and his companion.

Aragorn did not dare to take his gaze from her face, but out of the corner of his eye he was looking for a fallen branch he might snatch up. His knife was in his hand, but it was a woefully inadequate tool for such an encounter. If she decided he was a threat and moved to charge him, he would lose his arm trying to go after her with the short Elven blade. He waited, watching and not quite daring to hope that she would deign to leave him in peace. She might, he told himself. He had not touched the piglets, and Gollum's forceful intervention had kept him from stepping upon their little leader. But he was obviously near her den, and from the look of her the boar had only just weaned her young. She would still be vicious with the instinct to guard them, and he was a wanderer in a place men were not often seen. This last might measure either in his favour or against it: she might not perceive him as a threat, if she had never before seen a Man, but on the other hand she might attack him for an unknown entity.

The boar took a firm, confrontational step forward and Gollum made a thin whimpering noise in his throat. One long hand clawed at Aragorn's boot, and the Ranger tightened his hold on the knot of the noose, hoping fervently that his prisoner would understand and be still. The pig was bristling now, and she let out a rumbling bellow, whipping her head to one side so that her yellowed tusk showed starkly in the gathering dusk. Wary but motionless Aragorn watched her, filling his thoughts – and hopefully his eyes – with a sense of calm insignificance, of nonthreatening and innocuous existence. He meant no harm to her, he thought fervently. He had no wish to hurt her young. There was nothing, nothing at all to fear from him.

Suddenly she closed the distance between them on stout swift legs. Gollum swallowed what surely would have been an ear-splitting keening of terror, and jerked only a little against the hold of Aragorn's hand. Though it took all of his will neither to shy away nor to break into flight, the Ranger held his ground. Surprised by this, the boar halted just short of his boots. She looked up, eyes seeming to linger for a moment on the bright blade of the knife. Then with a swift lunging motion she bowed her head and butted Aragorn's shin with the bridge of her snout. There was a hollow clock of bone against bone, and a dull shuddering pain rippled out from the place of impact. He stiffened against it but did not allow his feet to shift. The boar swooped again in the same gesture, but this time before she made contact she turned her neck, swept around in a tight arc, and went trotting back to her piglets.

Slowly and cautiously Aragorn edged away from the little clearing in the undergrowth, not taking his eyes from the boar and her young until he was well away. Only then did he loop around to resume his northeasterly progress. When he was satisfied that he had put a solid mile between them he halted, releasing his hold on Gollum's rope and reaching into the satchel. He drew out an egg and offered it to his prisoner.

'You did well,' he said, determined to lay the credit for their serendipitous escape where it was due. 'You have saved us both from a mauling or worse.'

Gollum gave no sign that he had heard these words of sombre praise, but he took the egg readily enough, and when Aragorn lit his candle and started out in the darkness he followed without question.

lar

Before he was forced to halt again, Aragorn came to a place where the land began to dip downward. He found himself sliding and skittering between the trees with their ghostly garlands of spider-silk, worn boots gripping poorly amid the slippery mulch. Then the terrain leveled again and suddenly he was out of the underbrush and onto a mossy but well-packed path. It wound to the left and it wound to the right, and the cobwebs strung from the trees to either side of it did not cross the byway itself. Aragorn had neither the strength nor the spirit to smile, but his worries eased a little and he breathed more freely than he had in days. He had reached the Elven road in safety, and in little more than half the time it would have taken him to come here from the forest-gate. Despite the pain in his feet he continued on for a while, less haunted by the eyes beyond the glow of his candle. When at last he stopped to rest a while, he did so squarely in the middle of the trodden way, stretching out upon his back with one mittened hand beneath his neck. He had to fight off sleep all the while that he lay, for he had snatched fewer than three hours in total since departing from Grimbeorn's hall, and his mind kept begging to slip away if only for a few minutes. So although he was weary and wracked with perpetual grinding pain he rose up again as soon as he was able and hobbled onward. He did not light a candle this time, but followed the path by feel in the darkness.

Still he was dogged by the sense that he was being watched; that something was following him in the darkness, now from the mass of the forest to his right. He thought again of the greenish eyes, and his spine rippled with a shiver of dread. After a lifetime of danger he knew when he was being hunted. In other circumstances he might have doubled back, to search for signs of his pursuer and to try to divine what it was that tracked him, and perhaps even to what end. But he walked in haste and he was not alone on his road, and he had little enough strength to press on without wasting many hours hunting his pursuer. Whatever it was, it moved most often through the trees above - and so at least he could be assured that it was neither Man nor orc. Still his steps were haunted by the knowledge that pursuit was close upon his bruised and flagging heels.

He was forced to halt again that night, and he found the will to eat a little. The honey-cake, so blessedly wholesome and sweet, sat like a stone in his stomach, and though it left his mouth dry he dared not take more than two brief draughts of water. This was the fifth night since he had departed from the care of Eira wife of Grimbeorn. He had hoped to be safe within the halls of the wood-elves by now, and he had not even crossed the Enchanted Stream. He could not expect his water to last if he was too free with it.

Aragorn went limping on again long before dawn, and came at last to the narrow black brook just as the light was beginning to rise a little. Once, long ago, there had been a bridge over this stream: one rotted piling still showed low upon the opposite shore. When last he and Gandalf had come this way, there had been a little row-boat tethered to a root and waiting. He saw no boat now, but he knew this road. At the very bank of the stream there was a mighty oak girdled upon all sides with the Elven path. Its bare boughs were free of cobwebs: the spiders shunned it. On the opposite shore stood its sister, broad reaching arms spanning the water like a carven archway. Above the stream two thick branches met, entwined together. It was the wood-elves' bridge, by which they crossed the stream themselves.

To climb Aragorn was obliged to remove his mittens. At first his fingers, still aching and riddled with open sores, were reluctant to grasp. Then he realized that the residue of Eira's salve, which he reapplied with care upon each halt, was clinging to his hands so that they were slick and qick to slip. He wiped them carefully on the ragged edge of his blanket, and then he managed to make his ascent. Gollum was reluctant to touch the tree, but as Aragorn reached for the next branch and the rope pulled upon his throat he appeared to deem it the lesser evil to climb, and he scurried up after. The bridging boughs were broad and strong, and under ordinary circumstances Aragorn would have stood and walked across. Now, however, his legs were weary and shaking after the exertion of the climb, and there was a giddiness in his head. He straddled the branch instead, ankles tucked up behind him, and drew himself across in that fashion. The descent was easy enough, and the river lay behind him. Exhausted and with throbbing hands, he sat down upon the path and drew up his knees that he might rest his reeling head for a moment or two.

Then, horribly, Gollum let loose one of his shrill, piercing shrieks. Aragorn felt his whole body stiffen, and he would have driven his fingers into his ears if they had not been so stiff and aching after their exertions. Miserably he toyed with the notion of simply picking up his charge and hurling him into the water. The stream was under a powerful and ancient enchantment of slumber, forgetfulness, and deep dreams. It would silence Gollum for a time, and it would do him no harm. But of course he had not the strength to carry his unconscious charge, nor had he spirit enough for the fight to get him into the water. It was an alluring thought but nothing more.

Gollum took a stilted breath and screamed again, clawing at his head with one hand and tugging at the rope with the other. Aragorn's pulse quickened and he lifted his head out of its exhausted sagging. This was not the belligerent shouting that his prisoner had done at the edge of the forest. This was panic: true terror and a note of anxious warning. Twice before Gollum had heralded dangers that Aragorn had been unable to sense. Twice he had saved them from calamity. Now again he was writhing in fright, yanking upon the cord and trying to communicate something to which he could not apparently give voice. Weariness forgotten, Aragorn scrambled to his feet. He stumbled but kept his balance, and Gollum took off at a loping run, down away from the river. Swift as he could Aragorn ran after him, fumbling to draw his knife again and glad that his hands were still bare from the climb. Whatever awaited him he would fend it off with greater dexterity without the mittens. As he dashed after his prisoner he looked to the right and the left, but the cobwebbed forest was a blur on either side, and he could hear nothing over the keening shrieks before him.

When Gollum veered right and dragged him off the path, Aragorn was too rapt in watching for the unseen danger to take much notice.

Chapter LIII: Hobbled

Hastening after his prisoner, Aragorn ran. He was crashing clumsily through the undergrowth, battered feet pounding mercilessly against the forest floor and barking again and again upon roots or fallen brush. Even if Gollum's cries had not filled the air he would have been unable to listen for sounds of pursuit through the roaring of the blood in his ears. His ribs strained with the effort to draw the deep breaths needed to fuel his flight, and the gloom of the forest became flecked with lancing bursts of imagined light before strained eyes. Somehow he kept his grip upon his knife, striving all the while to ready his mind and body for battle, but his strength was failing and he was not at all certain that he would be able to go on much longer.

Then, so suddenly that Aragorn nearly tripped right over him, Gollum halted. Still straining to breathe through the crackling ache in his chest, the Ranger turned at once to watch the way in which they had come. He knew that they had left a trail this time that anyone could follow, and if the unseen danger was in pursuit it would come upon them soon enough. There was no time to ease his hammering heart or to put right his reeling head, but his body found its battle-ready stance almost at once and he focused his faltering gaze and his far steadier will upon the direction in which the threat would come. Gollum was behind him, tense and wary and silent at last. If his judgement was to be trusted he had taken the safest place.

It was the word trusted that struck the first uneasy chord in Aragorn's heart, but almost before he could recognize it something seized upon his cloak, plucking at the heavy wool where it rested on his right shoulder-blade. He had only a brief clarifying moment in which to grasp the folly of his actions before another strand struck at the crown of his head and his hood was tugged away.

He spun, cogent enough to turn left instead of right and so avoid entangling his legs in Gollum's tether, and there was a noise like the twang of a bowstring as the first length of spider-silk snapped. A third struck his scratched face as he whirled, and his knife-hand slipped up to sever it. From above came an indignant clicking noise that sent ice flowing through his veins as he was brought back to an inky tunnel choked with stale and putrid air, and the sudden phosphorescence rushing towards him out of the darkness. While the memory of that terrible time engulfed his conscious thought and set the deep scar in his leg ablaze, the instincts of a hardened warrior were searching for his adversary.

He saw it clinging to its web in the lower branches of a spreading oak tree, many legs shifting as it readied itself to strike again. The jewelled onyx eyes rolled and the pincer-fangs gnashed; then the bulbous body reared as the spinnerets sent out another floating length of webbing. Aragorn took a long step to the right, and it narrowly missed his head.

Then suddenly his mind was clear again, and he felt the irrational urge to laugh. As far as he could see there was only one spider, and a quick appraising glance about the little bower showed him only the one clean and tended web amid the tatters of others long abandoned. And this spider, though hardly of the peaceable garden variety, was but a little thing: scarcely the size of a yearling pony, and with a rickety underfed look that told him it was not much of a hunter. As it fired off another strand of silk and he dodged it again, his suspicion was confirmed. The vast demon-thing that haunted his memories cast this distant cousin in a most unimpressive light.

'Quick!' cried Gollum, his voice hoarse and shrill with anxious urgency. 'Quick, quick! It's swift and wicked, gollum, and it's deadly! Be quick!'

It did not seem especially swift to Aragorn, who danced out of the way of its entrapping filaments again and kept his eyes fixed upon the ugly thing as it skittered to the far side of its web in search of a better vantage-point. He was not fool enough to try to charge it while it roosted in the tree, and it would be mad to try to outrun a spider that could scurry from branch to branch with many-jointed limbs and clinging claws. He made his own judicious withdrawal, and Gollum was obliged to lope after him as the rope grew taut. When the next stream of sticky silk shot after him he dropped to one knee and closed his left fist upon the long fallen bough he had come after. The main shaft was thick and sturdy, and it spread into a fan of smaller branches; on the whole it was a little over four feet long. He could use it to drive back the creature if he had to, but more importantly it would allow him to protect his hard-won prize when the battle was joined.

Thus equipped, he fell to taunting.

'Ai, Attercop!' he cried. Bilbo's tale of his own remarkable encounter with these creatures had taught him long ago that they were proud, and easily driven to deranged anger. He had never tested this in his own encounters, but those had been with swarms of the things confident in their ability to take down a wanderer or two. This spider would clearly not leave its web without further incentive. 'Come after me if you dare, for I shall not stumble in your web.'

'Promised, you promised,' the spider chittered. Like all of its race it possessed some capacity for speech, though the sounds were warped and thickly trilling and there was little coherency to the words. Likely it did not mean promised at all, nor anything resembling it, and there was no use in trying to make sense of what it thought it was saying. 'Straight to my den, my beautiful web: nice rich breakfast, lean though it be!'

Aragorn took two long strides forward, raised his arm to its full length despite the inconvenience to Gollum, and swatted with the stick. The farthest twigs smacked against the foundation cords, several of them snapping against them. The web vibrated and the tree creaked as the spider reared and shifted indignantly. He tried to curl his lip into a scornful sneer, and although he doubted the unfamiliar expression was rendered very well it seemed to have the desired effect. There was a high clacking shriek of anger and the spider lunged after the branch and its bearer. Aragorn withdrew them both with a leap that cost him much agony in the landing, and shuffled back to a safe distance. When the next bolt of webbing came after him he twisted so that it caught his cloak instead of his body, and a swift swoop of the knife set him free again.

'Elveses!' wailed Gollum in a harsh and almost defiant voice. 'It's a friend of the Elveses, it is, with their bright eyes!'

It might have been nothing more than an attempt to aid him in drawing the spider out of its tree, but Aragorn could not keep himself from turning suspicious eyes upon the withered body crouching some distance from his boot. Before he could speak or give consideration to his unease the spider – emboldened perhaps by his momentary distraction – sprang from the tree and landed arched and ready before him. Its claws dug into the mulch as it moved to its left. Slavering globules of poison shone upon its quivering fangs, and the great eyes glittered with ravening avarice. Rearing up upon the two hindmost pairs of legs, it pawed at the air and let out a rattling howl before lunging. Bending his knees Aragorn swung the knife low and grazed against a bulging joint and narrowly missing the swoop of one chitinous claw. Quickly he withdrew, as Gollum hurried to keep well behind the guarding sweep of the branch. The successful strike had surely done little true harm to the spider, for the hairy legs were thickly armoured and though sharp the knife was short. Yet like all evil things it shunned the touch of Elven steel, and it retreated a pace with a keening noise of torment.

Aragorn did not press the advantage, but straightened and stood fast as he waited for the thing to strike again. Gollum was gibbering senselessly now. He hopped from one foot to the other, bony knuckles grazing the ground as he tried to keep himself as far from the affray as possible without risking strangulation when Aragorn's left hand moved unexpectedly. There was no time to watch him, for the spider had its forelegs in the air again and he was obliged to pull back to keep his knee from being gored by a long serrated claw.

'Hit it, cut it!' Gollum cried. Aragorn lunged, trying again to strike the underbelly where the horny armour of the spider's hide was weakest. The beast sent forth another spray from its spinnerets: not the strong cables this time, but a viscous and clinging mass that struck Aragorn's chest and stuck there. Given the chance the spider would have taken him in its claws and rolled him again and again as it coated his body in a cocoon of the stuff, immobilizing him so that he might hang until fit for eating. Instead he scrambled away, using the heel of his left hand for leverage without letting go of the branch. Small though this spider might be by the reckoning of the one that lent to Torech Ungol its name, it was not an opponent to be taken lightly. It had eight swift seeking legs, every one a weapon, while Aragorn was armed only with a knife and a brittle old stick. For the first time in many weeks he longed for the weight of a sword in his hands.

When he had his feet firmly under him he swept with that arm, smacking the wood against the side of the spider's head as he crouched. It yowled insensibly and lurched to its left, but his right hand was ready and he swung it inward with the knife in his fist. There was a thick squelching sound and when he yanked back the blade it was black with ichor. His heart seemed to strain against his ribs with a grim surge of triumph, even as he sprang away to keep from being eviscerated by a sweeping leg. He turned a hopeful glance at the faceted eye, but it was still whole. His stroke had gone ever so slightly amiss and instead of puncturing the orb he had plunged his knife into the socket behind it.

Still the spider was at least temporarily overcome with pain and rage. It clattered around in a reeling circle, pincers snapping and bloated head shaking. When it struck out at him again it did so erratically, and a swift sidestep sent its claws plunging into the mulch instead of his flank. Aragorn struck again, and again he narrowly missed the spider's left eye. This time the bright blade glanced off of the spider's pinched neck, taking many black bristles with it. The beast let out a piercing ululation of suffering and retreated almost to the foot of its tree before rising to strike again.

Yet now as Aragorn danced out of the way there was a rush of movement behind him. With the nimble precision of a lunging hound, Gollum slipped between the Man's long legs and banked sharply right. Though his wits cried out their warning Aragorn's body did not respond swiftly enough. The rope jerked suddenly rigid, yanking back his left hand and biting into his knees, and as Gollum circled broadly behind him the Ranger began to totter. Tugging on the cord himself, he managed to take a half-step backward, but his foot struck a tree-root and his ankle rolled inward. He thrust his weight forward and tried to brace his failing leg, but there was a terrible snapping sound and a sudden release of pressure spreading from his great toe along either side of his foot. It was followed almost at once by the sickening feel of tendons stretching and ligaments tearing, and he fell.

There was a sundering impact in his lower back, to the right of his spine, and it seemed that all the wind was driven from his lungs. In that moment of blinding anguish he knew nothing but the all-consuming fire that tore through his kidney into his viscera from the place where the wooden bottle of the Beornings dug into him. Then somehow he listed to the left and the vessel shifted beneath his tunic and he could detect the loose, floating burning at the end of his leg. Addled in his suffering, he strove frantically to remember where he was and what had happened and why he must find his knife.

'Cut us loose! Cut us loose, preciouss!' Gollum screamed, and the rope slapped against the side of Aragorn's head as his prisoner yanked at it. 'Cut us loose and kill it! We brought it, we brought it to you: kill it!'

Then with almost academic detachment Aragorn understood. Twice had Gollum given him true warnings, but many more times had he set out with murder on his crafty mind. He might have known – he should have known – that it had been the latter that made him cry out as if in terror on the east bank of the stream. He had expected his captive to make one last attempt to shape his downfall before they reached the stronghold of the wood-elves. He had known that Gollum would not go quietly. But he had not looked for malice disguised as fright. He had wanted to believe, and so had pemitted himself to think, that Gollum had once more meant to spare them both some calamity; and he had allowed himself to be led straight into a trap. How his prisoner had forged the pact with the spider he could not guess, unless it had been the beast's presence that had roused him from his brief uneasy sleep on the first night beneath Mirkwood's shadow. Yes, he thought with a weariness almost too great to bear, that was it. Surely that was it, and now he lay prostrate before his death: betrayed by a creature he should never have allowed himself to trust, even for a moment.

All this passed through the Ranger's mind in a single crystalline instant between the ebbing of the first shock of his fall and the drawing of the sundering gasp that filled his empty lungs and sent him into a fresh throe of agony. Beyond the top of his pulsating skull Gollum was still shrieking, and there was a clicking cacophony of shrill spider laughter. Then a black blur rose amid the muddy film over Aragorn's eyes, and he knew the beast was coming for him. He had scorned it as small and scrawny, but now it seemed quite large enough as it hefted its dark mass over him and reared its head to strike. The pincers dripped their poison and the spider thrust downward to bury them in his neck. It would paralyse him for a time, and when he woke he would be trussed up in its webbing waiting to be dismembered and devoured.

It seemed he was already under the spell of the venom, for he could not move. He stared up at the shadow eclipsing even the gloom of Mirkwood, and he tried to master himself. It was bearing down now, swift and yet impossibly slow. All that he had to do was roll upon one side, and the fangs would be driven harmlessly into the earth, but he could not muster himself to do it. Still Gollum was shouting his command of death, and though the words made little sense the trilling tone was more than Aragorn's patience could bear. For so long – seven weeks by his closest reckoning – he had borne the mutterings and grumblings and howlings of this hated thing. He did not want that sound to be the last thing he heard.

It was this thought, it seemed, that gave him the strength to command his battered body. At the last moment he twisted, left shoulder rising and left foot pushing as he rolled towards the root that had turned his ankle. The spider struck, but its fangs did not sink into the thin skin stretched across his collarbones and over the great vessels of his neck. Instead one flailed in the open air, while the other struck the meat of his shoulder and slipped into muscles that, though withered somewhat with deprivation and so less than their usual girth, were still hard with the sinews of a warrior. Aragorn felt the fire of the first trickles of poison, but it was the pricking of his right thigh that held his focus. For the pain came not from the ache of the old scar, but from the bite of a blade pressed shallowly against his hose.

By some miraculous might of instinct, he had kept his hold upon his knife.

In the instant of hesitation while the spider strove to decide whether to inject its paralysing cargo or to pull back to strike again, Aragorn wrenched back in the direction he had come. His speared flesh slid off of the pincer as the jet of venom shot out to soak the ground and his tunic and the hem of his cloak, while at the same moment his right arm rose. Sure of his target, laid so readily bare by the spider's straddling stance, he dug the Elven blade deep into the creature's belly. It jolted backward as if stung, but he came with it. The muscles of his abdomen contracted and he rose, forcing the knife deeper still. Then with a long sweep of his arm he drew it down and outward, tearing a massive rent in the spider's flesh and drenching himself in the dark gout of its death. Its final shriek shook the branches of the overhanging trees as Aragorn heaved the bulbous body off of him, and it rolled onto its broad back. Eight legs twitched convulsively in the air, and one by one they fell still.

Breathless and trembling, Aragorn tipped back to land amid the rotting leaves. His shoulder was ablaze with the spider's secretions and he could already feel numbness deep in the wound as the toxins began to spread. From his floating ribs to the base of his pelvis his right flank was a torment of throbbing misery. He could feel almost nothing in his foot now, but from the shallow gasps and the quivering in his fingers he suspected that this was only a sign of shock setting in. It was the bite of the rope against his ear that kept him from subsisting there until he swooned away, for Gollum was with him and he was trying to get free of the halter.

His left hand swung across his body and his right elbow dug into the ground. Aragorn rolled again onto his abused right side and pushed himself up as he did so, managing somehow to sit. Then he shifted the knife to his left hand and hauled upon the rope, dragging his prisoner writhing and shrieking to his side.

'Again,' he hissed, the word catching heavily in his throat. The effort of speaking sent a spasm through his chest, and he had to brace himself against the pain that followed. His right hand let go of the rope and closed on Gollum's ear. The creature stilled, gawping up at him with enormous eyes flooded with terror and rage and the bitterness of failure. 'Again,' said Aragorn, but he could find no words to express his loathing, his anger, his final drained despair. His nails dug into the soft flesh of the lobe and Gollum whimpered. He did not care. 'Again…'

There would have to be a reckoning for this, but he could not think of that now. He had to rise up and find his way back to the path. Though he had no idea how he would accomplish the first he knew the second would be simple enough. He had left a trail like that of a rampaging bull in his haste to follow Gollum in what he had taken to be a flight from danger. The thought that there was one problem in all this ruin with a straightforward solution bolstered his courage a little. He fixed Gollum with eyes he hoped were not too deadened with suffering and exhaustion, and he spoke again.

'You will follow, and you will not thwart me,' he said. His left hand jerked clumsily, but the Elven blade glinted despite the gloom. 'I can do to you what I did to your confederate, and with considerably less trouble.'

Gollum moaned and tried to shrink away, causing Aragorn's grip to tug at his ear again. He whined piteously and reached as though to claw at the Ranger's hand, but did not dare. Satisfied, Aragorn released his hold and used his right hand to shift himself so that he could bring up his left foot. At last he looked at his right leg. The ankle was canted, and though it straightened when he bade it there was a detached and distant warning of pain to come. He saw too the source of the dreadful noise that he had heard, and of the strange feeling of pressure abating in the moment before the sinews strained. The sole of his boot had torn free of the vamp. It flapped now against his foot, attached only by a few inches of stitching about the heel. He swallowed a cry of frustrated dismay, for he had greater difficulties than a ruined boot. Broken or merely wrenched, he could not put his weight upon his ankle until he had the chance to examine it or he might imperil the continued use of his foot.

He disentangled the rope from his legs so that his left harm had some freedom of motion. Gollum did not resist as he did this: his eyes were fixed all the time upon the knife. Then Aragorn cast about for something to aid him in his efforts to rise. The stick that he had used to fend off the spider was snapped in twain, and in any case it had been too short to be of use as a crutch. He could see no other likely prospect nearby and so, hoisting with his right arm and then shifting his hips, he dragged himself towards the nearest tree with Gollum creeping warily after him. By clinging to the trunk he managed to haul his weight up onto his left leg, the right dangling uselessly beside him. He swayed dangerously, a wave of terrible nausea breaking over him. The numbness in his left arm was spreading now; his elbow felt curiously absent and twice its normal size, though a careful glance confirmed that it was still in place and showed no signs of swelling. While sensation lingered he reached up to break off a long, strong bough, and he put his weight upon the tree as he stripped it for a staff. By the time he had finished his fingers had the feel of useless sausages, and he was obliged to tuck away the knife. Still he shifted it on his belt so that the hilt was clearly visible.

'You have seen me in battle at last,' he said hoarsely, and Gollum cringed at the sound of his voice. 'You know how swiftly I can draw it.'

To his ears the threat sounded feeble, but his prisoner seemed to take it with due alarm. Aragorn crooked his unfeeling left arm about the clumsy crutch, and gripped it with his right hand. He took his first cautious, hobbling step away from the tree and dragged his twisted foot after him. The ache in his side was terrible, but he set his teeth against it. 'Keep pace,' he commanded, glaring down at Gollum. 'If the rope grows taut you will rue it bitterly.'

Then, rocking against the stave and fighting with all his will against a head that swam with illness and hurt, he set off back towards the path. His progress was slow, tortuously slow, but he did not think that it took more than half an hour in the end. At last he was up on the Elven way again, where the cobwebs could not reach. He thought the spider he had slain was an outcast of sorts, but still the others might muster against its killer. Yet rage though they might they would not dare the wood-elves' road. Here too the way was level and the ground firm, and he would be able to limp on once he had seen to his hurts. Now, however, he eased himself carefully to the packed earth with his right leg stretched before him. The morning was still in its youth, and he could not go on until he knew what evils his body had taken.

He did off with cloak and blanket and then laid his pack aside, looking with dread at the stain of spider-blood spread across the wool. If his provisions were fouled he would have no choice but to go hungry, for he could not hunt in this state and he dared not leave the path to forage. Yet this, like his boot, was a minor worry, and he struggled one-handed to unbuckle his belt. He removed Grimbeorn's old tunic by sliding his useable arm out of its sleeve, tugging the garment up over his head, and easing it down off of his unfeeling left limb. The front was smeared with the sticky silver silk and soaked with the spider's dark and stinking blood. In patches the latter had oozed through to stain his tattered cote, but it was not half so foul. Aragorn reached for the lace that held his old garment closed, and then shook his head. The effort would exhaust him, and it was unnecessary. With two sharp tugs he tore the remaining line of stitches that held his dangling left sleeve, and slipped the sheath off. The shirt beneath was light and easily bunched up to the shoulder, laying bare the place where the pincer had punctured him.

It was a deep narrow wound, about an inch and a half in length. It might have been made by a knife, but for the ragged lower corner where the spider's serrated fang had torn at the flesh. It was bleeding copiously: having soaked the sleeve of his shirt it now sent thin red rivulets down towards his elbow. He probed it thoroughly, unhampered by pain because the paralytic – though administered in too low a dose to overcome him completely – had frozen his arm from its socket to the tips of his fingers. Finding no piece of broken pincer, nor anything else to worry him further, he decided to let it bleed awhile. He thought his giddiness to be a result of the poison, and if any lingered at the wound it would be best to let it wash away if it could.

Gingerly he felt his back. The flesh was tender, and exquisitely painful upon deep palpation. It was entirely possible that he had bruised his kidney, but there was no way to be certain unless he started showing blood and in any case such hurts could be healed only by time. The bottle itself had not broken, and that was a mercy. The leather vessel he had carried from Lórien would surely have burst under such an impact, and then he would have been without water. So despite the miserable injury he had in fact been fortunate in that.

Finally he drew his right foot close and felt the ankle. He could move each of the toes in turn and without much pain, but any attempt to flex his foot was rewarded with anguish. Already the foot was swelling and he felt certain he had sprained it. At another time he might have been filled with distress and dread, but his mind was numb to emotion now and he felt only a weariness that seemed to sink to the very core of his being. From his pouch he brought out the strips of wool with which he had bound Gollum's hands on the night when the wretch must have held his conference with the spider. He wrapped them about the arch of his foot, tying the loose sole of his boot in place and putting light pressure upon his inflamed foot. Then he dragged the satchel towards him and opened it.

Some of the spider-blood had indeed leeched through, but it was not as bad as he had feared. Three of the remaining parcels of waybread were ruined, but two were untouched. He tossed away the fouled ones, and with them the eggs – which had broken in his fall. He would have rid himself of them anyhow: he had no intention of feeding his prisoner again until he bided within Thranduil's dungeons. One of the felted shoes was soaked, and it was that which had spared the last of his provisions. He flung it away and tugged the other one over his broken boot. It would not keep his foot dry, he feared, but it was better than nothing. Then he had to contrive to dress himself again. He looked at the heavy woollen tunic, leaching loathsome black ichor onto the path, and he wondered how he could bear to drag it on again. He tugged it onto his lap, but the stink of spider was terrible and he choked back a flood of acid that rose to the back of his throat.

Violently he shoved the garment aside, fighting the urge to retch. He was shivering now, but the day was not much colder than freezing. There was no risk of wind beneath these ancient trees, and he had not much farther to travel. It was decided, then. He would leave the soiled tunic behind. Aragorn wrapped the blanket about his shoulders, fixing it in place with the strap of the satchel over one shoulder and the strap of the water-vessel over the other. Awkwardly he fastened Sigbeorn's cloak, which was wetted only a little with the blood of the beast. Then his right hand fell into his lap beside his useless left, and his chin sank down towards his chest. The urge to sleep was almost more than he could bear. His mouth was dry and seemed stuffed with lambswool, and the flesh across his cheekbones fairly crackled with weariness. Dimly he realized that this was not ordinary exhaustion. He felt as insensible as one drugged. The spider-poison was spreading, and it would lull him into oblivion if given half the chance. If that happened then Gollum would surely slay him at last, however he had to do it.

In a brief but fervent fit of anxious energy Aragorn rocked forward onto his left knee. He hoisted his staff in his right hand, cracked skin catching and tearing against the coarse bark. Levering himself with his two sound limbs he rose, reeling and swaying as he threatened to fall insensible to the path. But fall he did not, and though again he had to bite back the urge to vomit he managed to take first one unsteady rocking step and then another. Then somehow he was moving, sick and hurting though he was, and the path slipped by beneath his dragging right foot. Gollum followed in his footsteps with obedience borne of terror, and on they went as high above and unseen the Sun drove on to noon. As he walked Aragorn could think of nothing but the next unsteady step, save perhaps the need to fight off the toxic weariness that dragged upon his hammering heart. Yet deep within him there was a part of his mind not yet dulled by the venom that wondered why, if the spider lay dead behind him, he still felt that he was being hunted by a green-eyed watcher in the trees.

Chapter LIV: The Dark Before Dawn

There was a rocking, inelegant rhythm to his movement that was at once a comfort and a torment to the Ranger. With his weight heavy upon his hale left foot, he dragged with his right hand to plant the stave before him. It was braced between his dead left arm and his side, the crudely cut top buried between two ribs. When he forced his weight upon it that he might lift his good foot without harrying his lame one, the pressure of the knob seemed to dig deep into his lung. Always he swung his body as swiftly as he could, striking out to gain another half-ell, and then rocked forward onto his left leg again before the ritual could be repeated. Always the pain migrated in the same sweeping pattern: fire in his right flank, penetrating pain high up on the left of his chest, grinding torment from his wrenched and swollen ankle, and last the dull pounding ache as his left heel struck the ground. There was some solace in knowing what was to come, and yet all the while he had to fight against the greater part of his mind as it begged him to lay by this torture and give himself over to sleep.

It was the urge to sleep that was worst of all, for in it Aragorn fought not only nature but the swirl of spider-poison in his veins. This was now his fourth day without slumber and he would have struggled anyhow, but with the sedating toxin to contend with he could scarcely muster his faculties to remember why he must not give in. His head was heavy and muddled with a thick fog of bewildered exhaustion. He could not keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time, though his body was moving and the pain was ever-present. There was a weight between his temples that seemed to sway like the watch-bell of a ship upon a rolling sea. His thirst was terrible and his mouth felt bloated and strangely soft, but he did not know how he could drink and stand while his right hand was needed to keep the staff in place. No more could he wipe away the hot tickling rivulet running down the contour of his lip, for his nose was bleeding again; both nostrils this time.

At whiles he bestirred himself to look for Gollum, who was trundling along two steps behind. Though for the most part he kept his sullen gaze fixed on the path Aragorn caught him once, staring up at his captor with terror and awe etched deep in his unlovely visage. As he had ogled at the sight of the Ranger debriding his savaged forearm in the Emyn Muil far away, so he gaped now: as though he had not expected such a show of dour perseverance and now feared it.

That was all to the good. Aragorn had not the strength to mete out the punishment that his prisoner warranted; not yet. He had to keep moving, or the venom would drag him down into insensible unconsciousness, and so Gollum had to follow him. Fear alone could cow him now, though perhaps later there might be other means. Without fear there was nothing.

Hour upon hour they walked, for Aragorn did not dare to halt even for a moment. Again and again he tried to shift the fingers of his left hand, but they hung lifeless and useless at his side. Spider venom would wear off in time – from the muscles first, then the nerves, and then only later from the brain – but it could not do so swiftly enough for his liking. There was an ache in his right arm now from reaching across to grip the crutch, and if the need came upon him to draw his knife he was almost certain he would topple from his uneven stance. Hesitating for a half-breath he tried to twist up a fold of his cloak to cushion his body from the pounding of the staff's head. It made little difference. At last he could bear no longer the constant movement without surcease, and he hobbled to the very edge of the path where the thick bole of a beech stood waiting. Thrusting his weight upon the tree he at last dared to loose his hold on the branch long enough to lift up his water-vessel. With his teeth he dug out the bung, and he drank.

He meant to take but a sip or two to wet his lips and rinse away the worst of the sour woolly taste in his mouth, but his body had its own opinion on the matter. Ere Aragorn could stop himself he had taken three long, deep swallows that seemed to ease the misery in his skull almost at once though they sent his stomach sloshing horribly. He clamped his jaw closed and fought to keep the fluid within him. He had none at all to spare to a wanton loss by the roadside, and somehow his will fought down the nausea. The effort left him weak and trembling, clammy perspiration in a sheen across his brow and all down his back. Shivering he plugged the bottle and drew his cloak more tightly around him. The left sleeve of his shirt, bared by the torn cote, was stiff with blood. Cautiously he felt for the spider-bite with fingers that, though torn and aching, remembered still the duties of a healer. There was no fresh wetness, and he could feel no granulation in the wound. That was good. Yet though he pressed he felt no pain, not even deep in the muscle, and that was not so good. The gloom of the forest was still that of daylight, but dusk would come in time and if he could not then move his arm he would be defenceless against the dangers of the dark.

There was nothing to do but press on, though his left foot protested wretchedly against the burden of his body and the urge to vomit mounted with the resumption of the cycle of various pains. Gollum scuttled after him, blessedly silent. The path wound onward through the trees and the fine hairs on Aragorn's neck prickled with a warning he had not the strength to heed.

lar

Night fell and still he could scarcely move his arm. His fingers would shift a little, spastic and unsteady, and he could cock his elbow for a moment or two at a time, but he could not grasp the staff nor free his right hand to hold his knife. At last Aragorn began to feel a little jolt of prickling pain deep in the wound when the crutch dug against him. This was a good sign, and yet he could not find it in him to be grateful. His senses were dulled and his mind so addled with the lingering poison that he seemed incapable of any emotion at all. Even his dread was muted to a soft, indifferent greyness of spirit.

He could not hold a candle and the branch at the same time, and so he limped on in the perfect blackness and groped with the butt of the stave to ensure he was still on the path. He thought he was making better time now than he had been, though perhaps it was only that the minutes blurred together into an insensible mass. He had no way of measuring how quickly he went, or how far he had travelled since the crossing of the stream. He lacked the means to gauge his position in the forest. He could only hope that he was not moving so quickly that he might pass the hidden turning in the dark before dawn.

Beside him he could hear Gollum's wheezing breaths. Aragorn had been waiting all day for the resentful muttering to begin, but still his prisoner moved on in silence. That was a mercy almost beyond the Ranger's understanding, for his patience was utterly spent and he half-feared that if Gollum fell to whining now he would be unable to restrain himself from exacting a payment for the long weeks of misery even at the cost of his own body. Each time his inflamed right foot swung after its partner his thoughts were eclipsed for a fevered instant with the image of planting his torn boot into Gollum's emaciated side. He strove to supress the thought, but however he tried he could not quite do it. That such a motion would bring him far more torment and lasting hurt than it would mete out to Gollum seemed an inadequate reason to refrain. And unworthy though the thought was, he felt certain the gesture would be grimly satisfying.

Yet for now Gollum was silent and indistinct common sense reigned. While he could scarcely muster the energy to keep himself moving against the allure of drugged slumber Aragorn could not squander his strength on acts of discipline, much less vengeance. On he went, the betrayal unanswered and his injuries unrequited, and slowly the rush of blood in his ears seemed to quiet a little and his eyelids no longer drooped in inebriated enervation. When he tried to shift his left arm the elbow bent almost to ninety degrees and his fingers scrabbled against the tears in his cote. A burning brand ignited in the meat of his shoulder and it seemed as though he could feel his blood running cleaner as little by little the poison was filtered away.

It was deep in the middle-night when he realized that the woolen slipper tugged over his right boot was heavy with moisture. Cold water seeped through the border where sole and vamp had once been joined, soaking his hose and chilling the swollen ankle where it pulsed insistently against the constricting leather. When a fresh wave of chill struck his dragging foot he realized that he was stumbling through shallow drifts of snow half-melted on the path. The realization sent an unsteady bolt through his chest that he recognized only later as thin, wary hope. He had come at last to the eastern dells where the trees were not so dense. By daylight he might have seen beeches where before there had been broad oaks and gnarled walnuts. He had come at last to the place where Thranduil's marches faded into the heart of his realm.

Aragorn went on a little longer, limping off strides enough for half a dozen miles at his usual gait. Then at last he gripped the staff two-handed, his left fingers clumsy but determined, and inched himself down its bracing length to sit in the middle of the path. He landed with a low grunt of discomfort as his spine jolted against the impact, and stretched out his faithful left leg. He kneaded it with the knuckles of his right hand, which was itself wracked with brewing cramps, and exhaled a long rattling breath. There was a mound of snow close by him, melting against the heat of his thigh. He scooped it up and flung it away, for he knew it would not be clean enough to melt for water. Then for a long while he sat, hunched low over his lap and shivering with the chill of the air and the lingering fever of the spider's poison. Close at hand Gollum was snuffling and rooting in the earth. Aragorn ignored him.

Unmoving at last he found that sleep was clawing at him again, but it was only the sleep of honest exhaustion. He no longer felt the insidious fingers of a drugged stupor closed tight about his mind. True sleep he could fight off by strength of will alone, weary and worn down though he was, and he set about doing just that. His shoulders sagged as if beneath the weight of a millstone, and it seemed that each bone in his body had its own ache or agony or quiet complaint. Seldom had he known such utter weariness, and only twice could he recall pain more relentless or complete.

Such things did not bear thinking on, especially at a time like this, and so he busied his mind with walking the road ahead. If he regained a little more control of his left hand he could light his candle and walk on by its glow. If not, he would wait for the first grey glow of dawn. He did not remember how far, precisely, he had to walk to find the hidden crossroads where he would leave this path for the secret one that wound north to the halls of the woodland king. Even if he knew, he could not say precisely when he had come among the beeches. He was reasonably certain that the turning lay still ahead – likely far ahead – but he would not take the chance of stumbling blindly past it. Fool though he was he knew better than that. It would be no easy thing, limping down the less-trodden road, but he thought he could bring himself to do it. On the right path the Elven-road was less than half a day's march south of Thranduil's gates. He had only to find the junction.

Aragorn tried to beat back the thought that it was not likely to be so simple a task. Though he tried again and again to reassure himself that he could not possibly have covered enough ground in his present state to have passed the turn already, the gnawing fear remained. The prospect of wasting his strength to double back over land already covered sickened him. Worse was the knowledge that he might walk on for many miles before he could be certain one way or another. It had been many years since he had felt this fear, the unique terror that comes to one who believes he has lost his way in a dark and wild place. It was no less terrible now than it had been when first he had experienced it as a callow youth wandering alone for the first time.

Though the dark concealed it and there would have been no one save Gollum to see it anyhow, the lines of suffering softened a little in his face as he recalled his first lone patrol. Not yet twenty-one and walking still with his head half in legend he had lost his way one winter night. By the thin light of a waning moon he had stumbled hither and yon, tripping over tree roots and blundering into brambles as his terror mounted and he imagined himself wandering forever through the eerie shadows of Chetwood. Chetwood, of all places, that even now as the Shadow spread across the land and the dark things of the mountains and the northern wastes encroached ever further into quiet country was accounted one of the most peaceable forests of Arda. And he had been so frightened, and so young, and had thought himself so very alone – how grateful he had been when dawn came at last and he had managed to find his way out into the open country again, not three miles from the encampment where the others had been waiting.

He clung now to the memory, the sting of his youthful chagrin long lost to time. He tried to convince himself that he would one day look back upon this night, too, with fond amusement as he remembered how he had fretted over that which had come to naught. Yet he knew that would not be so. If he looked back at all, it would be with abject relief at a narrow escape and lingering dread of what might have been. This was no imagined horror, dreamed up by a young man away from home for the first time. This was a desperate situation: that of a wounded wanderer walking a dangerous road with a wily and unrelenting foe bound to his very wrist. Help, if there was any to be had, would have to stumble upon him by chance because after nearly sixteen years he was surely not truly expected. Danger, if it chose to seek him out again, would find him precisely where expected. With a hand beset with bone-deep tremors of want and weariness and pain he drew his knife.

lar

It was by might of will alone that he managed to rise when at last he realized that he could see his hand when he raised it near his face. The effort of gaining his feet – or foot, since the right one was now so bloated and sensitive that the lightest grazing against the ground sent forth blinding bolts of anguish – left him so spent that he had to stand motionless, tottering against the stout staff, until his heart sank down away from his tonsils and his lungs could draw breath once more. Even then he could do little more than inch along, left hand clutching the crutch and right hand holding the Elven blade in fingers that quivered so violently that it was a wonder they would keep their grip. He felt Gollum's eyes upon him, hateful yet wondering, but the faint half-light was driven back into blackness by the swimming spots that filled his sight. He was once more beyond fear, beyond hope, beyond even determination. He moved only because he could do nothing else; because movement was the sole constant in a world of gloom and hurt and half-remembered duty.

And after a time, movement brought its reward. His head grew used to its ponderous bobbing, and eyes and mind cleared a little. His body settled once more into the painful rhythm of the road, and accustomed itself to the pain. His spirit found some small surcease in the knowledge that he was doing what he could, what he must, to continue on his road. He moved onward in a haze of myriad miseries, but he moved.

The trees were indeed more generously spaced here, and the beeches were many. As the Sun rose a light brighter than any he had seen since leaving the open lands to the west settled about him, and Aragorn found his face upturned like that of a sunflower to find it. Now and then a narrow ray of sunlight slipped unassailed between the bare branches and kissed his leaden eyelids. Once, far away, he heard the cry of a lark greeting the morning. These tiny tokens of hope filtered through the veil of wretchedness like kind words cast into a dungeon; like drops of shimmering dew upon the lips of one perishing for thirst. They bolstered his resolve to continue upon a road whose meaning he had almost forgotten, and he limped on and on.

Once he halted to brace himself against a willing trunk and to drink a little. Gollum watched him, licking dry lips and whining deeply in his throat, but Aragorn offered him nothing. They were reduced again to this, it seemed: deprivation of food and drink to starve out disobedience. There was little enough water left, anyhow: less than a pint, and no hope of more. Here and there the little heaps of snow littered the path, but they were brown and foul and laced with cobwebs and other unidentifiable filth. Aragorn broke off a small piece of honey-cake and managed to swallow, but it sat uneasy in his belly and only served to heighten his thirst. After that he put aside thoughts of eating; he would try again at dusk when perhaps the last of the venom would be purged from his body.

The light was slanting westward when the path took a sharp southerly dip around the foot of a wooded hill. Aragorn paused to look at it, leaning like a dotard on his staff and staring stupidly for a long while before something sparked deep in his memory. The hill, close by the path, and beyond it the rim of a great drainage basin almost undetectable amid the gentle fall and swelling of the path save to an experienced traveller. He was three miles or less from the turning off the main path onto the camouflaged way that led to his destination.

Those three miles seemed longer than any he had walked in all his years of wandering. Every step was bought at a dear ransom of pain, and his breath came in shallow concussive gasps. About him the daylight seemed to fade twice as swiftly as it had any right to do, and his hands shook so violently that he was obliged to sheath his knife in order to plant one over the other lest he should lose hold of his stave. He had cursed the vagueness of his mind, but now that it was stripped away for anxious alertness he longed for the comfort of insensibility. Every sound seemed magnified, intense and nigh on intolerable in his ears. He could feel even the minutest twinging in his body, and every stone or half-buried root beneath his foot. The musty forest-scent and the rotten reek that went up from Gollum and from his own cloak were almost unbearable. And he could taste the copper tang of the blood that trickled down the back of his throat from a nose still sluggishly bleeding. Overlying all of this was the other sense, the hunter's sense, that cried out its tocsin of nebulous danger and could not be heeded because it might divert him from the all-important task of moving forward.

He found it at last; the heap of pale stones at the base of a holly-bush. It had the toppled and haphazard look of a chance conglomeration left perhaps by some deranged squirrel, but the feel of Elven artifice was all about the place. As carefully as he could, laden and limping, Aragorn picked his way through the thicket. Gollum veered behind him, stretching the rope to the right as he cut a wide berth around the trail-marker, but he did not dare to halt. Beyond the hedge there was nothing but forest floor and thin undergrowth for a distance of about thirty ells, but in the shadow of two bowed beeches the first fringe of the footpath could be seen. Soon enough Aragorn was on it, his heavy lopsided tread scoring the winter moss that blunted the constant crashing impact of his battered boot.

The Sun was setting: high above the silvery boles were stained orange and red, and the light at the forest floor was growing dim. All around the noises of the forest swirled in the flurry of activity that accompanied the fading of the day. As twilight's blue-grey shadows crept up around him Aragorn shuffled unsteadily to a level place and eased himself to the ground. Shunning both his company and the slender path, Gollum retreated as far as the rope would allow to crouch in the mulch beside their road. Aragorn glanced after him but did not trouble himself to draw in the cord. While he could still see he dug through his baggage and brought out his flint and steel and the last of Torbeorn's candles. Through his fumbling exhaustion he spared a thought of deepest gratitude for the boy's gift. Likely it had been every bit as impulsive as the beads the little ones had offered; merely something the child had on hand to give the guest. Yet the boon of light in this place where no stars shone was a treasure more precious than pearls.

Striking a light proved far more difficult than Aragorn had anticipated. His hands were unsteady and his fingers cold and clumsy. In the muddle and desperation of the last two days he had forgotten the mittens and neglected the application of Eira's salve. Though the air was not so cold as it had been, the labour required of his hands had been heavy and unrelenting. Their skin was once again raw and chapped, riven with deep cracks that wept and bled. The sores on his knuckles were open and oozing again, and from beneath the bandage wrapped under the cuff of rope thin orange trails were showing: blood and pus from the torn flesh beneath. Yet none of these things could be tended in the eyeless dark, and so Aragorn fumbled with his tinder and the inelegant firesteel he had changed for his own, and struggled to ignite the candle.

By the time it was accomplished he had been working by feel alone for ten minutes, and he was wracked with irrational frustration. Weary as he was he knew that he was not himself, and the storm of emotions blunted by pain and toil was brewing up afresh. He fought against it like the master of a sea-haven securing his quays against a rising flood, dripping beeswax onto a stone and settling the candle so that he could see to his hurts.

Without water to spare for washing there was little he could do. He removed his cloak and checked the spider-bite again, finding it red and glossy but already knitting together along neatly severed edges. He cut away the wrappings on his left wrist and changed them for fresh when he was assured that the traces of infection in the torn skin were not spreading into his blood. He smeared the sweet-smelling beeswax unguent generously over his hands, scarcely feeling the sting as it settled into the many sores and the shallow abrasions that covered his palms. Then he tugged off the sodden felt shoe and wrung it out as best he could before cautiously feeling the hard, swollen mass of his ankle beneath the leather of his boot. His toes still obeyed him, though not without pain. He took his last mouthful of water and with one of Una's handkerchiefs blotted timorously at his nostrils. Then his hands fell to the earth, unable to do anything more.

Panting softly against his upraised left knee, Aragorn struggled to beat back a wave of exhaustion. Now that he had ceased his moving the pains were settling into a hushed but perpetual blanket of torture that clung to every limb and gripped his very marrow. The throbbing of his deeply bruised back, hidden before amongst the more urgent hurts of walking, rose up now like a forest fire fanned by a wild wind, sending its tentacles into the very root of his being. A hot rivulet cut through the grime and splattered blood – both carmine and black – upon his right cheek. He was weary, so terribly weary, and he did not see how he could go on. Half a day's march, he thought with a quiver of despair. It might as well be another nine hundred miles.

He thought at first that the low grating growl came from Gollum, and his impatience flared white-hot as a goldsmith's forge. Misery forgotten for a moment in anger he jerked up his heavy head, a stinging reprimand upon his lips. Then he saw them, pale and glittering as beryls in the blackness just beyond the reach of the candle: two slanting green eyes.

They were not aloft amid the trees now, but level almost with his own. As he stared the growling rang out again, deep and timbrous and terrible. Then there was a harsh hissing noise and two broad crossed paws slid forward into the ring of flickering light. Even before the great cat edged forward Aragorn thought he could see its head: broad and rimmed with a ruff of fur, twin tufts on the chin like a forked beard and fine feathered fronds rising from the tip of each ear. Dark fur speckled still darker on head and back – darkened and coarsened through the generations bred in Mirkwood's gloom.

With a howling sound infused with a hauntingly human quality the lynx sprung forward in a brief abortive arc, forelegs swinging outward to cross again as it crouched low. It was a she-cat, large and lean and bristling with feral menace. She had tracked him for days, through the thick underbrush and down the path, over the stream and through his encounter with the spider. It had been a hard winter; prey was scarce. And while a Man was never a tempting target, being large and dangerous and often armed, Gollum surely looked like an easy meal. No doubt the beast had tracked them all this way, haggard and hungry, waiting for the moment when the Ranger should show weakness enough for her to dare a strike.

Keeping his eyes fixed upon her over the glow of the candle, Aragorn felt along his belt for the hilt of his knife. With the other hand he gripped the rope. 'Gollum,' he said, his dry throat grating upon the syllables. 'Gollum, do not move quickly, but come near to me.'

He did not dare to take his eyes from the cat. She was watching him as one predator watches another, gauging his mettle and measuring the threat in his gaze. Seeking deep within himself for the fires of his spirit, Aragorn strove at least to keep his eyes unblinking, his stare steady. Off to his left he heard a noise of terror catching in Gollum's gullet, but there was no movement. The lynx leapt again, this time jerking in place. The halo of fur about her face bristled as she called out her challenge again. This time it was the shriek that he had heard in the darkness: the cry like that of a soul in torment. It stilled his heart within him and raised the hairs on his forearms. Silently Aragorn cursed his ill luck. At any other time he would have sprung to his feet, thrusting out the sides of his cloak to make himself appear as large and as menacing as possible. But with his turned ankle he would fall if he tried that. He would tumble in a pain-wracked heap, and the lynx would spring not after Gollum but onto him.

'Come!' he breathed, twitching the rope. 'Slowly and carefully: do not take your eyes off of her.'

Yet even now Gollum proved stubborn, unyielding and unwilling to obey. Aragorn's fingers flexed against the hilt of his knife and he drew it slowly into a position of readiness, trying to keep it from glinting in the candlelight. The candle was an advantage, or at least a factor to level the field a little. In darkness a lynx saw far better than a man; in these woods where Aragorn could see nothing at all at night the cat could hunt and travel. In candlelight neither was any better than the other, and a Man at least did not fear fire.

The lynx made another threatening half-pounce, this time skirting a little to her right. There was no mistake that it was Gollum she was after. Her tentative approach and the tense bristling dance were but to see whether the Ranger would make any move to interfere.

Such was his weariness and his anger at the creature that had once more all but brought him to his death, and left him bruised and lame and sickened, that Aragorn might have considered leaving the wretch to his own devices. Mayhap Gollum, slippery as he was, could evade a wild cat; mayhap he could not. Either way it seemed unlikely that he would escape unscathed, and he had certainly done nothing to earn the Man's protection. Yet there was still the need that had sparked this long and tiresome hunt; the need that had driven Aragorn to seize the wretch in the Dead Marshes, stinking and vile though he was; the need that had taken them over perilous Anduin and across the hard and hungry miles; the need that had proved greater than the yearning for sleep, for food, for warmth and for peace. What Gollum knew – whatever Gollum knew – might prove to be invaluable in the relentless war that Aragorn had waged almost from boyhood; the war in which those whom he trusted and loved had fought without rest for many hundreds, many thousands of years. The secrets locked in that unwieldy skull, buried deep beneath malice and madness, might set them firm upon the right path or save them wasted labours guarding that which need not be guarded. Aragorn had failed to win the creature's trust, and he had been unable to mount a proper interrogation in the open wilderness: he could not fail to bring him safely to where others might continue the labour. Whatever the cost Gollum could not be lost now.

Letting go of the rope, Aragorn reached for his staff instead. He made sure of his grip, still not prepared to trust untried a limb until lately paralysed. Then he brought it up in a broad arc and set the heavy branch down with a crack across the back of the lynx.

The cat let out a yowl of pain and fury, and her lithe body scissored towards him. Strong jaws snapped and she whipped her paws around in a menacing sweep, but she did not quite dare to leap at him. With a creaking of overtaxed joints Aragorn managed to get up onto his knees, swinging the stave again. The lynx cringed and took a wary leap to her right. Then she lunged again, this time straight for Gollum. The prisoner let out a blood-curdling shriek of terror and the rope tugged at Aragorn's wrist as the bound wretch tried to hurl himself away from the beast. The next swing of the staff went awry and the lynx, unhindered, sprang upon her prey. Pale claws flashed and dark wheals appeared down Gollum's right flank. With another eerily sentient cry the lynx dove in to bite, but now Aragorn had his left foot under him and he stood unsteadily, right foot trailing. He brought down the stave again, squarely upon her skull, and the big cat reeled with an insensible snarl. Gollum was weeping and wailing and beating his arms against his head in a deranged attempt to shelter his face and throat from the beast. Again Aragorn struck her, and this time she pounced in the direction of her assailant. The flailing forepaws struck the branch and the claws snagged deep into the wood. Aragorn lurched forward, dragged by his gripping hand, and would have lost his balance save that his right leg thrust out in a motion driven more by instinct than by sense.

Anguish burst forth like the many-coloured sparks from one of Gandalf's fireworks: vast and blinding in its very splendour. Aragorn's jaw snapped to with such force that had his tongue been between his teeth they would have bit it in two. He could see nothing, could feel nothing but that explosion of all-consuming pain, but he knew – as only those long-accustomed to peril and combat can know – that there was danger here, and it was near, and that he could not fall.

He did not fall, and his left side found its ballast again and somehow contrived to take the worst of the pressure off of the traumatized limb. His arm yanked back on the staff and it was the lynx that foundered now, falling heavily on her side with her strong limbs thrashing and her claws still deep in the wood. In a smooth sweeping motion Aragorn knelt, his right leg slipping behind as his hand swept out with the knife, aiming for the beast's jugular where it was laid bare for a moment as she fell. Then suddenly there was a crashing weight upon his back and he felt something raking deep into his shoulder, tearing the threadbare cloth of his cote and the fine linen of the shirt beneath, digging into the flesh over his scapula and dragging down in a long rending stroke that skipped over his spine and sank in afresh against his ribs. Something struck the back of his head and he felt sharp teeth scrabbling, trying to tear at his scalp but snagging instead in the thick knotted yarn of the woollen hat he wore. He threw his body forward, driving his chest hard against his left leg but yanking his head free. The clawing, snarling burden rolled off of him and as he twisted he saw it was a second lynx: a male, and surely the mate of the one before him.

The she-lynx had her claws free now, and she whipped her legs to spring back to her feet, retreating out of range of Aragorn's staff and watching him out of one eye as she swept back towards Gollum. The male showed its mouth full of bright tearing daggers and lunged towards the soft flesh beneath the Ranger's arm, exposed by his position and the loss of his left sleeve.

Swiftly Aragorn twisted. There was no time to let go of the stick, nor to turn his whole body, and so his right hand swept across his chest and under his left. The stretching of the battered tissues in his right side was almost more than his sanity could bear, but he was rewarded for his suffering when the blade found its mark. It sank in and upward into the floor of the animal's jaw, and the lynx gave a harsh, guttural yowl. The wound was not deep, but it brought a gout of blood and it sent the cat retreating almost out of the firelight. Scrambling after it on hands and knees Aragorn swung again. This time he scored the creature's side and it lunged again. The Ranger had lost his grip upon the pole at last, and he thrust up his empty hand to fend off the attack. The bared teeth missed his arm and he sank his fingers deep into the collar of fur, holding fast in a desperate attempt to keep the jaws from his face. One heavy forepaw swiped, and the patch was gone from the right knee of his hose. Blood showed dark by the light of a candle still miraculously upright on its stone. The lynx pulled back, yanking free of Aragorn's grip. Crouching low for a brief and terrible moment, it sprung with jaws wide.

The upward thrust of the knife seemed almost to be the work of another arm. Certainly in his moment of shock Aragorn could not imagine how the appendage that had quivered so with fatigue only minutes before could make such a smooth, deft and powerful sweep. Yet sweep it did, and the knife slipped silently between two ribs. The cat's outstretched forelegs crumpled, the tearing claws that had been aimed at the Man's bare head rendered useless and inert. Aragorn jerked back his hand, freeing his knife, and there was a noise like air draining from a pig's bladder. The weight of the lynx landed hard against his chest and his bleeding shoulder, and it tumbled off of him, limp and whimpering in its breathless throes of death.

Aragorn had no time to comprehend what had happened; he had not time even to draw a deep breath. For there was a jerking on his left hand, bringing pain to the torn skin beneath the bandage, and his attention was drawn to the edge of the path. There Gollum was engaged in his own desperate struggle. The she-lynx was atop him, broad paws batting as she tried to clear the way to sink her teeth. This was not such an easy task, for beneath her the wiry creature wriggled, hands bent into vicious claws and grasping feet battering her underbelly and clutching at her fur. She growled but Gollum shrieked, and his sparse teeth gnashed with a fury unmatched even by her own. One of his bony hands dug too close to her eye and she jumped back, shifting her position as she came down again and trying once more to subdue him.

In that moment Aragorn's sympathy was with the cat, for he knew what a strong and slippery thing she had in her clutches. Her face and one shoulder were bleeding, and her left ear was missing a chunk of flesh. She might fight to the limit of her strength, and though she would likely prevail she would be left only with a lean and desiccated thing as unfit for eating as it was for travelling with. She was courageous even to try, but in the end he could not let her succeed. He was a hunter too, after all, and Gollum was his prey. He could not let him be lost to another, even if it cost him his life – which in his present state it might well do.

So he scurried forward on his knees, left hand digging into the mossy path to propel him along. His right, still clutching the knife, was ready. He could feel the blood flowing down his back where the he-lynx had mauled him, and his body was aflame with the exertions of battle. But he raised his arm and drove the blade into the hip of the great cat.

She thrust back her head, yowling. Even in routine calling her voice held the sound of one in torment. That note was heightened tenfold now. Above in the trees unseen creatures scurried: squirrels and small game roused to terror by the unearthly noise. Aragorn pulled back his knife, and not a moment too soon. For the she-lynx whirled, abandoning Gollum with one last swipe of her paw as she turned on the larger assailant. In the glint of her green eyes Aragorn fancied he could read her wild heart as she looked at him. He was large and he was armed; he had killed her mate, yes. But he was bleeding and he could not even stand. He had been wounded long before she challenged him, and she had seen the spider sink its fang into him. He was deadly, but he was weak, and she was hungry and she was hurting and she was angry. It was a fair match.

Again she let loose her terrible voice, and this time it seemed to echo far away like the cry of a hunting-horn in the cold night. Down went her head, her rolling shoulders. Next crouched her haunches, taut with the strength of wild things bred in dangerous lands. Coiled like a viper she drew down to spring.

Aragorn tightened his hold on his knife, but his hand was trembling again. It seemed impossible that he should strike true this time, whatever he had done before. Yet try he must, for there was no other choice. Behind her Gollum lay twitching and bloodied at the end of a rope now slack between captor and captive. If the cat bested the Ranger he would not long survive. Calling upon his last shreds of strength, on the well of courage buried deep within and the small bright spring of hope that suffering and weariness and his hated companion had been unable to quench entirely, Aragorn stilled his quaking arm and made ready to strike.

The she-lynx tightened, rising up in the first arc of her spring, and then quailed – green eyes uncertain as she looked upon his face. The tension of the leap melted suddenly from her body and she whined piteously, casting her eyes away as though she could not bear his gaze. Then she whirled and suddenly she was gone: a blur of fur and claws and trailing blood scrambling up the trunk of a tree into the canopy above. Bewildered Aragorn looked after her, but only for a moment. Then he heard the horn again and suddenly there was a clatter of galloping hooves reigned suddenly in and a ring of torchlight appeared among the trees, borne up by slender arms clad in woodland green. Gollum's shrieks redoubled and the Ranger let the desperate strength ebb out of his unsteady limbs as he sank down onto his curled left calf.

Thranduil's folk had found them.

Chapter LV: The Last Mile

There was a quiet percussion of soft shoes upon old fallen leaves as those riders who did not carry a light dismounted and stepped past the shoulders of their steeds. Long slender bows with arrows at the ready swept the circle, and bright blades glimmered. The corner of a green cloak swept out the flame of Torbeorn's candle as an Elf bent to pluck the knife from Aragorn's hand. Even if he had wished to resist the Ranger might have lacked the strength. His limbs were limp and his shoulders stooped, and there was a fearful lightness to his head as he drew in quick shallow breaths and tried to rally his wits. Nearby Gollum was still howling, and as three Elves drew in to surround him he sprang up and scurried along the rope to cower at Aragorn's side. He was bleeding from the claw-marks on his flank and on his arms, but his pale eyes were keen and wary and he shrank from the forest-guardians.

'What are we to make of this?' asked the one who had taken Aragorn's small weapon. He was turning it in his hand, looking at the blood-stained blade and the intricate tracery on the hilt. 'Knife of the Noldor in the hands of a Man, who is wandering unbidden on the secret path of our people with a strange little thing lashed to his wrist.' He stepped over Gollum and moved to look at the body of the he-lynx where it lay in a dark stain of blood. 'Hunting wild cats, are you?'

Aragorn wanted very much to protest that the cat had been hunting him. The Elf had spoken to him in the Common Tongue, and he longed to respond in Sindarin so that he might begin to prove himself a friend, but he could not find within him the capacity for any speech at all. Bile was rising in his throat and his sight was so obscured that the world about him was nothing but a blur of red firelight and indistinct shadows. Gollum's cries had dimmed to whimpers now, but at least it was evident that he yet lived.

'How did you find this road?' the Elf asked. 'Have you come through the forest before? What is your name, stranger, and what is your errand?'

Always these same impossible questions, Aragorn thought vaguely. There was a stinging pain low on the left side of his spine, but over his right shoulder-blade where the he-lynx had landed he felt nothing. Yet he felt the hot weight of blood-soaked wool against his back and the slow ineluctable tickle as the thin freshets crept past the border of his belt. If nothing else he had to ensure that these folk would guard his captive if he lost his grip upon the waking world. He had to speak somehow.

Out of the depths of his heart came one last burst of strength to form a careful answer. The words came out thick and slurred, almost unintelligible despite his greatest effort. 'I am a friend… to Gandalf the Grey. The creature is my prisoner, and my errand – my errand is known to your king.'

Swiftly the Elf came back and crouched, beckoning over his shoulder. A horse nickered softly as one of the torch-bearers dismounted and drew near, holding the light low. Gollum whimpered and crept around to Aragorn's right side where his shadow fell. Blinking dazedly in the brightness the Ranger could not quite bring the face before him into focus, but he knew that he was being scrutinized with care. Now, he thought wearily, would come the questions: endless impossible questions that he was too addled to answer safely. In the end he would have to err towards reticence which they would take for defiance, and he would be hauled as a prisoner to the Elven-king's halls. At least then he would be brought at last before Thranduil, who would surely recall all that had been arranged.

But the Elf before him frowned, indistinct features furrowing, and he shook his head in pained wonder. 'Not Aragorn Dúnadan, Lord of the West?' he asked. Long fingers reached to brush against the crest of the Ranger's cheekbone. 'I know the years wear hard upon mortals, but I had not looked for this.'

It was not the years, so much as these last bitter weeks, that had worn upon him; but Aragorn had not energy to make such corrections. 'Forgive me,' he mumbled, courtesy reflexive upon his heavy tongue; 'for I cannot recall how we have met before.'

The Elf laughed, the merry laugh of the woodland folk tempered a little with worry. 'Can you not? You insisted upon trying to escape my cells once, and could not do it. I am Losfaron, Captain of the King's Guard. When word came that a brace of strangers had crossed the stream I was sent with my comrades to investigate, but I did not think to find you. So many years have passed since the arrangements were made – can it be that you have found your quarry at last?'

Aragorn tried to nod, but this sent tendrils of fire across his back and made his head reel. 'I have,' he breathed. He gestured vaguely with one bloodied hand. 'This is the one I have sought for so long, who was to be given into your care.'

The captain stood and snapped his fingers. 'Water,' he commanded. 'What have we for bandages? Lord Aragorn is wounded. Bring the lights closer and lay by your bows. Alas that there is no healer among us,' he added, turning again to the bowed figure of the Man. 'Our scouts reported the travellers were weary but unscathed.'

'So we were,' whispered Aragorn. Someone offered him a water-skin and he reached for it, but his hands trembled and would not grasp.

'Here.' Losfaron knelt and cupped one hand at the base of Aragorn's neck, heedless of the unwashed hair matted with cobwebs and spider-blood. With the other he raised the skin gently to the man's lips and Aragorn drank, a long and greedy gulp that spread his ribs painfully but restored some order to his thoughts and his sight. He took an unsteady breath and drew another draught. He would have taken a third, but the vessel was withdrawn. 'Easy,' the captain said. 'Too much after the exertions of battle will turn your stomach.'

Already Aragorn could feel the stirrings of returning nausea, and he bowed his heavy head in acknowledgement of the other's wisdom. 'Thank you,' he murmured.

From his belt Losfaron took a small flask bound in gold. 'Take a sip of this too,' he said; 'but only a sip. It will ease your pains and lend you strength a while.'

He removed the stopper and tipped the bottle for the Ranger. He took a sparing mouthful of a sweet and warming liquor, like and yet unlike the miruvor of Imladris, for it was neither so rich nor so blessed. Like the orc-cordial that had borne him up during his hard descent from Torech Ungol, it dulled the aches of his body almost at once – but it was fair, not foul, and it seemed to ease his spirit also. Again he offered his quiet thanks and he reached to chafe a hand against his jaw like one awakened from hateful dreams to a tolerable reality.

An Elf-maiden drew near, strips of linen hastily torn from shirt-hems trailing from her fingers. 'What are your hurts, my lord?' she asked. 'Your back is black with blood.'

'That is the worst of it, I think,' said Aragorn. 'If you can fashion a pad to bind over it, so to stem the bleeding, I can wait to have a healer tend it. We are not far, I think, from your lord's halls?'

'The horses can bear us thither in a little more than an hour,' said Losfaron. 'We set out at sunset to look for you, but we did not expect to find you on this path, nor so soon. If you are well enough to keep a seat, we can be back within the cavern long ere the feast comes to its height.'

This remark brought several approving murmurs from the others, but Aragorn had no energy to spare to thoughts of feasts. Thoughts of food served only to trouble his unsettled stomach: he longed only for a safe and sheltered place to sleep, and perhaps something to ease his pain a little.

The Elf-maiden was folding several lengths of linen into a pad, and she looked to him for approval. 'Is this what is wanted?' she asked. 'I can bind up an arm or a leg at need, but a hurt such as this…'

'It will serve,' Aragorn said. 'Place it over my garments, and bind it in place across my chest.' She moved behind him and with a little more guidance affixed the dressing over the worst of the wound with two tight bands, one running over his shoulder and the other beneath both arms. The pressure of the cloth was deep and reassuring, but with his cote so sodden Aragorn could not tell whether the bleeding had stopped.

At once he realized that Gollum had fallen silent. Anxiously he whipped his head to the right, searching out the lean crumpled body beside him. 'My captive!' he cried. 'He is wounded: does he live?'

'Aye, he is breathing,' one of the archers said, looking down at the creature. 'Swooned away in terror from the looks of him. The scratches are not deep, and they've all but dried up. What manner of thing is it?'

'I do not know,' sighed Aragorn. He lacked the will and the strength to speculate upon Gollum's obvious hobbit-like features. Somehow he got his knees under him and reached to crawl to his prisoner's side. Losfaron stopped him with a firm but gentle hand.

'Bring the creature closer,' he commanded. Two of his lieutenants bent, disgust evident upon their faces, and picked up the limp form between them. Swiftly but gently they bore him around to Aragorn's left side in deference to the rope, and laid him down upon the ground. They withdrew with haste, scrubbing their hands upon their tunics.

Aragorn looked down at the withered form before him. Gollum's head was lolling to one side, but the sinews and the vertebrae of his neck were intact. There was a fine scratch across the side of his skull where the she-lynx had swiped at him, but it was shallow and already clotted. Similar marks, three or four lines in parallel, scored his arms here and there, and four nails were torn deep into their beds from his own violent scrabbling. The wounds on his flank were the deepest, but even these did not reach into the muscle and were bleeding only sluggishly. By rights he ought to have been mauled beyond recognition by the cat, and yet here he lay all but whole.

'There are two rolls of bandages in my pack,' Aragorn said as he felt Gollum's strong pulse with careful but unsteady fingers. 'Bring them and I will dress his side..'

'No,' said Losfaron. 'My folk can see to that. Do you think you are strong enough to ride, or shall we send to the palace for a litter?'

'I can ride,' said Aragorn softly, wondering if he spoke the truth; 'but my captive… I do not think he would suffer himself to be borne thus if he were awake, and I would not ask any horse to carry such a hateful burden. I cannot think they would accept it.'

'What then would you do? Carry him across your torn back? You look wan as a wight, my lord, with scarcely the strength to bear yourself. Shall our people guard him here until aid can be sent?'

'No!' cried Aragorn, far more sharply than he had intended or thought himself capable. 'No,' he said again, this time in a weary whisper. 'I will not have him out of my sight until he is locked safe within your dungeons. You do not know how sly and treacherous the wretch is. From the moment he wakes he will be a danger.'

Losfaron cast a slow doubtful look at Gollum, but he did not argue. 'Let us bind him hand and foot,' he said. 'We can wrap him in my cloak to obscure his scent, and I shall see if Moroch will consent to carry you both. She is a fearless steed and will surely wish to aid us as she can.'

He rose and went to the edge of the trees where a fleet-footed young mare was waiting. He stroked her neck and she bent to him, whinnying softly as he murmured to her. She followed him onto the path and picked her way past Aragorn's scattered possessions. She bowed her head to sniff at the Ranger's hair.

'Greetings, fair one,' he said. His exhaustion was rising again in a slow tide of agony. It seemed that there was not a muscle in his body that was not wracked with one pain or another. He could not think how he would manage to hoist himself up onto his crude crutch again and limp onward.

Moroch had paused at the sound of the Elven tongue from the mouth of this begrimed and bloodied man, but now she nuzzled the side of his neck with her nose and stamped one foot.

'Yes, my lovely,' said Losfaron patiently; 'but what of the other?'

He gestured to Gollum and Moroch stepped with care over Aragorn's outstretched leg. She bowed low and caught his scent, and instantly recoiled, ears flat and knees locked. She tossed her proud head and made a piteous sound. Then her master laid his hand upon her forelock and leaned to whisper words she alone could hear. He kissed her proud jaw and she turned to him with a low trilling query in her throat. Then she snorted and shook out her mane and turned to stand ready for mounting.

The Elves made swift work of binding Gollum with strips torn from Aragorn's blanket. His few belongings were gathered up, and the Elf-maiden fastened the cloak about his shoulders. Its weight would help to keep pressure on his wounds, and already Aragorn was beginning to shiver with the cold that came after intense exertion. He would not allow them to cut the tether that bound him to his captive, but was glad indeed when Gollum's stinking bones were rolled into the heavy cloth of the captain's cloak.

At last it was time to mount. Losfaron and one of the others took hold of Aragorn's arms and he managed to haul himself up onto his left foot. His right he kept aside, and he stared down at its distended mass beneath the knotted wool and the broken boot. Then he looked at the horse. She had neither saddle nor bridle.

'I did not think,' the captain said. 'Can you ride in our fashion?'

'I can,' said Aragorn; 'but I do not know if I can mount her. My ankle…'

With a small compliant nicker Moroch stretched out one forefoot and bent the other, kneeling low. Aragorn took the single hopping step that brought him to her side and swung his injured leg over her lowered withers. He settled upon her sturdy back, and the two Elves bent to lift the carefully-wrapped bundle out of which only Gollum's face – still strangely serene in his swoon – was peeping. The horse rose with them, so that the rope should not grow too taut, and the creature was settled before Aragorn with his belly bent across Moroch's shoulders. His covered legs hung by the Ranger's right thigh, and his heavy head by his left.

There was a flurry of swirling cloaks and dancing feet as the others mounted. Losfaron took the steed of one of his subordinates: the horseless Elf and another would remain behind to bury the body of the he-lynx and to make right the sullied portion of the path. Then the torch-bearers fell into formation and the little procession set off.

lar

The Elven horses moved swift and sure through the night, and Moroch was a steadfast and gentle steed. Aragorn sat upon her back in a haze of pain and wonderment. He could not quite bring himself to believe that the last dreaded miles were slipping away beneath his feet. His weary body rocked and swayed with the motion of the horse, and here his exhaustion proved a blessing for he did not need to think about relaxing his muscles to follow her movements: he had no strength to keep them rigid. Before him Gollum lay motionless for a while, and then stirred and tried to struggle. He was too tightly wrapped to make much headway, however, and he soon subsisted into a stiff resistance punctuated by the occasional retching sound deep within his throat. Aragorn rested one loosely curled fist upon the creature's spine, and he did not dare to voice his protestations.

The rhythm of Moroch's hooves was so smooth and so perfect that Aragorn found himself drifting on the border of sleep. His mind danced in shallow half-waking dreams and he knew nothing of his progress save that the torches still danced before him and behind him and beside, and now and then the faint silver shimmer of a beech-tree caught the light. When the mare's hooves clattered suddenly on stone he was startled back into the waking world to find that they were crossing the broad stone bridge that led up to the gates of Thranduil's subterranean palace. Beneath he could hear now the rush of swift waters, and about him the wood-elves were calling out cheerfully to one another. Only their captain, riding abreast of the Ranger with wary eyes upon him, was silent and watchful.

Before the great gates they halted, and other Elves came forth to greet them. Losfaron called out orders that Aragorn could not muster himself to attend, and there was much shuffling and laughter and wondering exclamations. The two who had lifted Gollum up came to hoist him down, and the unwieldy bundle writhed as unintelligible cries came from the creature's cloak.

'Hush!' snapped Aragorn, his patience breaking almost at once. He was exerting all of his energies to dismount with dignity, and he had no tolerance left for Gollum's whinging. Shifting his weight with care he slid down from Moroch's back, clutching the strong locks at the base of her mane to keep from sinking to his knees as his weary left leg trembled and his useless right one dangled. At his feet the Elves were unwrapping Gollum, and Losfaron's lieutenant sprang back with a cry as the sharp, sparse teeth snapped.

'Ai! It's as vicious as a viper!' he exclaimed.

Aragorn groped for the rope and yanked upon it with all the strength left in his arm. Gollum's body jerked and sprang free of the cloak with a harsh choking noise. He landed on the balls of his feet, crouching as if to do battle with flailing arms and clawing nails, then looked from one fair face to the other and bolted towards his captor. He shrank against Aragorn's leg, scratching at his left boot.

'Elves, terrible Elveses!' he wailed. 'Touches us, burns us, gollum! We'll be good, preciouss; we promise it! Ever so good, only don't let them touch us!'

Losfaron stood, mouth tight with distaste at the shrill sounds. 'How many miles have you walked with only that for company?' he asked.

Aragorn only shook his head and gave the rope a brisk crack. 'Silence,' he said hoarsely. Gollum's mouth snapped closed, but his scrabbling hands continued to worry at the Ranger's lame leg. He closed his eyes against a sickening ripple of pain and leaned more heavily against the horse.

The gates were opening now, slow and majestic. Someone came forward with a silver-headed pike, which Losfaron handed to Aragorn. 'Perhaps this will serve as a staff, at least for a few steps?' he asked. 'You may have my arm to lean upon if you will take it, but in your place…'

He gestured vaguely, but Aragorn understood and nodded. One soldier to another, they agreed upon this. It was far better to move under his own strength if he might, and he was almost certain that he could. Accustomed to the coarse bark of his makeshift stave, Aragorn's fingers slipped a little as they closed upon the smooth shaft of the spear, but it was stout and strong and he was able to shift his weight onto it with little difficulty. He disentangled his fingers from Moroch's mane and let his right hand bolster up his left. Deep in the bones of each he was still trembling, but he did not think that weakness visible. Only too glad to disrupt Gollum's worrying of his injured foot, he hobbled to the horse's head and reached to stroke the bridge of her nose.

'I thank you for carrying us, fair one,' he said. 'I know how tiresome the duty was, and I am grateful.'

She made a soft noise in acceptance of his thanks and then trotted off after the other horses. They disappeared from the globe of torchlight, and Aragorn set his eyes upon the gate. His steps were awkward and stilted, and he was forced to brace the pike against his shoulder despite the deep burning that came from the spider-bite as he did so, but it was under his own power that he moved between the angled pillars and under the great lintel. Into a passage lined in torches he was led, with Elves behind him and before and the captain close by his side. Gollum, looking wildly from side to side, and back and forward and up and all around, went slinking after him and did not dare to lag too far. Much though he loathed his captor, it seemed Aragorn's familiar antipathy was preferable to the bright eyes and laughing mouths of the wood-elves.

As they walked several of the party broke away, some to vanish down lesser passages and two swift runners sent at Losfaron's command to inform the king of the arrival of a long-awaited guest. The remaining guards hung back when they came at last to the great door that opened on the throne room, and Losfaron stepped forward to open the door.

Aragorn set his crutch before him and swung painfully over the threshold into the splendid cavern. Its vaulted ceiling was held aloft by pillars exquisitely carved of the living stone, and the polished walls were hung with tapestries and arrases of rich and beautiful colours. All the trees of the forest were represented in their turn in these woven pictures, and the great deeds of the king and of his long-departed father had been stitched in silken threads upon vast rippling canvases. There were statues of woodland creatures in the alcoves, their eyes of glittering gems, and the torches hung in silver brackets from the walls.

In the midst of all this richness like a monarch of old sat Thranduil upon his carven throne. He had been but lately summoned from his revels and could not have arrived in this room many minutes before the escort, and yet he sat tall and regal as though he had been waiting many hours. His raiment was of rich green velvet and cloth-of-gold, and upon his golden hair sat his winter crown of holly-berries and snowdrops. His expression was impassive and patrician as he raised his arm in greeting.

'Welcome, Aragorn son of Arathorn, Lord of the Dúnedain,' he said grandly. 'Long have I waited for the day when your pledge should be fulfilled and your quarry should be found. I have kept ready the lodgings that were arranged and—'

Suddenly the cool aloofness faded from the face of the Elven-king, and his brow furrowed. The wafting arm fell to grip the ornate wood of the chair and one foot in its jewelled slipper slid forward as he leaned to the edge of the throne. 'Are you wounded? Are you unwell?' he asked, anxiety apparent in his voice. 'What misfortune has befallen you? Alas that my realm is fraught with danger in these dark days!'

Aragorn took another swaying step into the hall. Gollum was sheltering now in a fold of his cloak, quaking and hiding his eyes from Thranduil. 'I have had some misfortune,' the Ranger said, wishing that his voice would not tremble so. 'I shall have need of care when my duty is discharged. Yet I have brought you the creature Gollum, as was long agreed.'

'So I see,' said Thranduil, rising to his feet and stepping down off of the dais. He tilted his head to one side, trying to catch better sight of the creature. 'Yet where is Gandalf? Did he not travel with you?'

'He did not,' said Aragorn; 'but word has been sent to him of my success.' His eyes drifted closed for a moment and he swallowed with some difficulty. 'I have hope that he will come as soon as the tidings reach him.'

'Well, you have done what you set out to do, however long it took you,' said Thranduil. 'And it seems that you have walked strange and wretched paths to do it. Let us take charge of the thing, that your hurts may be put right.'

Then Aragorn was seized by an abrupt and inexplicable reluctance. His fingers twitched as though they ached to let go of the stave that held him upright, that they might grasp the rope again. After journeying so many weeks in constant hope of this moment, he found that he did not wish to hand over his burden. It was no sympathy for Gollum and his fear of the Elves that bred this, for he had no sympathy left in him after these last miserable days. It was the anxious need to see the wretch secured; to know that he was watched and he was guarded and he could not escape. The constant twisting malice and scheming had taught Aragorn caution, but the wood-elves had none. Though there was no hope for Gollum of getting out past the enchanted gates, he might hide long and well in the labyrinthine caverns of these beautiful halls – and after all, there was another way out.

Losfaron was at his elbow, a shining knife drawn to cut the rope. Aragorn curled his right hand over the hated knot. 'With your leave, my lord, I would sooner see him to his quarters,' he said. 'Not until he is locked fast within your dungeons shall I be able to find my rest.'

Thranduil frowned. He was near at hand now, studying the Man's filthy and careworn face with grave eyes. 'You may not remember after all these years, Dúnadan, but the cell that was chosen is as deep and secret as any cavern in my palace. The way is long: a mile or more. Surely you would be wiser to lay by your cares and let the healers tend you.'

'When I have seen him safely imprisoned,' Aragorn said. He had the dim thought that his inherent obduracy was getting the better of his common sense, and then he was struck with the image of these twisting tunnels abuzz with anxious hunters looking for one wily little wretch in a place with thousands of dark and secret corners to hide in. He fixed the Elven-king with what he hoped was a firm and earnest eye. 'I have come so far; I can walk a little farther.'

And walk he did, though his left leg cramped and his right leg burned; though his arms ached to their marrow and the pains in his back grew deeper and more dreadful with every forward yard. Thranduil led the way and Aragorn followed him, Gollum whimpering and snivelling at his heels and Losfaron bringing up the rear. Through twisting and interlacing passages they walked, moving ever deeper within the hillside. The torches lit their way and the air remained pure, but to Aragorn the world grew close and dim as his body began to resist these miserable exertions. The Elven cordial had long ago worn off and he was struggling now just to keep himself upright. Yet despite his enervation and his pain and the hot waves of shivering illness that kept creeping up to drown him he pressed forward. This was the last mile of all his weary journey, and he meant to walk it himself.

As they had so many times on this bitter road, his thoughts turned to Bilbo. Turning another corner and passing through another sloping corridor he could well imagine his dear friend, alone and frightened and miserable, stumbling through these same passages to find his companions; stealing food where he could, snatching a few shallow minutes of sleep now and then, and managing despite everything to escape undetected with thirteen dwarves in tow. The image brought tired lips a faint twitching that wanted to be a smile, and with it the grim hope that Gollum would not prove half so resourceful as his old adversary.

At last Thranduil came to a heavy wooden door and gestured to his captain to come forward. Losfaron produced a heavy ring of keys from his belt and fingered through them until he found the one he wanted. He unlocked the door and led the way into a little guard-room. There was a table and a trio of chairs, a sideboard and a washbasin and an unlit charcoal brazier. The Elf took one of the waiting torches and stepped back into the tunnel to light it, then moved about to illuminate the room. Three more stout wooden doors opened off of it: each leading to a small cell furnished with a low wooden cot set with a straw pallet. The innermost one was indeed made ready for a prisoner. There was a blanket folded neatly on the simple bed, and a brass pot tucked into one corner.

'Here it is,' said Thranduil. 'You yourself have tested its impenetrability: you were satisfied then, and I trust you are satisfied now.'

Aragorn leaned heavily against the door of the cell and looked around, trying through the thickly brewing fog to make a proper assessment. 'Yes,' he said at last. 'It is all as we agreed.' He twitched an unsteady finger at the door to the corridor. 'Lock it. It must always be locked when the cell door is open, and the cell door must be locked when the other is not.'

Losfaron chuckled softly as he complied. 'I know well how to secure my prison,' he said.

'Your predecessor did not.' The words came out flat and cold, and Aragorn felt a flush of heat rising in his grey-hued cheeks. 'Your pardon, my lord,' he murmured. 'I did not intend…'

Thranduil waved him off. 'Think nothing of it,' he said. 'Thirteen dwarves hidden in empty barrels. We had a pretty time puzzling about how they managed it, and it will not occur again. While this thing bides with us there will be a constant watch kept on the water-gate, even as we will set one in this room. I fear that will be the more pleasant duty, with the store-rooms and the kitchens so near at hand, but we will find folk for both.'

'Now let me take him,' said Losfaron, coming forward and drawing his knife again. 'Your duty is ended, and mine only begun.'

Aragorn let his weight fall entirely upon the door and gripped the pike with his right hand as he held out his left. There was a glint of polished steel and a soft snick of severed rope, and the bond was cut. At once it seemed as if a millstone had been lifted from his back. Aragorn seized his improvised crutch and dragged himself hastily out of the way as Losfaron drove a writhing Gollum into the back corner of the cell. The creature let out a thin warbling shriek as the Elf knelt and sheared off the noose. The halter with its wrapping of rags fell to the ground; a broken crescent of useless fibre. Losfaron scooped it up and backed out into the guardroom, drawing the thick door closed. Deftly he turned a key in the lock and tried it. It was shut fast.

Awestruck relief like the ebbing of an all-consuming wave swept through Aragorn's body. It was over at last. His prisoner was secure – secure, and no longer his prisoner. The hateful toil was ended: others would take up the labour now. At last, at last he was relieved of his burden and he was free. He was free.

The last desperate shreds of strength vanished all at once from his body. His left knee trembled and buckled. He tried to brace himself with the pike, but his arms were quaking and his torn hands would not grasp. He felt himself falling, powerless to do anything to arrest his descent. Then a strong arm clad in rich fabrics slipped around his body: Thranduil, bearing him up with no thought for the blood still sticky on his garments, or the ingrained grime of his long road. Aragorn knew that he ought to be thankful, but the pressure of muscle and bone upon his battered right flank and the grip of a firm hand where the claw-marks burned with shallow torment was more than his spent constitution could bear. He did not cry out, but he felt his last tenuous hold on consciousness slipping from his grasp.

'Forgive me,' he mumbled vaguely. 'I cannot walk back.'

Then someone was bolstering up his other side, and his foot flapped dead and heavy against the stone floor, and in his right ear a low voice murmured; 'A little farther, Dúnadan. Only a little farther and you may rest.'

He felt the change in the air as they passed into a narrower room, and his knee struck something hard and unyielding, but before his torso was lowered onto the thin mattress he was lost to blessed oblivion.

Note: Well, I missed my chance to post on the Professor's birthday. Alas, poor handses: they just weren't up to the challenge. Enjoy the new chapter nonetheless! Happy New Year.

Chapter LVI: Safety and Slumber

Gollum's enraged and terrified shrieks roused Aragorn from the sweet balm of unconsciousness into a world made dark with unaccounted agonies. Though his heart hammered against aching ribs and his breath caught in a raw throat, he could neither muster himself to rise nor call out to his captive. He was lying on his belly, and it felt as though some great weight were pressing down upon him – as though he lay crushed beneath stones loosed in a mountain avalanche, or the great bole of a fallen tree. His left hand was close by his face: he felt a wafting of warm air as his fingers scrabbled down towards his wrist in a vain attempt to grasp the cord that bound him to Gollum. He could not find it, and his right arm was pinned beneath his battered body. The cries rang out again, echoing and muffled as if coming from a great distance. Now panic gripped the Ranger: somehow Gollum had managed to get free of his bonds, and he had tried to flee. He had not gone far before some calamity befell him, but Aragorn had to rise up and ensure both the security and the safety of his hard-won quarry, and he could not move.

When a cool hand descended upon his fevered brow, disturbing the grains of grime and dried blood upon it, Aragorn's first instinct was to strike out at his unknown assailant. He had neither the strength nor the mastery of his limbs for such a show of defiance, however, and so with a small abortive jerk he tried to shrink away. Another hand settled upon the crown of his head, and he felt the unlooked-for but unmistakable outpouring of goodwill from an Elven fëa. Beneath it his frantic heart seemed to quiet of its own accord, and his addled mind settled down to the task of opening eyes that appeared to have been pasted shut.

'Peace, Dúnadan,' a kindly voice murmured. 'I feared his cries would wake you. The prisoner is well and he is secure – but he seems inclined to fits of histrionics.'

The voice was vaguely familiar, but only vaguely. Certainly it was not a voice out of his childhood, and Aragorn found himself struggling to remember how he might have come to be in the company of a strange Elf, here in the bitterly cold expanses of the Wilderland where he had wandered so long with only Gollum's hated presence to keep him from solitude. His tongue tried to flick against his teeth, but it was swollen with thirst and managed only a clumsy wriggle. He still could not quite remember how to work his eyelids, and as Gollum let loose another indignant howl he stiffened. The sudden contracture of tormented muscles flung him into a drowning pit of pain so complete that he could not pin it down to any one area of his body. Lost as he was in this indistinct misery, he scarcely felt the slender hands as they shifted to brace his elbows.

'Leave the vile thing to its own devices!' the voice called, more commanding than kindly now. 'Lord Aragorn is conscious and has need of your care.'

There was a noise of rustling garments and against the faint reddish glow beyond his unresponsive eyelids a new shadow appeared.

'Conscious? Are you certain, sire?' This voice was utterly unknown to him, and fair though it was Aragorn felt his anxiety mounting again. He tried to fight the muddled and irrational fear and to unearth his memories from beneath the weight of bewilderment. He remembered the spider; hobbling on with a twisted ankle; the great cats bent on depriving him of his prisoner. He remembered horns in the darkness, the wood-elves coming, the swift and gentle mare, and the last painful mile. And then – O, then! – the moment when the rope was cut away and at last he was free. As overwhelming as it had been delicious, that knowledge that his toil was passed and he might rest.

There was one last indignant shriek and the sound of a grinding lock. Aragorn found the strength at last to force his eyelids open, though the sights before him were blurred and dim. Sure fingers that had been feeling for his pulse drew back.

'Conscious indeed,' the strange voice said. 'I had hoped you might rest longer, my lord. Alas that the wretch took so unkindly to my ministrations.'

Aragorn tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. Of his well-formed question only two broken syllables emerged, but the elf seemed to understand them. The shadowy shape nodded. 'I am Helegond, a healer,' he said. 'With your leave I will remove your cloak: the captain reports that you were wounded by a lynx.'

Swallowing hard against the grinding in his vocal chords, Aragorn managed to speak. 'Gollum,' he said. 'My prisoner. Are his wounds—'

'Nothing serious,' said Helegond. 'Shallow hurts that will heal swiftly if he can be compelled to keep them clean. Never have I seen such a stinking stubborn thing. Bring water, my lord; perhaps this patient at least will allow me to tend him.'

Aragorn shifted, trying to prop himself up with his right arm. He raised himself a little, and was smitten by a searing pain through his shoulder and back. Before he could fall he felt firm hands gripping his arm and bearing him up. There was a moment of sickening dizziness as his legs swung off the edge of the cot, but he had sufficient presence of mind to keep from barking his twisted ankle against the stone floor. Then at last he was sitting, curled low over his lap while his sides throbbed and his spine rippled with hot waves of pain. Trails of chilled perspiration trickled into his eyes, but he had a firm grasp upon his dignity.

'Thank you,' he panted. The healer's hands hesitated a moment and then moved to turn the ring of brass that clasped Aragorn's cloak. It fell from his shoulders to puddle on the mattress. 'Perhaps…' He blinked to clear his sight. 'Perhaps…'

'Drink: it will ease your throat,' the healer said. There was another shadow at his shoulder now, passing of a flagon that glinted a little in the torchlight that spilled through a narrow door into the darkened room. Its cool rim touched Aragorn's lips and he took a wary sip. Spring water, clean and cold and fresh, slipped over his teeth. He took a longer draught, then forced himself to pause. He thought he saw a glimmer of a smile amid the indistinct shapes before him.

'You are wise,' said the healer. 'Often I must remind Men to restrain their urge to quaff too quickly. Even when they know better the temptation can be too much.'

Slowly his eyes were clearing. Aragorn lowered his lids again and raised them cautiously. He could see the shadowed features of the Elf before him, and the rich coppery hair against shoulders clad in green. Behind the healer stood Thranduil, turned a little so half his face was in the light. His fair brow was knit with worry as he looked upon his guest. The room itself was small and narrow, lit only by the torches in the guardroom beyond. In the haste necessitated by his sudden swoon, his hosts had laid him to rest in the cell beside Gollum's. His eyes slid to the mattress on which he now sat. Where the indent of his head was still visible in the straw there was a dark, spreading stain. Hastily he raised his fingers to his nose. The nostrils were choked with clotting blood.

The healer was offering him the water again, and he curled his shaking hand around the vessel. The Elf did not release his own hold, which was fortunate, and Aragorn managed to drink without spilling. Again he murmured his thanks.

A third form appeared in the doorway. It was Losfaron. 'If you are strong enough, my lord, perhaps you would sooner remove to more clement lodgings,' he said. 'I would not rest with that creature so near at hand.'

The healer shot him a quelling glance. 'It is best that he remain where he is until I can catalogue his hurts,' he said. He swivelled his gaze and his words back to Aragorn. 'In any case I do not want any weight upon that foot. If any of the small bones are broken you may do it permanent harm.'

'They are not,' said Aragorn vaguely; 'at least not severely enough to be felt from without.'

Helegond smiled patiently. 'A healer may find injuries a warrior cannot,' he said. 'Leave me to judge.'

Thranduil cleared his throat. 'Lord Aragorn was fostered by the Peredhil in Rivendell,' he remarked. 'No doubt he understands full well what is within a healer's scope.'

The healer's eyes widened a little, and he looked at the Ranger with new respect. 'A mortal fostered in the Last Homely House?' he said. 'You must be an extraordinary Man indeed, lord.'

'Master Elrond has ever been gracious to my folk,' said Aragorn. His voice was hoarse but steadier now. The water had done much to clear his head, and his hurts were settling. So long as he did not move, nor breathe too deeply, he could bear them. 'He taught me something of his skill, and so I too am a healer. I pray you be frank with me, and perhaps we may confer upon my treatment.'

Now Helegond seemed almost stricken with awe. A flush rose to his cheeks that was visible even in the ruddy offcast glow of the torches. 'To study beneath the hand of Elrond Halfelven is an honour indeed,' he murmured. 'Forgive me: I did not know.'

Aragorn wished to make a dismissive gesture, but he was loath to move his hands lest he should disturb the hurts higher up on his arms. Instead he said; 'It is nothing.' From the next cell came a low, malicious grumbling. He could not make out the words, but the very tone set his teeth on edge. He shuddered, and the shuddering sent the fire blazing again in his side and through the deep claw-marks in his back. 'Good king,' he said, raising bleary eyes to Thranduil; 'I pray you: if there is anywhere else that I may bide let me remove there at once. Long have I travelled in the company of your prisoner. I can bear him no longer.'

Thranduil smiled sadly and nodded his head. 'There is no room prepared that is suited to your station,' he said; 'but if you do not object to passing what remains of the night in a humbler place there are chambers not far from here that stand ready to house soldiers.'

'Whatever my birth I am naught but a soldier,' said Aragorn. 'To rest in peace, sheltered from the cold, is all that I ask.'

Helegond did not approve of the idea of moving, but he seemed reluctant to argue now that he knew of the mortal's extraordinary education. He suggested hesitantly that they might send for a litter and bearers, but Aragorn demurred. His interest was not so much to spare his hosts from any further inconvenience (though that was true), but to prevent further delay. Gollum's mutterings ground on hatefully, muffled only a little by the heavy door in the next room, and he felt that if he had to listen any longer to it he would surely go mad. Furthermore he did not think that lying upon a litter would prove any less painful than limping with a pike to lean on. His whole body was wracked with hurts, but his back had borne the worst of his recent woes.

In the end it was decided that he would hobble with Thranduil and Helegond to bear him up. Losfaron did not even offer to take his king's place, and for that Aragorn was grateful: clearly the Captain of the Guard took his duty seriously enough that he was unwilling to leave the cell unguarded. He did, however, offer the little flask of cordial to the Man, and Aragorn took a mouthful and felt his pain recede a little. Under its influence and with firm and trustworthy arms to lean upon, he tucked his right foot up behind and struggled to stand upon his left.

The rooms in question were indeed near enough, but despite the support of his escort and the euphoria of the Elven liquor Aragorn was quaking with suffering and enervation when they reached the corridor. He saw nothing of the room around him as he was led to the bed – both higher and broader than the one he had left, and with two plump ticks and fresh linen upon it. The Elves helped him to sit and he eased his right shoulder against the bedpost, breathing shallowly and fighting an onslaught of chilling nausea.

'Perhaps if you would fetch Lethril, sire, and have her bring dressings and tinctures for pain and sleep,' Helegond was saying. His voice seemed to come from a great distance, but Aragorn could follow the words well enough. 'I will treat what is most pressing, but it is sleep that he needs most of all. Sleep, and many days' rest, and much gentle care. What a battle must have been joined, to leave him so battered.'

There was a whisper of silks and the squeal of a firesteel, and then Aragorn felt fingers on his left wrist.

'Can you speak, my lord?' asked Helegond. 'Or has the journey spent your strength? Do you know what has bloodied your arm?'

'A spider-bite,' Aragorn mumbled. 'Two… three… how long have I slept?'

'You have slept not at all,' said the healer, and there was an edge of uneasy concern in his voice. 'You swooned away, from pain or from hunger or loss of blood. I had time enough only to answer my summons and anger the ugly twisted thing before you roused.'

'Two days, then,' breathed Aragorn. 'Two days past, a spider-bite to my shoulder. Little poison reached me: I did not succumb to it.'

There was a tugging at the cloth of his shirt as Helegond pierced it with a bright little knife. He cut the sleeve from the body and tried to tug it away, but the blood had affixed the cloth to the wound. There was a sound of a cloth being wetted and rung out, and the healer began to dab gently at Aragorn's arm. 'You are fortunate,' he said. 'The spiders are a plague upon all this land, and as the Shadow spreads they grow ever more bold. A nest of them is more than a match for a lone traveller – and I doubt that your captive was much help.'

The protestation that he would have managed the spider quite well if not for Gollum's treachery could not quite find its way to Aragorn's lips. Though the cool water was soothing as it seeped through to his inflamed flesh, the pressure upon the wound was painful. He bowed his head slowly forward so that his brow might rest against the smoothly-hewn cavern wall. When at last Helegond began to peel the cloth away his breath caught in his throat and his fingers clutched reflexively at the tattered tails of his cote.

'There,' the Elf said soothingly, making a gentle pass of the wound with the wet cloth. 'Over and done. It does not appear to have taken any infection, and the wound is already closing. Fortunate indeed.' His hands moved to the dressings about Aragorn's wrist and hesitated over the traces of thin yellow discharge. 'But this… what happened here?'

'The rope,' Aragorn mumbled. His thumb jerked in an inarticulate half-gesture. 'Gollum's halter…'

The knife slid through the stiffened linen and there was a stinging, creeping pain as the bandages were drawn away. Helegond made a small horrified sound and Aragorn forced his eyes to focus on his arm where it lay limp across his lap. The bracelet of denuded flesh was still raw and sore, dark blots of cruor and fine ridges of pus standing out starkly against the pallid red stripe. He saw nothing of great concern: properly washed and freed of the constant chafing of the cord it would surely heal well enough. Then he realized the healer's sorrowful eyes were no longer fixed upon the wound, but upon his face. Wearily he veiled his gaze with leaden lids. A moment later he felt the sharp little pains as his wrist was washed.

There was a low knock, and Helegond bade the newcomer enter. There was some shuffling as supplies were laid out and sorted, but Aragorn was content to remain as he was, eyes closed and spirit drifting shallowly on the borders of the waking world. His hand was lifted and his arm wrapped, wrist and shoulder, in fresh dressings. It was eased back against his side, and someone unbuckled his belt and drew it away. For a startled moment he thought that he ought to reach for his knife before it was taken from him, but he soothed anxious instinct with the promise that he was safe here, in the Elven-king's palace beneath the earth.

Firm hands now probed his ankle, awakening its pain like a slumbering troll that stormed up into his knee and beat against his thigh. Aragorn's eyes shot open and his jaw tightened, but he managed to keep his peace as Helegond, kneeling now before him, began to cut the thin woollen strips. The loose sole flapped down, slapping against the floor, and the Elf let out a thin, surprised laugh.

'Perhaps you won't object after all,' he said, looking up at Aragorn. His lips formed an apologetic half-smile. 'I am going to have to cut off the boot.'

The mere thought of nodding raised a protest of nausea. 'I expected no less,' said Aragorn. 'It is beyond saving anyhow.'

Helegond held out his hand, and an Elven maiden standing near handed him a stout pair of shears. It must have been she who had knocked. Good manners demanded that he greet her, but Aragorn's weariness left him little will for such things. She was watching intently as the other Elf slit the leather with the point of the shears and began slowly to lever them up the Ranger's leg. As he passed the ankle bone there was a sudden hot rush of flowing blood as the pressure upon the inflamed joint was released at last. A queer sickly feeling settled upon Aragorn's foot, as though the ankle had been twisted afresh. Away from the injury the healer took larger bites of the leather, and soon he cut through to the top and the boot came away, a sundered husk that fell useless to the ground. For a moment Aragorn looked at it with the fond eye of an artisan who must at last lay to rest a trustworthy and faithful tool. That boot and its mate had carried him more than two thousand miles, stolid and uncomplaining all the while before their mistreatment at Gladden. They had served him well, but their time was past.

'Cut the other as well,' he begged. 'I have not the strength to haul it off.'

Without question Helegond obeyed. Then he untied and drew off the dirty hose, and lifted Aragorn's foot into his lap. The ankle was swollen to twice its proper size, and the foot beyond was pale and bloated. Where the joint had twisted black bruises stood out in stark relief as if painted in ink. Carefully and expertly the healer flexed the foot, felt each of the toes, and set palpating thumbs into the ankle. Each motion brought with it an arabesque of pain, and Aragorn floated quietly with them. The maiden brought down a basin to set upon the floor, and Helegond bathed the Ranger's feet before wrapping the sprain tightly in clean white bandages.

'Now,' he said, rising and reaching to untie the lace of Aragorn's cote; 'to see to your back. I think it will be best for me to cut this off as well. It is too tattered to be decently worn, and I am certain the king will be glad to provide you with raiment.'

At another time Aragorn might have protested, but he had no wish to spare these filthy rags that he had worn so long. He sat unmoving as the Elf unfastened the garment, and slit its shoulder-seams. Then he let Helegond straighten him, lifting him away from the support of the bedpost so that the healer could split the one remaining sleeve. He cut the shirt beneath in the same fashion, and then with the help of the two Elves Aragorn managed to stretch prone upon the bed. The pad that the archer had fixed upon him in the forest was removed, and the slow work of soaking the clothing free of the wounds began. As Helegond and Lethril worked with expert hands, Aragorn subsisted in a murky vale of misery where only the sharp and unexpected bursts of fresh agony kept him from slipping into merciful insensibility. When at last the foul-smelling weight of the garment was lifted from him he could not supress a small, wretched moan of gratitude.

'The flesh is torn deeply at the top of the wound,' Helegond said quietly. 'Near the bottom it is little more than a whip-weal. You shall have to lie upon your front tonight, and perhaps for many nights to come, but I will pack the worst of it.' Hesitant fingertips brushed Aragorn's right flank, and even that faint pressure sent a sundering ache into his innards. 'These bruises – you took a fall?'

Aragorn tried to speak, but could not find his voice. The healer laid a soothing palm upon the healthy expanse of his left shoulder-blade. 'Never mind,' he said. 'There is nothing to be done for such hurts but to wait. Let me do what I can for the claw-marks, and then you may sleep. Lethril has brought medicines to ease your pain and deepen your rest.'

He set about bathing and packing the wounds, and from the depth of the intrusion Aragorn knew that he was fortunate indeed to have taken that hurt only in the last hours of his journey. He would never have been able to dress it properly unaided, and such a large wound would have been fatal if left to fester. After a while he seemed to grow less aware of the pain and his mind began to slip away for long stretches at once. He came drifting back from one of these to find a lady's hand beneath his cheek and a delicate glass dosing-cup tipped to his lips. He drank the sour draught within unquestioningly, and felt its warmth trickle down through his chest. A sheet was drawn carefully over his shoulders, and a warm blanket to just above his waist. He heard the sounds of graceful bodies moving efficiently about the room, but his eyes were closed and his weary spirit was slipping ever farther from his ravaged body. When the lights against his lids dimmed to a quiet glow and the world fell silent, he found that he was able to let go at last.

lar

All that day he slept, and long into the night, waking only for scant minutes when the healers roused him to take a little water or another dose of the unpleasant-tasting elixir. Once he came back to consciousness in a cacophony of pain to find that Helegond was changing the dressings on his back, but otherwise his brief journeys into the waking world were gentle and dreamlike. In his slumber it seemed neither pain nor nightmares could reach him, so complete was his exhaustion. He tarried there as long as he could, but it was not possible to drift forever. At last he found himself wakeful behind closed eyes, listening to the quiet popping of a charcoal fire, and he knew that he would not sink swiftly back.

Still Aragorn lay motionless for a time, reluctant to bestir himself. He could feel the many pains of his body lurking just beyond his muscles, ready to be roused at the slightest movement. It was far easier to remain as he was, comforted by the knowledge that somewhere else in this subterranean palace Gollum was secure behind a solid door and guarded by Thranduil's folk.

In the end it was thirst that compelled him to open his eyes to the low red glow that enveloped the room. He could see little of his surroundings, lying as he was upon his front with his face turned to the left. Beside the bed was a small table covered in the assorted accoutrements of a healer: phials and bandages, shears, probes, and ointments. There was also a tray with a flagon and a pitcher, and it was upon this his attention fixed. He longed to reach for it, but it was just out of the range of his arm and in any case he had no wish to waken the deep pain of the spider-bite. Instead he watched the vessel as if he could will it to come to him, and wondered whether he would be a fool to attempt to sit up.

Then someone stirred near at hand and a lady's voice asked; 'Are you in pain, my lord? What has wakened you?'

Aragorn had to search for his tongue, and when the words came they were coarse and hoarse. His lips were dry, and one of the deep cracks opened again as he spoke. 'My pain is bearable, but I am thirsty,' he said. 'If you would help me to sit…'

At once she was at his side, firm practiced hands bracing him as he eased up onto his hip. His legs caught in the bedclothes, sending up a bolt of fire from his foot, but soon enough he was sitting with his spine curled over his lap. The lady propped a pillow against his lower back, where neither the bruises nor the claw-marks reached, and disentangled the sheet so that she could tuck another behind his knees. The aches of a long journey had settled in amid his other hurts, and Aragorn was torn between the pained desire to move as little as possible and the urge to be up and stretching his limbs. The lady, Lethril if he recalled correctly, poured cool water into the flagon and held it for him while he drank. He did so eagerly but with restraint, and careful though he was his stomach still roiled a little. His head was pounding as if he had taken too much cheap ale, and his neck throbbed fiercely from lying so long twisted to one side.

Beyond the foot of the bed was a small grate in which the charcoal embers glowed. It was vented into an unseen airshaft that likely serviced many small caves before reaching the surface, and it gave warmth without smoke. The Elf-maiden lit a taper from the fire and set it to a torch in a bracket by the door. After a minute's fanning the flame flared and the room was bright. The healer drew near, studying the Ranger's face.

'Now that you are awake you ought to be examined properly,' she said. 'I can fetch Helegond if you wish. I am as skilled as he, but I understand that among the Secondborn there are certain customs regarding the duties of men and women.'

The instinct to shake his head brought bright pain and fresh giddiness, and Aragorn aborted the motion at once. 'I am comfortable with the customs of the Eldar,' he said. 'I shall be glad of your care, lady.'

So over the course of the next hour she examined him, checking each limb for hidden hurts and sounding his ribs. She looked into his mouth and ears, and felt his skull with her fingers. She measured his pulse and she bent to listen to his heart. With the corner of a damp cloth she cleaned the lesser abrasions on his face and neck and body, and she studied the weeping sores on his hands and feet with care. 'Frostbite?' she asked, pausing over a place where a blister had burst.

'A little,' said Aragorn. 'I was tended for it in the house of Grimbeorn near Anduin's bank. If my pack is at hand I have a salve within it to soothe the skin. It has served me well thus far.'

Rising from her chair the lady went to the washstand in the corner. She brought back Eira's little jar, still whole in spite of its hard road. She removed the waxed cover and sniffed at it. 'It seems pleasant enough,' she said. 'I had always thought the medicines of Man to be foul and harsh. Among the folk of Dale bloodletting is still practiced as something of a panacea.'

'I assure you that your westerly neighbours are gentler,' said Aragorn. Despite his weariness and the omnipresent pain he found a spark of amusement as he spoke. 'The lady who made that dealt most tenderly with me, with neither leech nor fleam to be seen.'

'I am relieved to hear it,' said Lethril. 'From your pallor you have lost blood enough without being unduly deprived of it.'

There was little to be said to this. From his thirst, already returning again, and from the lightness in his head Aragorn knew that he had indeed lost more than was wise. The thought was not a happy one, for it would hobble his recovery and slow the gathering of his strength. He put aside that worry. It was enough that he was safe and that Gollum was secure. There was no need to think beyond that now.

'My prisoner,' he said, watching as the lady spread Eira's unguent over his riven fingers. 'Do you know how he fares? He too was injured.'

A furrow of a frown appeared between Lethril's arcing brows. 'He is your prisoner no longer, and you should not fret for him. The captain and his guards will see that he is tended; he will be given food and water, simple but plentiful; and they will not be negligent in their watch.'

Astonishment at hearing his litany of concerns from her lips raised Aragorn's head against the discomfort in his neck. At his expression the lady smiled sadly, eyes warm with pity. 'You cried out in your sleep,' she said. 'Time and again we soothed you: worry over the creature seems to consume your spirit. Is he dear to you, that you should worry so for him?'

A harsh barking noise broke from Aragorn's fissured lips. 'Dear to me? Nay lady, never have I travelled with any thing less dear to me. But he is dangerous and I have brought him too far to see him perish for hunger or lack of care. I would sooner see to his hurts myself, but in my present state I fear I cannot.'

'Do not regret that you are exempt from that duty,' Lethril said. 'I certainly do not. Helegond says that he is foul and he stinks, and he will not suffer himself to be touched. In the end they left him with water and towels to clean his own wounds. You can judge better than I whether he would do so.'

'I think that he would,' said Aragorn. 'He is no fool, and he clings to life with a spiteful will scarcely to be imagined. It was he who gave me those marks.' He gestured with one stiff finger at the glossy scars upon his right forearm.

'Ah,' said the healer. 'I wondered. There is still a pocket of infection beneath the skin. It ought to be drained, if you can bear it.'

Aragorn sighed. 'I have drained it many times myself. The wretch was foul with the muck of Dagorlad when he bit me; I dare not wonder what poisons he carried on his teeth. It pains me little now, unless sudden pressure is thrust upon it. Perhaps cleaned and tended daily it can heal at last.'

Lethril worked swiftly and with skill, piercing through the scar tissue and drawing out pus and stagnant blood. She bathed the site and cleaned it with a dram of potent liquor before wrapping it with care. She next checked the dressings on his left arm and, finding them to be satisfactory, turned her attention on the damage done by the lynx. These last ministrations were the most painful, but in the end the bandages were changed for fresh ones and Aragorn was rewarded for his fortitude by another helping of water and a dose of the draught against pain. By then his head was heavy with fatigue and his weary mind cried out for sleep. With the maiden's help he settled again, turning his face this time to the wall in the hope that he might balance the strain upon his neck. With the soft Elven mattress beneath his sore ribs, and the soft Elven linen drawn up to cover him, he slept long and deep.

Chapter LVII: Hurts Unseen

When next Aragorn awoke it was to a terrible yearning thirst. His tongue was thick within his mouth and there was a tang of blood upon his lips. His body seemed pressed into the mattress as if by a great weight, and the ache in his ribs was for a brief moment the only hurt that he could feel. Then the others came swooping back to peck at him with their various cruel beaks: some sharp and thin and swift, others hard and heavy and deep. He stirred against a fiery ripple in his leg, and gentle hands gripped his right arm and his left side and helped him, painfully and dizzily, to turn and to sit.

The effort was exhausting, but almost at once a vessel was lifted to his lips and cold water lapped mercifully against his teeth. He drank; a cautious sip and then a more substantial swallow. His eyes focused slowly upon the face of the male healer.

'Again,' said Helegond gently, tipping the cup. 'I left you to sleep undisturbed, but as a consequence you are surely parched. In great pain also, I should think?'

Aragorn said nothing to this. He was not entirely sure he could say anything, at least not until he took more water. His throat seemed closed with thirst, and only shallow breaths and the sweet trickling fluid could pass it. His head was reeling and he wished he might lay back against the pillows, but there was a hot persistent pulsing across his back and deep in his right flank that told him this would not be wise. So he leaned further over his lap, spine curled and shoulders sagging, and took timid mouthfuls of the water.

When the flagon was empty Helegond reached to set it on the table, all the while keeping his other hand bracingly upon Aragorn's elbow. Then his emptied fingers found their way to the Ranger's face, pushing aside the curtain of grimy hair to feel his cheeks and his temples and his brow.

'You have a fever,' he said. 'Lethril reported no signs of serious infection; only a trace of purulent matter at your left wrist and an old abscess in your arm. Do you know of any festering wound that she did not find?'

Still not quite able to speak, Aragorn dared to shake his head briefly from side to side. The motion sent the whole room reeling, and his fingers clutched at the bedclothes. The sheet was damp with perspiration and the blanket twisted awkwardly under his aching knuckles. He leaned into the healer's grasp, fearful lest he should fall back upon the worst of his hurts. From far away he could hear the Elf speaking.

'Then that is as I feared. The showing of blood was small, but it seems you have harmed the organs of your right side. It must have been a mighty blow or a dreadful fall, to bruise so deeply.'

His fingers were probing below Aragorn's right floating ribs now, and from the points where pressure was applied blinding anguish shot out deep into his viscera. Choking against the urge to cry out, the Man's grip on the covers tightened and his breath came forth in a rattling wheeze. The offending hand moved lower, right into the heart of the pain, and darkness swam up with its maw agape. For a hideous and indeterminate span of time he knew nothing, and then the torment dimmed to a steading tortured throbbing and he could feel the healer's hand upon the bruised crest of his hip, coming to the end of its quest.

'The kidney, certainly; the sinews about your lowest rib and perhaps the lung beneath. There is a rattle of fluid when you breathe.' Helegond stepped back and Aragorn felt himself listing without the support against his right arm. He bowed lower over his lap, sweat trickling into his eyes.

'It is well that the other side is uninjured,' said Helegond. He came back to the bed with the cup in one hand and a damp cloth in the other. With the former he bathed Aragorn's brow and throat before settling it as a cool pad against the back of his neck. He held the vessel so that his patient might drink. 'I am loath to restrict your intake of water, for you have lost much blood and must contrive to replenish it. We must hope your left organ may compensate for the harm to the right.'

Aragorn said nothing. He felt utterly wrung out upon the rack of his many hurts, and it was all that he could do to sip the water and cling to consciousness. Despite the warmth of the room he felt a chill creeping over him as the perspiration cooled upon his bare back. He could not quite supress a deep convulsion.

Beside him the Elven healer frowned, running one hand consolingly up the Man's arm. 'I have brought fresh linen and a robe,' he said; 'and I would have the sheets changed if you can bear to sit up a while. When you are strong enough you shall have to bathe, but I do not think it wise to undertake that labour yet.'

'No,' Aragorn breathed, able at last to speak. 'It would not be wise. I can sit, if you will help me to the chair.'

Carefully Helegond drew back the sheets, pausing for a moment to look at the Ranger's right ankle. Freed of the constrictive pressure of the boot it had swollen grotesquely, and the bandages did little to contain the inflammation. Below their shroud his toes were bruised and chapped, open sores still weeping where chilblains had ruptured. Aragorn cast his eyes away and tried to divert his mind from the host of worries that came from seeing his foot, his most crucial tool, in such ill straits.

The healer was lifting his knee against the dim protest of stiff and weary muscles. Gently he drew the right leg to the edge of the mattress, and then reached for the left. Bestirring himself, Aragorn used his arms to lever his body so that his hips could swivel. He let his left foot slip down to press against the smooth stone floor. From his heel and the ball of his foot sharp daggers of pain shot, but this was the ordinary misery that came from walking too long and too far in broken boots. He ignored it. Helegond put his hand beneath Aragorn's left arm, bracing against the ribs, and offered his other to the Man to grasp. They pulled together, Aragorn struggling to find any strength at all while his helper drew upon him with graceful ease. There was an anxious moment when it seemed his left knee would not hold, but then he was up. He shifted his left heel, keeping his right foot well clear of the ground, and let Helegond ease him backwards into the carven chair that stood ready. His hands closed upon the armrests and he braced his body with his left leg so that he should not slide down onto the floor. He felt a gentle hand under his calf, lifting his right leg, and distantly he heard the scrape of a stool before his ankle was eased down upon a tapestry cushion.

'There,' said the Elf. 'Hard work, no doubt, but it's over now.'

He measured out a copper-coloured concoction into a small goblet and held it for Aragorn to drink. The fluid was liberally sweetened, but beneath there was the bitter taste of bearberry leaves and laudanum. He drained the cup and felt it warm him even as his stomach roiled and lurched. Helegond then turned his attention upon the bed, stripping away the blankets and tucking a fresh sheet neatly over the two mattresses. Aragorn was aware of his labours but did not watch them, fixing his bleary gaze upon his hands where they curled against the filthy fabric of his braies. For a bemused moment he wondered what had befallen his other clothing, and then he remembered giving his leave to have his boots and tunic cut away. Softly he sighed. He would prove a sore burden upon his host, requiring not only many days' care as his body healed but a full set of garments at the end of it. He had no claim of kinship nor of affinity upon Thranduil; he was entirely reliant upon the king's mercy and good will.

Finished with the bed, Helegond set about helping his patient into fresh garments. It was an awkward process, and not without pain, but in the end Aragorn sat in a soft flannel robe over clean body linen. The robe was too short at cuff and hem, but it satisfied his modesty and provided some comfort against the chill of his fever. Exhausted from the exertions of dressing even so simply, the Ranger slumped in the chair with his wrenched ankle elevated before him, trying to gather his courage for the transfer back to the bed. He was still struggling with his will when there came a knock at the door. The healer answered and exchanged quiet words with the person without, then came back to the table bearing a tray laden with food.

'You must eat,' he said as he set it down and pulled the elegantly-carven table nearer to Aragorn. 'You took nothing yesterday, for you slept so deeply, and when one loses a great quantity of blood it is necessary to take plentiful nourishment. Has the tincture taken hold, or would you sooner wait a few minutes?'

Aragorn stared mutely at the tray. There was a dish of roasted venison rich with spiced gravy; an assortment of winter vegetables stewed in honey; warm bread and soft new butter; thin slices of aged cheese; a game hen resting on a bed of parsley; two thick slices of tart, one saffron and the other apple; and a bowl of lampreys in a thick sauce. The bevy of wholesome smells that rose from this sumptuous assortment of foods awoke in him two disparate sensations. The first, arising from his mouth and his mind, was a piteous yearning for hot and nourishing food flavoured with the luxuries of a well-appointed kitchen. The second, deep within his stomach and rising through his chest to hover just below his throat, was an almost unbearable nausea.

'We did not know what you might like best to eat,' said Helegond, laying out a napkin and pouring a fresh flagon of water. 'If there is something you do not fancy, or anything you crave, you have only to say. Galion has orders to accommodate your every wish.'

With unsteady hands Aragorn reached for the bread. He broke off a small piece and held it, staring at the golden crust and the soft white cloud within. Sternly he tried to quell the feeling of sickness. He knew that Helegond spoke aright, and that he would recover neither his health nor his lost blood if he did not eat. Yet there was nothing at this moment that he wished to do less. Mustering his will he raised the bread to his mouth. It tasted of ash and he chewed with ponderous reluctance. When at last it came time to swallow he was scarcely able to force it down, and it seemed to sit like a stone within him, heavy beneath his breastbone.

Helegond nodded his approval and turned his attention to sorting his tools and dressings. Slowly and against the wishes of his body Aragorn reached to take another piece of the bread. Any dream he had harboured before of relishing a proper meal was fled. He could find neither desire nor hunger to infuse pleasure into this labour. Again he bit down upon the thin flaking crust, and again he tasted only bitterness. Yet he could feel the giddiness in his aching head, and the tremors in his hands, and he knew that he must eat. It was a weary and a joyless labour, but if he wished to recover his vigour he had to do it.

There was a knock at the door again, and this time when Helegond came back he had a towel draped over his arm and a large basin of packed snow in his hands. He knelt between the chair and the bed and removed the bindings from Aragorn's ankle.

'Cold will ease the inflammation and may help the pain,' he began, then recalled himself and flushed. 'Forgive me; you know that, of course.' Then quietly he rolled snow in the towel and wrapped the resulting poultice gently over the bloated joint. The first shock of the cold was wretched, but after that it settled into a soothing weight as the snow began to melt and chilled water trickled over the foot. It soaked the pillow, but the Elf appeared unconcerned by this. Reluctantly Aragorn turned his attention back to the bread.

The third mouthful was difficult to swallow, and the fourth more onerous still. As Aragorn broke off a fifth piece, small as the others, he felt his innards wrench. He tried to close his throat, but the tide of acid rose and he felt a sudden heat spreading across his face and shoulders. The first retching spasm he managed to quell, but the second flooded his mouth with bile. The Elven healer was alert and he was swift; he reached for an empty bowl and brought it to his patient just in time. Up came the bread, the water, and the medicine. Feebly Aragorn coughed out the last of the sour mixture, closing his eyes against the miserable mortification of the moment. A cool cloth brushed against his lips, wicking away the searing fluids, though the foul taste of it lingered.

There was a flurry of activity that Aragorn could not quite see through watering eyes, and the door opened again. Then the flagon of water tipped against his lips and he took a dram with which to rinse his mouth. Before he could look for it the bowl was held for him again and he spat.

'Thank you,' he murmured hoarsely, still overcome with shame. A cool hand brushed the hair from his eyes.

'I do not understand,' Helegond said worriedly. 'Neither loss of blood nor a battered kidney should cause you to vomit. There must be some other ailment that we have failed to diagnose. Or is the pain so unbearable that—'

Not daring to shake his head Aragorn raised his hand in a silencing gesture. 'It is not the pain,' he said. His head felt very heavy and the ache in his chest was one of weariness as much as of illness. 'It is starvation. Too long I have travelled on scant commons, broken only twice in many weeks by bounty of which I partook but sparingly. This last fast… it has proved too much.'

The healer was looking at him in dismayed bewilderment. Among the Eldar such privation was rare, and until its very final stage malnutrition was swiftly remedied by a return to plentiful meals. An Elf brought low by hunger but still able to sit and speak could resume eating solid foods at once. The Secondborn could not.

'I was a fool to try it,' muttered Aragorn. 'My stomach is shrunken. I cannot eat.'

Now the Elf seemed frightened. It was clear that such circumstances were beyond his experience. 'But you must,' he protested mournfully. 'Surely if you do not eat you will perish.'

'Milk,' said Aragorn; 'or strained broth neither too rich nor too heavily seasoned. At least at first, until my strength comes back to me. Then simple foods, sparingly. Eggs, porridge, and then perhaps bread.'

He fell silent, too weary to speak, and for a long while it seemed that Helegond watched him with puzzled pity in his bright eyes. Then he moved to the door and called out to someone. Quiet words were exchanged, but Aragorn was drifting again upon the border of unconsciousness and did not care to listen. When the healer returned to his side he made a half-hearted attempt to reach for the flagon. His attendant bore it up for him and he drank a little, cautiously. There was a dreadful ache in his back where the chair pressed upon the claw-wounds. His eyes slid longingly towards the bed but he could not bear to face the effort of hoisting himself even with assistance.

The healer took the cloth, now sodden with melted snow, from his foot, and wrapped the ankle snugly again. It seemed to pulse against the bandages, but the pain was lessened. 'Do you think you can take another dose of the tincture?' asked Helegond as he rose. 'You will sleep more deeply if you sleep without torment.'

'Perhaps a half-measure,' Aragorn whispered. He was beginning to think that he would fall asleep where he sat, whatever the misery in his spine. He let the concoction trickle down his throat and felt his stomach give a drowsy lurch of protest before settling into slumber.

Once more there came a rapping at the door. This time Helegond ushered in the caller, and out of the corner of his eye Aragorn saw him sweep a bow.

'My lord,' he said graciously, then held out a small tray to the healer. 'As you instructed.'

'Thank you, Galion,' said Helegond. 'Tarry a while: when he has drunk you can help me to bear him to the bed.'

Before Aragorn could rally his wits a silver goblet was before him. Within he could see the foaming white of warm milk. 'Take a little,' the healer said soothingly. 'If it is what you need to recover your strength you must take it.'

'Aye,' Aragorn breathed. Beneath the fogged confusion of his weary mind he was awed at the care and consideration of his hosts. They feared for his wellbeing, and they wished only to comfort him. Warily he drank, but the milk did not roil his stomach. Its heat was soothing in his sore chest, and it eased his raw throat. He took two-thirds of the portion before the weight of satiety made him stop. 'That is all,' he murmured.

Between the two of them, the wood-elves lifted him from the chair and bore him to the bed. He was only distantly aware of their hands upon his body, arranging his limbs and settling him upon his stomach. He was shivering again as the fever swept in its flood tide, and the persistent anguish in his flank seemed to grind ever deeper within him. Weariness almost beyond comprehension clung to his spirit, and he was only too glad to slip into the dark embrace of sleep.

lar

That day and the next he languished in fever, drifting in and out of troubled dreams. He was tended at all times by one or another of the healers, and when he woke they gave him water and changed the bandages upon his back and murmured gentle reassurances. Time and again they tried to coax him to take a little milk, and time and again he did so, but he seemed no better for it. Blood still showed and his side throbbed, and when he drew a full breath his lungs rattled with fluid. Twice he woke to find the pillow-slip stained with blood from his nostrils and the bitter taste of it in his throat. His legs twitched restlessly against the cramps of inactivity, and whenever they did he was tormented by the pain of his twisted ankle. At times he thought he cried out for Gollum, but again and again soft voices reassured him that his captive was safe; that he was secure; that he was fed. And uneasily he slept.

Then there came an awakening that was not obscured by wandering thoughts or indistinct fears. Crusted eyes opened to the warm glow of the firelight on stone, and Aragorn understood that he was safe in Thranduil's halls; that his hurts were being tended; and that his dreadful journey was over. His body ached and he could feel the battered tissues of his bruised flank, but he was no longer wracked with nigh-unbearable agony. He was lying not upon his front but on his left side, and there was only the faintest soreness in the shoulder the spider had stung. He was warm and dry and clad in soft nightclothes, and there were cushions piled under his injured foot. He was thirsty but not unbearably so, and most gladdening of all he felt the first small stirrings of hunger.

He knew better than to roll upon his back, but he shifted his right hand to brace against the mattress, and with a soft grunt of effort managed to raise himself a little. He pushed his body higher in the bed, so that he might lean against the headboard. There was still a lingering soreness in his head, but he felt no trace of dizziness.

Lethril was at his side now, cautious hands ready to catch him if he swooned. Aragorn twisted a little to look at her. When she saw his eyes were clear and steady she smiled.

'You are stronger tonight,' she said. It was not quite a question, but very nearly. She reached to shift the cushions so that they offered better support. 'Your fever broke two hours ago; I hoped you might wake.'

Aragorn ran his tongue along riven lips and nodded. For the first time in what seemed like an age the motion brought neither pain nor giddiness. 'How long have I slept?' he asked.

'It is your fourth night in our care,' she answered. She offered him water, and he closed his hand around the vessel. Still the lady's fingertips lingered upon its base, steadying his hold as he drank. When he had finished she stood back, regret in her eyes. 'I must change the dressings on your back,' she said apologetically. 'I know it is painful.'

Aragorn had only the vaguest sleep-sodden memories of the process, but he knew she spoke aright. 'Less painful, perhaps, and certainly less laborious if I can sit while you do it,' he said. Resolutely he raised himself with his arms and twisted, cautious of his foot and the dull deep misery in his flank. She reached to help him and soon he was upright. He fumbled with the fastenings of his robe, but could not quite make his fingers – which trembled still and were stiff with crusted sores – navigate the intricacy of the laces. Lethril reached deftly to do what he could not, and helped him to ease the garment down off of his shoulders to expose the pad of bandages and the bands that held it in place.

She removed the long strips first and then took a towel and wetted it in the washbasin. Gently she sponged at the dressing to loosen it. 'It is a wonder you escaped with such hurts,' she said. 'The wild cats of the forest are fearsome when provoked. How did you come to run afoul of it?'

'The beast and his mate took a fancy to my captive,' Aragorn said. 'Clearly the winter has been hard, and game scarce. I—' His breath caught sharply in his throat as she passed over an especially tender place. He set his teeth for a moment and then said; 'Have you a mirror at hand, lady? I fain would see what has been done to me.'

A small amused laugh came from her lips. 'I have expected as much,' she said. 'You are a healer yourself, are you not? Helegond said you have studied under Master Elrond himself.'

'I have,' said Aragorn. She was peeling back the blood-soaked bandage now, and despite the careful soaking it tugged at the edges of the wounds. 'If it is not possible I am content to trust to your skill.'

'Nay, it is possible. I have had the mirrors waiting since morning; in your place I would be equally anxious to make my own examination, limited though it be.' With a swift flick of her wrist she tugged the last corner free and blotted at his back with a clean cloth. 'Now is as good a time as any to do it.'

She moved to the washstand by the fire and took from it a large flat disc wrapped in velvet and a small hand-mirror of smooth polished brass. The latter she handed to Aragorn while she unwrapped the former with care. Its bright surface gleamed as she took hold of the handles and moved to position it behind him. 'Look as you will, my lord,' she said. 'They have not closed yet, and may not for some time, I fear.'

Aragorn lifted the smaller mirror so that it might reflect what was behind him, but as he raised it he stopped, transfixed by something else entirely. He let his elbow fall back to his side and stared in mute dismay at his own face.

He was by no means intimately acquainted with his reflection. Often he went many months with nothing by the shadowy rippling echo in a pool's surface to remind him of his appearance. Yet the haggard stranger staring back at him now was outside his broadest expectations or wildest imaginings. Gaunt almost to the point of emaciation, the bones of the skull stood out starkly beneath a wrapping of pallid and grey-hued skin. Deep lines of care were carved in his brow and down the sides of his mouth, the latter scarcely muted by the thin straggles of a dirty beard. His eyes, glossed with pain but still far duller than their wont, were deeply sunken in sockets rimmed in shadows dark as bruises. A long scratch on one cheek stood out half-healed against his skin, and there were smaller lacerations on his brow and his jaw and across his nose. Dark blood crusted his nostrils, and his lips were cracked and peeling, marred with scabs and splitting at the corners. He seemed to have aged many decades since he had last looked upon himself in a mirror; small wonder those who knew him as he had been looked upon him now with startled consternation.

With a thin, shivering exhalation he let the glass fall to his lap. His head bowed, weighted with weariness and a faint despair. How long would it take him to recover his vigour, worn and battered as he was? He had hoped to linger here for only a week or perhaps ten days, for he was sick at heart and yearned for the company of those he loved. Yet in such a state he could not hope to travel. He might be immured in these caves for a season, convalescing slowly among strangers and haunted daily by the knowledge that Gollum abided near at hand. The hope that he had harboured of returning in haste to the West, of resting awhile in Rivendell before seeking out his men, seemed to shrivel in his breast.

The healer's palm settled on his left shoulder, gripping in gentle reassurance. 'Fear not,' said Lethril. 'Already the shallow places are healing, and there is no sign of infection. In a few weeks' time you will have only another scar.'

She mistook him and he could not set her straight. Burying his dismay and his wretched disappointment, and with them the ungrateful wish that the hand upon his clavicle belonged to his father and not some well-meaning wood-elf in a foreign land, he cleared the mists from his eyes and lifted the mirror again. This time he did not let himself look upon his dreadful drawn visage, but hoisted it at once so that he could see the large mirror behind him, and the reflection of the claw-marks on his back. There were four deep raking wounds in parallel, and a fifth tracing shallowly beside them. The flesh was torn deep at the top, bleeding sluggishly now that the dressing was removed. In the lee of his spine the marks were broken briefly, and below that gap they were little more than weals. The edges of the wounds were red and inflamed, but there was no trace of pus or poison. They would indeed heal well enough, and likely long before he was strong enough to set himself upon the homeward road.

Aragorn lowered the mirror to his lap and nodded stiffly. 'Thank you,' he murmured politely. 'I cannot fault your care.'

lar

The following day he was somewhat stronger. Helegond helped him into the chair again so that the bed could be put right, and a dish of savoury broth was brought to him. It made a welcome change after his meals of milk, but Aragorn's hands still trembled and he managed to slop almost as much of it onto his front as reached his mouth. The healer made no mention of this clumsiness, but gently and ably changed the robe for a fresh one and wiped the beads of fluid from the Ranger's chin. After that he was settled again upon his left side and he dozed a little, the shallow sleep of one who has slumbered long and yet is plagued with pain and weariness of heart. In the afternoon a joiner came to take his measure for crutches, so that if he regained his strength before his ankle was fully mended he would be able to move about the palace. This consideration was a kind one, and Aragorn was thankful, but each such gesture only served to heighten his guilty longing for home.

In the afternoon he was settled in the chair again at his own request, drawn close to the fire with a blanket tucked about his knees. It seemed he was improving after all, for his constant companions saw fit at last to leave him unattended. Alone he sat in the simply, cosy room, staring into the embers of the fire and trying to master himself. It would not do to indulge in idle wishing; to pine for things he could not have. He was sheltered and warm, tended and fed. The folk of Mirkwood were kind and solicitous and anxious to please. For all this he was grateful, and he ought to be content as well. It was a small price for such luxury: to keep his words courteous when he wished to voice his misery; to bite his tongue when he wished to cry out in pain; to keep his own counsel when he ached to unburden his heart. He had only to rest, to heal and to regain his strength. Then he could be gone.

A rap of skin against wood startled him from his silent struggle. His gaze slipped to the door, puzzled. He did not expect the healers to knock, and no one had cause to come to this room save at their bidding.

'Enter,' he said, and tried to straighten himself in his seat despite the grinding pain that the effort awoke in his side.

The door opened and Losfaron entered, sweeping a graceful bow. 'Well met, my lord,' he said. 'I hope I do not intrude too far on your rest?'

'Not at all,' said Aragorn. A sudden terror seized him. 'Is something amiss?' he asked anxiously. 'Has Gollum—'

'No! No.' The captain drew up the second chair and sat at the other corner of the hearth. 'He is a bitter and hateful wretch, but he is secure in his cell with a constant guard upon the door, and his injuries are healing. But what of you? You seem much recovered from the night of your arrival.'

Aragorn managed an unsteady half-smile. 'I am well enough,' he said. 'I have been kindly tended.'

Losfaron nodded and stretched his legs out towards the fire. 'I would expect nothing less,' he said. For a moment he was silent. Then he exhaled heavily. 'The creature, Gollum. What do you know of him?'

'Little enough,' said Aragorn. 'He dwelt for long years beneath the mountains; that much you know already. He wandered far and in strange and deadly places. There can be no doubt that he was put to torment by the servants of the Enemy: they wrought cruel work upon his hands and branded the terror of Mordor black upon his heart. No more did I glean from him in all the weeks we travelled together.'

'I wondered whether he had been tortured,' the captain sighed. 'He shrinks from the least intimation of touch, and he will not suffer us to come near. He wails and he shrieks until the caverns echo with his cries. The very stones are groaning with distaste. Is there nothing to be done to silence him?'

'I had no more luck in that than I had in coaxing him to useful speech,' said Aragorn. 'He will mutter and he will grumble, and when he will he cries out with a voice to crack the Firmament, but he will not answer a direct question however he is pressed.' A shudder of revulsion took him, and he was unable to wholly supress it. 'I am sorry to leave you with such a hateful charge. Mayhap when Gandalf comes hither he will have more fortune than I.'

'Is he coming, then?' asked Losfaron. 'I will discharge my duty, but I cannot but hope that the wretch may be tamed a little. He tried to bite one of my lieutenants this morning.'

'Be wary of that,' said Aragorn. His fingers slipped beneath the sleeve of his robe to touch the bandaged scars upon his forearm. 'He is stronger than his looks would indicate. He is treacherous and sly, also. He betrayed me in the forest, or I should never have fallen afoul of a spider.'

'I confess I should like to hear your tale. It seems you have walked by strange roads indeed.' Losfaron cast an eye over the Man, but there was admiration rather than pity in his gaze. 'Hardy is the race of the Dúnedain, to wander in the company of such a hateful creature through inclement lands and to emerge at last four-limbed and sane.'

A small and sour laugh touched Aragorn's tongue. 'Hardy perhaps, or foolish,' he said. He shifted uncomfortably against the back of the chair. His spine was aching and his head felt heavy again, and the talk of Gollum was doing nothing to ease his spirit. The creature had to be questioned, and if Gandalf did not come to do it then Aragorn would have to make another attempt himself. He wished that he could believe the task less onerous here in the safety of the Elven-king's halls, but he did not.

'I will come down to see him, as soon as my guardians give me leave,' Aragorn said at last. 'Perhaps he will heed me at last after a few days' confinement. If he does not then I fear there is nothing to do but wait for Gandalf. He will know what must be done.'

'Will he indeed?' said Losfaron wryly. 'He left you alone to search for the thing, and to bring it north as best you could. It seem to me that he is wont to leave the more unpleasant tasks to other while he himself is busy with private errands.'

There was a spark of indignation within his breast that surely shone forth in his eyes, and Aragorn drew himself up in the chair, his hurts forgotten as he roused to indignation on behalf of his friend. 'Do not think that!' he cried. 'We sought long for the creature together, and at last Gandalf turned to other matters – not private, but of the utmost import. He left me to face company little more pleasant and no more cooperative, in search of knowledge we desperately need. He could not have known where the hunt would lead me, nor what would come to pass when at last I found our quarry.' He halted, stricken by the look of chagrined dismay upon the fair face before him, and sagged again in his seat. 'There are unpleasant tasks enough in this weary struggle that everyone may have his share,' he said. 'Do not speak ill of Gandalf.'

'I will not. Forgive me,' said Losfaron. 'Strange folk are the wizards, and they are little understood in this land. I see you know more of the Pilgrim's business than I ever shall. Yet if he is as true a friend to you as you are to him, I wonder whether he will not agree more with my view of the matter than with yours.'

For a time neither spoke. Losfaron seemed deep in thought, and Aragorn was sinking again into leaden weariness. He longed only to lie down and to sleep again, for in slumber there was some hope of forgetfulness at least for a little while. At length the captain arose.

'Shall I help you to your bed, my lord?' he asked softly. 'You have the look of one walking half in dreams already.'

Aragorn's pride wanted to refuse, but his wisdom could not. Heavily he nodded, and let the soldier take his arm and grip his left side and guide him the few hopping steps to the bed. He lay down, forsaking the effort of lifting his bloated foot onto its cushions, and let the blankets be drawn up over his shoulders. In the last moments of fading wakefulness he heard the chamber door fall closed.

Note: Sorry about the long wait: it's been another rough week. Nonetheless I hope you enjoy what I have to offer!

Chapter LVIII: The Depths of the Earth

On the afternoon of the sixth day after his arrival, Aragorn was again sitting bundled before the fire. His right foot was resting upon the cushioned stool with a cool compress wrapped about the still-swollen ankle. He had done it much mischief beyond the original injury, which had been quite serious enough. Walking on had been an act of desperation, and that perhaps excused the foolhardiness of it, but between that strain and the jarring the limb had received in his frantic encounter with the cats he had certainly torn more sinews than could be healed with a few days' rest. Like the deep unseen injuries in his flank, this hurt would be slow to mend.

The claw-wounds at least were healing well enough. They no longer wept their colourless fluid, and the bandages could now be changed once a day. The edges had begun to itch, and this irritation wore upon his nerves more than he would have felt possible. As for the spider-bite, it was now little more than a florid red mark scoring his shoulder. In that he had indeed been fortunate. Even now the memory of that perilous moment sent his hands trembling at the thought of what might have been. Gollum's betrayal and too-well-timed intervention in the skirmish had very nearly proved fatal.

Yet all these hurts he might have borne with greater grace had his body not been so weakened by the ceaseless strain and deprivation of his northward journey. Wounds mended more slowly, and organs were more reluctant to heal in one worn down by famine and exhaustion. Even now his nose still trickled its thin dark blood, the flesh within dry and prone to cracking because his body lacked the nutrients necessary to keep it protected. The same complaint troubled his lungs, rattling with fluid whenever he drew a deep breath. He had tried time and again to cough, that he might clear the troublesome exudate before it brewed disease, but his efforts were dry and unproductive. There was no strength within him to spare in the production of phlegm.

With nothing else to occupy his time, he passed many hours brooding over his journey and wondering wearily what he might have done to keep himself from sinking to such a pitiful state. Linger longer in Lórien? Impossible: for surely Gollum would have escaped, or pursuit found them. Hunt more carefully in Eastemnet or along the borders of Fangorn? Perhaps, but he would likely have fared little better than he had and there had been no time to spare. And even if he had affected some change earlier in his travels, the good of it would have been lost in Gladden's depths. Upon reflection it was then that the journey had gone so dreadfully awry. If only he had not fallen through the ice, had kept hold of his pack, had not placed upon his constitution the terrible burden of thawing a frozen body and keeping it thawed, he might have conserved his strength and used the energy squandered in barest survival to keep from starvation. Yet try though he might he could not think how he might have managed to keep that catastrophe from striking. There, as in the encounter with the spider, his hateful captive had proved his downfall.

Yet in the end he had survived, and he had every hope of recovering. Certainly the Elven healers intended that he should. Seldom in his travels had he found such dedicated caretakers; only in Imladris had he been given care more tender and more skilled. Though they had little experience with extremes of privation, their care of his wounds was exemplary and they were eager to learn. Helegond had taken a great interest in the question of diet, and had the steward following Aragorn's instructions devoutly. He took small quantities of broth or milk frequently, and this morning he had managed a few mouthfuls of bland porridge before the first stirrings of nausea had prompted him to halt. His head no longer ached so persistently and his hands were recovering something of their old steadiness. How long it would take to restore his full strength or to fill out the worrisome chasms between his lower ribs he could not say, but he was certainly set upon the right road.

A knock at the door came fast upon the thought that it was nearly time to feed again, and Aragorn bade the visitor enter. Expecting Galion, the steward, or one of his assistants, he was startled and discomfited to see first a velvet sleeve and then a belt of beaten gold and the glimmer of emeralds as King Thranduil himself came through the doorway, bearing a silver tray and smiling courteously.

'Your Majesty,' Aragorn said breathlessly, shifting to grip the arms of the chair that he might lift himself onto his good leg to greet his host. Swiftly Thranduil set down his burden upon the table and moved to press a restraining hand to the Ranger's shoulder.

'Peace, Dúnadan: do not rise for me,' he said. As Aragorn eased back into his almost-comfortable position under this command the Elven-king drew up the other chair and sat. 'I trust my folk have given you the care and courtesy that is your due?'

'Indeed they have,' said Aragorn. 'I thank you: every consideration has been extended to me.'

'I have brought you your supper,' said Thranduil, looking at the tray and frowning. Upon it was set an ornate bowl filled with strained broth, and a small dish bearing a thin slice of unadorned bread. 'It is humble fare; my steward tells me it is what you have requested? I had hoped you would avail yourself of all the hospitality of my realm.'

'I shall be glad to do so, lord, when I am able,' said Aragorn. 'I fear my stomach would be ill-suited to richer provender at present.' Hesitantly he added; 'The healers will have told you that I will not be fit to depart for some time?'

'Do not think of departing!' said Thranduil with a dismissive flick of his hand. 'I would have you tarry as long as you wish. It is not often that I may play host to the Heir of Elendil, and it is my pleasure to do so now. Pray do not let me keep you from your meal, but if you will permit me I would sit and talk with you while you eat.'

Aragorn could scarcely refuse this request, though it was with some trepidation that he inclined his head in assent. His hands still had their moments of unsteadiness, and he had not yet managed to feed himself without some minor mishap. Nor could he very well ask the lord of the land to haul him, chair and all, to the table. Instead he twisted in his seat, breathing into the pain in his right side, and drew the tray into his lap. He balanced it carefully, holding it with his left hand. With his right he picked up the silver spoon with its shaft headed by a cast acorn.

'I see that your possessions have been brought to you,' said Thranduil, looking at the pegs by the foot of the bed, from one of which hung Sigbeorn's cloak. It, along with the satchel that Eira had given him, had been returned to Aragorn that morning, having been thoroughly laundered. By the wondrous skill of the Elven fullers the stench of Gollum had been removed from the garment, and the bloodstains on both were reduced to faint shadows. 'We shall have to see about getting you fitted for new clothing when you are able to stand for the tailor. We cannot have you eternally clad in an ill-fitting night robe.'

'Thank you,' murmured Aragorn as he swallowed his first mouthful of broth. He was relieved to have the offer unsolicited, for he had not been quite certain how best to broach the subject. 'I am afraid I will also need new boots, though it may be some time before my foot is ready to take measurements.'

He glanced down at his toes with their ugly, slow-healing sores, and wished that he had tugged the blanket to cover them when the Elven-king entered. Studiously he turned back to his bowl.

'So I noticed,' said Thranduil. 'It is remarkable that you were able to walk at all. How far did you come upon a twisted leg?'

'I was waylaid by a spider not far past the stream,' said Aragorn. 'My prisoner betrayed me, or I would not have fallen. You must bide your soldiers be vigilant, lord: Gollum is not to be trusted, not even for a moment. I was wrong to rely upon his warning, for all that he had proved in earnest in the past. Do not let the guards underestimate him.'

'We are careful of prisoners nowadays,' Thranduil assured him with a wry smile. 'I promise that he has no hope of escaping from his cell.'

'See that he does not,' said Aragorn. 'I would not relish the thought of hunting him again, and I doubt that I could contrive to catch him a second time.'

For a little while there was quiet, an amiable hush during which Aragorn continued slowly and methodically to eat. He left the bread alone and focused upon the broth, which was savoury and warm and seemed to strengthen him with each spoonful. His hands had not yet shown signs of shaking, and he had so far managed not to spill upon himself. At last Thranduil, who had been watching the embers thoughtfully, spoke again.

'I came to ask you for an account of your journey,' he said. 'Your skill in the wilderness and your hardihood in the face of adversity are celebrated by all who know you, and yet you came stumbling to my door at the very border of your strength. Behind that surely lies a bitter struggle and a strange tale.'

'A bitter struggle, aye,' said Aragorn; 'but the tale has little value in the telling. I walked a hard road swiftly, accompanied by a dangerous wretch who strove to thwart me at any opportunity, and I did so with little opportunity for rest. I met misfortune in your woods, and was wounded. There is nothing more to it than that.'

'Where did you find him at last?' asked Thranduil. 'In the empty lands north of Gladden, perhaps? The winter has been a hard one, and you would have found little game in that country.'

The urge to laugh, long and bitterly, seized Aragorn for a moment. Instead he shook his head wearily. 'I took him on the borders of the Dead Marshes, as night fell upon the sixth day of coirë. Through the Emyn Muil I drove him, and swam Anduin. I feared pursuit, for I believe he was held captive by the Enemy and then permitted to escape upon some ill errand thwarted by his capture. Thus I took a westerly road. I passed through the eaves of Lothlórien, and Lord Celeborn promised to send missives to Gandalf telling him the creature had at last been found. I crossed Anduin again at Carrock, and rested two nights with Grimbeorn's folk. They did much to aid me and to set me out upon my last road clothed and provisioned. Had I not allowed myself to be led to the spider I might have reached your gates in a better state.'

Thranduil was frowning, his fair brow furrowed as he reckoned. 'But surely that is a journey of many hundreds of miles,' he said.

'Near to nine hundred, by my reckoning,' sighed Aragorn. It felt as though every one of those miles had been wrung out of his flesh in anguish. He dipped the spoon again and sipped at the broth. So many long roads he had travelled in his lifetime; yet of all those this last seemed longest and most trying. Even the perils of the last weeks of the hunt seemed insipid and easily borne by comparison.

'And that you have accomplished in fifty days, burdened as you were by that wretch and short of rest and provisions?' asked the Elven-king. He shook his head in wonder. 'In your place I think I should boast of the feat, Dúnadan.'

Aragorn looked at the monarch, sitting with earnest respect upon his face and admiration in his eyes, and he felt only weariness. What was there to boast of? He had dragged himself and his captive through empty countries and barren places, driven by fear of pursuit that had never found them – and indeed might never have been made at all. He had taken a broad detour that doubled his road, because he had feared to pass too near to Dol Guldur. He had done without rest because he had no other choice: he had been obliged to guard Gollum day and night, or risk a strangling death. He had failed to mount a successful interrogation of his charge; he had failed even to keep himself from starvation. He had laid aside other labours and other responsibilities for this, and he still did not know whether his efforts would bear any useful fruit. This was no feat worthy of song or story, but a quiet and ugly struggle for supremacy and survival – a battle of attrition that he had won at last, but only barely. He had no cause to boast.

At a loss as to what he might say to gently disabuse his host of the notion that he had made some great victory, Aragorn turned his eyes back to the tray. He set down the spoon and broke off a corner of the slice of bread. As he raised it to his lips he paused, staring down at the bony hand that held it. The chilblains and broken blisters were still raw and livid, here and there trickling transparent ichor over veins that stood out starkly blue beneath pale flesh. The waxy residue of Eira's salve was caught in the cracks and fissures in his chapped skin. His nails were long and ragged, torn at the edges and marred by the black arcs of grime trapped deep beneath them. There was dirt ground into his palm and dirt in the webs between his fingers – dirt and dried blood and traces of Gollum's foulness. Sudden shame flared within him, and his face burned with mortification that the majestic King of Mirkwood should see him eating with such filthy hands.

He let the bread fall to the tray and instinctively tucked his fist away beneath it, hiding the offending appendage. He curled the tips of his left fingers under as well, unable to release his hold on the tray.

'Have you finished?' asked Thranduil kindly. At Aragorn's mute nod he took away the dish and the Ranger was able to tuck his left hand under a fold of his robe. 'Shall I help you back to bed? Surely you must be weary.'

'Thank you, no,' said Aragorn, rather hoarsely. He struggled to smile but did not quite succeed. 'I shall sit up a while longer, I think.'

'Very well.' Thranduil rose and looked down for a moment at his bedraggled guest, pensive. 'I shall tell the healers to come to you when they are able. I wish you a peaceful night, Aragorn son of Arathorn. I shall visit again if I may.'

'I would be honoured.' Courtly politeness at least had not deserted him and Aragorn inclined his head in an approximation of a bow. 'I thank you for your company, lord, and for the shelter of your palace.'

'To that you are welcome,' said Thranduil. He picked up the tray and went to the door, pausing to look back with a strange glint in his eye. He looked at once searching and oddly nostalgic. Then the moment passed and he smiled once more. 'Sleep well,' he said, and he was gone.

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Aragorn waited until the quiet footfalls moved off and faded away. Then he tugged the blanket from his lap and flung it over the arm of his chair. Cautiously he lifted his right leg so that the towel slid off of his ankle. He lowered his foot to the floor so that it just skimmed the stone, and planted its partner firmly. Gripping the chair for leverage, he set his teeth and hoisted himself, unsteadily and not without pain, onto his left foot. He held fast to the back of the chair and took a shuffling half-hop that brought him near enough to plant his palm against the hot wall behind which the flue drew upon the fire. Using it as his crutch he hobbled to the corner by the door where the wash-basin stood. The water in the pitcher was cool, but he had neither the will nor the energy to go back to the fire to warm it. He poured out a generous measure into the bowl and, leaning with his right shoulder braced against the wall and his bad foot tucked up, he took a scoop of soft soap from the jar and set about cleaning his hands.

He scrubbed like a madman, scarcely feeling the sting of the open sores and caring nothing for the fresh cracks that opened or the fissures that deepened as he lathered his hands. Cupped fingers brought up a dram of water and he worked all the more vigorously. There was a small brass curette sitting next to a prettily carved comb, and he used this to dig beneath his nails, scooping out the filth and old blood and shed skin. He rinsed his hands in the bowl and, dissatisfied with the result, began again. By the time he had finished, the water was black and many of the abrasions on his hands were weeping thin bright tendrils of blood. He dried them carefully, leaving pink stains upon the towel, and stood canted and breathless, too exhausted to face the journey back to his chair.

He looked down at the pallid skin, roughened and cracked by weeks in the cold and marred with bright blossoms of irritation where he had scrubbed too hard, but clean at last. All at once he was aware of the unwashed state of the rest of his body. The healers had been diligent about cleaning around his wounds, and they had bathed his face many times throughout the days of fever. But his hair was matted with dried blood and fragments of old cobweb, and his body itched under a layer of grime and dead skin, and he stank. He was not so vile by far as he had been upon his arrival in Lothlórien, for then he had borne with him the putrescence of some of the most foul and loathsome places in Middle-earth, but he was far from clean. As if seized by a madness he felt driven to wash, whether he had the strength or no. He reached for the laces of his robe and tugged at them. Dimly he knew that he would never manage a proper wash like this, standing over a basin with half a pitcher of fresh water left, but he did not care. He had to try.

So intent was he upon removing the robe that he did not hear the door open. He scarcely heard the puzzled voice calling his name, nor the exhalation of relief when the intruder spied him at last in the corner behind the door. He had just managed to slide the garment off of his shoulders when a gentle hand fell upon his bared left arm. It was Lethril.

'Lord Aragorn?' she said, her voice soft but tinged with concern. 'What are you doing away from your chair? You ought not run the risk falling upon your foot again.'

He looked at her, at the worried green eyes and the innocent puzzlement within them, and he came back to his reason. 'I wanted to wash,' he said quietly, inadequately. He felt suddenly like a small child caught at something very foolish. Unable to explain himself he added simply; 'I am dirty.'

Her expression softened a little. 'That is only to be expected, fresh out of the wild,' she soothed. 'You will be well enough to have a proper bath in a few days. Come and sit, and we will see what may be done to make you more comfortable.'

Had he been in the care of his foster-father in Rivendell, Aragorn would have protested. He would have begged to have a tub and hot water brought to the room that he might wash; he would have felt able to explain how vile and uncouth he felt now that he was well enough to be aware of his state. Indeed, he might not have even needed to explain, so well did Master Elrond know him and understand the workings of his heart. But here he could not argue. Hauling water was weary work, and the small room had little space to accommodate a tub. He could not place such an imposition upon his well-meaning hosts. No more could he give voice to his misery, lest they should think he found their care wanting. So he leaned upon the maiden's shoulder and let her draw him back to the chair.

She brought the pitcher to warm on the hearth, and then wetted a cloth and lathered one corner with soap. Gently she blotted at the worst of the grime on his chest and arms, wiping away streaks of blood and sweat. She scrubbed beneath his arms and ran a fresh cloth down his legs, then washed his feet with care, avoiding the sores so that she should not hurt him. Then she took the comb from the washstand and set to work on his hair, gently working loose the tangles. The worst of the knots and the clumps of spider-silk she snipped away, and now and again she dabbed at his hair with the towel to loosen mats of blood or dirt. This labour was a slow one, and Aragorn found himself half-dozing beneath her patient fingers, but at last she was finished. Then she took up a brush with long bristles and worked it through his oily tresses, putting them straight and pressing down so that the brush scraped the dead flakes from his scalp. It was a comforting feeling, a cleansing feeling; not half the relief of a proper washing, but enough to dispel the last of his anxious mania.

'Thank you,' he murmured drowsily as she set aside the brush and helped him back into his robe. 'That is much better; thank you.'

Lethril was knotting the fouled towels into a bundle now, and she smiled serenely up at him. 'As soon as you're strong enough you can go and have a proper bath,' she promised again. 'I know it must be a hard thing to do without.'

For a moment he was taken by the urge to explain himself; to tell her that though he could bear his dirtiness well enough in the wild, as a necessary discomfort of wandering, among civilized people it became swiftly intolerable. But he was weary and sick at heart, and he did not know if he would be able to make her understand. Again a terrible loneliness assailed him, and he closed his eyes against the pain within.

Taking the motion for mere weariness, the lady arose and went to turn back the bedclothes. Aragorn let her lead him the few steps across the room, and settle him upon the soft mattress. She brought him water and he drank, and then turned upon his side so as not to put pressure on his battered flank. With his face to the wall he was spared the labour of guarding his expression, and he stared for a long while at the dancing shadows on the stone.

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As it turned out, Aragorn did not have to wait three days for a proper bath. The following morning Helegond came bearing his breakfast and a gift: the crutches for which he had been measured days ago. They were carved of oak branches, lovingly shaped and embellished with twining vines and leaves and acorns etched into the wood. Pegged crossbars were set for his hands to grasp, and the cradles were covered in pads of soft sheepskin so they would not bruise his ribs. The wood had been smoothed and polished like glass, and it had been rubbed with linseed oil so that it was dark and glossy. Beautiful as well as strong, they were the epitome of Elven workmanship.

With Helegond's help Aragorn rose from bed, and tucked one crutch beneath each arm. With his right leg lifted behind him he took one swinging step and then another. The motion placed some faint strain upon his right flank and the shoulder blade where the lynx had torn deep into the flesh, but these discomforts were bearable – and nothing to the relief of being able to move under his own power. When he had finished his milk and half the slice of bread brought for him, Aragorn dared to raise the question of a bath.

From the healer's pensive expression it was clear that Lethril had not discussed the matter with her colleague. That was all to the good, thought Aragorn, for if she had not then Helegond would not be swayed by her judgement that three days' rest was needed before he could undertake the exertion. He made an effort to sit straighter in his chair, and to look as fit as he was able.

'It would give you an opportunity to test the crutches properly,' said Helegond thoughtfully, looking over his patient with a discerning eye. 'But are you certain you are up to the journey? The baths are some distance from this cavern.'

Vainglorious pledges of strength might have served his agenda better, but Aragorn could not ply a falsehood. 'I do not know,' he said. 'I believe I can manage it, for the relief of being clean at last, but it is possible that I am yet too weak. Nevertheless I should like to try.'

Helegond made an uncertain sound and resumed his study of the Ranger's face. 'Certainly cleanliness is a balm for the spirit in addition to being healthful for the body,' he said; 'and while you bathed we might have the room made fresh for you. The wounds on your back are still open, but the scabs have held for two days now and they could stand to be washed. My chief concern is that you will strain the injuries amid your viscera with the exertion of the journey.'

'I can strain them no more now than I did in the days after my fall,' reasoned Aragorn. 'I am no longer showing blood, and the pain is much improved. A hot soak will do the bruised muscles no harm, either.'

'True,' Helegond allowed. He ran a thoughtful hand along his jaw. 'Would you object to my constant attendance?' he asked. 'If you should swoon or drift off to sleep you might drown if left alone.'

Aragorn felt a flare of hope. 'I would not,' he said. 'I would be glad of your company.'

'Then let us try it,' said Helegond. 'But if you grow too weary you must tell me, and we shall halt and I shall send for a litter to bear you back to bed.'

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The journey to the bathing caverns was not a long one, but it was wearisome. Aragorn had not realized how stiff and sore even his uninjured muscles were after so long abed. His left leg was reluctant to carry him, and the crutches put a strain upon his arms. Even his right leg ached with the effort of holding his crooked calf and dangling foot. Nevertheless he persevered, and was ushered at last into a chamber lit with many torches. A great hearth was set in the centre of the room, vented above by a hooded chimney. An attendant stirred up the embers as they entered, and the heat flared. A second grate was set in the wall, beneath a bronze cistern in which water was heated. There were tubs about the width of an apple-barrel upon the polished floor, and stools to sit upon while one washed. Soap and cloths and the other accoutrements of bathing occupied neat shelves, and there was a trough carved along one wall to bear the used water away.

Helegond helped Aragorn out of his robe, and the Ranger managed to remove his body linen unaided. With one crutch to lean on and the healer's arm to grip he sat upon one of the low stools, his injured leg stretched out before him. The Elf untied the bandages across his back and about his forearm, and naked at last Aragorn was able to set about washing himself. The tub was too small to sit in, even if he did not need to keep his right ankle free from strain, but the hot water with which the attendant filled it was a blessing. Slowly and methodically Aragorn worked, scouring and scrubbing and rinsing. Soon enough the water was dark, and it was changed for fresh. Helegond washed his back, mindful of the slowly mending wounds, and then insisted upon undertaking the chore of cleaning the Ranger's hair.

'It is too much labour for your arms, and you might so easily break the crust upon your shoulder blade,' he said. 'And the spider-bite may be closed, but a good tug would tear it open afresh and then you will have a scar.'

Aragorn cared little for one more scar, but it was a relief to be spared the exertion of scrubbing his scalp. The healer worked soap through the dark hair, rinsed it thoroughly, and then began again. This time a lather was raised. Now and again the slender fingers snagged amid the wet locks, tugging at the roots, and Aragorn was grateful that Lethril had brushed out the worst of the tangles the night before. At last the chore was done, and the bathing attendant brought a large ewer to pour over Aragorn's body, rinsing away the last of the soap. It was a delightful feeling to be clean at last, but Aragorn was breathless and tired from the efforts, and he could not imagine why the healer had feared he might fall asleep, much less drown.

'We shall leave the crutches, I think,' said Helegond, offering his arms to help Aragorn stand. 'They might so easily slip upon a wet patch and send you tumbling.'

Bemused, Aragorn hoisted himself onto his good leg, leaning heavily against the healer. His body was wet and his shoulder left a damp patch on Helegond's tunic, but the Elf seemed unconcerned. Slowly and with the same practiced care he used when leading his charge from bed to chair and back, he helped Aragorn across the room to an archway leading deeper into the caves. In his eagerness to wash Aragorn had not noticed it before, and it was with some uncertainty that he let himself be led away from his crutches and his clothing and into a larger cavern beyond the first.

The air was hot and humid here, and the torches flickered and sputtered. There was no scent of charcoal smoke, and no hearth for a fire, but the chamber was far warmer than the one they had left. The gooseflesh that had begun to rise on the Ranger's wet skin receded and his rattling lungs breathed more easily in the moist atmosphere. The room was devoid of furniture and at first Aragorn wondered at its purpose, but then he heard the low gurgling of water and followed the tendrils of steam to a rock-pool set in the floor against one wall. Its sides had been shaped and smoothed by Elven hands, but it was clearly a natural formation. The water within it was milky, scented faintly of salt and the timeless minerals of the earth. Now and then a bubble rose to the placid surface and burst in a shimmer of brilliance. Wonder and delight rose in Aragorn's heart. It was a hot-spring, heated by the fires of the earth itself, tamed within this cave and bent to the use of the folk of the forest.

He hobbled towards it, leaning heavily on Helegond's patient arm. The healer guided him to a place where steps had been carved, curling around the side of the pool. Kicking off his soft shoes, the Elf stepped into the water and held out both hands to help Aragorn descend. He did so unsteadily but eagerly, feeling the heat first upon his left toes, and then into his foot and up his leg, reaching the swollen flesh of his right ankle in a wave of blessed comfort. Awkwardly he lowered himself onto the next step, passing Helegond where he stood with the water lapping at his calves. There was a ledge in the side of the pool, smoothly carved into the shape of a bench, and Aragorn eased himself onto it, feeling the hot water rise to cover his stomach and his ribs, finally slipping over the crest of his shoulder blades. He stretched his long legs out before him and tilted his head back to rest upon the rim of the pool. Before he could stop himself, he let out a low moan of piteous pleasure.

Helegond smiled, mounting the few steps he had taken and rising out of the pool. He rounded behind Aragorn and settled himself on the floor with his back to the wall. The fingers of his left hand played in the water two armspans from his patient. 'A balm for tired muscles and a comfort for the spirit,' he said.

'Yes,' Aragorn breathed, unable to say more. The water was stinging in the sores upon his hands and feet and sending prickles of startled discomfort from the wounds across his back, but he did not care. The wondrous warmth and the gentle weight of it upon his strained limbs was the most delicious sensation he could have imagined. It tickled in the strands of his sparse beard and he thought distantly that he would have to see about shaving. For the moment, however, he was content merely to lounge here, languishing in utter decadence and delight.

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath enriched with the steam rising from the water, and he felt his cares wash away. Yes, he thought; he might indeed drift off to sleep if he were careless. But under the watchful eyes of his guardian he lingered happily in waking dreams, leaden limbs made buoyant by the water as it soaked the aches from his body and laved his weary spirit.

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When at last he reached his bed, now turned and fluffed and made with clean bedclothes, Aragorn was far gone in his exhaustion. The soporific effect of the long hot bath was coupled with the effort of bearing himself back to his chamber. He had roused himself sufficiently upon leaving the pool to shave before a brass mirror in the washing-cavern, and had managed to escape with only three nicks of the well-honed blade provided him. Now, as he sank off the crutches and onto the mattress he wondered whether he might have been wiser to wait for another day to undertake that labour. He was almost too weary to keep from falling asleep where he sat, head bowed over his lap. Only the persistent throbbing from his flank kept him from sliding away entirely. It seemed that the crutches did not only work his arms, but all the muscles of his chest and side. The black bruises and the outraged organs beneath were protesting with a low throbbing misery. But he was clean at last, truly and utterly clean, and as Helegond helped him to ease onto his left side and his smooth cheek brushed the pillowslip he knew that he could have made no other choice. Almost he wished to weep in relief at the feel of clean cloth upon clean skin and the gentle weight of the fragrant blankets across his shoulder. Instead he let his mind slip away.

He slept long and deep, untroubled for once by dreams of Gollum. Indeed he did not seem to dream at all until there came a clatter of a door in the darkness and the sound of lithe feet scurrying on stone. There were bootfalls also, heavy and firm and strangely determined. Out of the gloom, muffled but indignant, came a protesting Elven voice.

'You cannot go in there. His Majesty's guest abides within. I have my orders from the healers: he is not to be disturbed. He is resting! Lord Aragorn is resting!'

And another voice, brisk and irate and utterly intractable: 'Nonsense. Lord Aragorn will wish to see me at once, and more to the point I wish to see him. Now stand aside and let me past, or I shall surely roast you!'

Then with a bang the chamber door flew open and Aragorn realized that he was not dreaming at all.

Note: When I finished the previous chapter, I was of two minds as to the structuring of this one. The decision was impossible to make at the time, but it clarified itself of its own accord yesterday. Some may find this all redundant, but I maintain that it is not. One reason is of course the long lag between updates, which may make it useful for some readers. More importantly, I think it is fascinating and valuable to see what is included and what is omitted in this, the most complete telling of the tale that Aragorn ever offers – except perhaps once. Enjoy!

Chapter LIX: The Wizard and the Weakling

His back was to the door. His back was to the door and someone had just burst through it in purpose and wrath. His back was to the door!

Instinct and inbred reflexes awoke before any more analytical faculties, and Aragorn knew only that he must turn, must rise, must defend himself. To be taken unawares in sleep was a dread doubtless known to all hunted men, and Aragorn never let his guard lapse entirely in the wild. But here he had slept deep, deep and careless, and now something was upon him.

A sharp twist of his hips sent him rolling from side to back, and he drove his right elbow into the mattress to keep from landing agonizingly on his healing wounds. But of course he was unaccustomed to lying on such a surface and he miscalculated. The force of the landing was less than it might have been, but the bright pain blinded his bleary eyes and robbed his arms of their strength. His cracked lips parted in a voiceless gasp of misery and he sank down deeper into the bed, only increasing the pressure on the claw-marks. A deeper, more nauseating pain shimmered up from his kidneys through his viscera.

There was a rustle of woolen cloth and a low tock of wood on flagstone before the door swung closed again. Then a brisk voice, affronted and half-teasing, rang out.

'I have ridden with all haste from the South afeared for the life and limbs of the Hope of the Dúnedain, and what do I find? The mighty right arm of the North himself, lying like a slugabed in the midst of the afternoon!'

Aragorn was still trying to rally his wits while his mind kept insisting that he must rise. 'Oh,' he managed breathily. Then in a long exhaling sigh made ragged with hoarseness; 'Gandalf.'

'O, Gandalf indeed,' the wizard snorted. 'Do you have any idea what you have put me through these last days, you troublesome Ranger? When last I saw you it was with your feet set for Mordor, and then—'

As this tongue-lashing commenced, Aragorn had reclaimed enough of his reason to convince the more elemental parts of his mind that it was unnecessary to mount a defence, at least in body. When he let the quaking tension ebb from his arms and shoulders he found himself better able to focus on forming words – though still they came slowly.

'The missive from Lothlórien… reached you, then,' he said softly.

'Ai, it reached me!' Gandalf thrust his staff into the crux of the mantelpiece, flung his garments out around him, and sat with a huff, planting two mud-caked boots on the low stool. He wafted a hand distractedly. ' "Lord Aragorn has come out of Dagorlad, bearing with him the creature you sought. A wretched thing it is, and spiteful. Sly and murderous he called it, and he did not tarry—" Will you sit up, Man, and greet me properly? It is like talking to one of the effigies in Rath Dínen.'

Aragorn tightened his jaw and mustered his strength. With his left heel for leverage, he got up on his elbows and braced his unscathed left shoulder blade against the wood of the headboard. All this demanded an exertion of dour determination and came not without pain, but it was worth both for the small dignity of being able to look his friend levelly in the eye.

Gandalf was disheveled and trailworn, his warm garb rumpled with long wear and his hat limp and misshapen on his head. The hems of his robes were wet and begrimed to the knee, and splattered liberally with mud well above the belt. There was mud in his beard, and even fine flecks of it in his bushy brows. The wise lines of his face were carven more deeply than usual, and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes.

'Greetings, Gandalf the Grey,' Aragorn said with tired good humour. 'My lodgings are simple, but the fire burns bright. I have none of the Elf-King's fine wine to offer, but there is water fresh from a deepling spring.'

Gandalf grunted, eyes still fixed almost unseeing on the middle space between them. It was evident that he too had had a long road. 'So you have found him at last, O stubbornest of mortals,' he said. 'The bedeviling Gollum has been secured.'

'He has.' The words caught in his throat, snaring on dim unbelief rather than coarsened vocal cords. Aragorn wet his roughened lips and tried to smile. His pains were settling into manageable cycles again, and his breathing eased. 'I can say no more than that, I fear. There is little love between us, and all my charms could not avail me in extracting useful knowledge from him.'

Now Gandalf did lift his eyes, breaking the heavy crust of his own weariness. 'It may be that I have useful knowledge enough for both of us,' he said. 'My own hunt has proved fruitful, and – hammer and tongs, boy, what have you done?'

With the Dwarvish oath, his boots struck the floor with thunderous force. He launched forward in the chair, gripping the arms. Glamdring's scabbard, already wedged awkwardly against the wizard's leg in his sudden descent, squealed shrilling against the floor as it snagged. Gandalf's keen eyes were pinions now, pricking over Aragorn's face and shoulders, down to t he ungainly bulge of his bandaged ankle, and back again.

'What have you done?' Gandalf said again, but now his voice was muted and hoarse with horror. Aragorn felt a heat of shame creeping up behind his ears, though he doubted he had the blood to flush. What a sight he must make, even now, to so consternate the world-wise wizard.

'I brought my captive North as best I could with the resources to hand,' he said quietly and with wary rigidity. He did not want Gandalf to make much of this, and now that seemed unavoidable.

'From Dagorlad to Lórien and north,' Gandalf muttered, tightening his grip on the chair but mercifully casting his eyes away in thought. 'Bypassing Dol Guldur, no doubt.'

'Even so,' said Aragorn. 'I assume you came by a more direct route.'

'Aye,' said Gandalf. 'It seemed only prudent to come with all speed, though the way cost me three days backtracking to Osgiliath. Even in these days it seems a wizard on an Elven steed is not a tempting target.'

Aragorn nodded thinly, his unasked question met. Gandalf had overtaken him so swiftly, despite his long lead, because he had gone mounted and not on frozen feet and broken boots. 'I am glad the Galadhrim found you ere you turned too far westward.'

Gandalf's lips twitched tortuously beneath his beard. 'I very nearly did not,' he said softly. 'I should have gone East to venture that which I have never yet dared. But the news I had to bear was too grave to be waylaid for any bond, even one so dear. Even that might not have stopped me, save that the last word I had of you put you on a northward road, however ill-equipped. I elected to have faith in your capacity for survival.'

Aragorn frowned. 'How is this?' he asked. 'You had word of me ere the news came from Lórien?'

He twisted, trying to reach behind to prop up a pillow for his aching back, but this sent a spasm from tale to nape and made him stiffen involuntarily. He could feel an insidious nether burning as his battered organs tensed with his spine.

'Let me do that,' Gandalf said brusquely, getting to his feet and stumping the short distance to the bedside. 'Can you lean forward a moment? Grab hold of my arm.'

Aragorn did the former, but the latter he deemed unnecessary. He curled over his blanketed lap, breathing into the sting of stretching scabs where the lynx had torn him. Gandalf sent him a glare that he could feel even with his damp and blessedly clean tresses falling to obscure his sight. Then the wizened hands, as always both astonishingly strong and gentle, arranged the cushions behind him.

'There,' said Gandalf, not quite tenderly. He cupped Aragorn's off shoulder, mercifully the left, and eased him back against the soft slope. Aragorn could not help but close his eyes, riding another wave of sharp pain from his wounds at the same time the rest of his back was relieved of the weary burden of bearing him upright. He felt the brush of a calloused fingertip like a whisper across his cheek, drawing back the dark, overgrown curtain of hair. The hand hovered a moment too long over his hollow cheek, and then dropped down to straighten the coverlet. Only then did he open his eyes to find Gandalf looking gravely into them.

'Never mind my tale,' he said. He unclasped his cloak and flung it back onto the chair he had vacated. Then he brushed the worst of the mud from his flank and backside and sat down on the edge of the bed, hip to hip with the Ranger. Here they sat, Aragorn thought: the wizard and the weakling. And that sounded so much like a playful Hobbit song that he almost smiled again.

Perhaps it did not show, for Gandalf's grave expression did not alter in the least. He looked at his hand, brushed it on the breast of his robe, and curled it over Aragorn's. The healing chilblains rasped rough against his palm, and the Ranger knew that his friend could not help but feel the unnatural thinness of his long fingers. He wanted to look away, but he did not give in. He had wrought these changes on his body, whatever the cause, and he would not shy from that.

'Tell me of your road,' said Gandalf. Though soft, his voice was solemn and blessedly free of any hint of dismay. 'I left you in Harondor, and then?'

Aragorn drew in a deep and cleansing breath. His friend smelled of sweat and mud and good horseflesh, pine smoke and the damp undergrowth of Mirkwood. There was something in this mongrel scent that grounded him, as if it proved that Gandalf was really here with him, and the long hard road left behind.

'I passed into the Ephel Dûath,' he said levelly. 'There I came upon a sly orc who had rumours of our quarry. With his information, I passed into a network of caverns and tunnels – not all of natural make. I emerged in Torech Ungol.'

Gandalf sucked in a hissing breath. 'That is an evil name,' he said.

'It is an evil place,' Aragorn concurred. 'There is a…'

His voice trailed off, failing him as a soul-deep shudder wracked his body. In the haste and desperation of his northward journey he had given little thought to the vast spider he had seen and so narrowly escaped. He shook his head.

'I did not pass into Mordor,' he breathed, and somehow those words gave him the strength to continue with his tale. With all he had seen and suffered, at least it had not come to that again. 'I descended the stairs to Morgul Vale.'

There was no need to speak of what had passed there. That was a tale for a firelit night in the Last Homely House, not for a sickroom in this shadowed realm so far from home. He went on, still fixed on Gandalf's eyes.

"I tarried a while in Ithilien, wending slowly north as I recovered my vigour and gathered such food as I could find. Even so far south, January is not kind.'

He paused, hoping that the use of the Hobbit-month might bring a spark of fondness to Gandalf's eyes. His love of the little folk was legendary, and that legend far from foundless. Aragorn's own dear friend among that people had carried him through many dark times especially on this wretched journey. But Gandalf was only watching him, solemn and silent and inexorably demanding that he go on.

'I came at length before the Black Gate, and what I have to tell of it will doubtless chill your blood as it has chilled mine. The Enemy is amassing the waste of great industry there: mountains of slag that rival the ancient hills, and column upon column of wretched slaves bearing loads to add to it. The cogs of war are turning in Mordor, and the waste of Gorgoroth is spilling forth. Soon it will not be that land's only export.'

Gandalf nodded. 'I heard something of this in Gondor,' he said. 'Their watchers and scouts are not unaware of the stirring giant on their border, and the Steward's own countermeasures have begun – in as much as they can be begun in these waning days.'

'Of course,' Aragorn whispered. He thought with cold anxiety of Gondor: of her smithies and armouries struggling to produce, of her armies trying to awaken from the static tension of an uncertain border towards the manic vigilance of war, of young boys brought from cot and farm and apprenticehood and told they must be ready. Even the might of the nation he had known, under a Steward recruiting swords and minds even from far abroad, would have struggled to mount a sufficient defence against the monstrosity he had seen. And then there had been Thorongil to lead them, and valiant Adrahil in armour that glinted like gold, and Denethor their Captain-General and a hale man in the prime of life. What now? Were the young noblemen of Gondor the equal of those that were gone or aged now into advisors and recallers of the past? And Denethor, now come into his own as he had so lusted to do: was he the Steward Gondor needed to guide her into war?

'Yes, of course,' Gandalf echoed. 'You know well Gondor's border defences and the practices of her eyes in Ithilien. Few of the policies and methods taught to them have changed these many years.'

There was a searching note in his voice that Aragorn did not like, but neither did he understand it. What was clear was that he had to continue with his tale: otherwise he might lose the will to finish it.

'I despaired at last,' he said determinedly, keeping his gaze steady although his voice creaked. 'The trail had too long been cold, and the way treacherous. I was without resource or hope of resupply, and even then my stamina was flagging. I had thought perhaps to seek entry to Mordor after all, but I could not. Accepting my defeat and my disgrace, I turned to the North.'

Gandalf's eyes darkened and he opened his mouth sharply, but no words emerged. Closing it again he shook his head, and motioned with his unoccupied left hand that Aragorn should continue.

'I was skirting the Dead Marshes,' he said; 'and unlooked-for I came upon that which I had sought with such assiduous eyes all these long years: a small footprint in the mud – more hobbit-like than orc, with long toes and narrow heel. The marks were fresh: scant hours old. I followed them, and I had him, squatting on the edge of a foul pool. I took him, but it was no easy task. He gored me with his teeth, and that hurt has festered slowly all the long leagues that came after. '

Gandalf had hold of his left hand, which otherwise might have gone unwittingly to the bandage on his right arm, just visible beyond the cuff of his garment. As it was, Aragorn had to content the sudden intractable itch with a flexing of his right fingers and a rolling of the wrist. Gandalf's eyes travelled to it instinctively, horrified despite the carefully schooled expression the rest of his face still wore. The reprieve from his piercing stare was a welcome one, and Aragorn used it to press on.

'Our passing of the Emyn Muil was swift and strange. I learned very quickly that he had to be kept gagged at all times, and bound when we chanced to halt. I did not dare to sleep save at direst need – that held true all the long way north. We passed over Anduin as soon as I could contrive it—'

'How?' asked Gandalf sharply, and Aragorn was momentarily bewildered by the ferocity of the question. 'How did you cross over Anduin?' the wizard said.

'I bound my captive to a piece of driftwood and swam,' Aragorn said impassively, grey eyes daring the Istar to challenge him on this. 'I have done it ere this.'

Again Gandalf seemed to wish to speak, but refrained. Again he motioned that the speaker should go on.

'We crossed Eastemnet, where we were waylaid and nearly undone by a valiant young champion of the Riddermark named Osbehrt.' He half-hoped that Gandalf would question him on this, for it was a bright point in a very dreary tale, but the wizard was silent. 'And we trailed the skirts of Fangorn.'

Aragorn fell silent at this. Now he could feel, as if still beneath those ancient boughs, the weight and presence of the trees. It seemed he could feel their eyes upon him, boring through to his heart and all his most secret thoughts, and fears, and desires both noble and shameful. He wanted to ask Gandalf of this, to query if he had ever wandered that way and what he had made of the ageless forest if he had, but it seemed almost profane to do so. To ask of this being who for all his humble form was privy to powers and secrets more vast than the minds of Men could grasp the meaning of this strange sentience almost as venerable and mystical as his own… that was an act of hubris and arrogance that Aragorn could not commit.

Gandalf gripped his hand more tightly for a moment, and then patted it in a prosaically consoling manner that quite erased Aragorn's flight of philosophy from his mind. 'Just a moment, if you will,' he said. 'From the sound of it, Strider the silver-tongued needs to wet his whistle, and I am brewing a thirst myself. I came marching through Thranduil's halls and passages with the haste of a forgetful pageboy.'

He rose and went to the table, pouring clear, clean water from the ewer into the waiting goblets. He offered one to Aragorn and quaffed of the other himself. The Man took his carefully, exerting all his will to keep his hand from shaking. He was far improved from his condition on the first night in this subterranean palace, but he was still weak and unwell, and the effort of reliving this road, however cursorily, was exhausting to his very spirit. He took a careful sip of the water, still cool and sweet despite standing so long. There was doubtless some Elven blessing wrought into the vessel that had held it. He drank somewhat more deeply, and felt his throat soothed out of a burning tautness he had scarcely felt. He lowered the goblet to let its base rest on his lap, but Gandalf took it instead and set it with his own on the edge of the table before sitting again on the edge of the bed.

This time he did not take Aragorn's hand, and that was encouraging. He no longer feared that the Man might be so fragile that he would slip away without an anchoring hold upon him. Aragorn crossed his arms over his chest, still tender on the right side with the sequelae of his hard fall, and resumed his tale.

'I came at length to the very eaves of Lothlórien,' he said. 'There was no question of trespassing further, for I had no time to spare and Gollum would not have been welcome in that place of peace. I expect you have had a full accounting of my brief sojourn from the Galadhrim.'

'Not a full accounting,' Gandalf muttered. His eyes were searching deeply again, but he spoke more clearly as he said; 'They told me you came to them in rags, leading a wretched thing almost beyond description. They described you as wayworn and weary, and one admitted – to her comrade's chagrin, I think – that they held you as an intruder of suspect motives.'

'They did, but there can be no blame for that,' said Aragorn. 'The misunderstanding was put right, and they clothed me and left me well-provisioned. I would have come to journey's end in far better state than I did, if not for Gollum's treachery. He scuttled us on the ice over Gladden. My pack was lost, the wretch nearly escaped, and it was a near thing to keep from freezing. The winter's last chill was a desperate one this year.'

Gandalf's eyes were clouded with grim thoughts that likely ran entirely too close to the course of truth. This time Aragorn did take his gaze away towards thin hands that had moved somehow to his lap and folded together there. He tightened their hold and saw white crescents rise in the ruddy, frostnipped flesh. At Gladden's mouth had Isildur drowned, foundering in Anduin with orc-arrows piercing his flesh. It would have been a fine end to the bloodline if his last scion had frozen on the blighted river's bank.

'Through the ice?' said Gandalf. 'And into the river.'

'Yes,' Aragorn said, too weary to dissemble.

There was a dissolute huff of air from Gandalf, and Aragorn knew his nostrils had flared with it. He could not bring himself to meet the wizard's eyes again. 'We crossed Anduin by the ferry,' he recited flatly; 'and I passed two days with the Beornings. Grimbeorn graced me with sanctuary, and the lady Eira and her granddaughter saw to my care. Without their goodness and generosity, this last road may well have proved beyond my strength. As it was I fell afoul of a spider, much thanks to Gollum's machinations. And we were beset by a lynx and her mate, though I do not think my prisoner was willfully to blame for that. The horns of the Greenwood came none too soon.'

He wanted to contrive a wry grin to show that he was not disheartened by his brushes with his own mortality or his persistent stupidity in underestimating his captive, but the corners of his mouth seemed weighted with lead. He could not even try to bring a glint of amusement into his eyes.

'Now I am here,' he said at last, heavily. 'And Gollum is ensconced in the very cell that once held the King Under the Mountain ere he reclaimed his crown. What use you can make of him I do not know. I have wrung nothing from him but bitter imprecations, strangling claws and treachery. I lack the heart to interrogate him, and the grace to refrain from atrocities if I tried.'

'Doubt your heart's fortitude if you must, far as it has been pushed,' said Gandalf softly; 'but never its grace. You would not stoop to such methods, however pressed.'

Aragorn's eyes flew to his friend's face, and he knew they were very cold: frozen by denial of this belief and dread of the truth he feared and knowledge of what had passed between him and his captive in the wastes of Wilderland. He had tried to uphold the precepts of nobility even in the face of greatest duress, and in part he had succeeded. But what of those times when his restraint had broken? What of those times when he had indeed raised a hand against a bound and defenceless prisoner? What of that?

Gandalf sighed and chafed his beard with one palm. He was shaking his head almost hypnotically. 'And that is your tale?' he said. 'Have you told me all, Aragorn son of Arathorn, or are you holding back to spare an old man's conscience?'

'What have you to put on your conscience?' asked Aragorn. 'You had no part in this.'

A bitter chuckle came from the wizard's lips. 'I had every part in this,' he said. 'It was I who brought the problem to you. It was I who gave credence to your suggestion that the creature must be found. It was I who whisked you away from your folk and your labours time and again to take up the hunt. Though you have been good enough to forget it, it was I who kept you from your mother's deathbed on that selfsame errand.'

Again Aragorn's gaze shifted sharply, but this time with reproof for his friend. 'I have said there can be no blame for that,' he declared. 'I should not have been with her, wherever I was at the last.'

'No,' Gandalf said, such gentleness in his tone that Aragorn felt his courage wavering. He had held himself fast through the pained telling of his tale, but this would surely break him. 'Had you been at Sarn Ford or Amon Hen, or even in Cardolan or the Trollshaws, you might have been found and fetched in time. But you were far away across the Hithaeglir, toiling in friendship. That has weighed heavily upon me these last years, forgiven or no.'

'It is forgiven,' Aragorn pledged. Now it was he who bridged the gulf between them and took Gandalf's hand. 'It has always been forgiven, if there was ever anything to forgive.'

'And who am I to scorn a royal pardon?' Gandalf asked sardonically. He pulled his hand away and stared at it. 'But what forgiveness is there for one who abandons all hope and despairs of his quest, and leaves his friend to go alone into darkness? You have not told me all, Dúnadan, and it is what you have kept back that I must answer for. What did you find in the passes above the Black Land?'

'Foul air and fouler thoughts,' said Aragorn evenly. 'Perils best left forgotten.'

'Aye?' lilted Gandalf, cocking his head in doubt. 'And in Imlad Morgul? And before the Black Gate?'

'Poisoned blossoms and a sight to taint the heart and try the courage,' Aragorn answered. For a moment he could feel the chill nothingness of the Black Breath clawing at his lungs and his soul, as he filled his mind with the earnest riddle of Bilbo Baggins's creation.

'And a passel of orcs to bind you?' Gandalf sang back in the same metre.

Aragorn's sore lips parted fractionally, but he was too practiced in the arts of dissimulation and equivocation to give more than that even now. 'Orcs abound in the Enemy's lands,' he said. 'They are crawling over the slag hills from out of Udûn: who else will keep the slaves to their work?'

There was bitterness in his voice instead of nonchalance, but he could not mask that. The memories of his time in Mordor had been blunted by the decades, but not enough to suppress the tide of outrage and revulsion that rose at the thought of those wretched people, some born out of generations of bondage, cringing beneath the Eye behind the bastion of the Ephel Dûath. They were forgotten by their kindred, now distanced by ever-increasing degrees stretching even unto centuries. They were forgotten by their homelands. They were forgotten, perhaps, by the Sun herself – and remembered only by a lone wanderer who walked free and yet was bound by the same Shadow, drawn on towards an end that likely could not, even in its most favoured iteration, result in their liberty.

'Son of Elrond, do not lie to me," Gandalf said, and the dour note in his voice chilled Aragorn and brought him up short, aided greatly by this most private of his many epithets. He read the warning in the eyes of the Istar, so nearly unmasked in their fierceness now. The underfed freshets of his veins ran with ice.

'I do not lie," he said, and that was true. But he had dissembled, and tried to change the course of the questioning. He would not admit to that fault, but he could not persist with it. 'How did you learn of the orcs?' he asked instead.

'I was many weeks in Minas Tirith, plumbing the depths of ancient archives left untouched perhaps since the dawn of the Age,' said Gandalf, the tension ebbing a little from his body as he spoke. 'I fear I was a great vexation to my host, who could not turn me away and did not try to make me welcome. Yet it was his obligation to house me in the Citadel, and to give me my board. I did not take it with him but once,' he added with a ghostly little twinkle of amusement in his eyes. 'That was on the night of my arrival, and I fear it was a trial enough for both of us.'

'I imagine it was,' Aragorn said, forgetting his discomfiture and the crawling feeling of impeding mortification for a moment in the thought of Denethor forced by old custom to welcome one he disliked to his very core but could not – did not dare to – scorn. Denethor had never taken gracefully to an awkward corner. 'I hope you did not force a permanent estrangement.'

'No,' said Gandalf. 'But I did take to having my meals at times that were, I fear, inconvenient for the servants but at a healthful remove from their master's habits. The day-meal, in particular, I would take late at night when my labours grew too wearisome. So it was that I sat one night in the Steward's great hall by the light of one tall candle, partaking of a fine repast graciously held over for me by the kitchens. Minas Tirith is a city of plenty, and no garrison of war: more was laid out than one scholar could possibly consume. But the company of the meal itself was insufficient after so many days alone among the dusty tomes, and when a form appeared in the far doorway, I called to it to join me. You remember the far doorway of the great hall, no doubt.'

Now Aragorn did smile, unaccustomed though his mouth still was to the notion. Indeed he did remember it well. How often he had slipped unobtrusively through it, coming late to board as his duties allowed, or hurrying up to it only to slow himself to a sedate walk as he entered into some feast from which he could not be excused, though he had ridden hard all day to return from labours on the frontiers of Ithilien! How frequently he had taken his leave through that same carven arch, when the night's festivities drew near their close. Once he had been drawn through it at a trot by a flustered maiden, wrath high and scarlet in her cheeks as she held her rage until she and her confidante were out of earshot of the assembled company.

Yes, he remembered the far doorway of the hall where once the sons of Elendil had danced with their wives. It faced the high table where in his time Ecthelion had presided as lord and a young captain out of the far countries had been honoured more than once. To have a square view of that doorway Gandalf would have been sitting, ostensibly impudently but in truth with perfect right, in the Steward's chair.

'He came to me, this shadow, and who should he prove to be when he stepped into the ring of light but the Steward's second son, weather-stained and muddy in his cloak of mottled green,' Gandalf was saying now. 'He has been made Captain of the Rangers of Ithilien, you see: a place known to be favoured by his grandfather, but somewhat less honoured under the present Steward. It is a great legacy for a young man to take on, but I believe he has done well beneath it.'

'Denethor's second son,' Aragorn said thoughtfully. He had forgotten his weariness now, and almost forgotten the awkward question that had presaged this tale. His mind was walking in hallowed memory even while he listened to Gandalf. 'I had been gone some years before he was born, I think.'

'Aye: his small feet were never sullied by being dandled in the lap of his father's rival,' Gandalf said sardonically, but not without good humour. He too was enjoying this telling, and the light of remembrance it had ignited in eyes that had gone dull and blank as their own tale progressed. Aragorn did not allow himself to think of this, but in his heart he knew it all. 'And yet somehow he has grown up on the fringes of his father's good grace. Lord Boromir was ever the great jewel in Denethor's coffer, and beside him young Faramir is but a bronze brooch: beautifully wrought, perhaps, but little admired.'

There was something strange in these words, too: an undertone beneath one word that Aragorn could not quite pin down. In any case he was occupied with a pang of pity for the Steward's younger son. He knew what it was to be out of Denethor's favour, and it was not a scorn to be borne by the faint of heart. Thorongil had liked well the Lady Finduilas, and had read the shadows in her heart and the Sea-longing in her patient eyes. He would have wished better on her child.

'I am sorry for that,' he said now. 'I have never known a father's displeasure, but I have seen it to be a heavy burden.'

'Say disinterest,' Gandalf suggested. Then he frowned pensively and amended; 'Sometimes displeasure, I think. But only sometimes. For the most part I think the youth craves merely a quiet word of praise for all his earnest and so often fruitful labours. But his craving goes for the most part unsatisfied, and so the secret places in his heart have been closed off like the shell of a tortoise, guarding what is within. Remember that as I go on.

'So I called to him, and he came to me gladly. "Mithrandir!" he said, with the same earnest warmth I had received from his brother. "Well met! I did not hear you had come to the city. Have you also just arrived?"

'I told him no: that I had been here many days upon a matter of scholarly interest. "But I see you have but lately returned, and must be hungry," I said to him. And I bade him sit and eat with me. This he did, "For my father will be abed at this hour, and though I should go first to my Captain-General and make my report I think Boromir will forgive me a small indulgence. My belly is empty and my mind is full. I would welcome your counsel as well as your company."'

Aragorn inclined his head in solidarity with this sentiment. When he had a mind Gandalf could make uniquely excellent company, and he never offered anything but the wisest of counsel. Though he had himself long grown out of the temptation to partake of a meal before delivering his tidings, he remembered the keen pangs of a young stomach only too well: fuelling a body still growing into manhood's hardiness and not yet well-trained enough to bear privation patiently. He thought that he liked this son of Denethor, and he could plainly see that Gandalf held him in some affection.

' "Company first!" I said, and motioned again for him to sit. As he came around the table I could see that he was weary, and I guessed that he had not made camp on his homeward road. I wondered what cares might drive a man so when there was no imminent need, but I held my tongue on that score and gave him my old news out of Rohan in exchange for his old news of Minas Tirith. You will be interested to know that Minardil has had a great-grandchild.'

'Indeed!' Aragorn tried to sound cheered by this news, but it made his heart ache for days that had been. Minardil had been his first commander when he came to Gondor, and later his most trusted lieutenant. In those days he had been courting, then newly married. A great-grandchild spoke of an early union in one generation or the other, but not early enough to make Aragorn feel anything but ancient. Ancient, and childless, and still dispossessed with the Shadow undefeated. It was not a happy thought.

'Hmm.' Gandalf nodded pensively. 'There were other things, too, and I shall tell you all that in time, but soon enough we ran short of pleasantries and fell to graver matters as we started on a very nice compote.'

A wild, amused thought flitted through Aragorn's mind. If Gandalf had had any clear sense of the desperate privations of the Ranger's road, he might have omitted talk of food from his own tale. Perhaps his dignity was unscathed after all.

'"I have a tale to tell you, Mithrandir, and I beg of you to hear it," said Faramir, and the joy at our meeting was gone from his face. He had the look of a man troubled to the very depths of his heart, and unsure of any surcease. "Tell me," I bade him. "For a burden shared is a burden lightened, and my shoulders are broad."' At this he flicked Aragorn an arch look that was neither unmissed nor worthy of comment in the moment. 'Then he sighed and he said; "On patrol in northern Ithilien, one of my scouts came upon an encampment of orcs. They had sheltered for the day in a cave in near the foot of the mountains, near a certain tree that has always had the look more of a gallows than a thing of nature…"'

Aragorn had ceased to guard his expression somewhere around his first thoughts of his beloved liege-lord, and now Gandalf could read him clearly. The wizard's lip curled wryly as he took in the Ranger's expression.

'I see the story is known to you,' he said. 'If indeed I had any doubt before. Would you care to continue?'

'To what end, if it is known to both of us?' Aragorn asked. He was cornered now, but he could not be angry and he found that he was not ashamed after all. He had been taken in ignominy, it was true, but he had escaped with his dignity, his boots and his knife. And in an awkward corner, he had always been his rival's better. 'I confess I am curious to see how it played upon the other side of the curtain.'

Gandalf smiled, and the smile was a little wider than amusement alone should have made it. Aragorn saw that it was spread with relief. 'I thought you might,' the wizard said. 'Faramir told me how his man had signaled for the others, and for the aid of a healer for a wounded captive. Yet when the Rangers assembled and descended on the camp, the orcs were there and the Man, bound and bloodied though he had been, was gone. There was no question of withdrawing, for the servants of the Enemy are not welcome even on the far marches of Ithilien. There was a battle, swift and fierce, and they believed all the orcs were slain. But when they gathered to tend to their comrades' wounds – thankfully minor – a stringy little goblin rose up from among the dead and fled into the crevices and stony heights of the mountain behind. Any attempt at pursuit was senseless, and the wretch escaped, letting fall a trinket as he ran.'

'Third Voice!' Aragorn hissed. His astonishment was almost past expressing, and eclipsed any minor details of the account. The wily little thing had escaped the slaying of his comrades in the Ephel Dûath. He had survived his fall from the cliff face to the scree. He had kept his head down in a band of hostile Uruks, invoked the Nazgûl to keep his prisoner from being lynched or beaten to death, and then escaped from Ithilien's doughty Rangers. It was beyond belief, and despite himself he could not help but feel a spark of admiration for Third Voice and his cunning.

'What was that?' Gandalf asked sharply, raising an eyebrow.

'The little orc,' Aragorn said. 'He was sworn to Minas Morgul. It was he who insisted I should be brought there for questioning nearer stronghold of the Morannon. He prevented… never mind. He escaped. It is… remarkable.'

'It is unprecedented, in Faramir's opinion,' said Gandalf dryly. 'But he and his men – particularly the one who had actually seen the prisoner – were more interested in the orcs' erstwhile captive. The injured were sent back to their haven in the forest, for none were too far gone to walk or to defend themselves if the need arose, and the others made chase. Their quarry was swift and cunning, and they tracked him until sundown. They half expected to find the trail broken when they took it up at dawn, but somehow it was not. The Man, so it seemed, lacked the wit to double back or take steps to otherwise confound them.'

There was a gentle teasing lilt to this, and Aragorn offered a tired, chagrined shrug of his good shoulder. 'Perhaps he was not at his best at the time,' he said.

'Perhaps. They resumed the trail, and the most far-seeing of the company caught sight of him once: an indistinct brown lump against a brown land, and moving with great speed. They comforted their consciences then with the knowledge that he could not possibly have been gravely hurt by the orcs, and that was a particular consolation to the one who had found him. Anborn, so Faramir tells it, is a tender-hearted youth and rather too unhardened for his duties. "But to callous a tender heart is perhaps a worse wrong than to let a soldier soften a little," he said to me. "The others keep him well in line and he is valiant in a scrape."'

Gandalf paused and looked thoughtfully at Aragorn. What was passing through his mind the Man dared not guess, but it had the look of far-wandering in distant memory. Then the keen eyes focused again and he went on. 'Night was falling when they came, not to the end of their trail but to the very edge of the Dead Marshes. Their chase had borne them out of Ithilien into debatable lands, and to the very brink of a place of such ancient dread that it is said no man of Gondor has trod it in two thousand years. Into that evil swamp the footprints led: prints of old boots without hobnails, worn but well-made; the tracks of a man taller than most who walked even in his desperate haste with a stride so even that it might have been measured. A description, by the way, that to the knowing would have been proof enough without any other.'

There was a haunting truth to that, but it needed no remark. Aragorn let himself sink back a little further against the pillows. The pressure that had been so painful on his claw-marks was now soothing, and he felt his exhaustion filtering back like fog through a silk curtain. He hoped it did not show.

'There was a debate then: whether to pursue the trespasser even into that perilous place, or whether to withdraw to safer lands and resume their duties. "I know what my father would have bade me do," said Faramir. "But a captain's duty is only second to his lord. A captain's first duty is to his men, to safeguard their lives as he can and to spend them only in direst need and for measurable gain. To press on into that place would have put them at great risk for questionable profit. Such dangers soldiers must sometimes dare, but only when the need outweighs the cost. Had I lost a man to that venture, his life would not have been spent but squandered." At his order they withdrew, and he bade them forget the stranger the scout had seen and the chase they had made.'

'It was the right choice,' said Aragorn. 'The marshes of Dagorlad are indeed deadly, and the unwitting may fall too easily to their enticements. The land before them is debatable enough, roamed by the servants of the Enemy and far from any aid. There will be work aplenty for the men who safeguard Ithilien ere long: not one life can they afford to squander on a vagabond who was clearly no friend of the Uruks. I would not have risked one of my own on such a quest, much less a handful. He was right to pursue as far as he did. One step further would have been naught but arrogance and negligence.'

Gandalf nodded. 'That much I told him straight away. But Faramir was uneasy in his mind. It was his duty, you see, to report the incident, and he knew his father would look with scorn and rage upon his choice. He could not shirk his responsibility, but his heart was sick with dread. He feared also for the Man he had failed to pursue, for he had been in the hands of cruel captors and had been seen to be ill-used. He could not have escaped as he did and brought with him much by way of provender, or any other assets to aid him in that terrible land in which he had taken refuge. "I fear I have left him to his death, lamentable wanderer though he was," he confessed to me. We had long since dispensed with the meal and turned from its leavings, but at that moment I should not have been able to eat had I been without for three days.'

Sober eyes fixed on Aragorn's, and the firm, weathered hand closed now on his arm as if to reassure the wizard that the Man before him was real and living. 'I have great faith in your hardihood, Aragorn, but I feared for you then. I see my fears were not misplaced, for you are as haggard as one left a week in the gibbet. What you have endured in the name of this hunt stretches far beyond anything I could have intended. For that, too, I am sorry.'

Aragorn's throat was tight. His friend's care was balm for a lonely soul, but the pain of witnessing his remorse was terrible. 'They bloodied my face and bruised my ribs: no more,' he said tersely. 'The Captain and his earnest young scout overestimated my incapacity.'

'That I know well,' said Gandalf; 'and once again should have done so with no further proof. But as your incapacity was overestimated then, so your capacity has been sorely tested since. My fears were not unfounded, only somewhat off the mark. And Faramir eased them almost at once, for he confessed he had left water and such scant provisions as he could spare without harm to his men.'

'So he did, and the provisions did not seem scant to me,' said Aragorn. 'That was an act of mercy that was the equal of many told of in song, and I will never forget it. But how did you counsel him?' This question brought a flutter of anxious unease to his breast. 'You could not have told him to keep the tale from his Steward.'

'Indeed I did,' said Gandalf. 'I should have done so in any case, whether I recognized the fugitive or no, for the greater evil would have been to give to Denethor such a tale to brood upon in the midnight hours. He has grown over-analytic in his age, and ruminates upon strange happenings with unhealthful fascination. I do not know what he would have made of the incident in the end, but I doubt any good could have come of it. Though it could scarcely circle 'round to touch you, it would have gone ill for his son.'

Aragorn felt a sick horror that was blurred with disbelief. 'You counselled that young man, so noble in his intentions and so sensible in his judgments, to be forsworn to his avowed lord?' he breathed.

'Nay, it did not come to that, Captain Thorongil,' Gandalf said with a tiny note of fond amusement. 'Have no fear for your successor's honour. I bade him merely follow the ancient chain of command and report not to his Steward, as a son might report to his father, but to his Captain-General, as would be expected of any other commander in the nation.'

For a moment Aragorn considered this, having to translate the titles to their current holders instead of those he had known under them. 'To Boromir,' he said, and the image in his mind was not that of a stalwart warrior of Gondor, but of a small boy in a silken gown and brocaded slippers toddling unsteadily as he clutched his mother's fingers.

'To Boromir. I told Faramir it was fitting for him to tell his Captain-General, and to let his superior decide what it was mete for the Steward to know and what was beneath his notice. Fear not!' he said, as a doubt rose to Aragorn's eyes. 'For Boromir is a conscientious lord – more conscientious, some would say, than his predecessor was in that same post. He will do his duty by his Steward and judge the matter to be too insignificant to trouble a head already burdened with many weighty problems. And he will do his duty to the mother he adored by safeguarding the brother he loves. I do not doubt it will remain their secret.'

Aragorn wanted to shake his head in wonder, both at the strange coincidence that had brought word of this to Gandalf and at the wizard's deft handling of a sensitive matter, but he was too weary to spare the strength. Instead he closed his eyes slowly and held them thus. 'You are cunning, Gandalf the Grey,' he said. 'Small wonder Lord Denethor is loth to let you trespass too far into his household.'

Then his eyes shot open in sudden remembrance of the task that had borne Gandalf to Minas Tirith in the first place.

'Did you find it?' he demanded, his breath coming short and quick from his wet lungs. 'Did you find what you sought?'

'I found it,' Gandalf assured him; 'but we will not speak of that now. I have tried you beyond your endurance, I think. Now you must rest, and I must impose myself upon another lord of the Free Peoples for hospitality he has not precisely offered.'

Aragorn opened his mouth to protest, but his tongue was too tired to form the words. Arguing with Gandalf required stamina at the best of times. Now, it was nigh on impossible. He inclined his head slightly in clear assent.

'When you go to see Gollum—' he began.

'I shall return to you ere I trouble with him,' said Gandalf. 'I do not think you have told me the half of your story, Dúnadan, and while the same is true of mine, that one consists almost solely of a dry account of the thousands of accountancy scrolls, miscopies of old poetry, and marriage ledgers I have sorted through. Yours, I think, will make far more illuminating telling, and you may recall important details you neglected to share this time. Sit up for a moment now: take hold of my arm.'

This time Aragorn obeyed, not trusting the muscles of his abdomen to draw him forward on their own, nor the sinews of his back to keep him upright once he got there. He clung to Gandalf's arm, brow braced against his shoulder, while the wizard rearranged the pillows one-handed so that Aragorn could be eased down onto them.

'One more thing before I go,' Gandalf said quietly, standing by the bed and bowed over him with Aragorn's left hand clasped in his right. Aragorn looked up at his friend's weathered face, ancient and yet ageless and writ with wisdom and kindness in equal measure. 'Faramir son of Finduilas laid one last charge upon me ere he went to his brother that night. "You have travelled far and wide, Mithrandir," he said. "If in all your journeys you should chance to stumble upon the one to whom this thing belongs, I beg you to give it to him with my blessing." Then he laid in my hand the trinket that the small goblin had let fall in his haste. I told him I did not know when I would find such a person, or where, and perhaps you will agree that I did not quite deceive him. Take it, Aragorn, and keep it. I know you would not have let it go save in direst need."

Then his left hand emerged from beneath his robe and moved palm to palm with Aragorn's right. There was something cold and hard between them, ornately contoured and yet smooth to the touch. Aragorn raised his hand and tucked his chin, but even before he saw it he knew what he held. He had carried it with him through all the long years and all the weary journeys save this last. He had taken his name from it once, and his legacy from it always. There in his ravaged palm sat the rayed silver star of the Dúnedain.

He spoke, though his eloquence failed him. 'Thank you,' he said simply. 'I should have been sorry to lose it.'

Gandalf chuckled, his eyes very soft. 'Adroit as ever, Dúnadan,' he said. He drew up the bedclothes with his left hand, but kept his right closed over Aragorn's as he bent low again. 'Now sleep. You have not spoken of your suffering, but it is writ across your body in signs even an old man can read. You have starved yourself in fetching the truth for me, and that worries me more than your other hurts, for you have borne worse than those and thrived. But now, diminished as you are? I cannot say.' His voice dropped almost to a whisper, mournful and impossibly tender. 'What you have endured, my poor foolish boy!'

Aragorn was already half asleep, his battered body having its own ideas about the matter and pursuing them without consulting his will. But he mustered himself enough to shake his head against the cushions. 'I do not deem my deeds foolish, though they were desperate,' he mumbled thickly. 'And I am no longer a boy.'

'Indeed you are not,' Gandalf said gravely. 'And no clearer sign of your manhood have I ever seen than this last great act of courage. Sleep, Aragorn, and may you be blessed with the fairest dreams Estë has to offer.'

Then bowing low he kissed Aragorn's brow, gripping his hand tightly again. And he was gone from the room, and the firelight dimmed before weary eyes as the Ranger slept.

Note: Isildur's epistle is taken from "The Council of Elrond", The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter LX: Words for Posterity

Aragorn awoke once in the night to find the fire banked and Lethril watching over him. She helped him up off of his back, first to sit and take some water and then to hobble as far as the corner. There was a showing of fresh blood in the pot, which displeased Aragorn far more than it did his Healer: she reassured him such a resurgence was not uncommon, and no sign at all that his kidney was any worse than before. He knew that, of course, but it still felt like a setback in a long and tiresome battle. He sat in the chair, arms crossed on his knees while she changed the dressing on his back. Those wounds were bleeding again, but modestly and with a bright scarlet blood from the shallower vessels. Then it was time to take his usual ration of milk, this time cut two parts to one with cream, and he returned to his bed. This time he was careful to lie on his side, as he should have done before. Soon enough he slept again.

When he came back to himself again, Gandalf was seated in the second chair by the fire, watching the flames dance. His face was far away and very grave, and he did not at once notice that the sleeper was roused. Aragorn moved the bedclothes with a quiet hand and watched him noiselessly awhile. His travelworn garments had been changed for robes of soft Elven cloth, still grey in colour, and his beard and hair were clean and combed. No longer did he look dogged by exhaustion and Aragorn was envious of the swiftness of his friend's recovery, but he was clearly troubled in his heart.

Aragorn considered his next motions with the careful mind of a captain executing a complex troupe maneuver. When he was sure of himself – or nearly – he slipped his left arm beneath the covers and swept them back off of his hip. The motion drew the wizard's eye, and he began to speak, but already Aragorn had his right elbow under him and was pushing up onto his hip. When he was halfway into a sitting position, he reached down to free his bandaged ankle from the sheets, and swung his leg gently floorward. This allowed him to rock the rest of the way up, and soon he was sitting on the edge of the bed with the soft robe bunched up near his knees but his back straight and his head high.

'You make a fair sight to greet the day, my friend,' he said, almost without any whisper of a pant. 'I see you have taken your rest, and I trust you have eaten.'

Gandalf had turned in the chair and nearly risen to help. Now he was sitting back again with a pleased tilt to his lips and earnest relief in his eyes. 'Aye, the hospitality of Thranduil is extravagant, if carefully guarded. He had much to tell me of your arrival that is troubling.'

'It was not an easy road,' Aragorn said, reaching for his carven crutches where Lethril had stood them by the headboard. He placed them securely to either side of his legs and rose up onto them with his twisted foot carefully held aloft. Gandalf stiffened in the chair again, ready to spring up at the least sign of trouble, but none was expected and none was experienced. Aragorn stumped the few steps to his chair and eased into it, arranging the ill-fitting robe as neatly as he could. Someone had wiped the mud from his footstool, and he rested his right leg upon it, curling his dully-aching hands over the balls of the armrests. 'Gollum is a sly wretch, and he did me evil one final time in the forest.'

Gandalf nodded, but did not pursue the matter: firm proof that Thranduil had told him all he knew of spiders and great cats. There was no need for Aragorn to say more. After a moment or two the wizard spoke.

'I intend to go to see him today. Is there aught that passed between you I might use to my advantage?'

Aragorn shook his head ruefully. 'In truth I do not know. He was put to some great torment in Mordor. It is impossible to think he would have been questioned about anything other than Bilbo's ring, but as to what he may have told his interrogator I do not know. Whatever it was, you can be sure it was all he knew or thought he did. The one who worked upon his hands… well, I have seen such marks before.'

He wished at once that he had brought the counterpane from the bed to lay across his lap, that it might now have hidden his feet. It was an absurd impulse, for the only notable scar was swathed in the bandages that bound his right ankle. Suddenly he was taken by a memory, clear as a divine vision, of that last day together in Harondor, when he had sat swathed in Gandalf's cloak, dispassionately studying his bare feet. How far each of them had come since that day in the waning of the year!

'And what you may endure, we have plainly learned, cannot easily be borne by others,' Gandalf agreed thoughtfully. At Aragorn's sharp look he smiled sadly. 'Do not fear for that secret, Dúnadan. The truth is I have suspected some such thing for many years. Had anything useful or dangerous come of it, I know you would not have held your silence as you have. Yet it is all the more to your credit that you dared venture back into those shadows. You are certain, then, that Gollum came to you out of Mordor?'

'As certain as I have ever been of that I did not witness with my own eyes,' Aragorn assured him. The memory of cold grey eyes and the hissing imperious voice was all but gone now. 'I did not succeed in learning anything of what he told them, nor did I learn any particular of his escape. I believed when I took him and I believe now that he could not have done so without aid or at the very least a deliberate lack of interference.'

'You feel that he was let go intentionally,' Gandalf clarified. 'To what end?'

'Upon some evil errand, surely, but I cannot say what,' answered Aragorn. 'I tried to coax it, or surprise it, or wring it from him, but my manner of questioning lacks a certain persuasion found only among the darkest servants of Sauron.' He curled his lip to show he meant that half in jest and added; 'The truth is that after a time I ceased to question him at all. It was enough to endure his company and prevent his escape.'

There was silence between them for a moment. Then the Ranger spoke again. 'I was certain when I struck out from the Ephel Dûath that we were being pursued, either by those seeking to recapture Gollum or by they who wished to see where he might need them. It was that same certainty that bore me over Anduin, and led to the briefness of my sojourn on the marches of Lórien. Now… I do not know. Perhaps the haste and desperation were unnecessary.'

'Hardly that, I fear,' said Gandalf. 'Do not question too closely the choices of that road, Aragorn. Guarding the creature as you surely must, how did you find the opportunity for sleep?'

'I confess I seldom did,' Aragorn said, pleased to find that a note of rueful amusement came naturally to the words. 'I snatched an hour or two where I might, securing him as best I could, but I dared not sleep long or deep save in my two havens. The sons of Grimbeorn did hard duty my two nights in their lodge, I fear.'

'You were made welcome there, I trust?' Gandalf said with a fiery glint in his eyes and a rumble of warning in his voice. 'Despite your unpleasant companion and your no-doubt less than gentlemanly state?' His tone made it clear that there would be a reckoning if he had not.

'Extravagantly welcome,' Aragorn said with all his heart. 'I was greeted more as prince than vagabond, and every comfort was laid before me. They sent me forth with gifts of food and clothing. Even the youngest of the children were eager to attend to me.'

'That I do not doubt, storyteller that you are,' said Gandalf, stroking his beard. After some moments of silent thought he said; 'So there is nothing you can tell me of Gollum's thoughts or habits that would aid me in questioning him?'

Aragorn closed his eyes in thought. He heard the wizard rise and move to the table, and then the soft song of water falling into silver vessels. A moment later the base of a goblet grazed his hand. He took it and drank, glad of the clean fluid and still searching his mind. 'He has a great fondness for fish, and does not seem very particular about seeing them dead first,' he said. 'He mutters in circles, repeating his nonsense to himself many times in sequence. He fears the Sun and the Moon – seldom could I induce him to move if either proved too bright. He sleeps little, he listens less, and you must be careful of his teeth.'

Gandalf's eyes went to the bandage on the Man's wrist, but he said nothing of it. 'That is all? In fifty days' company you have learned no more than that?'

The tone was not one of judgment but the words pricked deep as any accusation, aided, no doubt, by Aragorn's own self-recriminations on the matter. 'No more than that,' he said, and the words were bitter.

Gandalf nodded and returned his gaze to the fire, and for a long time neither spoke. When at last he deemed the wizard had had sufficient time for his own thoughts, Aragorn at last voiced the first of his own questions.

'What of your own road?' he said. 'You told me you have found what you sought.'

'Yes,' said Gandalf. 'But that can wait a little while, Dúnadan. First I wish to question your prisoner, and I would as lief see you further recovered from your ills before we talk of such things. If you wish, I can tell you much of Denethor's discomfiture.'

'The novelty of that has faded,' Aragorn said dryly. Gandalf raised his bushy brows and let out a brief, breathy laugh that made the Ranger smile. So often on his wretched road he had wished for companionship. Now in spite of the dark and weighty matters at hand and the sting of his own failures with Gollum, his heart rejoiced. 'Tell me instead of the White City and her people.'

They sat for an hour, lost in talk of that distant land that lived so near to Aragorn's heart. Gandalf had news of old acquaintances other than Minardil, and Aragorn had questions concerning everything from the state of the poorer quarters of the city to the watch-practices of the Guards of the Citadel. Gandalf had carefully gathered word of Ecthelion's two surviving daughters and details of river defences and news from the coast which must have been very difficult to obtain without drawing Denethor's undue notice and disapproval. He had not forgotten Aragorn's hunger for tidings, and while those he brought did not slake it he still presented a feast to savour.

They were interrupted when the steward, Galion, came bearing a large tray of comestibles. There was milk and coddled eggs and bare bread for Aragorn, and an assortment of dishes to tempt Gandalf. At first these smelled enticing to the Ranger, but after a few mouthfuls of his own simple meal his palate seemed jaded against them. His stomach was still laboring heavily enough to make good of the plain fare, though he ate more now than he had at any other sitting. He could not feel the strength in his blood yet, but reminded himself firmly of the need for patience. He had not deteriorated to this sorry pass over night, after all. It would take time to dig himself out again.

When they had eaten, Gandalf took his leave. That was the hardest moment Aragorn had endured in many days of gentle care. His heart cried out to the wizard not to leave him, not now when he had at last found true friendship and understanding again. But his lips smiled and his head nodded and his voice wished Gandalf grim good fortune with the captive. So down the wizard descended into the dungeons of Thranduil.

lar

'He is the vilest, most tiresome wretch it has ever been my displeasure to know!' roared Gandalf, pacing the length of the room from door to bed and back again, turning each time with a whirl of robes. 'The simplest of questions he refuses to answer straightforwardly, and the pitch of his voice when he raises it to a whine is enough to bend the bells of Tolfalas! At least you had the benefit of enduring that under the open sky. In a closed room it is well-nigh unendurable!'

Aragorn was sitting on the bed, his right knee bolstered up so that his foot hung in the air while he took it slowly and easily through a series of simple stretches that reached not halfway to his usual range of motion. It was the third day of questioning, and Gandalf had returned from the creature's cell with a storm in his eyes that would have shrivelled lesser constitutions – had shrivelled them, from the look of the attendant at the door. He had been listening patiently for some minutes as his friend unburdened his frustrations.

'I can argue none of that,' he said now, his voice quiet. It was easy to be the tolerant and reasonable one when he had not been shut up in a cell with the hateful creature for six long hours. 'I am grateful that you have spared me the need to visit him myself.'

'Your efforts would certainly be wasted!' Gandalf huffed. 'He spend most of his time in woeful imprecations, chiefly against you. Hateful manses, great lumbering long-leggy lout, bright eyes burns us, Precious, burns us, long legs sinking – what does he mean by that, by the way?'

'It is a wish he expressed for me at our crossing of Anduin,' said Aragorn with mild humour. He did not suppose it was right to be cheered by a friend's distress, but there was something so familiar, so right about Gandalf's blustering that he could not quite help himself. 'Do you know, I truly believe he lacked any real faith in my ability to swim the river.'

'Ah!' snorted Gandalf, as if this made some profound and retrospectively obvious sense. He launched into another lap of the room, boots clacking on the floor. 'I cajoled him with promises of food – fish and eggs, as you said – and he gave me nothing. I reasoned with him that if he did not tell me I would leave him to the Elves. He gave me nothing. I threatened him with your return, and he wailed and thrashed and cursed you to the heavens before collapsing into a heap in the corner and declaring that he would say nothing more, no, nothing more at all, Precious: not if wicked old Bright Eyes was somewhere about.'

Aragorn supposed that he ought to feel honoured to learn he had apparently warranted his own moniker, and along the same lines as those of the Sun and the Moon themselves, no less. But his lifting spirits had begun giving way again to melancholy and the dull belief that the whole adventure had been futile. 'So you learned nothing.'

'Not quite!' Gandalf declared, flinging up his hands in exasperation before dragging a chair one-handed up next to the bed and flopping down at it. He watched the slow, aching rotation of Aragorn's foot and grimaced. 'Are you certain you ought to be doing that? It's still as swollen and purple as an overripe plum.'

'Yes, but if I leave it idle the joint will lock and I may never restore it to its former state,' said Aragorn, setting his teeth for one last series of movements. The muscles of his calf were tight with the effort, and his foot and ankle throbbed. He caught himself holding his breath and exhaled slowly through the pain. Then he let his leg slip down off of the bolster, gently lowering his foot onto its cushion. He sat back against the headboard, now hardly feeling the shallow pangs in his back where once there had been agony. 'What did you learn, then?'

'That either the story Bilbo gave me in the end was the truth, or our dear friend is in league with the wretch in some strange and pointless conspiracy,' said Gandalf sourly. 'In between the wailing, and making a welcome change from his maledictions upon you, he had some very unkind words to say about a certain Baggins who took his "birthday present" from him and apparently destroyed what had been a very idyllic life quite above reproach up until then.'

Aragorn was astounded. 'He told you that?' he asked. 'Of his own accord?'

'Oh, no,' Gandalf said, a mockery of blithe dismissal. Grimly he added; 'I had to press him for it almost constantly. I must have gone through those accursed riddles half a dozen times, getting little more than a scrap of the tale each time. But in the end I managed to piece together a very good copy of the tale as we have both had it from Bilbo.'

'I never doubted its veracity,' Aragorn said truthfully. 'Though I confess I am amazed you managed to get it out of Gollum.'

'Hmm.' Gandalf gave him a queer, quizzical look before saying darkly; 'You were not fed a fairy tale the first few times you asked. I don't blame Bilbo,' he added with a sigh. 'If it is the Ring we suspect it to be, no doubt it was exerting its own influence to keep him from telling the truth. Certainly it has not helped Gollum's honesty. My Precious. I wonder…'

'What is it you wonder?' Aragorn prompted gently, when no more seemed forthcoming.

Gandalf seemed to come out of his thoughts with a start, as if roused from a daydream or a spell of battle fatigue. His eyes widened for a moment and then focused on the Ranger's face with pensive calculation. 'Well.' He exhaled and shifted in his chair, now looking up and down the length of the tall thin body wrapped in soft cloth. His eyes came back to the sharp angles and hollows that slow re-feeding had not yet filled out to any noticeable degree. 'I suppose there is nothing wrong with your mind, after all, and you no longer look as if you would nod off to sleep at the least invitation. But I want you to remember that you are the heir of ancient kings, and not one of them yourself. You are not answerable for the errors of your forefathers, any more than you are inclined to take credit for their greatness. This road has put a shadow on your heart, and it is not the purpose of this tale to add to it. Do you understand me, Aragorn son of Arathorn?'

'I do,' Aragorn said softly, though his chest had grown tight. He remembered all too well what Gandalf had sought, and it seemed that he had found it. Now he found himself taken with a sudden doubt: perhaps he did not wish to know this after all.

But when had his wishes had any bearing upon his duties? He bowed his head forward slightly, bidding the wizard go on.

'I was in Minas Tirith many weeks, as I have said before this,' Gandalf began. 'The archives of the Steward – at least beyond that point where a pair of meddling hands once roamed a-cataloguing to his Captain-General's dismay – are a warren of crumbling scrolls, faded tomes and ledgers both illuminating and useless. The outer rooms are well-kept by the lore-masters, as they were in Thorongil's time, and those on the floor below with which you are no doubt intimately familiar have not fallen too far back into chaos in the intervening years. But all these records stretch back only a few centuries.'

'Five, if I recall aright,' Aragorn agreed. Below the second level, the rooms were bolted and the cabinets locked, and one had but to step over any threshold to feel that the lamp in one's hand posed a grave risk to the entire building among all those gathered heaps of brittle paper and long-dried parchment.

'You would know better than I,' said Gandalf. 'My interest was not in the deeds of Hurin the Second, whatever his administrative prowess. I started in the very depths of the library, among the oldest volumes, and I worked my way through them one at a time. I did not hope to find a travelogue or any volume of military stratagem or anything of that sort: Elrond will be the first to tell you that Isildur's uses for the pen were primarily stately, and he had no interest in the preservation of personal accounts for posterity. Yet if a man is troubled in his heart, and may speak of it to no one…' He gestured pointedly to Aragorn, inviting him to finish.

'Then the page may prove a welcome confidante,' he finished, understanding all too well. He did not add that on the occasions when Thorongil had so relieved his mind, he had had the good sense to burn the resulting compositions. If Isildur had done likewise, they would not still be speaking of this.

'Precisely,' said Gandalf. 'So I thought I was looking for a loose page or two, like as not pressed into some weightier volume or forgotten curled in a corner beneath a duty old shelf. I searched for longer than I care to think on… do you know what the study of all that old parchment does to the hands? I have never known fingers so dry and smooth-sanded. There were times I could hardly catch the edge of a page to turn it.'

Aragorn smiled with a sudden boyhood memory. 'Erestor complained of the same thing,' he said.

Gandalf grunted in acknowledgement of this. 'But I found it at last. It was not among the detritus of the reign of Meneldil, where one would think to look. I found it in an old leathern case, curled inside a scroll recording spice inventories from the kitchens of Ostoher, who ruled four hundred years after his twice-great grandsire was crowned by his uncle.'

'What matter is that?' asked Aragorn. 'With the disorder you describe, it is hardly surprising to see the mixing of generations in the chaos.'

'That is so,' said Gandalf. 'But ask yourself this: had anyone else laid eyes upon that page, would it still be buried in the deeps of the archives? The only known document written in Isildur's own hand ever to be found in the city that still reveres him?'

'No,' Aragorn confessed. 'No, not even in the time of Ostoher. It would have been preserved in the King's own vault and passed down through the generations with honour.' There was a letter from Elendil to his sons in that vault, carefully preserved through the generations not for the minutiae of familial tidings but for the mighty hand that had penned them. It was a secret now known only to the Steward's closest confidantes and the Master of the Archives. Ecthelion had trusted him with the knowledge, and the wonder of that sight still lived with him.

'Precisely,' Gandalf said with a curt nod. 'If it was in a volume of such a late provenance, then it was placed there deliberately to keep it from being found. If you had discovered such a document and wished to protect it from, for instance, the Lord of Gondor's insatiable curiosity, where could you put it without removing it from the library but in the case of another, most unlikely scroll?'

'Confirming your belief that Saruman had found it before you,' Aragorn said. 'I can scarcely fault him for that act of prudence.'

'Nor can I,' said Gandalf. 'Having read it, I am glad to know that Denethor has not. His own reverence for ancient kings is great, but it would not have kept him from making capital of this. It was a single page after all, narrow but long and so brittle that I feared it would disintegrate in my hands. I do not know Isildur's hand, but there was no mistaking the author of the words. The page began thus:

'The Great Ring shall go now to be an heirloom of the North Kingdom; but records of it shall be left in Gondor, where also dwell the heirs of Elendil, lest a time come when the memory of these great matters shall grow dim.

'So you see that your forefather had something of the same extraordinary foresight you enjoy,' said Gandalf. 'Or at least a clear understanding of the minds of Men and the fragility of history.'

Aragorn could not speak. His heart was high in his throat and his mind a tumult of muddled thoughts. He had heard from Elrond of the deeds and words in those last terrible moments on the slopes of Orodruin, and the folly of his ancestor had followed him all his days in the Wild. But to hear of it now in Isildur's own words was another thing entirely.

'There follow some cursory words of how he had obtained it in victory,' said Gandalf. 'That I need not tell you, and would not in any case, I confess. I must ask you to understand, Aragorn: that last grim struggle is a matter too near to the heart of one we both love well. It is he who should hear his ally's words first from me.'

Aragorn nodded, but still he had no voice. Gandalf seemed to comprehend this, and he went on.

'He writes of the Ring itself then, in all the detail a distant student might hope.

It was hot when I first took it, hot as a glede, and my hand was scorched, so that I doubt if ever again I shall be free of the pain of it. Yet even as I write it is cooled, and it seemeth to shrink, though it loseth neither its beauty nor its shape. Already the writing upon it, which at first was as clear as red flame, fadeth and is now only barely visible to be read.

'No doubt that is why he sought to lay down this account when he did,' Gandalf remarked gravely. 'For it seems he wrote within scant hours of victory, while the armies of Men and Elves still camped in Gorgoroth.'

'No doubt,' Aragorn whispered in inadequate echo. His limbs were very cold and his being seemed somehow at one remove from his body with its lingering pains and its unsteady weakness. He felt as if he might draw back the veil of time and step out into a ragged siege-pavilion in which his longsire sat curled over a piece of precious parchment, scarce in wartime. He could imagine the soot-smeared face, its noble features drawn with exhaustion and pain, the shaft of a stripped quill held by the unscathed sword-hand while its seared fellow lay curled beneath a loose poultice no doubt prepared by the same master of herb-lore and healing who had treated Aragorn's own first burn and many to come after. He could see the camp-bed, ropes sagging from long use, the maps and battle-plans piled on a light travel-chest, the tarnished helm cast aside, the shards of Narsil, newly broken beneath his fallen father, on the trestle table before him, and nearer still than that the Ring, a band of gold writ with fiery letters. Breathless Aragorn waited, and Gandalf went on.

'It is fashioned in an Elven-script of Eregion, for they have no letters in Mordor for such subtle work; but the language is unknown to me. I deem it to be a tongue of the Black Land, since it is foul and uncouth. What evil it saith I do not know; but I trace here a copy of it, lest it fade beyond recall. The Ring misseth, maybe, the heat of Sauron's hand, which was black and yet burned like fire, and so Gil-galad was destroyed; and maybe were the gold made hot again, the writing would be refreshed. But for my part I will risk no harm to this thing: of all the works of Sauron the only fair. It is precious to me, though I buy it with great pain.

'And below that, written indeed in the script of the folk of Celebrimbor, were lines in a tongue that Isildur could not read,' said Gandalf. 'Though it is my guess that you would have little difficulty, being regrettably learned in such matters. The writing is indeed in the Black Tongue, and it is naught but a translation of the dourest couplet of great smith's song of betrayal:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them.
One Ring to bring them all, and in the Darkness bind them.

'That is all he wrote: the rest of the scroll was blank.'

Gandalf exhaled slowly and sat back in the chair again. His face was drawn with strain, as if the effort of recounting this had drained him of his strength. Wordlessly they sat, Aragorn's awareness coming slowly back into his body again to find his heart hammering and his hands as cold as they had been on the night he came to Grimbeorn's hall. His mind was filled with all that he had heard, with many grave questions and many anxious suppositions. What came to his mouth first, however, was something that could only have been expected from one with a proclivity for languages.

'It is precious to me,' he said, changing Isildur's words from the tongue in which Gandalf had spoken them – in which they had surely been written, and into the common speech. 'That is the only fitting translation. Any other word would not preserve the deeper meaning.'

'That is what I thought,' said Gandalf. 'And what I first wanted your opinion on. It is a strange coincidence, if these two rings are not one. The Rings of Power have their own inclinations of language; I can say that with no uncertainty.'

It came to Aragorn's lips to ask what curiosities of speech Narya had bestowed upon its bearer, but he did not do it. That would be to acknowledge what he knew of the disposition of this last of the Elven Rings, and even here that was unwise. It was a question he might perhaps ask at another time, or of another person. There were far more important matters to resolve in any case.

'What do you intend to do?' he asked. 'Will you ride for the Shire and attempt this test Isildur suggests?'

'Not at once,' said Gandalf after a moment's silence. 'For one, the matter is not desperately pressing. If it is the One Ring, it has lain in secret for almost eight decades in the Shire, and far longer than that beyond the Enemy's sphere of knowledge. A matter of a few weeks will make no difference now. For another, and far more importantly, we must learn all that Gollum knows. If the Ring is indeed in the keeping of Bilbo's nephew, then Gollum is our only link between it and the circumstances of its rediscovery. How could such a thing come from the depths of Anduin's bed to a lightless lake between the High Pass, and what other bearers lie between Isildur and our riddling wretch?'

'You mean to stay then, and continue with your questioning,' Aragorn said, needing to have it spoken aloud. He had been privately, and certainly selfishly, dreading the time when Gandalf would tire of this loathsome game and depart for the westward roads. His own convalescence was likely to stretch through the spring, if he wanted to be well enough to walk the high places of the Hithaeglir, and without Gandalf it promised to be a dreary season. He tried to suppress such thoughts, but he could not quite help thinking them regardless.

'Yes,' growled Gandalf, and his grim solemnity morphed into disgruntled irritation. 'I will go back tomorrow and see if I can tempt him with some eggs after all, provided he has them to look at.'

'Take them raw,' Aragorn suggested. 'He ate little of the coddled eggs in Grimbeorn's house, but he was eager enough to steal one fresh from a henhouse in Eastemnet.'

Gandalf looked at him curiously. 'Escaping singlehandedly from orcs, swimming Anduin with that nasty bit of baggage, falling through the ice at Gladden, battling a pair of lynx, and now burgling henhouses? I do not know whether to laugh or to weep!'

'Oh, there was no burgling,' said Aragorn. 'Only intent.' His hand travelled to his throat, where the bruises of nimble fingers had long since failed. 'I was punished for my moral objection.'

Gandalf snorted and shook his head. Then despite both their efforts the silence came back, and with it the awesome dread of deeds to come and the doom that was gathering before them.

Note: So, what does everyone want to read when this story's done: Thorongil's time in Gondor, or Aragorn's first journey to Mordor? Asking for... a friend.

Chapter LXI: Water in the Wilderness

Aragorn slept poorly that night. His dreams were soaked in darkness and desolation, hostile flames and foul poisoned fumes that tread the heavens hobnailed. Sometimes he thought he was in the archives of the great library in Minas Tirith, smothered by the dust of lost years and the weight of knowledge about him. Sometimes he was lost in the broad white wastes, rags whipped in the winter wind, lost and snow-blind and exposed to the sight of all watchers. Sometimes it seemed he was in the war-tent of his imaginings, watching as Isildur penned the lines Gandalf had repeated with such precision. The High King, newly made upon the death of his sire, murmured the words as he wrote them, and he spoke in Aragorn’s own voice. 

And always there was Gollum: his shrill shrieking wails, or his constant resentful muttering, or the hiss of malice that was his noise of triumph. Most of all there were his eyes, those pale and terrible eyes with their gleaming hatred and that other ineluctable presence buried behind it. The eyes, always, always the eyes. 

At last there came a breathless wakening when Helegond no longer rose to urge him soothingly back to sleep. Morning had come. Aragorn had little difficulty this time in convincing the healer that he should bathe: the last expedition had after all gone without crisis. This time he was stronger and more experienced with his crutches. The journey to the baths was not terribly arduous, and soon he was sitting on a stool before one of the tubs, lathering his body as if he could scrub away the memories of the evil night. 

He could not, of course, but by the time Aragorn had settled into the bone-deep comfort of the hot rock pool his thoughts had turned from fabricated horrors to the all too real problems before him. 

He knew the tale of Isildur’s folly from a time when he had still been Estel, ardent but distant pupil of history. Learning that the prideful error was a part of his legacy had added to the turmoil of his earliest manhood and perhaps kept him from growing too great with pride in his newly-discovered lineage. Ever after it had followed him, the root cause of Sauron’s resurgence and inexorable rise to ever-greater power. All his life, so it seemed, Aragorn had been labouring in a war (sometimes overtly, more often covertly) that could never have begun without Isildur’s vainglorious choice. Yet somehow this latest discovery and the revelation of Isildur’s own enthralled marvel at the deadly thing he had captured from an overthrown foe seemed to make it all the more real, and all the more horrifying. 

Aragorn knew that the cause of his horror lay less in the long consequences of his forefather’s theft – for theft it was, from the Enemy or no – than in the execution of the choice itself. Five had mounted the slopes of Orodruin that day. Only three remained to witness Sauron’s fall. One had seized the Ring from the Dark Lord’s very finger, and the other two had counselled against it. Yet despite that counsel Isildur had kept the One, had kept it and had written of it and had ultimately lost it with his life and the lives of his loyal hosts. And that was what Aragorn could not understand, and so could not forgive. Isildur had been told by Elrond Peredhil himself that to keep the Ring would bring dire consequences, and still he had refused to cast it into the fire. 

From his earliest childhood, Aragorn had accepted Elrond’s wisdom and followed his counsel unequivocally.  At times he had questioned, as all children must, the wisdom of the one who stood as a father to him, but always, always he had come to see the error in his own judgment and the strength of Elrond’s. In his manhood he had followed Elrond’s advice in many crucial matters and never had it failed him. True, Elrond was not infallible: like all Children of Ilúvatar he stumbled at times. Perhaps his greatest miscalculation had been made upon those same fiery heights, when he and Círdan made no move to force Isildur to destroy the Ring. Certainly Aragorn knew this was the one decision his foster-father regretted most in all his long life. But to dismiss his words so wholly, in a matter of such weight, as Isildur had… that Aragorn himself could never have done. 

Yet the choices of the past were made, and could not be unmade. It was the next host of decisions that would fall upon the Wise and their cohorts, and perhaps shape the next three thousand years as Isildur’s choice had the last. Aragorn had been privy to all the debates and verdicts of Elrond and Gandalf since he had come to manhood, and many which concerned Galadriel and Celeborn as well. He did not doubt that in this new matter his opinion would be sought and given due consideration, and the weight of that was heavy in his heart. 

If indeed Bilbo’s little ring proved to be the One, what then? Aragorn knew little of Ring-lore when measured against Gandalf, but he did know enough to be certain that destroying a Ring of Power was no small thing. Perhaps it could be carried West, across the Sundering Seas to be laid before Súlimo in that other Ring of Doom. Then he, most ancient and most wise, might decide the matter for them all. Yet as tempting as such a thought was, it seemed grievously wrong. The One Ring was an evil of Middle Earth, wrought out of the folly of the Firstborn and enduring out of the folly of the Secondborn. Seeking intervention from beyond the Seas, or even the counsel of the Valar struck Aragorn as somehow profane. It was mete that the folk of these fallen lands should put right what they and their kindred had allowed to turn so wrong, just as it was mete for Isildur’s Heir to answer in his small way for Isildur’s fault. 

Aragorn was grateful when Helegond came back and suggested that it was time to return to his room and break his fast. The awkward efforts of rising from the pool, of towelling and dressing and limping one-legged back through the tunnels made a welcome distraction. Better still, there was someone waiting when they reached the little chamber. A merry-eyed elf clad in extravagantly dagged and slashed garments had come to take Aragorn’s measure for a suit of clothes. 

‘My lord would look most striking in blue,’ he suggested, as he worked with his knotted cord and a wax tablet already filled with notations. Aragorn shifted his weight to the right crutch as the tailor began to work on his left arm. ‘Or perhaps a deep carmine. I have a length of satin that would suit you.’ 

‘That would be most impractical in the wilderness,’ said Aragorn. ‘A good, dense wool is what I need, in dull woodland hues.’ 

‘Ai, yes, the travel garb!’ said the Elf. ‘But I am speaking of your courtly robes. You cannot enjoy our revels properly dressed for tramping the roads. His Highness has instructed me to clothe you as befits your station. ’ 

Unhappily Aragorn realized that Thranduil’s interpretation of new clothing was very different from his own, and that he had given his orders accordingly. Drawing on his now seldom-used well of courtly etiquette, he considered the best means of extricating himself from this embarrassing situation. 

‘It may be some time before I am able to join in your revels,’ he said carefully. ‘And when I do it shall be nearly time for me to depart from these fair halls. I have need now only of simple garments, and if they are made warm and durable I may use them for travel as well.’ 

The tailor gnawed his lip thoughtfully, staring at Aragorn’s face but not meeting his eyes. Then a glint of decision lighted his countenance and for a moment the Ranger thought he had made himself perfectly clear. Then the cord was suddenly flung about his throat, and the Elf was taking a measurement for the collar. It was an uncomfortable moment, recalling as it did the noose of orc-rope with which Aragorn had bound his captive. 

‘I shall certainly provide you with something warm, and all my garments are durable,’ he said. ‘But they need not be dull and unbecoming as well. Bright colours never made a pair of hose more fragile, nor is a broidered sleeve any less sheltering than a plain one. Rather the opposite, in most cases.’ He made another mark with his stylus and then laid his cord along Aragorn’s shoulder, from the top of the socket to the base of his neck. 

‘Bright colours are folly in the Wild,’ said Aragorn. ‘They make a traveller visible from afar, and draw eyes that would think nothing of a shape in the hues of the land. If I wish to go unnoticed, I must suit my surroundings.’ 

‘Unnoticed.’ The Elf looked positively flummoxed by this. Responsible for Thranduil’s royal wardrobe, he had likely never even considered that one might dress in order to escape attention rather than to garner it. Then he grinned triumphantly. ‘But if you must suit your surroundings, you must dress as befits His Majesty’s honoured guest.’ 

‘Nay,’ said Aragorn; ‘for no harm will come to me in the halls of the Elven-King. In the Wild I have no such surety. I need only a cote and hose, and a change of linens: they must be simple and they must be drab.’ 

The tailor frowned and shook his head. ‘I am to fit you for an assortment of garments,’ he said. ‘It is His Majesty’s wish.’ 

‘I fear His Majesty mistook me,’ said Aragorn; ‘and perhaps made too much of my station. I am a traveller and a hunter, not a prince. I should be dressed much as your own guards and woodsmen. Anything more would be unnecessary and presumptuous.’ 

‘I was told you are a great lord of Men, and a fosterling of Elrond of Rivendell,’ the Elf said uneasily. 

‘I am the Chief of a dwindling people and the Captain of a rag-tag band of itinerant swordsmen,’ said Aragorn. ‘I was indeed fostered in Rivendell, but chiefly out of the grace and generosity of Master Elrond rather than my own merits. Please. Do not make a fool of me by parading me in silks and rich colours.’ 

The tailor studied him again, this time with a furrow of concern between his brows. He was weighing the wishes of his client, no doubt, against the instructions of his King. At last he sighed and took up the stylus. ‘Wool, then, in such greens and browns as our sentries wear in the forest.’ He frowned resignedly. ‘That we certainly have in abundance. Cote and hose… no jerkin? Or surcote? A mantel at least…’ 

‘I have a cloak that will serve me well,’ Aragorn said, nodding towards Sigbeorn’s garment where it hung. ‘Most of all I long for the dress of a man instead of an invalid. Furnish me with that, and I shall be ever grateful.’ 

‘You must take the worsted twill at least,’ said the tailor. ‘If I clothe you in cheap woolen offcuts the King will be most displeased.’ 

Aragorn, who had his cheap woolen offcuts made carefully and precisely to look thus by the weavers of Imladris, smiled in quiet amusement. This was a compromise, but one both sides could comfortably tolerate. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But there must be no rich dyes.’ 

‘No bright colours, my lord, I promise you!’ said the tailor. ‘Can you free the other arm a moment? I must have your wingspan, and then we are done for today.’ 

Aragorn was unsure of his ability to balance on his one good foot without the aid of some support, but after all he had lived a life of testing his limitations of body and spirit. He let the tailor take the crutches and spread his arms slowly. He wobbled a little, his battered body struggling to find its ordinarily thoughtless equilibrium. But he held the strange pose long enough for the Elf to get what he wanted, and he did not fall. His props were restored to him at once, and the tailor asked a few more questions about hem length and sleeve shape before bowing and taking his leave. Only once he was gone did Aragorn hobble to his chair and sink into it gratefully, cold with perspiration and as weary as if he had run some mighty race. Healing he might be; healed he was not. 

lar

That evening Gandalf came from Gollum’s cell in a state of grim resignation that was far more worrisome than yesterday’s anger. 

‘I got nothing from him,’ he declared, laying aside his staff and sinking into the empty chair. ‘He keeps jabbering about his hands and his “birthday present” and all the charming things he would like to do to you, but I did not get one bit of worthwhile information. Oh. He did complain about his grandmother when I tried to bargain with the eggs. That was certainly a pleasant change.’ 

‘Strange to think of that creature with a family,’ Aragorn muttered, knowing the words were uncharitable but scarcely caring. Gollum’s foul malice was fresh in his mind after his uneasy night. 

‘If it makes it easier to comprehend, it seems they did not get along,’ Gandalf said. ‘Wicked old woman, he called her; mean, spiteful Grandmother. It seems she turned him out of the family hole.’ 

‘Hole?’ said Aragorn, curious despite himself. ‘Then it seems he was of a hobbit-like folk after all.’ 

Gandalf’s eyes widened a little, like those of one who has just noticed some small change in a familiar room. Then he nodded. ‘So it seems,’ he said tiredly. ‘Well, perhaps I am not learning anything new from our captive, but at least I’m successfully confirming much of what we already suspect.’ 

He drummed on the arm of the chair for a while, watching the pop and flicker of the fire. ‘It seems he was her special pet, or fancied himself as such,’ he went on at length; ‘but she turned him out and the bitterness of that is still very much alive after these many years. There is no telling why she might have done it: all of that seems to be muddled in his mind with goblins and Bilbo and my Precious.’ He sighed wearily. ‘I could tolerate him no longer tonight,’ he said. ‘At least when you will not answer my questions you do not offer wailing nonsensical soliloquys instead.’ 

A small smile came to Aragorn’s lips of its own accord. ‘Gollum does seem to possess boundless energy for such performances,’ he agreed. ‘I would have preferred sullen silence every mile of our journey to even one of his tantrums.’ 

Gandalf was watching his eyes with uncomfortable intensity. ‘What befell you in Morgul Vale?’ he asked softly. 

‘In truth?’ Aragorn said, fixing his own clear gaze upon the wizard. Gandalf nodded curtly. ‘Nothing worth later consideration. What do you hope to accomplish by drawing from me an account of every step of the long and tiresome road?’ 

‘In truth?’ Gandalf aped dryly. Aragorn gave him an appreciative twitch of the lips. He did not need to know that the phrase was an irritating answer to one’s question, but he also felt that his friend could do with deflecting his irritation away from his unpleasant duty for a while. 

‘I know it can accomplish nothing,’ said Gandalf, shaking his head and plucking absently at his beard. ‘Yet I spent many a broken night in a well-appointed chamber in Minas Tirith speculating on your path, and every step of my own northward journey contemplating all that could have befallen you between Harondor and Dagorlad. Few indeed are the clement paths that wend thither, and I have experience enough with the hunt to know our quarry would not have chosen a pleasant way.’ 

‘Be satisfied, then, that the worst of all my journey befell me in the Marshes,’ Aragorn said. ‘In my folly I took it for a stroke of luck to find him at last. That starveling wretch proved more perilous than any orc, and more trying to my spirit than the Ringwraith.’ 

Gandalf’s eyes flashed and Aragorn pressed his lips tightly over his careless tongue. He kept his gaze level and his expression unchanged, however, and the wizard made no comment. He understood after all the Ranger’s reasons for evading such tales. 

For a time there was silence, as each of them walked grimly in memory. Then Gandalf sighed and got to his feet. ‘I will sup here again if you’ve no objection,’ he said. ‘The merriment of Thranduil’s hall ill-suits my mood tonight.’ 

‘In truth?’ Aragorn lilted, earning a suspicious and amused glance from the wizard. ‘I would be glad of the company.’ 

At last Gandalf smiled. 

lar

On the following morning, Aragorn made his first attempt at a more substantial meal. Roast venison was brought to him along with his coddled eggs and his cup of rich milk, and in place of bread there was a hazelnut pastry with a sugared glaze. Plainly Galion had been waiting eagerly for a chance to display his talents for the unusual guest, for it was a delicate masterpiece shaped like a curled oak leaf so finely detailed that there were veins sculpted into it. It looked far too beautiful to be eaten, but eat it Aragorn did. It tasted heavenly, even as the honey-cakes of the Beornings would have if only he had possessed the appetite to enjoy it. He took more sparely of the venison, for he had eaten no meat since the meagre half-squirrel west of Anduin. He was right to be cautious, for soon his stomach was burbling uneasily and though he did not sicken he spent much of the morning with an uncomfortable tightness in his lower ribs that had nothing to do with the lingering fluid in his lungs. 

It was mid-afternoon when Gandalf knocked at his door: fully three hours earlier than expected. Aragorn was half-naked with his shirt in his lap and the robe bunched about his waist, for Lethril had been working on his back. When the wizard came in, the Ranger was bowed over his lap so that the healer might examine the darkly crusted wounds. She glanced up at the intruder only briefly before continuing with her gentle ministrations. 

‘You shall have a fine set of scars to boast over,’ Gandalf said with a jollity so fierce that it was almost bilious. ‘To think that a common wildcat did that, when the Uruks of Mordor could not!’ 

‘The dangers of the Wild spare me no more than any other Man,’ Aragorn said. The greater part of his focus was bent upon the sensations on his back: the feel of the flesh as the healer palpated the borders of the wounds. He felt most of all a deep, cleansing ache broken now and again by shivers of more stinging pain. On the whole it was the sensation of a wound still raw, but mending well. There was a hot trickle of blood as one of the scabs cracked beneath Lethril’s fingertip, but that too was natural and no cause at all for concern. 

‘Well, Lady? Will he live?’ Gandalf asked, still in that falsely cheerful voice. Profound unease began to creep over Aragorn. 

‘Yes, Mithrandir: for many years yet!’ Lethril promised earnestly. 

‘Provided he stops driving himself so mercilessly,’ Gandalf muttered. Then he deposited himself in his usual place. 

Lethril was obliged to go about cleaning and dressing the hurts under his silent, glowering watch. When Aragorn was clothed and comfortable again, she departed with a few uneasy words, clearly as troubled by the wizard’s brooding as Aragorn had been by his attempt to disguise it. 

‘You fared poorly today,’ Aragorn said mildly when it became obvious that Gandalf would not break the silence left in the healer’s wake. 

‘Your mastery of understatement is truly remarkable, even for one skilled in so many crafts,’ Gandalf growled. He continued to scowl at the hearthstones, and Aragorn was beginning to fear he would not speak again when he looked up. Angry and discouraged eyes searched the Ranger’s face. 

‘This is an exercise in futility,’ said Gandalf. ‘I cannot coax the creature to trust me, and when I question him he answers in gibberish. Today it was all poor handses and complaints about the snow. I saw marks of a hard winter on my northward ride, but his exaggerations are beyond all belief!’ 

Aragorn was not so certain of that, even knowing Gollum’s predilection for dramatics, but he saw no point in elucidating. 

‘Kinder tactics availed me not at all,’ he said. ‘Likely I tried them too late, after a hard fight in his capture and harsh measures to drive him into the Ephel Dûath. By then he saw me only as a foe. When I pressed him, I got either scowling silence or murderous rebellion for my pains. At least you need not fear the latter here.’ 

‘I lack your patience, Dúnadan,’ Gandalf muttered. ‘You endured him for fifty days. After five I am ready to fling him into the river.’ 

It was unwise given his comrade’s mood, but still Aragorn could not help but chuckle. It was such an immense relief to be able to find any amusement at all in the situation. ‘That would prove a poorer punishment than you might think,’ he said. ‘Gollum is a wily waterman and as strong a swimmer as I have known. He would be off in the blink of an eye, gleeful and looking for prey.’ Then he told Gandalf of the crossing of Limlight and the fish Gollum had caught with his toes. 

By the time he was finished, Gandalf’s glare had softened and the fog of despair seemed to hang less thickly in the room. He shook his head wonderingly. 

‘Ever stranger, it seems,’ he said. 

‘And perhaps not so hobbit-like after all,’ said Aragorn lightly. 

‘Oh, the hobbit aversion to waterways is a matter of ancestral bias and practiced distaste,’ said Gandalf. ‘There are river-faring folk among the Brandybucks of Buckland, and some of them can swim. Certainly hobbits must float superbly.’ 

‘It is a wonder Gollum can float at all,’ Aragorn snorted. 

‘The same could well be said of you,’ groused Gandalf, looking him over critically. ‘Are you certain this regimen of milk and bread is helpful? You certainly don’t seem to be filling out.’ 

‘Not yet,’ Aragorn allowed. ‘But I am eating faithfully throughout the day, and I feel stronger. I had some venison this morning, and Lethril has offered me more spacious accommodations. You see that my caretakers now believe I am well enough to be moved.’ 

Gandalf looked around the small room. ‘I wondered about that,’ he mused. ‘I thought perhaps Thranduil had neglected to render you your due.’ 

‘Nay, he has been most gracious,’ said Aragorn. ‘But these quarters are near the dungeon, and it was most expedient to house me here on the night of my arrival. For that same reason I have declined the kind offer of relocation.’ 

He half expected Gandalf to argue, or to say outright what he had not, but the wizard only shrugged. ‘Expedient, aye,’ he said. ‘I am housed just up the corridor. But for the want of a window, there is no more a traveller needs.’ 

They made inconsequential conversation after that, and presently Galion brought their supper. Gandalf moved the chairs to the table, and Aragorn followed on his crutches. They were almost a part of him now, moving naturally and in response to his least whim. He sat, and was able to display his new trick of partaking of the game dish before tucking steadily in to his simpler fare again. He did so with the same diligent determination that he put into stretching his hobbled ankle, though he had little desire for food. The gloom was still a brooding presence in the room, and watching Gandalf pick indifferently at the roasted woodcock and other elegant dishes did nothing to improve it. 

The wizard spoke little, save to comment on Aragorn’s meal, and the Ranger let him have his quiet. There was no need for talk between two such old friends; they knew one another so well that the quiet was no burden. Despite the scent of a coming storm, that hour was one of peace for Aragorn. He was able to forget for a time the travails of the journey behind him and the worries of the road ahead. It was the very thing he had so sorely missed in his first days in the Elven-King’s halls: the serenity he always felt in Rivendell. 

When the attendant had cleared the table and Aragorn was finished with his simple preparations for bed, Gandalf muttered his leave-taking. He got as far as the doorway and stood there, silent, his back turned to the room and his hand upon the post. 

Aragorn had been swinging his bad leg up onto the mattress and its cushion. Now he sat, turned awkwardly to watch the figure on the threshold. Even two days ago, such a twisting of the waist and hips would have sent deep, tearing agony into his battered kidney. Now all he felt was a tired ache along the hypotenuse of pelvis and spine. 

‘What is it, Gandalf?’ he asked quietly, knowing the question might well drive him off but unable to be silent. 

Instead, the door was closed almost before the wizard had time to pivot back into the room. He crossed it in five swift strides and sat down upon the edge of the bed as he had on the night of his arrival. The glowing embers of the banked fire were the room’s only light now, and his face was deeply sunken in shadow. Still his eyes glittered keenly, fixed on Aragorn’s face with a needful intensity that made the Ranger’s heart flutter. 

‘You must lend me a measure of your unquenchable courage, my friend,’ said Gandalf, hushed and in terrible earnest. ‘I have marched into battle against terrible foes, and faced dark things in empty places without aid, and escaped the very dungeons of the Enemy. Yet before Elbereth I confess that I know not how to find the will to return to that cell on the morrow.’ 

There it was: the hopeless dread that had haunted the evening. For a moment Aragorn could not speak. How could he give Gandalf, Gandalf the Grey, timeless and wise beyond the ken of Men, the courage to do what he himself could not? The thought of cloistering himself in that small room with the vengeful, whinging, lying, foul-smelling Gollum made his innards churn with revulsion. 

But in the next shallow breath Aragorn knew that such feelings would not stop him. If the need pressed him and he had to do it, he could master his loathing and limp back to the cell behind two heavy locked doors. If he had to, though it might undo him, he could question the prisoner he had led so far. For if they did not learn what Gollum knew then the whole miserable journey, the nine hundred miles of dissipation and ignominious toil, the long and weary way he had walked with the vile wretch in tow, would be for naught. Apart from the greater strategic concerns and the doom of Middle Earth, that way lay madness. 

Aragorn felt the light of determination igniting in his eyes. It was the shining will that had inspired men to desperate ventures and most improbable triumphs. It had lent strength to the weary, hope to the despairing, and will to the sick and the wounded. Now he turned it on his friend. 

‘We can do it, you and I,’ He said. His voice, though modulated to the size of the room and the intimate proximity to his audience, resounded with a confidence and authority it had not known in many months – not even on the ferry at the Carrock. ‘We shall compel him if we must, with fear if nothing else will serve. Come for me on the morrow, and we will go together.’ 

There was a moment when Gandalf sat unmoving. It was just long enough for Aragorn to begin to feel foolish, sitting up in the narrow bed with his legs straight before him and one hand still clutching the edge of the bedclothes. Then Gandalf  hooded his eyes and lowered his head with an almost noiseless sigh. 

‘Like water in a wasteland,’ he murmured. When he raised his head he did so with resolve, and the slump of defeat was gone from his shoulders. He smiled, rueful but no longer grim. 

‘If you will come, you must come no further than the guardroom,’ he said. ‘His hatred of you is well-nigh as black as his hatred of Bilbo, and he fears you more. The sight of you would doubtless drive him still deeper into obstinacy and hysterics. Still I should be grateful of your presence, even for a short time. I would not have you suffer him lightly, but I am utterly at a loss amid his rantings.’ 

‘Perhaps four ears can hear what two may not,’ Aragorn said, trying not to feel the craven relief that came from knowing he would not be in the cell itself. He turned his lips up in a wan smile. ‘We have faced greater labours than this, have we not?’ 

‘I wonder,’ Gandalf muttered sourly. Then his eyes grew grave and earnest. ‘Yet certainly we both have greater labours to come, if the creature’s testimony and my other discovery prove out as we suspect.’ 

Again Aragorn passed a peaceless night.

Note: Thanks to everyone who's weighed in so far. My… uh… friend is having trouble making up her mind, and would welcome any further input on the Gondor/Mordor dilemma. Cheers!

Chapter LXII: Spiraling Rhetoric

The anteroom of the small clutch of cells looked much as Aragorn remembered it – in so far as he remembered anything of the night of his arrival. The table with its chairs stood centred in the middle as before, lately vacated by Losfaron and the other guard. Now the brazier was lighted and the sideboard laden with the accoutrements of a set watch: water, bread with a dish of golden butter, a bowl of winter fruits. And, because this was after all a haven of the merry Silvan folk, there was also a flagon of wine.

This Aragorn eyed with some apprehension. Losfaron saw it and laughed.

'Fear not!' he said cheerfully as the Ranger swung over the threshold with the wizard close behind. 'It is not for our refreshment, but for Mithrandir's relief. I would be lax indeed in my duty if I permitted guards to tipple at their posts!'

Swiftly Gandalf put a finger to his lips, brows knitted into a piercing glare. Then he pointed at Aragorn and cut his hand through the air in a patently negative gesture. He jerked his chin sharply towards the occupied room. Losfaron frowned in puzzlement at this pantomime, suddenly wary. He looked from Aragorn to the locked door and back again. Canny understanding broke over him, and he nodded tightly.

'You are alone,' he said to Gandalf, his voice carefully neutral. Then upon reflection he added; 'Again.'

'Quite,' said Gandalf. Too late Aragorn realized that they ought to be speaking in the Elven tongue: it seemed it was the captain's habit to use Westron with outsiders. He could say nothing now, for he did not doubt that Gollum would know his voice in any language.

Gandalf was looking about the room with a tactician's eye. 'Let us move the table into the corner. It suits me better;' he said, pointing to the place where the front wall of the prisoner's cell met the wall to the left of the entrance.

'Gladly,' Losfaron said. He motioned to his subordinate and they drew back the chairs so as to lift the table. Gandalf took two of the simple wooden seats, and Aragorn made to move for the other before recalling that with his hands occupied in perambulation he had no means to grasp it. When Losfaron came to claim it, Aragorn motioned to the space immediately left of Gollum's door. The Elf set the chair against the wall and looked questioningly at the Man, who nodded. He meant to be as near as possible without betraying his presence, and as the door opened in that direction he would be well shielded from the prisoner's sight.

During one of the sleepless spans that had comprised so much of his night, Aragorn had worried that perhaps Gollum would know him by scent. Upon deeper reflection he deemed this unlikely. It was not that he doubted the creature's command of this sense: all things driven to survive in the wild learned swiftly to make full use of all their faculties. Rather, Aragorn knew that he himself smelled nothing like he had on the trail: sweat and loam, blood and exhaustion, dirty hair and wet wool and sour body linen. Now he was clean, with the faint scent of Elven soap about him and the comfortable spicy hint of wood-smoke that came from being cloistered with a well-vented fire. A dog would recognize his native scent beneath all that and know him, but a feral hobbit-creature in the next room? He thought not.

So he settled in the chair, stretching his right foot before him and propping his crutches against the table that stood close by his right side. Gandalf looked questioningly at him, and Aragorn nodded: he was comfortable enough. Losfaron and the other guard were exchanging quiet words on the far side of the room, speaking in their own tongue at last. At a curt gesture from the Istar, the captain came forward and offered his ring of keys. Gandalf took them, and the two elves moved to the anteroom door.

'I will wait as before in the armoury, Mithrandir,' said Losfaron. 'I wish you good fortune in your labours.'

'I am certain I will have that today,' said Gandalf. Then, conscious that the prisoner could hear every word through the grate near the top of his door, he said with a certainty he could not possibly feel; 'He will see that it is in his best interests to speak to me: he is no fool.'

The other Elf bowed first to the wizard and then to Aragorn before retreating. Losfaron cast a last look at the Ranger, his soldier's eyes veiled from the questions he no doubt longed to ask. Then he too made a swift little bow and was gone. Gandalf closed the heavy door firmly and locked it. Aragorn's lip twitched in approval. His instructions were being followed with care, even by the wizard himself: while one door was open, the other must always be locked.

Gandalf went to the sideboard and poured himself a goblet of water. He drained it in one long draught before picking up the silver tray that held the flagon and cups. He brought it to the table, then returned for the bread and the fruit. He gave Aragorn a chiding look that was also an invitation. He should eat or drink as he wished, and he was not to overtax himself by thumping around the room after a measure of water. The next arching of the bushy eyebrows was clearly a question, and after so many years' acquaintance Aragorn did not need to be asked aloud. Did he have all that he needed? He nodded: he did.

Gandalf stood thoughtfully for a moment, eyes still avoiding the door to the cell. Then he went to the sideboard again and opened one of the lower drawers. He took out a prettily inlaid writing box and a few sheets of soft vellum. He brought these and the flagon of wine to the table, and laid the scribal materials at the edge of the table nearest Aragorn. He spread his fingers wide and tipped his hand as if to say perhaps, shrugging the shoulder of the arm that held his staff. He did not mean for Aragorn to make a verbatim record: this was only in case he should hear anything valuable.

Firmly Aragorn nodded his understanding, but he did not trouble to open the box. He had conducted his share of interrogations, and only in Gondor had written records been kept. He would listen, and he would remember. The paper and ink were only a safeguard.

Gandalf turned to go, and Aragorn reached up to catch hold of his forearm. When the wizard looked down again in surprise, Aragorn gave him a small, bracing smile and squeezed his arm companionably. 'You and I,' he mouthed wordlessly, not daring even to breathe as his lips moved, lest some sound should escape.

Gandalf's brows knit together resolutely, and he slipped his arm free so that Aragorn's hand brushed down its length and over his wrist. For a moment their hands met and grasped in a gesture of mutual solidarity. It might be only one who was venturing over the threshold, but they were both equally invested in the enterprise. They had hunted together so long for this very moment, and battle was once more to be joined.

The wizard moved to the door at last and found the key among its fellows. He turned it in the lock, and then looped the ring over the back of his hand so that he could seize the door-handle. His grip upon his staff tightened and he lowered his head, collecting himself. With one final sidelong look at his friend he straightened, squaring his shoulders and setting his face into a mask of stern expectation. Then with a strong, smooth jerk of his shoulder he pulled open the door.

At once the rotted reek that had grown as familiar to Aragorn as his own unwashed stink wafted out to fill the anteroom. The door swinging towards him shielded him but for a moment, and then the stench was everywhere. Evidently Gollum had refused to avail himself of the opportunity to be clean. Perhaps he was so far gone in misery and hatred that he cared nothing for such comforts, but Aragorn could not help but wonder if the gesture was purely mulish malice. If Gollum suspected how his foulness repelled his jailors, it would certainly not be beyond him to keep himself in that state deliberately.

For his own part, Aragorn was fighting a tide of hateful memories and unwanted frustration brought to the forefront of his mind by that sickening stench. He did not understand how the vile vapours of Dagorlad could seem to cling still to Gollum, not after hundreds of miles and three wet river-crossings, marching through snow and damp winter woods, and all the rest. Yet still it seemed to; or perhaps it was only that the smell of Gollum was linked in his mind to the Marshes with their deadly candles and their haunting air of death.

Gandalf's nose wrinkled distastefully, but he took a deep breath nonetheless and strode across the threshold, dragging the door to behind him. It closed with a thud that vibrated even into the stone wall, and from within came a familiar whinging yelp. There was a rattle of iron as the wizard locked himself in with his startled prisoner. Aragorn could not suppress a shudder at the thought, but there was no one left to see it.

'Yes, it is I,' Gandalf drawled dispassionately. 'You will not be rid of me so easily as that.' Aragorn could hear him moving across the small space, and there was a rustle of straw as he sat down upon the cot. Gollum would surely be cowering on the floor, glaring up at the wizard with those terrible eyes. 'Now. You were going to tell me where you found the golden Ring.'

'We won't, we won't, gollum. None of its business, is it, Precious? None of its business, no it's not!' the wretch muttered blackly. Aragorn could imagine too well the sly scowl upon his desiccated face, and he had to close his mind to thoughts of his quiet chamber. He had come to aid his friend in the only way he could, and he refused to regret that choice.

'I think you will find I have made it my business,' said Gandalf. 'You say it was your Birthday Present: you told Bilbo the same—'

'Baggins, Baggins, thief Baggins,' spat Gollum. 'Long we lived there, nice cool waters: far from Yellow Face, safe and quiet. Couldn't find us there, gollum, with their nassty pinching fingers and their kicking feet, no they couldn't! Kicked us, they did. Kicked us and hurt us, gollum. Poor hurting legses, poor hurting head. Bite and scratch, Precious. Squeeze them! Sleeping so quiet, bright eyes hiding: squeeze him, too, and choke him. Choke him and kill him and dig out his eyes. Serves him right, yes, for kicking. Hateful cruel manses!'

Somehow he had gone from his encounter with Bilbo by the subterranean lake to the night in Eastemnet when he had tried to strangle his captor in one swift sweep through some nonsense about others who had kicked him and now could not find him. Aragorn tried to fix those fragments of information in his mind, hoping to piece together something of use.

'My friend did not kick you,' Gandalf declared flatly. The certainty in his voice was heartening to one so often doubted by those he met. Aragorn had used the toe of his boot to lever Gollum up onto his feet more than once, but never had he kicked him. 'Tell me where you got your Birthday Present.'

'It was a Birthday Present!' Gollum said defiantly. 'We got it, we did. It was given us, gollum. Given on our birthday. It's ours and we want it! Give it back to us, and then we'll tell you! Yes, yess, then we'll tell you anything you want to hear, gollum. It's a promise, a promise. Give it to us now!'

'I do not have it, and would not give it to you even if I did,' said Gandalf. His tone was still firm and very calm, showing no sign of the dread Aragorn knew he had felt of this morning's interrogation. 'You have given me no cause to trust you: you have answered none of my questions forthrightly, and what answers you give are peppered with lies.'

'Not a lie!' shrieked Gollum. 'Not a lie, no it isn't! Gave it to us, she did! Our Birthday Present, my Precious! It's ours, yes it is, and we wants it! It's our birthday, my love, and we wants it!'

A chill coursed along Aragorn's spine. He had heard those words before: he knew that he had. Before he could think where, Gollum was repeating them.

'It's our birthday and we wants it, gollum. Give us that, my love, we wants it! It's our birthday, it is. It is!'

Now Aragorn remembered. Those words had drawn him up short one frosty morning, when he had been walking in fresh hope brought on by nothing more than the breaking of the dawn after a weary night's walking through lands haunted with the memory of massacre. He had wondered wildly how Gollum had known the significance of the day, before it had come to him that the creature was not speaking of Aragorn's birthday but of his own.

He needed to tell Gandalf of this, but he could not do so now. It had seemed nothing more than a strange occurrence on a strange road: Gollum declaring that it was his birthday and whining for food obliquely, so that he did not yield to his captor the victory of addressing him directly. If he had not been speaking of food at all, but of the thing he called his Birthday Present, then he must have been walking in memory on that day south of Gladden.

Several sharp thoughts lanced through Aragorn's mind at once, leaving little room to listen to Gollum's continued whining and Gandalf's flat response. Certainly there was no doubt that Bilbo's Ring was constantly on Gollum's mind: his ceaseless use of his pet-name for it was proof of that. All the long leagues from Dagorlad to Gladden he had muttered bleakly about his Precious, but he had only spoken of it as his Birthday Present on that one occasion. At the time Aragorn had made two incorrect conjectures: first that Gollum was demanding victuals, and second that Gollum somehow knew the date of the Ranger's own birth eighty-six years before. What if his last assumption was also faulty?

But he was meant to be listening: a second pair of ears to help decipher the creature's ravings. He could not puzzle this out and follow the rambling narrative on the other side of the door at the same time.

All at once Aragorn was reaching for the writing box after all. He turned on the seat of the chair, unable to move the furniture itself because the noise would make his presence obvious. He was careful to maneuver his sprained foot around the leg of the table without striking it, and in a moment he was sitting head on and removing the stopper from the small pot of ink. He plucked up one of the three neatly trimmed quills waiting in the box and dipped it. Then he was taken by a reflexive pang of guilt at this extravagance: new vellum was too costly to use for hastily penned notes. He shook himself to his senses with a shuddering little jolt. He was not in the Wild now, nor making do in a Ranger camp, nor counting the copper pennies of a footsoldier's wage. He was in a realm of plenty: here, as in Rivendell, writing materials were abundant and could be used with impunity. He touched the pen lightly to the lip of the inkwell, and lowered it to the page.

'Ours, Precious, ours, gollum!' the prisoner was still protesting. 'Don't you say we lie, don't you dare it! It's the truth, it is; the true, true truth! It's our Birthday Present and she gave it us, gollum.'

'She gave it you,' Gandalf repeated. Aragorn was listening with one ear as he wrote: South of Gladden, first of March. Spoke of Birthday Present: give it to us, my love, we wants it. He remembered how strange it had been to hear Gollum speak of love at all, even in that wheedling and manipulative tone. 'Who gave it? Tell me.'

'Grandmother! Grandmother, yes she did. She did, oh, she did,' Gollum said, gabbling very fast now.

'And where did she get it?' asked Gandalf. There was an edge in his voice: he knew as well as Aragorn did that this had to be a lie. Better, indeed: for it had been he who had witnessed Bilbo's struggle to leave the thing behind when he departed from Hobbiton, and Aragorn had merely heard the tale from each party.

'It felt so strange, Dúnadan,' the hobbit had confessed to him as they sat together in the homey little parlour Elrond had provided for his honoured lodger, Bilbo in his small chair and Aragorn cross-legged on the rug. 'It was as if… well, as if Gandalf had asked me to cut off my own hand and leave it there by the clock instead. It was so foolish. Year to year I scarcely thought about my ring – that ring – and yet when the time came to pass it onto Frodo you'd have thought it was a piece of my heart. I still don't know how I managed to do it in the end. If Gandalf hadn't been there to see I went through with it, I might be standing there still at the fireplace, dithering!'

A Ring of Power, even a lesser one, was not something lightly to be given. It had taken all of Bilbo's indomitable hobbity will to do it, and that with Gandalf standing over him to urge him on. From the wizard Aragorn knew of the way Bilbo's hand had faltered when he went to set the packet containing the thing down at last, and of the rage in his eyes when Gandalf caught it up for him. It was difficult indeed to imagine Gollum's grandmother giving him that same ring as a birthday gift, especially if he was not high in her favour – and surely he had not been, if his prior claim that she had turned him out of her hole was true. Grandmother, he wrote. Gift. Lies.

Gollum's protestations had faded to broken, unintelligible whimpering, and beyond the heavy door Gandalf sighed.

'You have not answered my question,' he said very clearly. 'Where did she get it?'

'She had it,' snapped Gollum. 'She had lots of things. Lots of rings and lots of treasures. Mistress of the family she was, great family. No one spat on us in those days, Precious, oh, no! No one kicked us then, tied our pretty handses up in stinking man-rags, made us walk 'til our poor feet froze blue! Drove us under Yellow Face, under White Face, wicked nassty manses. He's a thief himself, that's what he is. He knows about Baggins, he does, he does. Time, time, Precious. Yes, the answer's time and he knew it. He knew it!'

This rose into a warbling shriek that even in the next room was piercing enough to drive a spike of sharp pain into Aragorn's eardrum. Within it must have been unbearable.

'I do not need to know what Aragorn did with you,' Gandalf said sternly. 'I have had that story from him, and much more straightforwardly. Tell me about your birthday.'

'Birthday,' Gollum echoed, singsong. 'Birthday, birthday. Bright, bright birthday: sun on the water. Sun on the daisies, yes. Yes it was: sun on the daisies on our birthday, Precious. Eye in a green face: not a burning eye, but it smells, gollum. Smells like… smells like…'

Silently Aragorn urged Gandalf to press Gollum on this. Bright birthday, sun on the daisies: that sounded like no first of March that Aragorn had known in any land. Daisies were a summer flower. Even far South in Anfalas they did not bloom until the last weeks of spring. But of course Gandalf knew nothing of Gollum's words that day, and Aragorn cursed himself for failing to mention it. He could not have known, surely, that the encounter might be significant, but perhaps if he had not been so stubbornly keeping to the barest facts of his tale he might have mentioned it, strange as it had been. He tried to remember if he had even consciously recalled that morning before now, overcome as he had been with greater cares, but he could not.

'Yes,' Gandalf said, his voice low and almost coaxing. 'Yes, the Sun on the daisies, and they smelled. It was your birthday.'

'Yes, Precious, yess,' Gollum hissed. 'Sun on the daisies, and the purple beards, and the reeds all flowering. Smells all 'round us, yess. And we wants to go fishing, Precious. Catch us some fish, Déagol, my love: it's our birthday and we loves nice, juicy fish.'

This was new: a name at last. But it did not sound like a name of any folk or language known to Aragorn. It was certainly too unlovely, too strangely guttural, to belong to the charming lexicon of hobbit-names. Yet as he tried to write it he found his hand moving smoothly through Elven phonemes even though the combination of sounds would have rung sour in Elven ears.

'Who is Déagol?' Gandalf breathed, his voice as soft as the breath of a child who does not wish to disturb the butterfly that has lighted on her finger. He feared to spook Gollum out of this reverie, and Aragorn found that his own lungs were clenched in apprehension as he prayed a clear answer would come.

'We loves him, my Precious,' Gollum whined. 'Our friend, our good friend, Precious. He's our friend, he is. Never pinching, never biting. Never kicks us, no, not Déagol! If he could see our handses now, poor hurting handses! Whips and red iron and fire! OH! Hurts us, Precious!'

Aragorn let out his breath in a hot stream of frustration, scarcely restraining himself from letting his head slap down across the back of his hands where they held pen and vellum. Gollum was back on the subject of his hands, and he could rail about that for hours. All the while he would refuse to say who had hurt them, or why, or what they had asked him while they did it. Then sooner or later it would come back his poor handses being bound up in rags so he could not move them, or stinging in the snow while he was driven north into the wailing wind. Finally they would be right where they had started, muttering about thief and Baggins and Yellow Face.

If this was what the last five days had been, it was small wonder that Gandalf was near his wit's end. Aragorn set down the pen and returned noiselessly to his original position, resting his shoulder blades on the back of the chair and his head on the cool stone wall behind. He closed his eyes and concentrated on burying the frustration that wanted to break from his cold-roughened lips in a roar. He tried to filter Gollum's voice of its shrill hideous quality and to focus only on the words, but that was little help. They were so garbled, so repetitive and useless that he could not help his mounting vexation. He could hear that same tension growing in Gandalf's voice, though he was struggling to school it. While he could, so would Aragorn.

On the other side of the wall, he knew that Gandalf was playing the same game. While the man without could hold his silence, he would keep on with his dogged questioning. Each of them would try to outlast the other, in the hope that by doing so both of them might outlast the prisoner. With a grim attempt at his old wry humour, Aragorn told himself that he would have to be the victor. Otherwise he would be obliged to yield up his reputation as the most patient of the two.

But Gollum was trying the patience of the living rock itself.

lar

Nearly three hours more did Gandalf sit in the fetid little room, plying the prisoner with question after question and trying without success to get him to say anything new about the ring. Again and again, Gollum twisted every question until it brought him back to how ill-used he was and how the treachery, dishonesty and spitefulness of others made it necessary for him to look after himself. He did not try to bargain information for his Precious again, however, and Aragorn wondered what had passed through Gandalf's eyes when he had refused the first offer. Certainly his voice had betrayed little.

At last the key rattled in the lock and the door swung open, loosing another wave of befouled air. By this time Aragorn was stiff from sitting so long on the bare wooden chair, and his head ached mercilessly from Gollum's whining and spiraling rhetoric. Still he sat up as straight as he could and tried to fix a hopeful expression on his face as Gandalf rounded the door and slammed it shut with all the force in his sword-arm. He thrust the key into the lock so swiftly that the iron creaked in protest, and the tumbler fell to with a low gong. He whirled upon the Ranger with blazing eyes.

Aragorn held out the silver cup he had filled when he heard the interrogation winding suddenly to a close. Gandalf snatched it, looked at it, and then quaffed deeply of the fragrant wine. It brought a flush of colour to cheeks made almost as grey as his beard with the strain.

'By all the stars in the Firmament—' he began, muttering wrathfully.

Aragorn shook his head in haste. After the careful subterfuge, it would serve them not at all if Gollum learned he had been overheard all this time. Quietly Aragorn took his crutches in his right hand and braced his left on the seat of the chair. Without an armrest it was more difficult to keep himself steady as he eased his weight onto his good foot, but although Gandalf hurriedly set down the goblet to reach for him the Ranger was able to rise unaided. He placed the crutches as silently as he could and loped towards the anteroom door. His feet in their soft felted shoes scarcely whispered across the stone floor, and beneath the clatter of Gandalf's boots and the jangle of the keys he could surely not be heard.

At the door, however, he hesitated. Had this been the arrangement all along: for Gandalf to lock Gollum in and then go to fetch the guards? How far away was the armoury, and for how long was the prisoner unattended? Long years ago when the arrangements had been agreed upon, a perpetual watch had been promised. While Aragorn could not deny the wisdom of keeping the questioning secret even from Thranduil's faithful captain, he did not like this notion of leaving Gollum alone; not even for a minute.

He leaned his right arm against the wall and let it take most of his weight so that his left hand could loose its hold on the crutch. When Gandalf opened the door, Aragorn reached out for the ring of keys. The keen eyes flashed, half in anger and half in query. Aragorn tipped his head towards the corridor, indicating that Gandalf should go, and then pointed straight down at his own feet: he would stay.

'What good can that possibly serve?' Gandalf hissed, leaning in so near that the barest breath of a sound was enough to reach Aragorn's ears. Aragorn fixed him with a hard look, silent but immovable, and instead of waiting for the keys to be offered he reached out and took them without once breaking eye contact. There was a moment's resistance from Gandalf's hand, and then the wizard snorted in acquiescing annoyance and marched from the room.

Aragorn locked the door, rattling the keys only lightly so that it would sound as though the sound came from the other side. Then he eased his arm down to his side again and hooked his thumb around the carven grip of his prop. There was no reason to push himself off the wall: he would have to let Losfaron and his subordinate in again presently.

From beyond the cell door he could hear Gollum snuffling and whimpering to himself. There was the rasp of rough skin on stone, and the slap-slap of bare feet as the creature began to pace.

'Asks us, asks us, it does,' he said. 'Just asking, asking, asking. But when it stops asking, what then, Precious? Then the hurting and the cutting and the scalding, gollum! Binds us and beats us and what next? We didn't do it, Precious. We didn't hurt him. He should have handed it over, yes he should. What was he thinking, keeping it from us? Found it, he did, found it for us. Catch us something nice, my love. It's our birthday. Our birthday.'

Then there was a cry of anguish the likes of which Aragorn had never heard from lips he had believed incapable of discovering any new bone-grating ululation. It made his back and shoulders tense, and his head tuck instinctively as if cringing from a whip, and all the fine hairs on his arms stood up, prickling. The noise continued unabated for so long that it should have come for a creature with lungs many times the size of Gollum himself. And then it broke off suddenly to the clatter of bony limbs on the floor and a fit of bitter, tormented weeping.

Aragorn eased out of his startled posture, his stomach churning uneasily beneath his ribs. The words were strange enough, and the howl had been terrible, but the sobs that now came from the cell were some of the most piteous and most hideous he had ever heard. There was guilt and pain and fury in that sound, and it was terrible.

Aragorn could only listen uncomprehendingly, wishing bleakly that he were long gone from this place. But he could not move now, not even to slip from the room. Instead he closed his ears to the clamour as best he could, and focused on fixing Gollum's words in his mind. It was plain that their prisoner was certain they meant to put him to torment, and it was doubtful that he would reveal much while that fear loomed still in his mind. The morning after the disastrous crossing of the frozen river loomed like a great shadow in Aragorn's mind. As much as he wished to believe that Gollum's fear of torture was rooted only in his sufferings in Mordor, he could not.

But the other wretched protestations were more significant, perhaps. Who was it that Gollum was so eager to convince himself he had not hurt? Certainly the reference to catching something nice harkened back to his earlier words about a birthday fishing trip. His friend, then?

With his head pounding miserably and his convalescing body wracked with weariness, Aragorn could not muster the name from his mind. It was on the paper, however, tucked into the front of his borrowed Elven robe. He had girded himself for the occasion, fastening his belt to the very last of his crudely cut notches so that it would not slide too far down his bony hips. He had wanted the comfort of a blade, even if it was only a slender knife. He was glad of it now, though neither arm was free to reach for it. There was surcease in knowing he was not defenceless with an enemy – even an imprisoned enemy – so near at hand.

There were so many questions he wanted to ask Gollum, and yet he could not speak. But ask he would, as soon as he could convince Gandalf to allow it. Clearly one inquisitor could not keep Gollum from sliding into one of his mad whirlwinds of vitriol and self-pity. Perhaps two would fare better. Yet if Aragorn seemed to have intelligence of things he should not have known, so much the better.

Footfalls rang in the corridor, and Gollum choked off his sobbing into sullen hiccoughing pants as he heard them. Lest one of the oncomers forget himself and knock, Aragorn reached at once for the door. He held the keys as carefully as he could, trying to keep them from rattling, and when Gandalf reached the door he found it ajar. He pushed it open and came back in, a striding blur of grey. Losfaron was on his heels, this time followed by a different guard. She bowed her head to Aragorn as she passed, but she had plainly been advised not to speak.

'I must take some refreshment,' Gandalf announced, with a look at the Ranger that said he was speaking for both of them. 'Then I shall return. You may give him water, but he is to have nothing to eat unless he is ready to repay favour with favour. Understood?'

'Yes, my lord,' said the lady.

'Aye, Mithrandir: as you say,' Losfaron agreed in the same breath.

But Aragorn shook his head. It was awkward work with the crutch under his arm, but he held his hand flat, palm upward, and moved it as if ushering a tray through the door. He pointed from Gandalf to the table and made a no doubt foolish-looking pantomime of eating. Then he tilted his hand back over a bent wrist invitingly, wafting it between the Elves and the wizard as he inclined his head with a smile. That last was a habitual gesture of Elrond Halfelven, used as a gracious invitation to assembled company that they should talk amongst themselves and well known to any who had spent much time at all in the Last Homely House. It was a complex series of gesticulations with the accompanying facial acrobatics, but he hoped the meaning was clear. Food would be brought, Gandalf should remain here, and he should make pleasant conversation with the guards.

Gandalf gave him a look of such incredulous puzzlement that despite the grave situation Aragorn felt the urge to laugh. He was rallying himself for another attempt when Gandalf rolled his eyes.

'I think I shall take my meal with the two of you,' he announced, moving to the table and sitting down as noisily as he could without actually overturning it. 'Come and sit, and let us talk of cheerful things a while.'

Aragorn gave his friend a taut smile of approval and a small nod. He held out the keys to Losfaron, who took them. Then he swung quietly from the room, unaware that by now he was almost as deft on his crutches as on his feet. With any luck, Gollum would not only never know that he had been there, but also realize that Gandalf's absence had been scarcely five minutes: not long enough to find a co-conspirator in these vast caverns, much less brief him. He would worry later about facing the wizard's displeasure at this unilateral change of plan.

Note: Thank you to everyone who's weighed in on the poll so far, both here and at fanfiction.net! There have been some very compelling arguments on both sides, and clearly I’ve got some thinking to do. Happily we still have a little further to go on this "long and lonely road"…

Chapter LXIII: Fishing

Aragorn met Galion around the first turn, coming from the Ranger’s little room in puzzlement. He had looked in when his knock went unheeded, and of course found it empty. At his guest’s bidding the steward left the platter of simple foods and took the rest on to the guardroom, where his assistant was already bearing the watchers’ meal.

Aragorn ate as quickly as he dared, still distrustful of his uneasy stomach. There was a portion of cold game hen, but that he left untouched in favour of the gentler fare. He found he craved bread most of all, and the bakers of the Greenwood were skilled in its making. When he had finished he rose, but not before fishing the piece of vellum out and glancing at it to refresh his memory as to the identity of Gollum’s mysterious friend. He left the sheet it on the table. The last thing they needed was for it to fall from his garments by some mischance. Even if their captive could not read Elvish it would raise questions in his mind.

Easing his weight onto the crutches again, Aragorn cast a brief longing glance at the neatly made bed. The temptation to stretch out upon it was great, for his back was stiff and his limbs ached with the long morning of sitting in an unyielding chair. He resisted, however, and instead took a long moment to screw up his resolve.

He took stock of himself, too, before abandoning his refuge. The comical effect of the robe’s too-narrow shoulders, too-generous body and too-short sleeves was dispelled somewhat by the wholesome cleanness of the cloth and its sumptuous colour. Perhaps Thranduil’s tailor was not entirely in error about that. Aragorn adjusted the sheath upon his decrepit belt so that his knife was plainly visible on his hip. As an afterthought he plucked up one of the fine woven bands which had been left upon the washstand, and bound back his hair.

The brief walk back to the cells was at once eternal and far too swift. Aragorn scarcely had to think about using the crutches now, so there was nothing to distract him from his dread. Sitting at once remove and listening to Gollum’s gabbling had been quite trying enough. The thought of actually having to stay composed and ask the questions set his jaw to clenching and his belly roiling. Perhaps it had been a mistake to eat.

Gandalf’s voice could be heard right up the carven corridor, talking animatedly of horse husbandry in Lothlórien. They had left the door open wide, doubtless in the hope of dispelling the sour air that leaked from Gollum’s cell. Aragorn swung his good foot past the posts and took a quick, deep breath that brought him neither pleasure nor confidence.

‘How goes the questioning?’ he asked. There was a note of command in his voice, but he took care not to overplay the subterfuge: he spoke no louder than necessary to be heard through Losfaron’s pleasant boast of his own mare.

Gandalf turned in his chair, piercing eyes still puzzling. This was not at all what had been agreed, but his trust in the Ranger was great. ‘Poorly,’ he said with chill displeasure. ‘Our guest refuses to treat with me, whatever I try. Today it has been persistent cold questioning. I fared no better with that than with enticements. I am beginning to think him incapable of intelligible speech.’

While he spoke, Aragorn was listening. From behind the locked door a strangled squawk had arisen at the sound of his voice. Now there were noises of a frantic, scrabbling muster: banks and rattles from the wooden cot, muted breathless snuffling, and the screech of ragged nails clawing the stone. Their artifice had been successful: only now was Gollum aware of his captor’s arrival.

‘Mayhap I can help you to persuade him,’ Aragorn said. ‘Certainly we have travelled far enough together that I must know something of his mind by now.’

Gandalf was searching his eyes, trying to divine the course this conversation was meant to take. He had little success, for Aragorn had given the matter scanty thought. He was trusting to their long acquaintance to guide them both through it as naturally as possible.

‘You had little fortune questioning him ere this,’ said the wizard, caution in his eyes but none in his voice.

"I did not,’ said Aragorn coolly, though despite their intent the words stung. ‘But we were driven at a great pace through uncertain lands. I had no opportunity to mount a proper interrogation.’

It appeared that Gollum had not yet heard that word from Gandalf, for a dread silence fell upon the locked room.

‘I would be glad of your aid,’ Gandalf said aloud, though his eyes were blazing. As the two Elves began to gather the dishes from their meal, he swooped in towards Aragorn so they stood nearly nose to nose. ‘What is this madness?’ he hissed through his teeth, only just audible even so near and surely overpowered by the clacking of crockery. ‘You need not endure him: you are not yet well!’

‘I am well enough for this,’ Aragorn breathed, eyes firm with a conviction he did not feel. Returning to a speaking voice he said; ‘Has the prisoner been fed?’

Losfaron had caught on to the game, and he stepped in to make a play. ‘Watered only, my lord. Mithrandir bade us forgo his feeding.’

‘That is well,’ Aragorn said. He lowered his voice to a murmur loud enough that Gollum should catch the occasional word. ‘Send to the kitchen for some river fish. Trout or dace will serve. They should be filleted but uncooked. Knock when you return, and one of us shall come out to meet you.’

‘Aye, my lord,’ Losfaron assented. He went back to gather up a laden tray and he and his guard departed with haste. Aragorn moved out of the way so that Gandalf might close and lock the door.

‘Do you mean to question him alone?’ This was spoken for the prisoner to hear, but the question was grimly earnest.

‘Indeed, no!’ Aragorn said, a little too emphatic in his distaste. Modulating his tone, he said; ‘Perhaps we two together will prove more successful.’

Gandalf grunted skeptically at this, and then took hold of Aragorn’s forearm. ‘Much though I mislike this, it is surely for the best,’ he said. Then he dropped his voice almost to nothingness and whispered; ‘I am weary with this work, and it has made me imprudent. Again it seems I must implore your forgiveness: in my carelessness I uttered your name!’

Aragorn nodded. ‘I heard. It is of no moment. He has heard it at every waystation from Lórien onward. My name, at least, is no secret to him. It cannot be helped now, and surely the name itself means nothing to him.’

There was uncertainty in Gandalf’s eyes, and little relief. Aragorn had become so resigned to the inevitability of Gollum learning something of his secrets after such prolonged and imprudent association that he had not paused to think how dismaying the prospect must seem.

‘Let us make a start,’ he said, again in an audible voice. ‘We shall see what he may tell us. I have not hunted so long that he might sit sullen and silent in the Elven-King’s dungeon forever.’

That would make Gollum wonder about his future, and with a little luck make him anxious to secure it. Aragorn went to the door and braced his right shoulder on the wall by the post that he might lay by his crutches. Gandalf pursed his lips in disapproval, but said nothing. It was plain that any show of weakness would harm their position. He found the key and put it into the lock, hauled the door wide and motioned for Aragorn to pass through.

Not since his encounter with the great cats had Aragorn taken a step upon his mangled ankle, nor even tested his weight on it. It was still inflamed and tender, bruised brilliantly beneath its bindings. The foot itself was raw and peeling, even as the left one was. This gambit was a risk: falling would be far worse than crutches. But Aragorn put his left hand on the far doorpost and took his perilous step.

The sickening looseness of the sinews struck him first as the joint trembled beneath its load, followed swiftly by a stab of protesting agony. By then he had his left foot on the floor again, and he relieved his right momentarily of his weight. Setting it down again was like planting his heel upon a bare framing spike and stomping down to drive it upward into the bones of his leg.

Aragorn bent his will to moving as naturally as possible, and bore the pain with silent fortitude. In another moment he was in the corner of the cell. He leaned back with a shoulder against each wall and planted his left shoe firmly. He bent his knee to draw his right foot back and off of the ground, letting his toes brush the floor but loosely. He crossed his arms to complete the posture of indolent confidence, and looked appraisingly down at Gollum.

He was crouching on the bed with his bony back pressed into the corner. His pale eyes were enormous with apprehension, and the hideous contortions of his face added to it the blackest hate.

Gandalf was inside now, locking the door. When he turned his face remained impassive, but his eyes flicked worriedly down the length of the Ranger’s legs. Aragorn gave him a tight-lipped nod. Then the wizard set his staff against the wall in the opposite corner and frowned at Gollum.

‘Well? What have you to say for yourself?’ he asked, his voice resounding with authority in the shallow space.

Gollum’s lips worked soundlessly, his eyes still roving over Aragorn as if trying to take his measure. Then he glared piercingly at the wizard instead.

‘Nothing!’ he spat. ‘We has nothing to say! No, nothing at all. Cruel manses, both of them: we won’t say it! We won’t!’

‘What is it you will not say?’ asked Aragorn; an old trick he had learned from a wily soldier in Gondor. ‘Is it to do with your Precious? With your Birthday Present?’

Gollum hissed as his head whipped to its right. His eyes narrowed almost to slits as he stared at the Ranger’s pallid face, just before he cast his gaze abruptly away. ‘We won’t talk to him, we won’t, we won’t,’ he muttered. ‘Tall wicked Bright Eyes. Ties us, Gollum, and beats us! Steals us away to the Elveses, Precious, and sends cruel old Greybeard to question us. Yess he does!’

‘You have had your chance to speak to me alone,’ said Gandalf sternly. ‘And you have had your chance to confess to him. Now you must answer to us both.’

‘No!’ Gollum snarled, lunging forward on the cot in angry defiance. ‘We won’t , we won’t! You can’t force us, Gollum.’

‘To be sure we could, if that was what we wished,’ Gandalf said, his voice low and dangerous. ‘But it will go easier for you if you tell us of your own accord. There are many things we may provide you: comforts, even luxuries. Are you hungry, Gollum?’

A sly look flitted across the creature’s face before the wasted features drooped into an approximation of long-suffering misery.

‘Hungry, hungry, yes!’ he moaned piteously. ‘Always hungry, poor belly pinching. Starves us, he does, hateful manses. Scorches our squirrel, stringy already and then dry and nassty. Days and days and nothing at all, Precious: not a nibble or a bite. And then? Then it feeds us wood!’

Gandalf turned his head curiously to Aragorn, who had to resist the urge to squirm uncomfortably against the wall. ‘Pine bark,’ he said simply. ‘Nourishing enough.’

‘See? You see what he does?’ Gollum cried, jabbing an accusatory finger at the Ranger. ‘Admits it! He forbids us nice sweet eggses, too. Feeds us roots and dirt, gollum, expects us to eat it. Bitter roots and Elvish poisons!’

There was nothing to be gained from answering these charges, though it was interesting to watch Gollum try to turn Gandalf against his cohort. Aragorn waited silently for the wretch to wind down his diatribe. Then he spoke, calmly factual.

‘I now have the means to feed you and you shall be fed well, if once you cooperate,’ he said.

‘Lies! Liesss!’ hissed Gollum. ‘Lies like Baggins, he does. Liars, all liarsssss. You lie, you do!’

Aragorn shrugged one shoulder regretfully, as if to say he had expected no better. ‘I do not doubt that someone is lying,’ he said dryly. Gollum was working up to an enraged protest when Aragorn went smoothly on, still hoping to surprise him into some admission. ‘What did you do to your friend Déagol?’

Gollum made a strangled swallowing sound and Gandalf looked sharply at the Man. He knew not whence this question had come, but he also knew better than to give voice to his confusion.

Seeing that he had successfully tapped a vein, Aragorn pressed on. ‘What did you do to Déagol? Tell me.’

‘No, precious, no!’ Gollum shrieked. ‘Went fishing and never came back, he did. Gone far from home, far from nice holes and ponds, what did he think would happen?’

‘He went fishing and he never came back,’ Aragorn echoed. ‘Fishing for your birthday meal?’

Gollum cast him another startled look, this one more fearful than the last. ‘We didn’t tell him, no we didn’t,’ he muttered to himself. Then he seemed to be puzzling through something. ‘Just today it was. Just today.’ He glared suspiciously at Gandalf.

‘Did Déagol go fishing on your birthday?’ Aragorn asked more explicitly still. He had forgotten his weariness and the pulsing pain in his foot. The quickening of the hunt was on him, almost as it had been in the Marshes of Dagorlad. ‘You wanted him to catch you something nice for your birthday.’

‘Yes!’ Gollum gabbled. ‘No! Fish! We wanted fish, we did: only fish! Nice juicy fish, fat fish. Oooh, it pinches, Precious! Poor stomach, always empty and hungry. Starves us, precious!’

Just as Aragorn was thinking that this would be a most opportune time for Losfaron to return, he heard a muffled knock without. Gandalf moved to the door as silently as possible, trying not to draw their prisoner’s attention. Gollum was sniveling incoherently, hiding his eyes with his hands and scrabbling with his feet against the tick so that the straw within bunched into unsightly humps.’

‘Did he catch anything?’ Aragorn asked as the lock clicked to again. Déagol’s luck with a line was immaterial, but it might bring Gollum around to the thing he wanted so hard to convince himself he ‘didn’t do’. It was like drawing an ugly memory from a very small child, or a bewildered and traumatized old man: skirting the edges of the truth and working slowly inward was best.

‘Caught him, it did!’ Gollum barked, something horribly like amusement in his voice. ‘Tugged on the line, and splash! Out of the boat and into the big river. Wide waters, big beautiful fish, gollum!’

So a large fish had dragged this Déagol into the water, had it? Aragorn thought absently that it would take a wide water indeed to harbour such a fish. Giant carp and sturgeon were not unknown in the fathomless Northern lakes, but in a river? Perhaps this was only another lie after all. Yet there surely must be some grain of truth hidden within.

‘Did he drown?’ Aragorn asked. Now he made his voice very soft, as filled with sympathy as he could counterfeit to make it. Two months and nine hundred miles back, he might not have had to pretend. ‘He was your good friend, and it was your birthday. Did he drown?’

‘Drown, drown, drown,’ Gollum mumbled in a haunted singsong that hardened to a snarl as he added; ‘We should have drowned him, Precious! Drowned him and sank him and left him to rot. Let the fishes eaat his eyes, Gollum, and his toes and his nose and his…’

There was more, and Aragorn was briefly certain he had learned something significant at last. Then Gollum straightened, fixed hateful eyes upon him, and snarled spitefully; ‘And left him there forever, under the ice!’

Aragorn let out a hot column of air through his nostrils, jaw tightening in frustration. Gollum had doubled back to their journey again: this time to the ill-starred crossing that had nearly claimed them both.

‘Perhaps you will fare better when next you try to drown me,’ he said with sour restraint. ‘I asked if your friend was drowned.’

Gollum’s nostrils flared, but before he could speak the door opened and Gandalf came back. He fastened the lock and held out a handsome carven platter to the Ranger. On it were the filleted sides of several trout, silvery-orange and glistening, obviously fresh.

Aragorn looked from the uncooked to the uncouth and drew his roughened lips into a thin line. If this method was to work, he had to make a show of faith. Unfortunately, he recalled only too well how such gestures had been met in the past. It was irksome to be forced to extend courtesy where it had been so often rejected before.

He gave the dish back to Gandalf and picked up one of the cool, slippery pieces. He tore off a small chunk and placed it in the palm of his hand. Gollum was watching him warily, but with avarice.

‘Déagol went fishing on your birthday to catch you something nice,’ Aragorn recited slowly. ‘A large fish pulled him from the boat, so you said.’ It might be unwise to include this last, for he risked rewarding a lie, but Gandalf had not yet heard it. Besides, trust must first be given before it could be expected. ‘Since you have told me these things, you may have this.’

The slightest sidelong glance at Gandalf was all that was needed. He reached out and stayed Aragorn’s hand.

‘You reward such a paltry tale as that?’ Gandalf asked coldly. ‘I would not feed him for twice as much.’

‘He has earned it,’ said Aragorn. ‘When he has done my bidding before this he was rewarded as circumstances would permit. It is only just that I do the same now.’

He slipped his arm from the commanding grip that was truly little more than a light touch, and held out the fish to Gollum again.

‘Come and fetch it,’ he invited, almost pleasantly. ‘You have earned it.’

Gandalf was very still, his staff in the crook of the arm that held the platter. His eyes moved slowly between Gollum squatting on his cot and Aragorn standing casually one-legged in the corner. Aragorn did not take his gaze from the prisoner, but he kept his eyes soft and very patient. It was like the night when he had invited his foul travelling companion to shelter beneath his blanket: acceptance or rejection would decide the course of the interrogation. This time, at least, there would be no wargs to disrupt the crucial moment.

Gollum reached out with one grasping hand, clutching at empty air. He could not reach the fish: to take it he would have to cross the room and enter the Man’s armspan. He took a crouching hop away from the wall, and then another. Spittle was dribbling from one corner of his mouth, and his eyes were so intent upon the scrap of fish that it might have been yet living and he preparing to snatch it from the water.

Now he was perched on the wooden lip of the bed. One skeletal foot crept over the edge and slowly down, excruciatingly slowly like a swimmer slipping down off a pier into icy water. Aragorn watched, not daring to move and scarcely hazarding a breath, as the long toes hovered just above the floor. Then they touched it, flexing down.

All at once Gollum let out a shriek and leapt back up onto the cot. ‘A trick, a trick, a trick! Tricksy manses, wicked cheating thing. Snatch it away, he will, and grab us! He’s a friend of Baggins: tricksy cheating Baggins. He cheated first, he did, and tricked us. Tricked us out of our Precious, gollum. Stole it away: hateful thief. Find him and squeeze him and dig out his eyes…’

For a moment Aragorn and Gandalf both stood speechless, startled by the swiftness of the change far more than by the ugly words. Gollum was gabbling senselessly again, licking at his hands and rocking to and fro. Exasperated and trying not to give in to it, Aragorn flung the piece of fish back onto the plate in Gandalf’s hand. It landed with a soft plop, and the wizard stared down at it for a moment before flinging the dish onto the floor in the right-hand corner.

‘Enough of this!’ he snapped. ‘You will tell us what we wish to know, or we shall compel you.’ He motioned briskly at Aragorn.

‘What happened to Déagol? Did he drown in the river?’ the Ranger asked, his voice hard now with the effort to restrain himself. ‘How do you know of the great fish?’

‘He cannot know: it is another lie,’ said Gandalf unexpectedly. He snorted disdainfully in Gollum’s direction. ‘His friend left home to go fishing, and never came back: that is all. He knows nothing of his fate.’

‘It’s not a lie!’ Gollum snarled, uncoiling himself to glare murderously at the wizard. ‘It’s the truth, it is: we saw it! We watched him, yes we did, gollum. Watched him, saw him: in he went! Splash, into the water like a stone.’

This hung upon the air. After a moment’s swift consideration, Aragorn spoke. ‘When is your birthday, then?’ he asked. ‘The daisies were blossoming, and the bearded iris?’

Gandalf shot him another incredulous look, doubtless wondering what bearing flowers could possibly have on the matter. Gollum was shaking his head spastically.

‘No, no, no,’ he moaned. ‘Go away! Turn away! Leave us be! Leave us be, gollum. We don’t know it, don’t know it, don’t know any of it, we don’t. We didn’t do it, none of it: all lies and nassty suspicious little minds. Take us and whip us and hurt us, Precious! Not fair at all: not fair.’

‘Answer me,’ Aragorn pressed. ‘The daisies and the iris were blooming on your birthday?’

Gollum tried to give him another hateful glance, but as soon as Aragorn caught his eyes he held them, staring deeply and willfully into Gollum’s heart. All he saw was blackness, twisting and writhing in misery and hatred, but that was no less than he had expected to see. More importantly, Gollum was transfixed: unable to move, unable to speak, unable even to look away. His jaw dropped and his sparse gums worked, and his hands writhed together. Then he let loose another of his ear-splitting wails and cast himself bodily onto the floor, scuttling under the cot as swiftly as a bedbug in sudden light.

‘Yes! Yes!’ he yowled. ‘Daisies and purple beards, nassty stinking flowers. Spoiling our birthday, Precious: ruining it. Hates them, Precious. Hates them all: nassty kicking feet and cruel handses, fire and knife and cruel ropes! And their stinking flowers, all around the river.’

Now Gandalf was fairly seething with questions he could not ask. Gollum was sobbing and whimpering, almost hidden from sight as he tried to cram himself into the corner under the cot. He cowered behind the brass pot that was tucked beneath it, slavering and whinging.

Aragorn looked sharply at his friend. ‘The irises still in bloom, and the daisies open,’ he said calculatingly. ‘Late spring or very early summer.’

Gandalf’s look was clear, and very irritated: what can that possibly matter?

This Aragorn could not say aloud, but his mind was moving at a frenetic pace. If Gollum’s birthday was not the first of March but near the time when spring gave way to summer, then it had not been the day that had reminded him of it. And if it was not the day, what else could it have been? Not his companion, surely: he counted Aragorn no friend. Assuredly not the weather, or the scent of the wind. No: if anything had prompted Gollum’s memories of his birthday and his all-important Birthday Present, it must have been the place.

‘Gollum,’ he said sternly. The whimpering hiccoughed and quieted somewhat, but did not cease. ‘Gollum, where did Déagol go to fish? In what river?’

He already knew: in the only river known to him that might run broad and deep enough to harbour a fish sufficiently large and strong to drag a hobbit-like fisherman out of a boat. It was not necessarily a lie after all.

‘Was it Anduin?’ Aragorn pressed. ‘Did you dwell near Anduin? Near the Great River? Was your grandmother’s hole…’ He lost his words for a moment as he put this together: Déagol had gone far from home, and had never returned. And if there had been a big river, did it not make sense that there might be a small river? ‘Was your grandmother’s hole near the banks of the Gladden?’

Gandalf’s eyes widened and he turned to Aragorn, lips parting as he realized what the Ranger’s questions were suggesting. Aragorn looked to the wizard in his own turn.

‘But have a hobbit-like people ever dwelt in the Vale of Anduin at all?’ he asked breathlessly, not quite whispering but certainly hopeful that Gollum might be too distracted to heed his words.

‘Yes,’ Gandalf said. His voice was hoarse. ‘Yes, long ago there were little folk burrowing in the hills and banks of the lowlands. There are tales yet among the Beornings… but they dwindled and were lost as the mountain passes became infested with orcs and the lands darkened beneath the Shadow of Dol Guldur.’

Aragorn’s brows furrowed. In this his family’s history served as a touchstone; not his family of birth, this time, but the family that had fostered him. For the first clear sign that the mountain passes were becoming infested with orcs had been the capture of Celebrían, wife of Elrond. And that had been more than five centuries ago. ‘If that is so…’ he began.

Gandalf put a hand upon his arm. ‘Not now,’ he whispered. More loudly he said; ‘Gollum? Where did you get it? How did you come to possess that ring?’

‘Birthday Present, BIRTHDAY PRESENT!’ Gollum yowled. From beneath the cot came more frantic scrambling noises.

Gandalf squatted down onto his hams, tilting his head to peer beneath the bed. With only one good foot, Aragorn was incapable of such contortions. He had to make do with the dim shape lurking in the deep shadow cast by the lantern which hung high upon the wall.

‘Gollum,’ said the wizard, his voice taking on a stentorian quality that seemed to make the very air rumble in this close and stinking place. ‘How did you come by this Birthday Present?’

‘Gave it to us, she gave it to us!’ Gollum droned shrilly. ‘Grandmother. Very rich, she was, yesss, very rich! No raggedy wild manses to trouble us then, oh, no! Wouldn’t dare it, would they, gollum?’

Gandalf shot Aragorn a brief amused look that clearly said Gollum should not be so sure of that. Aragorn felt his own spirits lift, just for a moment. If Strider had business with someone, it was true enough that wealth and influence would not prevent him. But the matter at hand was too grave for levity to linger long.

‘You cannot expect us to believe that,’ Gandalf said severely. ‘It is as improbable an excuse as any I have ever heard. Your Grandmother did not have the Ring.’

‘She did, she did! Her hole was filled up with treasures: beautiful things. We would dig our tunnels and we would find them: gold and silver trinkets, cups and dishes, gollum. Knives and clasps and buttons, rings, yess, and bracelets, and plates as big as coracles, gollum. Many, many precious things….’

He went on in this vein for some time, bemoaning the loss of his grandmother’s treasures and her favour and muttering curses upon those who had driven him out of his home and away from his people. Gandalf gave up his awkward crouch and sat down upon the floor, now and then trying to bring Gollum away from the subject to something more fruitful. But Aragorn was occupied in keeping himself upright against the wall.

His head was swimming in a way that had little to do with his weariness, and there was a sickness in his belly that neither the stench nor his uneasy meal could explain. The notion of Gollum’s grandmother possessing many Elven Rings, even lesser ones, was absurd. However, the tale of tunnelling and finding treasures had the feel of terrible truth. If indeed Gollum’s people had dwelt in the crook of Gladden and Anduin, they would have unearthed the long-hidden remains of the hosts of Arnor slaughtered there at the dawn of the Age. Gold and silver trinkets, knives, dishes: the ornaments of lords great and small and the utensils of soldiers, wrought handsomely even when in base metals. And plates as big as coracles? Steel bucklers with the leather rotted away. As he had on that same day when Gollum had spoken of his Birthday Present, Aragorn felt a lonesome desolation that only the slaughter of his ancient kindred could bring. Failed by their Captain, failed by their King.

‘Get out of there,’ Gandalf said at last, climbing to his feet and dusting the skirts of his robes. ‘We have had quite enough of your histrionics. It is a sad thing that your grandmother disowned you, and no doubt it was unpleasant to be driven off by your kindred, but all that was long ago. If you can remember it, you can remember how you came by your beloved Precious.’

Gollum jabbered something senseless, but he made no move to abandon his shelter. Aragorn shook off his haunted thoughts and cleared his throat. ‘Gollum!’ he said in the imperious tone that had from time to time compelled the wretch to obey. ‘Come forth and face us. There is nowhere to hide.’

From beneath the bunk came a warbling noise of dissent followed by many an imprecation of cruel manses and hateful liars and gollum. They listened for a while, each struggling in his own way for control. Aragorn wanted to cross the room and fling the bed aside, that he might seize the wretch by the shoulders and shake him as he deserved to be shaken, as he had so often by word and deed begged to be shaken, until his neck bobbed loosely on sinews too jarred to hold it and his six fetid teeth rattled in his accursed head. He knew he could not do it, but that was not enough. He had to keep himself from wishing to do it. It was a base impulse, an unworthy desire. Gollum was his prisoner, helpless before his will: helpless to do anything but thwart how ever he could their desire to learn what he knew. It was to be expected that he would resist. It was maddening, but it was natural. It fell upon them, the jailors, to maintain in this place both order and justice. However weary, irate and provoked, they could not stoop to the devices of the Enemy.

He had fought such urges before, and suppressed them. He had meted out his punishments with calculation and control. He had struck Gollum heatedly only in those moments when he had been fighting not only for mastery but for his very life. If the lonely road with its countless travails had not broken him in this, he would not be broken in this warm and sheltered room. He closed his mind to thoughts of petty vengeance and strove to cool the choler of his blood.

Gandalf was undergoing a similar struggle, eyes stormy with wrath and wizened hands working. They clenched and unclenched. They plucked at his beard and raked through his hair. They tugged at one another’s sleeves. Many were the proverbs that warned of the wrath of wizards, and Aragorn knew that none of these were unfounded. His own temper might burn hot as a forge, but beside it Gandalf’s was dragon-fire.

‘Turn it on end,’ Aragorn said at last, his voice more hoarse than he would have expected.

Gandalf turned on him as if to launch into a fearsome dressing-down. His eyes blazed and his restless fingers tightened. But all he said, grinding out the word over set teeth, was; ‘Turn what?’

‘The bunk,’ said Aragorn. ‘Turn it on its end, and he will have nowhere to hide.’

The room was not five feet deep and only seven broad, but the bed did not occupy the whole of the back wall. In length it was short of six feet: during his two-day sojourn here as he had done his utmost to test the limits of Thranduil’s security, Aragorn had taken his brief spans of sleep stretched out on the floor instead of folded onto that abbreviated thing. It was not fixed to the wall, nor to the floor, and he had made every conceivable use of it in his own escape attempts. Though heavy and unwieldy it could be moved.

‘I had thought to take him by the ankle,’ said Gandalf tartly; ‘but someone once warned me against his teeth.’ Then he took the two swift steps across the room and flung the thin straw pallet and blanket from the cot. He took hold of the edge that was driven into the corner – where Gollum had been sitting until he threw himself to the floor – and with a swift, sparing sweep of his arms that spoke of strength far greater than appearances would indicate, he flipped the simple furnishing onto its foot, narrowly avoiding the lantern on the wall.

Cast suddenly into the light, Gollum’s legs scuttled up beneath his wasted body. He was curled in a ball, but his hands did not guard his head as might have been expected in such a position of defence. Instead, his head sheltered his hands. They were huddled between his bony shoulders, writhing like overturned insects. He was licking them as he whimpered.

"Poor handses!’ he sobbed. ‘No, no! No more! No more!’

A sour metallic taste filled Aragorn’s mouth, nothing like the thick, vile flavor of the stagnant air. He remembered the early days, fleeing into the Emyn Muil and tending his own festering arm while all the time mindful of the need to be vigilant of Gollum’s ruined hands. Burns and shallow cuts and the hard, bruised wheals left by strange and terrible instruments. He and Gandalf might have kept the arts of Mordor from this cell, but they flourished in the prisoner’s mind. The terror of that place lay black upon Gollum’s heart.

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So it went on. Hours passed, and they tried every stratagem they knew. Wordlessly they passed the roles back and forth: one now advocating for the prisoner while the other spoke against him; then the other would press him fiercely while the other reasoned or coaxed. They tried silence. They tried barrages of questions so rapid that an accomplished Elven scholar could not have kept track of them all. They tempted him with the fish. They tempted him with water. This last privation they could not sustain, for Gollum frothed at the mouth and sweated out such quantities that Aragorn’s healer’s eye began to fear for his wellbeing. He had endured longer stretches of thirst than this, but never with such unearthly exertions. He writhed and he scrabbled and he tried to climb the walls. He scurried between them when Gandalf strode wobbling ellipses around the small room and the two of them pelted him with their queries. Ever his wiry hands were in motion.

The questions were almost as repetitive as the garbled evasions. They pressed him for his history, for the rest of the story of his friend which seemed so wound up in the fated birthday, for an account of his movements after leaving his dark lake beneath the Misty Mountains, and again and again for whatever he might know of Bilbo beyond his name and his purported dishonesty at riddle-games. Now and then they would throw in some other inquiry, trying to distract him briefly so that the other might surprise some truth from him. But Gollum was skilled in the arts of evasion, and his sanity was tenuous. He wept and whined and spouted all manner of lies, and when none of that availed him he repeated his accusations of cruelty again and again. They were both cruel, it seemed, but Aragorn most of all.

That was almost the worst of it: his distorted accounts of mistreatment on the road behind which the Ranger knew his friend could read the struggles and deprivations. Once or twice when Gollum was in the throes of one of his gymnastic contortions, Aragorn caught the wizard watching him with sad and knowing eyes.

The physical discomforts of the work were secondary to the mental agonies and the ringing in their ears, but they were not insignificant. Aragorn did not dare to move from his corner, not even when his left thigh began to burn and threaten to cramp. He did not wish to risk stumbling upon his bad foot without cause, and the only cause he could imagine that would be worth the risk was departing from this place. His back ached fiercely, putting to shame any twinges he had suffered this morning. His neck was stiff and sore from resisting the flinch his body wanted to make every time Gollum let out one of his sundering howls. And the headache that had been brewing almost from the beginning of the day’s labours deepened and intensified until it seemed his very skull pulsed and throbbed each beat of his heart.

Gandalf’s troubles seemed chiefly to be in the hollow of his spine and up his arms into his shoulders. During his most terse and testy questions, he would kneed at these places with hard-fisted knuckles. The drawn look that came over his face whenever Gollum’s ululations rose beyond a certain octave told Aragorn that the wizard, too, was sore in the head.

But Gandalf was not tethered to the wall by the limitations of his body. Twice he left the cell to bring back water (on the second occasion for Gollum as well as the Ranger). He took away the fish when it began to smell strongly enough to be detected even under Gollum’s reek, and once he brought in a thick slice of the guards’ bread with a careful scraping of butter, that Aragorn might eat a little. He did so, but only through a mighty exertion of his will: the smell in the room made no notion quite so unpleasant as feeding.

In the end, when Gollum was once more muttering snatches of riddles between self-pitying sobs, Gandalf turned from him with a face curled into a rictus of disgust.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Let him stew in his juices another night if he must. This has gone beyond toil to torment.’

Before Aragorn could speak out to agree, much less offer comment of his own, the door was thrust open. Gandalf took hold of his shoulder with a strong hand and moved as if propelling a reluctant Ranger through the exit. In fact what he was doing was offering something sturdy for Aragorn to thrust his weight against when he had to step with his right foot. This time there was no pain: his leg was numb below the middle of his shin, having fallen asleep in its limp, pendulous position. Aragorn covered the short distance to the anteroom with ease, and could not help cringing with the pounding of his head when Gandalf slammed the door with all his might. He thrust the key in the lock and turned it wrathfully.

‘Tomorrow,’ he vowed bleakly, as much for the captive’s benefit as for their own.

Aragorn got his crutches under his arms and hobbled to the table. He feared to take one of the chairs, lest he should prove unequal to rising again, but he sat himself on a corner of the table. It was an enormous relief to take even a portion of the burden off his left foot, which was burning with itch and weariness even as prickling needles of awakening nerves began to ripple through its mate. Again he motioned that Gandalf should go and fetch the guards while he stayed. This time, however, Gollum said nothing. There was only the crackle of straw and the whisper of canvas as he punched at the simple mattress, doubtless making himself a nest on the floor.

Gandalf returned swiftly with two fresh soldiers in his wake. Brief instructions were given: water, but no food; the light to be left burning; the one door ever locked when the other was not. Neither of the two interrogators asked how long they had been cloistered with their subject in the sunless, timeless room. Neither of them wished to know.

Chapter LXIV: Conflagrations and Conjurations

'We made such a promising start of it,' Aragorn said, wishing to be the first to speak but knowing naught else to say. Gandalf was just coming back into the Ranger's room, having gone to give instructions for their victuals. The wizard closed the door doggedly. After this day's toils neither liked the notion of being shut in again, but the need for secrecy was great. Gandalf stood with his back to the door and his fist on the handle, shoulders slumped as he stared dully at the Man.

'Promising, was it?' he scoffed. 'Perhaps at first. I almost dared believe you had broken through his bastion of obstinacy.'

'As did I,' sighed Aragorn. He was in his chair, stripped to body linen and bandages. His clothes, like Gandalf's, had been ripe with the reek of the cell after so many hours. Now the wizard was clad in a velvet night-robe. It was curious to see him in the borrowed garment with its deep azure nap.

Aragorn tried to lift his mouth in a sardonic little smile, but the muscles of his face were too strained from the rigid struggle to school his features. 'At least we have learned something,' he said. 'Gollum came of a hole-dwelling folk who lived upon the Gladden Fields.'

'In the Vale of Anduin, yes,' said Gandalf, eyebrows knit. 'But how can you be certain of the latter when you did not get a straight answer from him?'

'I am not certain, perhaps, but I am truly convinced,' Aragorn said. 'Give me water, and I will explain myself.'

Gandalf filled a goblet and brought it to him. Aragorn took it with a steady hand, but as he drank his control faltered and the silver rim clattered between his teeth. He clamped his lips together to silence it, and cast a quelling look at the wizard. Gandalf's eyes were brewing a fresh storm, but he broke from Aragorn and whirled to fling himself into the other chair. He grimaced as he landed, and then shifted in his seat with a fist in the small of his back. When he was settled, he removed his hand and with it motioned tiredly that Aragorn should begin.

He related what Gollum had said on that day when they had marched the approach to the River Gladden. Though he did not speak of his own troubled thoughts, he did share how he had misconstrued Gollum's. This part of the story brought an appreciative snort from the wizard, but by the time Aragorn finished he was once more grave and grim.

'So that is why you made much of the flowers,' he said. 'Because if the wretch was born in summer, then what was there to remind him of it in the heart of winter's last freeze?'

Aragorn nodded and drained the cup. By holding the lip he managed to lower it to the floor without having to lean too far against the arm of the chair. Even so, the muscles of his back quivered a dour warning.

'There is the matter of his grandmother's treasure, as well,' he said. 'Unearthed trinkets and the trimmings of a camp: it can be no other place.'

'And it is certainly a strange coincidence, if coincidence it be, that this Ring's first known bearer dwelt once so near the place where the One was lost,' said Gandalf. 'But as for his grandmother's hoard, the notion of her possessing many such Rings is preposterous, much less that she gave them away on a whim.'

'So I thought,' said Aragorn. 'I feel the truth is rather somehow entwined with his guilt about his friend.'

'That is something else.' Gandalf's eyes narrowed. 'What led you to think he might feel guilt? I suspected nothing of the kind.'

Swiftly Aragorn summarized what he had heard in the short span of time when Gollum had thought himself unwatched. 'He must never be left alone, however briefly,' he finished, more sternly than was perhaps fair. 'Losfaron should never have permitted it.'

Gandalf's portentous frown had deepened steadily, and when he parted his lips Aragorn was prepared for sharp words about questioning the Istar's judgment. Yet it seemed he had something very different on his mind.

'So that is what drove you to this pass?' he demanded. 'For a few garbled words spoken by a lunatic, you cast aside our agreed-upon course and condemned yourself to that ghastly trial by whining? When most you have need of care and rest, you took upon you such strain because a half-mad creature muttered that he had not done something?'

Aragorn's head was pounding with the force of these words. He touched his fingertips to his brow. 'I did indeed break from our plan, and I thank you for adapting so swiftly. Thank you, too, for keeping these other objections to yourself in front of our prisoner. Yet my choice had the effect I wished of it: Gollum was caught off-guard to realize I knew things I should not. It was in his confusion that we gained the best intelligence.'

'In the first half-hour, aye!' said Gandalf bitterly. 'And all the rest of this tiresome afternoon you stood there, hobbled though you were, and we gained nothing! Nothing for a day of toil, save that he was born in summer had had a friend named Déagol who may or may not have drowned!'

'You know more of hobbits and their like than I,' Aragorn said, trying to take the tiller of the conversation as he sifted through all that he had intended to say once out of the captive's earshot. 'You said such folk dwelt in the Wilderland until they dwindled around the time the mountain passes became treacherous.'

'Yes,' said Gandalf, brooding. 'I walked those lands in the year Thrór assumed his throne in the Lonely Mountain, and there was no sign then left of their habitations. I do not know what fate befell them.'

Aragorn searched his mind for that date, but his dealings with Dwarves had never been close and he could come up with only a broad approximate interval. Yet at its very latest it was still many lifetimes ago.

'Then if Gollum dwelt among them ere they disappeared,' he said slowly; 'how old would that make him?'

Gandalf's grinding frustration was lost in abrupt wary wonder. 'Far older than he ought to be,' he murmured. 'Then it is a Great Ring indeed, giving long life. I have long feared that Bilbo's remarkable spryness was not merely good fortune.'

Aragorn could not speak to this immediately, for he was grappling uneasily with the notion. To think of his dear friend's live so affected by this alien power, so intertwined with it, was profoundly unsettling. His one consolation was that Bilbo and his Ring were now long separated. For Gandalf there was not even that small comfort, dear as Bilbo's nephew was to him.

Before he could compose himself there came a knock upon the door. Aragorn gave leave to enter, and there was a flurry of activity as Galion and two of his underlings overtook the room. They had trays and flagons and dishes of every description, and one had brought a kettle of hot water. At Gandalf's bidding he filled the washbasin and brought it to Aragorn so that he might lave his hands and face. This the Man did gladly, and but for the smell of Gollum lingering faintly in his hair he felt quite clean again.

When the elves were gone, Gandalf washed also. Aragorn drew up his good leg and reached for his crutches, preparing to stand so that his chair could be moved. The wizard turned back to the room and raised a refuting palm.

'Stay!' he commanded, and his voice was more imperious than it had been at any time with Gollum.

Feeling not unlike a chastised schoolboy but knowing better than to argue, Aragorn remained where he was. Gandalf, moving stiffly and far more like an old man than he had earlier, took hold of the table and dragged it noisily from the wall. When its leading leg was past Aragorn's bound and elevated foot, Gandalf pushed the heavy-laden thing up to a comfortable distance before the Ranger. He shoved his own seat up to the opposite side and sat almost wrathfully.

'Seldom has a day of heavy labour left me with less appetite,' he muttered, looking at the array of fine foods without interest. 'Did you mark how the horror of Mordor haunts him?'

'So it has done from the first,' said Aragorn softly. 'Let us not speak of that now.'

Gandalf assented with a jerk of his head, and lifted the cover of an ornate tureen. He spooned up a little of its contents and sniffed at it. 'Strained beef tea, unless I miss my guess. More food for the invalid?'

At another time Aragorn would have made some clever riposte to soothe pride bristled by that description of his state, but he was too weary for such antics. 'It was among the foods I named to them as fitting for one in my situation. I hope it was not too great an inconvenience to make it.'

Gandalf filled a dainty bowl with the dark broth and passed it across. 'Take it, and give no thought to its making. If it puts some strength in your blood it is worth the effort, and no doubt Galion is flattered to have a guest bold enough to make specific requests. What else do you wish? There is a tempting dish of water fowl; duck, I think.' He stirred the contents of a shallow bowl with the pricking fork, sending up a fragrance of cloves and rosemary. 'Yes, certainly duck.'

'Thank you, no,' said Aragorn. He found his dish of milk thickened with cream, and broke a piece from the high white loaf in the middle of the table. He deemed he might not stomach even what he had chosen: he felt no yearning at all for food.

'Roasted apples?' Gandalf tried. He reached for another covered dish and spoke as he raised it. 'And here we have—aah.' His face froze briefly in disgust and he dropped the lid as if it were coated in something vile. His lips twitched convulsively as he fought his distaste. Then he looked at Aragorn and feigned a thin smile. 'I do not think either of us have any wish for trout tonight, however handsomely baked and garnished.'

'No,' Aragorn agreed, scarcely exhaling the word. Gollum's constant lauding of fish as a foodstuff and the memory of those occasions when he had satisfied his yearning would have been deterrent enough, even without the smell of raw trout being so entangled with the afternoon's ordeal. At the moment Aragorn did not care if he never tasted fish again. He dipped his spoon in the beef broth and sipped of its savoury warmth. His eyes fluttered briefly closed. How often in these last weeks he had yearned for a hot meal!

Gandalf took a portion of the duck and cut one of the apples in two. 'You must taste it, at least,' he said, spearing one soft half with a knife and reaching to deposit it on the Man's all-but-empty plate. 'Fruit is nigh as rare as bread on a winter road, and surely this will not overburden your palate.'

Aragorn was not so certain, but he obliged Gandalf by shearing off a small piece with the side of his spoon and lifting it to his mouth. The flesh was tender and warm, and the spiced sugar mixture with which it had been filled was almost intolerably sweet to his unaccustomed tongue. After casting his friend a look that asked if he was satisfied, Aragorn returned his attention to the beef tea. It would indeed put some strength in his blood, and after today he realized how sorely that was needed.

They dined in silence for a time. Aragorn had expected to do so with perfunctory determination, exerting his will to carry on until his stomach began to feel full. Instead he found himself struggling even to manage that. The food tasted like ash in his mouth, and the milk soured on the tongue. Swallowing became a struggle even to imagine, much less perform. Here they sat, dining plenteously, while only down a short corridor their captive lay hungry. That he had refused to take food when it was offered seemed little excuse: it was they who insisted he must take it from their hands or not at all. They could not have commanded Losfaron's soldiers to feed him, for if Gollum suspected he might receive more lenient treatment from the wood-elves any chance of learning the truth would be lost. Still they might have left something when they departed, or in some way seen him provided for. At the very least they should have tried.

Presently he realized that Gandalf was watching every movement he made with eyes sharper than they had any right to be after such a day. After a few minutes of this, Aragorn set down the tasteless piece of fragrant bread and looked at his friend.

'May I be of some service, Gandalf the Grey?' he asked, a little acerbically. The food had done nothing to blunt the ache in his head, and his patience was threadbare.

'No,' said Gandalf tightly, like one who forces himself to deliver a missive that he knows will be ill-received. 'Not tonight, and not on the morrow. I would not have you return with me to the cells.'

This stung. 'Because I did not consult you as to the change of plan?' Aragorn asked, carefully composed. 'Had I done so, had you been gone from the guardroom even five minutes longer than you were, Gollum would have most naturally surmised that you had briefed me on the morning's questioning. My capacity to startle him would have been much diminished.'

'It was a sound strategy,' said Gandalf. The words were approving, but the voice was laden with care. 'You accomplished more with it in that first hour than I have in the last few sessions. This is no judgment on your capabilities or your skills of persuasion, Dúnadan: both are beyond reproach.'

'Not beyond it, surely,' Aragorn said with a small deprecating shake of his head. 'I believe I was wrong to play the sympathetic part at first. It was I who should have been critical, and you kind.'

'If there was any opportunity for Gollum to think of me as kind, it was lost many days before this,' scoffed Gandalf. 'He loves me little better than he loves you, and he has had less occasion to see that I may reward good behaviour. It was as well done as we could have hoped in the circumstances.'

'Why, then, do you wish to bar me from tomorrow's session?' Aragorn asked. 'Do you suspect he might open up to you, if only I am gone?'

'No,' said Gandalf, now looking very weary. He kneaded at his right shoulder absently, not knowing how he showed his aches. 'I doubt now whether he will open up at all, unless he is compelled.'

'Then we must find the means to compel him,' Aragorn said hollowly, trying to build a pantomime of hope where the true thing had fled. 'There must be something he desires – or something he fears – that we will not be foresworn to bring forward.'

'The only thing he desires is the Ring,' said Gandalf. 'As for his fears, they are manifold. What among that multitude we might bend to our use without sacrificing what must never be sacrificed, I know not.'

'Then what do you intend to do tomorrow, that I may not witness it?' asked Aragorn.

The wizard's bright eyes flared wrathfully for an instant, but only his sorely tried temper and his shredded patience allowed it. The spark was swiftly snuffed and Gandalf sighed wearily. He drew his hand across his mouth, palm rasping over his whiskers. 'Tomorrow I will question him again, as I have been doing until this last, and I will try to think of something more fruitful to try. So you also may do, but from the comfort of this room. I will not allow you to accompany me.'

Now Aragorn's temper was rising. 'You will not allow?' he repeated, almost scornfully. 'Am I a stripling once more, to be told what you will and will not allow? It was I who found him; I who brought him hither. It was I who succeeded at last in the hunt. I have done all that you asked of me—'

'I did not ask this!' Gandalf cried, and suddenly he was on his feet, palms slamming down upon the table that his fingers might clutch its side. Impassioned eyes moved wildly, and his head trembled with the force of his feeling. 'I did not ask for this! For you to risk your safety, your freedom, your very life even unto the Black Gate itself, for you to wander alone where the Nazgûl tread and brave the treacherous steps of Torech Ungol, for you to let yourself be taken and beaten by orcs, pursued by those you once called friend, mired in the foulest places of the earth: neither did I ask for this! I did not bid you be mauled by savage snapping jaws, nor swim a flood-swelled Anduin, nor limp northward on broken boots through lands buried deep in bitter snows! I did not bid you drive yourself to the very brink of starvation, sharing what little you had with that hateful creature as you brought him hither! I did not ask that you cross treacherous ice, or huddle naked by a meagre fire to keep yourself from freezing, or climb trees in a blizzard! I did not ask to make you a beggar, despised and driven off with your strange companion! I did not bid you gamble your life upon strength sustained by pine bark in warg-infested forests, to fight spiders and wild cats to safeguard your quarry, to chance your death and the end of all our hopes on this accursed quest! None of this did I ask of you!'

Stunned silence filled the room. Gandalf's chest was heaving and his shoulders were thrust high by his locked arms, but the desperate frenzy was gone from his eyes now as he realized with dawning horror all that he had said. Across the table where crockery still rattled from the force of the wizard's quaking grip, Aragorn sat motionless, breathless, torn between mortification and the impulse to weep tender tears. He had known Gandalf had been piecing together more of his own tale than of Gollum's as the creature complained ceaselessly about his treatment, but this he had not looked for.

'Nay,' he whispered, his voice hoarse with a long day's strain and his present turmoil. A great weariness was on him, far greater than even his sore body could account for. 'Nay, Gandalf: I know you did not ask for this.'

'Then why did you do it?' The question was harsh, broken: the ruins of a rage borne of anxiety and love for a friend and guilt for the speaker's part in all this. This was the unspoken supplication that had been behind Gandalf's eyes these many days, laid bare at last.

'Because I vowed to find him,' Aragorn said, knowing not what to say but the truth. 'Because I had sworn to you that I would seek him, and on discovering bring him hither. Because I believed this was the only way; our only hope of the truth. Because once begun such roads cannot end save in success or death, for the cost of abandoning them is too high to bear.'

Gandalf released his death-hold upon the table. He seemed to collapse in upon himself, to shrivel from a righteous lord into a tired old man. He hung his head and he shook it. 'Again you have laid before yourself a test greater than any other could devise, and again you have passed it. What if the next proves beyond even your endurance?'

'I do not lay these tests for myself,' said Aragorn. 'I merely meet them with what fortitude I have and bear through them as best I may, as I hope I will find the courage to do when the greatest test is upon me.'

'If it be greater than this,' sighed Gandalf; 'let us pray that you have better fodder than a tree's brittle sheath to sustain you.' He sank down into his chair and rested his brow upon an upraised hand, elbow braced on the table.

'If I have any choice in that matter, it will certainly be so,' Aragorn said with the smallest tugging of a smile on his cold lips.

Gandalf looked up, and a sudden laugh was startled from his lips. Aragorn's smile widened. 'Perhaps some fine hobbit-foods,' he suggested, pushing it a little further; 'or the best travel-fare that the kitchens of Elrond can furnish.'

The wizard shook his head again, this time in disbelief tempered by earnest admiration. He straightened in his chair and reached for the flagon of wine. 'Drink with me, Aragorn son of Arathorn: we have earned our libation this day.'

His stomach was perhaps not ready for wine, but Aragorn's heart would not permit him to refuse this gesture of amity. A mouthful could do him no harm.

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Later, when the dishes were borne away by Thranduil's people and the fire in the small hearth was warmly banked for the night, Aragorn sat close by the tall candles as Gandalf helped him lift his right leg so that his calf rested squarely across his left knee. This brought his wrenched ankle near enough that he might examine it. The wizard did not rise from his crouch, but sat instead upon the lately vacated footstool and watched gravely as Aragorn unwound the bandage.

The bruises, which that morning had been fading from purple to blues and greens and even a few patches of all-but-healed yellow, were in places fresh and black again. Freed of its bindings, the ankle throbbed and the foot below it tingled. The skin was still red and tender from damp and frost, but that would heal soon enough. Both Aragorn and the wizard were more concerned about the state of the joint itself, and whether his four short steps upon it had done more than send it swelling afresh.

Carefully Aragorn spread his palm against the sole of his foot. He exerted an effort with each, but his arm most of all: pressing the two surfaces squarely together. Then he moved his hand to the ball of his foot and flexed slowly, toes bending back as his arch curved more prominently. It was as if he were standing tip-toed upon his hand, crosswise instead of vertically. This brought some pain and the deep, wobbling looseness, but nothing that was not to be expected. An ordinary sprain would have been much improved by now, but he had compounded the problem by using his foot so indiscriminately in his fight with the lynxes. Yet as he withdrew his hand and tried a slow, rolling stretch of the complex joint, Aragorn did not believe he had done himself further harm today.

Gandalf watched thoughtfully as Aragorn wrapped his foot again, drawing the bandages as snugly as he could without endangering his toes. His eyes never left the Ranger's hands, healing steadily from their own raw hurts. When at last Aragorn was finished, Gandalf picked himself off the stool and reached to guide the injured leg back down to its perch. Once his foreleg was safely clear of his knee, Aragorn drew back and slipped his foot through the wizard's grasp. He tucked it beneath the chair and raised his arms to his friend.

'Will you help me to the bed?' he asked. 'I am weary, and the crutches are too slow to wield now.'

Gandalf straightened his legs and let Aragorn get his left arm across his shoulders. He gripped his right hand and used his own to brace the Ranger's side. Aragorn rose smoothly onto his good leg, leaning only a little against the pillar of support that held him. Two quick hops bore him to the bed, where the blankets were already turned back.

'Shall I fetch a fresh robe?' asked Gandalf.

'The shirt will serve well enough tonight,' said Aragorn as he lifted his leg again, this time to guide it with care onto the waiting cushion. 'Here I certainly do not suffer for want of fire or warm wrappings. I must enjoy it while I may.'

Gandalf hovered near while the Man lay down, stretching out his aching back at last. Now that he was in the soft, sweet-smelling bed, Aragorn began to feel sleep lapping up out of the sea of exhaustion that surrounded him. He reached to draw up the bedclothes only to find that the wizard was already doing it. Blinking away the pleasant blur of oncoming slumber, Aragorn fixed his friend with a look of authority that was in no way harmed by his less-than-commanding position.

'You must come for me tomorrow,' he said firmly. 'We have begun it together: together we must finish it. Promise me, or I shall set a watch upon your door.'

'A poor watchmen either of us would make tonight,' said Gandalf. But he read Aragorn's resolve in his eyes and he sighed in defeat. 'Very well: I shall fetch you. But there will be a chair in the cell tomorrow, and you will not abandon your crutches even for a single step.'

It was a compromise, but so many strong ententes were. A good negotiator knew when to stop pressing and consent. Besides, the very fact of their return would prove their resilience tomorrow. Gollum was not so lost in self-absorption that he could have failed to notice how wearing the day had been on his questioners.

'Very well,' said Aragorn. 'We will find some way to induce him to talk. It cannot be impossible.'

Gandalf was silent, and there was something far too like self-reproach in his eyes. There was indecision also, but this hardened quickly into firm determination. He left the bedside for a moment, and there was a scraping of wood on stone as he drew near Aragorn's chair. He sat upon it and leaned near to the Man, resting his forearms on his knees so that his hands dangled between.

'What tortures were put to Gollum's hands by the servants of Sauron?' he asked, in a swift steady way that could only mean he feared to loose his resolve in posing the question.

Aragorn tried to look away. Would this day's indignities never end? But Gandalf held his gaze and he could not bring himself to wound his friend further by tearing free. There was nothing left to hide.

'I do not ask the great traveller, who has walked many strange paths that others fear to tread,' said Gandalf. 'I ask the son of Elrond, skilled in the healing arts, who saw the wounds on our prisoner's hands when they were fresh. What did you make of them?'

Aragorn breathed no easier at this, but certainly the thoughts were clearer and less painful. He closed his eyes, trying to crystallize the image in his mind. 'Burns,' he said. 'Some shallow, some blistered, a few very deep. Some were made by heated implements, some by open flame. There were cuts, most shallow and in the places best calculated to cause raw pain. Upon the left palm a strip of skin had been peeled away. Two nails were missing, the rest broken or ragged. There was no dislocation of the joints, but that does not mean there had not been. His hands were filthy. It was a wonder they did not fester, but I doubt that the thralls of Sauron can be held wholly to blame for the grime. There were deep punctures also, already healing from within. There is an instrument something like a retting board, but hinged in two pieces—'

'That is enough,' Gandalf said softly. Aragorn opened his eyes to find the wizard watching him pensively, clearly deep in thought behind steady eyes. 'He was foolish not to let you tend him, and fortunate that he suffered no more permanent hurts. That is all I need know tonight. There may be something he fears after all that I might brandish before him without dishonour. We shall see.'

He rose to his feet and drew back the chair, then paused with his head to one side, studying Aragorn's face. 'I will come for you when I am ready to go back,' he promised. 'For now we both have need of rest. My old bones ache.'

'May this be your night for fair dreams,' said Aragorn earnestly. 'Tomorrow must needs be better.'

Gandalf chuckled ruefully. 'Aye, for it could scarcely be worse,' he jibed. He collected his staff and slipped from the room.

Aragorn expected to lie awake staring at the carven ceiling, or to slip into troubled night-horrors. He did neither. His weary body proved too great a force for his uneasy mind to counter. With one last thought of urgent hope for the success of Gandalf's new half-hatched plan, whatever it might be, he slept long and deeply.

lar

At some point in the night, one of the Elves had entered Gollum's cell and returned the wooden bunk to its place against the back wall. Whoever had done it, however, had surmised correctly why it had been set on end in the first place. The creative guard had laid the cot upside-down with its legs in the air, and made up the bed on its underside; raised off of the floor, but still affording Gollum nowhere to hide from his interrogators. The mattress was now misshapen and smeared with greyish-green stains: Gollum's rough handling of it had not served it well. He had fashioned a rude shelter for himself out of the blanket, and he was crouching at the mouth of the woolen cave when the door opened in the morning.

Gandalf stepped in first, carrying one of the chairs from the guardroom. He set it in the corner where Aragorn had passed most of the day and then withdrew without a glance at the glowering creature in the corner. He brushed past Aragorn and strode to the far side of the anteroom, taking up his staff again and leaning a hip against the sideboard to wait. With a last steady look at the wizard, Aragorn entered the cell.

He had stretched the terms of their compromise, and now used only his left crutch. It was no more than Gollum had already seen, in the crude branch that had served him at first and in the tall pike he had used to walk the last hard mile of his road. The more important consideration was that it left Aragorn with a free hand, that he might carry the wooden platter unaided. This time it held one trout filet instead of many, and a small bowl in which sat a tempting brown hen's egg. The Ranger sat with care and set the plate upon his lap. The door was ajar, but not far enough to tempt escape. Even if Gollum had tried it, the outer door was locked fast and Gandalf waited before it.

Aragorn lifted the egg between finger and thumb so that Gollum could not help but see it. 'You refused food from my hand yesterday for fear of some trick,' he said gravely. 'Have you thought better of it? You gave us little, but you were not rewarded for what you did offer. This is yours for the taking, if you will have it.'

Gollum glared suspiciously at him. At least he tried to do so, but his eyes kept flicking greedily to the egg. He was salivating copiously, dribbling from the corners of his mouth, and his hands plucked at the air.

Aragorn waited. He said no more: it was no duty of his to coax the creature to eat, only to make the offering. Gollum had been without food two nights now, for if he would not take it from his interrogators he could not have it at all. After some debate, Man and wizard had settled upon this strategy; requiring nothing as the price of breakfast but a small gesture of faith. So Aragorn sat still with his arm resting on his knee, holding out the egg pinched in a steady hand. Though he ached from yesterday's long labour, the night of deep sleep had done him much good.

Waddling without rising from his squat, Gollum inched forward like some great emaciated bullfrog hesitating short of a leap. Still he did not quite dare to venture off the edge of his increasingly noisome bed.

Aragorn could hear Gandalf moving restlessly in the anteroom. He had been allotted ten minutes for this. Soon the wizard would return and the true business would resume. Time pressed him, but the man did not move. Not once in all their long journey had he offered Gollum food and then snatched it away. If the prisoner only paused to consider the matter rationally he would surely recall this. Rationality and Gollum were not of intimate acquaintance, it was true, but if he did not figure it out today he would tomorrow, or the next day. By the day after that, he would be too famished to refuse food whatever his fears.

Yet Aragorn was uncertain. He had believed his captive tamed by hunger once before, and what good had come of that?

He turned his hand and let the egg roll into his cupped palm. He bowed forward over his lap, as far as his stiff back and the deep lingering soreness in his flank allowed. Thus it was possible to extend his hand far into the shallow room until the egg hovered scarcely two waddling hops from Gollum. It was also far beyond the Ranger's capacity to seize him, had he so wished.

'Take it,' said Aragorn flatly. 'If you want it, you must take it.'

Gollum had shrunken back against the bulging blanket as the Man reached. Now, face still lined deeply with suspicion, he stretched headfirst towards him. His heavy skull bobbed on his sinewy neck like a pendulous fruit at the end of a too-thin branch. He extended his left foot slowly, planted it on the stone floor, and then shot forward over it to snatch the egg. One ragged nail grazed a raw place on Aragorn's palm, and then Gollum recoiled onto his hindmost leg with his prize clutched to his chest. With one last hotly reproachful look at the Ranger, he turned his back and hunched his shoulders almost to his ears. He tucked his head, and there was the crackle of the breaking shell followed by an ugly slurping noise.

Looking with distaste at the dish balanced on his knee, Aragorn decided he was through with this tiresome dance. The only thing hunger had ever succeeded in compelling Gollum to do was cease his biting.

His mind made up, he leaned low again and let the wooden dish clatter to the floor. First with his fingertips and then with the side of his good foot, he pushed it across to the other side of the cell. Then he sat back and tried to find a comfortable position with a minimum of twisting.

Gollum had stiffened at the scrape of the plate. Now he peered suspiciously around his left shoulder, seeing the Man drawn back into his corner and the tempting piece of fish lying so near, he dared to turn. He cast another wary look at his captor and then grabbed for the filet.

It was halfway to his mouth when Aragorn said sternly; 'Put the shell in the bowl.'

Perhaps the chastisement was too unexpected to ignore, or perhaps Gollum had decided to yield a little ground after all, but he obeyed. Almost too swift for sight, his arm shot out and the eggshell was wobbling in the dish. But for a small chunk pried from its tip, it was whole.

Gandalf came in just as Gollum started in on the trout, snuffling and slavering. The wizard stood motionless at the door, disgust and pained pity warring on his face before numbing to simple disbelief. He reached behind himself to draw closed the door, and glanced at Aragorn with a question in his eyes. Aragorn tilted his head into a slight shrug. Yes: this was how Gollum was wont to eat.

The rumble of the iron tongue of the lock startled Gollum and he skittered right back into his corner, chary eyes huge in his gaunt face. He was still sucking at shreds of the flaky pink flesh.

Taking a wide stance with his back to the door, Gandalf stood there. He was leaning upon his staff and his gaze upon Gollum was thoughtful. The near corner of his mouth tightened and Aragorn understood it to be his cue to speak, though he knew not what he was meant to say.

'Have you anything to tell us?' he asked levelly. When the tension left Gandalf's lips, he knew he had come near enough to the mark. 'This is the last time we will ask so civilly.'

Gollum made his guttural swallowing sound, shifting from one foot to the other in his crouch. His hands he held before him, fingers curled and elbows tucked so close that they were very nearly digging into his famished sides. He bared his few jagged teeth and gnashed them at the Ranger.

'You underestimate us,' Gandalf said. 'Myself I can understand, for our dealings have been slight. Yet I cannot comprehend how you can continue to think so little of my friend. He caught you when you believed you were beyond such catching. He kept you in his charge for fifty days through open country by will and rope alone, when your prior captors could not hold you even with their walls and chains and many guards. He has thwarted your every attempt to confound him. Do you truly think that you can drive him away, drive either of us away, with lies and snivelling?'

Again the terrible, pale eyes moved to Aragorn. This time there was uncertainty in them as well as hatred. It was warranted, though Gollum could not possibly imagine what Gandalf intended to do.

'It would be a grievous error to underestimate a wizard,' Aragorn cautioned. 'He has other talents than a quick tongue.'

Gollum's own tongue rolled about his mouth and he spat copiously onto the floor near Aragorn's soft-clad foot. The Ranger shook his head sorrowfully, and although he truly did regret this necessity he could not refute it. They might know with near certainty that Bilbo's young nephew was even now in possession of a Great Ring, but if that was the truth then it was all the more crucial that they learn everything. Most important of all was what, precisely, their prisoner might have told the servants of the enemy.

Flatly, Aragorn spoke once more. 'Do not say that you were left unwarned.'

Gandalf drew in a great breath, rising now to his full height as he lifted his weight from his staff. He closed his right hand around its shaft at the midpoint, far lower than he was wont to hold it. Aragorn steeled himself with no outward sign, setting his features into prepared lines of bored indifference. It was an awe-filled and awful thing to witness: the uncloaking of Gandalf's power. It took preparation and effort to appear unaffected, and he had been working up to it since rising that day.

Slowly the wizard raised his hands. The left was open wide, palm outward and fingers splayed. The right held high his staff. Gollum's neck craned, following the shaft warily. Aragorn thought too late of the straw mattress, but he trusted that Gandalf had seen it. Nonetheless his eyes measured the distance between his hands and the woolen blanket, lest the need should arise to extinguish the tick.

Then Gandalf threw back his head and the air seemed to crackle with latent power unmasked. 'Naur an edraith ammen!' he cried. And he smote the wall with the head of his staff.

The room erupted in fire. From the tip of the wizard's rod it ran like a swarm of brilliant orange beetles, up towards the ceiling and down to run along the floor. Then all at once it was a single great sheet of translucent flame, strung like a curtain to cut the room in two. Aragorn withdrew his left foot just swiftly enough: the felt of his shoe sizzled with the dying sparks as it slid beneath the chair. He could feel the heat dry and blasting on his face, on the backs of his hands and across his shoulders and through the skirts of his Elven robe.

On the other side of the veil of flames, Gollum was shrieking, writhing in seething terror and trying to press himself right into the wall. The flames licked the stone of floor and ceiling, lapping back towards the door and the glut of air beyond it. It was drawing in the direction of the jailors instead of the jailed, Aragorn saw. Even in this bleak extremity Gandalf had calculated with care, though it was unlikely Gollum would ever know it.

The heat intensified and the air grew thin. Aragorn's heart was hammering in his chest, and he was now upright on the narrow chair. He strove to keep his countenance empty of passion, though his eyes were beginning to squint and his lips to stretch into the involuntary grin of defence against the radiant furnace spread before him. This was no humble handful of fire to take the bite out of a snowy night; no pretty trick to please a hobbit-child. This was a glimpse of the majestic might that walked shrouded in grey robes and aged bones. Under the open sky it would have been terrible to behold. In this close place it was almost more than mortal mind could grasp. Knowing as he did that this power bided with his friend, Aragorn was exalted despite his insignificance before it. Gollum had no such inspiration to draw upon.

Then at once it was over. Gandalf lowered his hands and pursed his lips almost as if snuffing out a candle. The flames swirled for a moment more, springing lithely in the air before their master. Then they seemed to shrink in upon themselves, collapsing into a broad orb, then a ball, then at last a tiny pinion. Then they were gone.

For a vague span there was no sound but breathing: Gandalf's, deep and full like that of a fleet runner at the end of a race well within his skill; Aragorn's shallow but steady in his exhilaration. Gollum's was hitching, uneven, half-hysterical.

The room was hotter than before, with a crisp freshened scent to it as if all the unclean vapours had been seared away. There were scorch-marks on floor, walls and ceiling: a band of baked stone where the flames had been strung. The near rim of the plate on the floor was blackened, its carven edge smoking faintly. The upended bed and its all-too-flammable straw pallet were meticulously untouched.

Aragorn's back had just found the wall again when Gollum began to scream. His voice rose shrilly, warbling with blind terror. The yowls rang off the walls in torturous echoes that rattled the listeners' teeth and made their skin crawl. The Ranger had not flinched from the flames, but that blood-tainting sound made him want to clap his fingers over his ears and hide his head in his lap.

Gandalf brought the butt of his staff down with a thump. 'CEASE!' he commanded.

Gollum swallowed his cry mid-shriek and flinched low as a beaten dog, staring up at the wizard in empty terror. He was quaking uncontrollably, and Aragorn realized there was a new vile stink in the room after all.

There was a tickling trickle on Aragorn's upper lip, and he blotted at it with the side of his forefinger. It came away smeared with scarlet: his nose, which had not troubled him in over a week, was bleeding again. He scarcely noticed and cared not at all. He was watching transfixed as Gandalf strode forward. He seemed to tower over the cringing heap on the sullied mattress.

'You have been warned, and now my patience is at an end,' Gandalf decreed, his voice deep and resonant. Gollum flinched as if expecting a blow, but of course none fell. The blow had already been landed. The wizard's voice grew vaster still as he roared; 'Tell me how you came by the Ring!'

Unhinging his obdurate jaw in a gabbling flood of harsh, piercingly panicked noises, Gollum began to speak.

Note: It wasn't easy, but I've made up my mind on the Gondor/Mordor question. I've decided to go chronologically, following Thorongil through his service to Ecthelion until the moment when he leaves his companions at Pelargir where "when he was last seen his face was towards the Mountains of Shadow". Then, naturally, we'll follow him thither as well!

Chapter LXV: Garbled Truths

'… didn't do it, Preciouss, no! No, no, gollum! Gave it to us, gave it to us he did. He should. Yes, he should. It was our birthday, Precious. Why else did he have it but to give it to us?' Gollum wailed, clawing at the dome of his skull. It had taken some time for him to come down from his panic into something resembling comprehensible speech.

'Who gave it to you?' Gandalf asked swiftly, eyes narrowing. 'He: your friend? Déagol? He had the ring?'

The prisoner had cringed violently at the sound of the wizard's voice. Now he pressed himself low against the pallet and whimpered. 'Had it, had it, he did!' he moaned. 'Give it to us, my love. We wants it. I wants it. It's my birthday, my love, and I wants it!'

Aragorn looked to the wizard to see if he had noted this change of pronoun. Gandalf was watching Gollum intently; eyes fixed and unreadable even to his friend. 'Did he give it to you?' he asked. 'Or did you take it?'

'Already gave you a present, he said!' snarled Gollum. 'Nice presssent, more than he could afford, gollum. But it's ours: it's ours. It came to us. Wassn't we the one who wanted to go fishing, Precious? Wasn't it us who thought we should go far from home, down to the big river to catch the big fishes? Pulled him in, it did, and when he came up he had our Precious! Lovely and golden, so bright in the sunlight, waiting for us! It was waiting for us!'

'Waiting for you, yes,' said Gandalf, lips scarcely moving. 'Yes, I do not doubt that. What happened then? What did Déagol do?'

'Found it, he found it, he said. Found it, Sméagol, and I'm going to keep it. Bright beautiful gold, so round, so perfect. But it's ours, my Precious, not his. It's mine, my love. Mine, mine, it's mine!'

For a moment the unexpected entrance of a third player in the story puzzled Aragorn. Then he realized with an uncomfortable clenching of the stomach that this Sméagol was not an interloper at all, but Gollum's own right name. At no point had it even occurred to him to ask it. Clearly Gandalf had not thought of it either. It had seemed so natural to think of him by the epithet Bilbo had bestowed so many years ago. Now he wondered if perhaps he had started his own dealings with the creature with that simple question, the course of his journey might have been very different.

Perhaps the wizard was thinking the same thing, for he said; 'Tell me, Sméagol; how did you come to see all this? You went fishing together, but you were not in the boat?'

'Let us out, he did. Walking 'round the bank. Always something interesting to find there, Preciouss. At the bank, in the bushes, under the roots… roots, deep roots and their secrets, gollum. It was in the river's roots, wasn't it? My Precious.' The terror in his voice had waned a little, and he sounded almost dreamy. His right hand clasped and unclasped, and he rounded his back up off the cot. Then suddenly the sight of his long fingers seemed to anger him. He clenched his hand into a fist and then released it, raising it up before him curled into a claw. The left hand rose to join it. 'Going to keep it, are you indeed? Are you indeed, my love?' he snarled.

His hands drove in towards each other as if around a circular shaft. The knuckles tensed and whitened, though there was nothing but empty air beneath them. Then the fingers rotated towards one another and the bony thumbs crossed, digging down into the centre of the firmly delineated circle.

Aragorn's hand rose to his throat even before his mind could analyse what he saw. It seemed he could feel them now, those emaciated fingers rounding to clamp down on either side of his spine while the thumbs (strong; impossibly strong in one so lean and withered) pressed in upon his jugular notch. With a creak and a snap, his windpipe collapsed…

Gollum was shaking his hands now in short, abortive bursts, the ring between them still perfectly maintained. His face was contorted in rage and avarice and agony, and the sounds coming from his throat were harsh and inhuman. Spittle flew from his mouth, and his eyes bulged wide. Then suddenly he was boneless, crumpling back down into the straw tick and sobbing wretchedly.

'Didn't do it, didn't DO it, Preciousss!' he howled. 'Went away fishing and he never came back, he did, he did. Never found his body, oh, no. Never found it, hidden so clever. Déagol went fishing and he never came back!'

Gandalf moved as if to take a long step away from the captive, but he restrained himself. His hold upon his staff tightened and he seemed to lean more heavily upon it. His face looked haggard as if with pain, and he turned slowly to look at Aragorn. Hastily the Man folded his hands into his lap, but he did not evade the sharp eyes. He shook his head faintly and saw in Gandalf's expression that they were thinking the same thing.

Murder in the name of a Great Ring was certainly not beyond imagining; not if the dark tales of the spreading of the Nine were true. Yet there was something about this story that was more horrifying by far than legends of bloodthirsty Eastern warlords or brawny mountain monarchs dogging one another to death for the dubious honour of walking damnation. Aragorn had wandered many lands and seen many foul deeds done by Men for far less temptation than a Ring of Power. But the image that rose in his mind of the sunny riverbank, of the fat little boat with its plump little passenger, of a wooly-footed figure peering around the bole of a tree to watch him – stout about the middle, round and ruddy of face, with a crop of curly hair most likely of a middling brown…. that image filled him with a cold nausea that chilled him to his very core.

'You took the Ring,' Gandalf said huskily, once more watching Gollum; 'and brought it home with you. Such a little thing, and how perfectly it fit your hand! And when you put it on—'

'Couldn't see us, Precious! They couldn't see us, could they?' Gollum hissed. He looked up at the wizard and, horribly, he grinned. 'Go where we wish to, do as we please. Learned all their nassty little secrets then, we did! Yes, gollum! Hurts them if they hurts us, we does. Takes what we need, hateful folkses! Cruel, wicked. Calls us Gollum, drives us off. We taught them! Taught them, we did! See if we'll put up with it all, Precious. Cuff us, kick us, chase us off and then send Thief Baggins to rob us, gollum! We has friends now, my Precious. Big friends, strong friends. Stop them all, they will: thieving Bagginses and thick-booted Dwarves, bright-eyed Elveses, yes, stop them all! And manses, too, Preciouss: wicked cruel manses with their brooms and their long swords and their dogs and their high stone cities! Tear them down and put them in chains, they will. Greybeard and long-leggy lout, too, take them, they will, and hurt them, Preciouss! Our friends. Good friends. Good friends, oooh, yes!'

The sneering malice in his eyes was equaled only by the vitriol in his words. The threats might have stirred no more than bored irritation in the interrogators. Certainly they had each heard as much and worse in the course of their dealings with the wretch. But there was something in these turns of phrase that made Aragorn uneasy. Tear them down and put them in chains did not sound even remotely like Gollum's usual plans of small and ugly violence. And while he did not doubt that the creature had experience aplenty with both dogs and brooms, what did Gollum know of long swords and high stone cities? These notions had not come from his own imaginings: someone had put them there. Someone who wanted not simply to blind a thief or choke a kidnapper or two, but who dreamed of the day when all the Free Peoples might be enslaved.

Gandalf saw it, too. He leaned nearer, stopping short of actually taking a step. 'Who are these friends, Gollum?' he asked. Catching himself, he amended; 'Sméagol. Sméagol, tell me where I can find these friends. If I might talk with them, perhaps you could be left alone.'

That tread the line between coercion and deception, but they were well past the point of noble restraint. At least it was not an outright lie. For a wild, amused moment Aragorn imagined Gandalf standing face-to-face with Gollum's interrogator, trading insult for insult in cold, calculated tones.

But Gollum did not take the bait. His eyes narrowed and he let out a hissing sound so long and undulating that he sounded like one of the great southern serpents uncoiling to strike. 'Tricksy, tricksssy,' he spat. 'Knows it all, he does: never tell him. Never, never.'

Now the wizard did take a step forward after all, and instantly Gollum was cowering, shrinking away from the staff and sobbing in terror. 'No! No! Go away! Go to sleep! Leave us be, Precious! Look away, leave us be, go to sleep! Go to sleep!'

'I will not sleep until I have the answers I seek,' said Gandalf. 'Nor will you. Your folk disliked your thieving and scheming, and they shunned you. Your grandmother turned you out of her hole, and the others drove you off. What happened then?'

'Lonely!' Gollum wailed. 'Off we went, we did; lonely, cold, cold and so very hungry. Poor belly pinching! Never feeds us, gollum, never stops walking. Walking and walking, under Yellow Face, under White Face, through the snows and the hateful winds, gollum…'

'I have told you before that I am not interested in your account of that journey,' Gandalf said coldly. 'You will not convince me of any misfeasance on the part of my friend however you try. Where did you go after your people were rid of you? What did you do?'

'Lonesome, very lonesome, Precious…' Gollum lamented. Gandalf stirred as if to move nearer still, and he yelped. 'Walked!' he yipped. 'Walked and walked, so far, so very far, gollum. Empty lands and nothing to eat, no, nothing but rootses and berries and cold water to drink. Ah, but they doesn't see us, gollum. No, not even with their round bring eyes. Pretty fishes, swim so swiftly. Wait 'til they stop it and grab them, Preciouss! Grab them and eat them and spit out the bones.'

Despite himself, Aragorn found a spark of amusement in this. He had tickled his share of trout over the years, and it was cold, wet work. It was trying, too; requiring a great deal of patience especially when one had not lately eaten. In such a pursuit he could not deny that an invisible hand would be an asset: simply dip it slowly into the water and reach as smoothly as you could, then close your fingers swiftly on your prey. Then he thought of Gollum's nails digging into the gills of the little fish he had snagged off of the ferry at Carrock, squeezing as they squirmed in anguish, and his mirth dimmed.

Gandalf sighed and turned his back, pacing to the door and then into the unoccupied right-hand corner. He slapped his splayed palm upon the wall, shoulders tensing with the effort of reigning in his frustration. He might have terrified Gollum into some semblance of cooperation, but it seemed that the creature was incapable even under threat of flame of producing a coherent narrative.

'Did you meet anyone on your journey?' Aragorn asked, leaning forward a little and picking up the cast-off line of questions. 'Did you travel to towns or villages? Did you—'

'Out in the lake, right out in the lake,' Gollum whinged, licking the back of his hand. 'Town on stilts, narrow little streets and tall wooden houses.'

'Esgaroth,' said Aragorn. That made little sense: what would have brought a lately ostracized Gollum over Anduin those long centuries ago, and how had he been lured back to the western bank to take up refuge beneath the High Pass? 'Why?'

'Rumours, voices,' Gollum muttered. He lapped at his hands again and squatted back onto his hams. One long finger slipped into his ear, scratching. He examined whatever he had scooped out of it and fell back to licking. 'Know him, they do. Hero of Lake-town. Pah! Thief, that's what he is. Miserable little cheat. Cheated us first, he did; always they cheat us! What has it got in its pocketses? Not a fair question, no; not a fair riddle. It broke the rules, it cheated us! Cheated by the pool, too, gollum. Come up behind and jumps on us, great long arms and bright knife, gollum. Gollum, gollum.'

There was a horrible squelching sound as he put forth a great effort to clear his phlegmy throat, but Aragorn was satisfied. He had not travelled to Esgaroth before delving beneath the mountains, but after leaving them. After, no doubt, the wood-elves had lost track of him in Mirkwood decades before. He had gone to Esgaroth, and heard news of Bilbo.

'What else did they say?' Gandalf asked sharply, pivoting away from the wall and fixing keen eyes on the prisoner. 'In the town on the Long Lake. What else did they say about Bilbo?'

There was a blissful instant when Aragorn was confused, unable to see what Gandalf could possibly care about the stories the folk of Lake-town told about their friend: after all, it was nothing they themselves did not know; nothing, in fact, that they had not been told on their own travels to the area. Then his mouth grew dry and his heart hammered unsteadily. Just what was known about Bilbo in Esgaroth, where he was a figure of local legend and no little interest? For what Gollum knew he could have been forced to repeat long ere this, and not to the Wise.

'Thief! Cheat! Stinking Baggins!' Gollum spat. 'Down into our cave he comes, talking of riddles. Ought to have squeezed him, yesss, Precious! Sun on the daisies, sun on the daisies! No sun down there, gollum; no Yellow Face to burn us. Burns our poor neck, hurts us, creeps up while we're fishing and bites at us! Down, down into the cool and the dark. Empty, empty dark and quiet, gollum. So empty, so empty. Nothing but goblins, my Precious, goblins and strange pale fishes; never taste right. Hates them. Hates them all!'

He wrung his hands and whimpered. 'Don't want to talk of it!' he growled, flinging his head up defiantly. 'Don't want to. Can't make us. Can't make us, Precio—'

Gandalf said naught in answer, but thrust forward his hand with his staff clenched in it. Gollum shrieked with such shrill volume that the back of Aragorn's throat stung with it, clear through his eardrums. He skittered into the corner, crushing his blanket-cave beneath his bony rump and clutching at his skull so that his emaciated forearms covered most of his face.

'Not fair, not fair!' he squealed. 'It hasn't asked a question! No question! How can we answer if it asks us no question?'

'This is my question,' said Gandalf, enunciating almost painfully through set teeth. 'What did you learn about Bilbo Baggins while eavesdropping in the alleys and side-streets of Lake-town?'

'Thief and burglar! Hateful hobbitses! Burglar Baggins! Stole from dragons, he did, stole from us! Songs and stories, yes, Precious: they sings about him, nassty thieving thing. From cot and Shire, to brave the fire! Smaug's funeral pyre… a thief and liar!' He had broken into a discordant, tuneless attempt at song, coming out of it suddenly with a snarl of derision that somehow, surreally, fit the metre.

Cold dismay drenched the room, quenching the capacity for questions and quelling the quest for knowledge. Before he knew what he was doing, Aragorn was halfway to his feet with his hand groping absently for a crutch he could not seem to find. Gandalf's grip upon his staff faltered, and his face had gone a chalk-grey hue that was paler even than his beard. Only the sharp pain when he tried unthinkingly to put down his right foot stopped Aragorn from swooping down to seize Gollum by the shoulders. Instead he fell back into his seat with a clatter, letting fall the crutch and curling over his lap to bury his head in his hands.

Curse the ancient tradition of commemorating great deeds and their doers in song! Curse the good folk of Esgaroth for their well-intentioned honouring of one of their heroes! Curse the Common Tongue itself, for making such simple and plentiful rhymes for Shire. With the name of an individual and his race and the name of his country, Strider could have found an unsuspecting someone in a matter of weeks; no more than four months even far into Harad. How much more could Sauron, with his swift spies and his vast resources, accomplish? Even now the agents of Mordor might be swarming down upon the Shire, searching for Baggins and his Ring.

There was a heavy stump of the staff as Gandalf brushed up beside him. One lean, strong old hand closed on the Ranger's shoulder. The gesture was meant to be one of comfort and hope, but the hand was shaking. 'And you told them this?' Gandalf asked, his voice an abyss of emptiness. 'You told your questioners about that song?'

'Told them nothing!' Gollum spat. 'We doesn't tell a thing, no, not a thing. Not to you, not to them, not to Him, not to nobody!' He whined wretchedly and curled in over his arms again. 'Poor handses! Poor hurting handses… make it stop,Precious, make it stop! Anything! Anything! Only make it STO-O-O-OP!'

The dreadful noise atop the disastrous news was nearly enough to send Aragorn lashing out in a maddened tirade, but as Gollum let out a long hiss of hitching air something plucked at the depths of the Man's mind. It was the hiss that did it, stirring a memory of poisoned blossoms in a land of eerie unlight and soul-drowning despair. The Nazgúl. If Sauron knew the location of the Shire, surely he would send forth his fleetest servants to ride for it with all haste. Gandalf had crossed Anduin at Osgiliath some days, perhaps as many as ten, after Aragorn had passed through Lórien: long weeks after Gollum had been taken at Dagorlad. At Osgiliath stood the Great River's only bridge.

'He doesn't know,' he whispered, coming out of his curl of despair and looking up at the wizard with startled certainty. 'He does not know where it is.'

'What?' Gandalf said sharply, fixing interrogative eyes on Aragorn as if he were the one under questioning.

'If he knew, would Gondor still hold the bridge?' asked Aragorn. 'I found him on the first of February. How many weeks would Sauron wait to muster his Riders if he knew where to dispatch them?'

'Weeks? He would not wait hours!' said Gandalf. Then he understood, and some faint flush of colour returned to his cheeks. 'He does not know where it is.'

Aragorn shook his head unnecessarily. The maps in Minas Tirith did not carry the location of the Shire: in Thorongil's time they had still been marked with great empty swaths of land bearing the old names of the fiefs of Arnor. In the Steward's council chamber, the great map which bore the latest borders for Rohan, for Gondor and her tributaries, for Mordor and Ithilien and Rhovanion and even northern Harad, the place where the hobbits lived their gentle, quiet lives, was drawn as part of a broad wilderness labelled Fallen Arthedain. Why should the Enemy's maps be more clear?

With a person's name and their country, Strider could find them in a matter of weeks – but only if he knew the country and where it lay. Otherwise one might as well begin sifting all the sands of the Sea in search of a single poppy seed.

There was time yet, if this was the worst of what Gollum had told. But they had to make sure of that. If they did not know what Sauron's torturers had wrung out of Gollum, they could never guard against it.

'When did they take you?' Aragorn asked. 'How were you captured?'

Gandalf cast him one last look of grim gratitude, and turned back on Gollum. The interrogation went on.

lar

They left the guards with orders that Gollum was to be fed tonight and given the opportunity to wash. The mattress, too, had to be replaced though doubtless he would only befoul the new one as well. When Gandalf drew the door closed, Gollum was lying huddled in a ball over his lap, hands shielded by hunched shoulders, sobbing uncontrollably. He had yielded up a few more details over the course of the long, respiteless day, but only about his history and his emergence from the Hithaeglir in search of Bilbo. About his capture and his sojourn in Mordor he would say nothing at all, save to writhe and weep and make much of his hands. Gandalf had pressed on without a rest, halting only once to fetch water for the three of them. He had plainly wanted to make capital upon the morning's harsh beginning, and to an extent he had succeeded. Certainly they knew far more than they had the day before, and most of it useful. But the price for every cogent piece of information was eight or nine strands of rambling woes, imprecations, exaggerations and outright lies.

Again and again Gollum returned to the theme of his Birthday Present, and how it had been given to him by the family's wealthy matriarch. Not once, though Gandalf tried, would Gollum repeat his admissions regarding Déagol and the Ring. He seemed to shy away from the idea as it were torment, and if there was anything of the hobbit left in him it surely was. However he sang it, the song was the same: Déagol had gone fishing and he hadn't come home, the Ring was his because it was his birthday, it was his by right and it had been stolen, and he would take his revenge on the thief and his cohorts with time. Who his friends were he would not say, but there was less doubt about that than about almost anything else still left unconfirmed.

Gandalf strode ahead up the corridor, still burning with restless agitation from the questioning. Before long Gollum had stopped responding to Aragorn at all, and would answer the wizard only when the threat of the staff and its fiery outpouring was put in the forefront of his mind. No further display of might had been necessary, nor indeed any words of reminder: a twitch of the arm which held it sufficed. No matter how afraid he became, the truth was still eternally tangled with the senseless, hate-filled nattering.

Aragorn leaned heavily on his crutches even with his good foot firmly on the floor. He was weary, and not from the physical discomforts alone. It exhausted the mind, following Gollum's snarled logic and jumping from time to time and place to place without even a breath of warning. He was tired of listening to self-pitying blather, and if he heard the word thief once more today he did not think he would be able to restrain himself from conduct most unbecoming a civilized person. His throat was raw and parched, his head throbbed far worse than it had at any time the day before, and his neck and shoulders were crimped into burning knots of tension.

'Go in,' said Gandalf, flinging wide the door to the Ranger's chamber. 'I shall do off with these weeds and join you presently. I do not know if I can bear to eat, but we certainly ought to try. It has been a full half-day since we broke our fast.'

'So long?' Aragorn asked, when what he meant was but half a day? He had caught up at last, and he shuffled his crutches to the side as he approached the entryway.

Gandalf snorted, trying to toss his head appreciatively but succeeding in only a tense little jerk of his chin. He gripped Aragorn's shoulder briefly. 'Go in. I'll be back in a moment to help you out of that robe. Thranduil's laundry must resent us immensely.'

'I bore his stink for fifty days,' said Aragorn. 'I can bear it for one night more.' His left hand left the crutch briefly to pluck at the front of his robe. The reek of rottenness and filth mingled with the smell of his own perspiration and the smoky bitterness of charcoal heat. It was not a perfume that would encourage a peaceful night if left to fester on the back of his door.

'You can, but why should you?' asked Gandalf. 'If they resent us they can take it up with their Lord, who can quite easily be brought to experience the stink firsthand.'

It had not seemed to trouble him overmuch on the night he had borne up a filthy Ranger sooner than let him fall to the stone floor, but Aragorn did not say this. He was taken with a sudden wave of hot, weary dizziness, and he thought it would be best to sit down as quickly as he might. He set his crutches over the threshold and pushed off with his foot. The landing was unsteady and his tired left leg wobbled, but he did not fall. He turned his head to offer a preemptive reassurance, and found Gandalf staring at him with grim intensity.

'Your back,' he said tightly. 'It bleeds.'

Aragorn restrained the urge to drop a crutch and twist his arm up that his hand might grope between his shoulders. It was not necessary. He had no doubt where he was bleeding. He had spent the day on that hard chair – a full day this time, not a morning – and as he grew wearier he had leaned more and more often upon it. The curved top of its prettily carved back put a line of pressure across his upper back, below where his shoulder blades rested against the cool stone wall. That pressure, that bruising edge, had doubtless cracked open the black scabs healing slowly over the claw-marks.

'It cannot be very grave—' he began, but Gandalf was already in the room and herding him to the bed.

'I should never bend to your compromises!' he scolded. 'Did I not say that you are yet unwell? Stay here. Sit down. Give me that.'

'Choose one,' Aragorn said crossly. 'I cannot manage three commands at once.' But Gandalf was already unbuckling his belt. Before the Man could protest, the robe had been plucked open and its skirts bundled off to one hip. The sleeves slid down his arms so the collar was spread elbow to elbow.

'Turn and sit,' said Gandalf, maneuvering out of the way without relinquishing his hold on the garment. His other hand guided Aragorn's arm until he was aligned with the edge of the bed. Then it whipped down to pluck up the tail of his shirt before he could sit. The crutches were snatched away and rattled against the wall as they were dropped to lean upon it. Swiftly Gandalf was slipping the robe off his arms.

'It was folly to go down there when you have not yet recovered your strength,' the wizard muttered. 'It was folly of me to let you. It has been taking all my strength to manage these toils, and I am not but lately risen from my sickbed.'

'I have not been ill,' Aragorn protested, but the words rasped in his throat and undercut his authority.

'Mauled and malnourished, then,' snapped Gandalf. For a moment the Ranger feared that he might launch into another oration like last night's. Instead he felt his shirt being rolled up his back. He moved to cross his arms, intending to hoist it over his head. 'No, you don't!' Gandalf barked, swatting his hands down into his lap. 'Stretch those shoulders and you'll only make it worse. Be still and tuck your head: you're entirely too tall for this.'

The list of his faults was multiplying absurdly, but Aragorn obeyed and bowed his chin to his chest. Gandalf pulled the bunched linen over his head, and then slid the sleeves down to his wrists before finally allowing Aragorn to lift his hands free. Before the Man could speak, Gandalf was bending around behind him and touching the bandages with light, nimble fingers.

'It cannot be grave, he says,' he muttered, chafing two scarlet fingertips against his thumb and staining it. He came around to the front and looked the long body over. 'I will go to fetch the healer. Should we lie you down first?'

That sounded very tempting. He was sore and cramped after a second long day, and the thought of stretching out and taking the weight off of his hips and back was very alluring. But he had bled through his clothing: the wounds would be examined and then dressings would have to be replaced. For the latter task, he would have to sit up again, and that would require an effort far greater than staying as he was for a few minutes more. Aragorn shook his head.

'A useless exertion for us both,' he said quietly. 'One or the other of my caregivers should be in the common room with the attendants. I believe it is just up the hall?'

'It is,' Gandalf said briskly, already moving for the door. His own stiffness and lassitude seemed quite forgotten. At the threshold he turned and raised a stern warning finger. 'Do not rise. Do not move. Do not tamper with the bandage. If you disobey me in this…'

He did not finish the threat, but he did not need to. If Aragorn disobeyed him in this, he would find his freedoms curtailed to nothing in the days to come, and his hope of even being consulted in the ongoing interrogation would be lost. As it was he was unlikely to convince Gandalf that he would be well enough to resume in the morning.

Alone in the bar of torchlight coming in from the corridor, Aragorn reached around to pluck the linen shirt up off the bedclothes. He drew it into his lap, trying not to twist his torso or further aggravate his wounds. He unrolled the back panel and saw with some dismay that the stain upon it was large and dark. Glossy redness glistened in the centre, but out to the edges it was already dried to maroon and rusty brown. He had been bleeding for more than a few minutes; quite likely for much of the evening and perhaps back into the late afternoon. He touched the patch where it was wettest, and felt the consistency of the fluid. He lifted his hand almost to his mouth and sniffed at the blood on his fingers. It smelled only of cold metal and clean cloth, with the faintest scent of Gollum that was likely coming from his hand rather than what he had touched with it. There was no sweet reek of infection, and that was well.

He wanted to explore the bandages and the hurts beneath, but he knew better. Gandalf was right: warping his shoulders to reach behind would only aggravate the wound further and perhaps start up new freshets of blood. Aragorn wiped his hand on the already ruined shirt and bowed his head patiently to wait. He felt giddy, as if the world were a ball on which he stood balanced with his one useable foot, rocking from side to side with his arms thrust out to steady him but knowing all the while that a single misjudged shifting of his weight would send the whole apparatus crashing down. Surely he could not have lost enough blood to affect his head!

Swift bootfalls in the corridor were followed by the soft whisper of Elven feet in soft shoes. There was the sputtering of a candle taking a light. A moment later Helegond's capable hands were upon him. Aragorn tried to speak, but his mouth was dry.

'You have certainly reopened the largest wound,' the healer said matter-of-factly, with no hint of accusation in his voice. 'The bleeding is extensive, but slow.' He found the knot on Aragorn's breast and undid it deftly. Four passes unwrapped the bandage from chest and shoulder, and Helegond reached to catch the thick pad beneath before it could fall. Without having to be asked, he handed it to his patient. A cursory inspection with bleary eyes told him what the stain on the shirt had: there was no infection.

'A fortnight and it is still not healed,' Helegond murmured near Aragorn's ear. His hands were exploring the wound. 'The shallower scratches are beginning to mend. You are bare to the new scar here—' He grazed Aragorn's lower back with a fingertip before moving a little to the left. '—and here. It is not right that the centre is still so fragile.'

'Mortals heal more slowly,' Aragorn murmured, trying to swallow and finding nothing in his mouth with which to do it. He could feel the protest coming, and he cut it off; 'And I am not at my full vigour.'

Helegond nodded in sudden recollection. 'The ravages of hunger on the mortal body,' he sighed. Earnestly he asked; 'When do you expect that to improve?'

'Soon,' Aragorn said. It was comforting to fall into a teacher's cadence, even though the gentle blotting at his back and the sting of clean water in his wound reminded him all too well that he was also the patient. 'I have been introducing new foods and eating faithfully at regular intervals—'

'Until the last few days,' Gandalf interrupted acerbically from the hearth, where he had been lighting the fire. 'He has eaten nothing since his bread and milk at daybreak. Is this in keeping with your instructions, healer?'

Helegond raised his head swiftly, a far too telling gesture. 'It is not,' he said in soft dismay. 'It is not in keeping with the instructions you yourself gave to me, my lord,' he added, tilting to look at the Man without removing the cloth from his back.

'It was an oversight,' Aragorn muttered. They were in league against him in this, it seemed. In truth he was irate with himself. At one point during the day's questioning it had occurred to him briefly to ask Gandalf to fetch some bread and fruit from the anteroom, though to halt for a proper meal had been out of the question. But it had seemed so much like Gollum had been on the brink of offering some new piece of information about his wanderings after catching news of Bilbo in Lake-town, and he had declined to interrupt.

Gandalf snorted disdainfully. 'It was folly,' he said. 'And I am a fool for allowing it. How grave is the damage?'

'Not grave at all,' said Helegond. He was applying a new pad of linen with a firm hand, sopping up the freshly welling blood. 'The muscle sheath has all but knit together again, and the bleeding did not come from any major vessel. I would call it superficial in any other instance.'

'And in his?' Gandalf challenged. Aragorn's ears were hot, but he said nothing in his own defence. He could only sit there, it seemed, like an errant child, and stare into his half-clad lap as they scolded.

'In his case I am concerned because the wound ought to be healed by now, and because he has not been partaking of sufficient quantities of blood-replenishing foods. I am told by the kitchens that he has not yet requested meat, nor anything heartier than an almond pastry.'

'He tasted a little of mine some days ago,' said Gandalf, fair at least in this. 'Venison, I think? But no more than a few mouthfuls. It seems to me that he is being over-cautious with his stomach.'

Again Aragorn wanted to protest, for he knew better than Gandalf both the protocol for a malnourished patient and the limitations of his own innards, but he managed only a brief blazing glance from behind the tendrils of hair that had come loose of their thong. Even this motion made him dizzier still, and he clutched twin fistfuls of the shirt in his lap as he tried to ground himself.

'I do not know,' Helegond confessed. 'I have no experience with such maladies. Among the Elves it is almost unheard of, save in the gravest of cases passed down from days of old. Weakening from want and even perishing of it, yes, but failing to rebound at once when returned to a state of plenty? It is passing strange.'

'Strange it may be, but it is certainly true,' said Gandalf. 'He has had too little water for his good today, as well.'

'You need not speak of me as though I were dead already,' Aragorn muttered, mustering the energy for that at least. He knew that Gandalf was right about the water, but he had been swept up in the day's breathless revelations and the desperate need to untangle the truth from the matted snarl of Gollum's mind. As in the heat of battle, simple human needs had seemed remarkably unimportant.

'And your water?' asked Helegond. 'Is there any fresh showing of blood.'

Aragorn's hangdog glance was answer enough. He had not passed anything at all, much less blood, since the early morning.

Unexpectedly a silver cup was thrust before him, its rim lapped with water cool enough to raise beads of condensation on the side. He took it, determined his hand should not shake, and he wet his lips. His tongue sucked greedily at the fluid, and he allowed himself a more substantial sip. Gandalf's hand withdrew when it became plain he could manage the dish unaided. The third swallow of water seemed to clear his head markedly, and Aragorn sat up a little straighter. He lifted his arm away from his body as Helegond's hands laced a fresh rolled bandage beneath it.

'It was an oversight,' Aragorn repeated, looking up at the wizard. 'My mind was much occupied with more important matters.'

'Hmph.' Gandalf seemed unimpressed. 'From this minute forward, there are no more important matters for you than recovering your health. I will continue with the questioning alone, and I will consult with you immediately upon leaving our prisoner. In exchange for those consultations, you will remain here, where you will eat at regular intervals, partake amply of water and whatever nostrums your leeches see fit to provide you, and you will rest.'

'That sounds like a very promising regimen,' Helegond put in, a chiding note coming into his voice at last.

'Are his wounds bound? Is there anything more you can do for him tonight?' Gandalf asked, looking sharply at the healer.

'Yes, they are bound. I do not thing there is anything more that I could—'

'Then leave us,' Gandalf said with almost regal dismissal. 'I will fetch you if there is further need. And would you kindly bear those away?' He motioned at the dirtied clothing. 'You have my thanks.'

Helegond's lips parted in an astonished prelude to protest, but perhaps he remembered the fearsome reputation of Gandalf the Grey, for he closed his mouth and nodded. Then he gathered up the cast-off robe and took the shirt and soiled bandage from Aragorn. 'Goodnight, my lord. Lethril will come to attend you in the morning.'

'Thank you,' Aragorn said softly. The same childlike impulse that had left him silent before made him want to find some excuse, any excuse at all, for the Elf to stay and spare him the lecture that was surely coming. 'I wish you goodnight.'

Helegond bowed and retreated swiftly, closing the door behind him. The noise of the latch echoed in the quiet. For a long time, so it seemed, Gandalf said nothing.

'I ought to be furious,' he said at last. The words fell harsh upon the small room. Aragorn did not speak: it was best to bear up and get it over with. 'I ought to be furious,' repeated Gandalf. 'With myself as much as with you. We should each have taken better care of these matters, and for both our sakes. For what is coming we will each need every ounce of strength and vigour.'

He moved as if to reach for a chair and then sank down upon the edge of the bed instead, hip to hip with his friend. At once his back curled forward wearily. 'Yet who could pause to think of food or drink in the face of such things?' he murmured. 'The One Ring found – almost certainly found after an Age in oblivion – and in the possession of the most unlikely of keepers, the Enemy, alas, aware it has been found though thankfully not where it bides, and we unsure what more he may have been told by the poor sniveling thing we hold in our custody. What is to be done with this knowledge? What is to be done?'

It was the same question that had been plaguing Aragorn since that dreadful moment when it had seemed all their secrets were laid bare to the Eye of Sauron. To hear it from Gandalf himself was at once reassuring of Aragorn's own sanity and terrifying in its repercussions. For if not even the Istar knew what should happen now, they were in grave straits indeed.

Yet the question had been asked in earnest, and Aragorn had been raised to never let a question pass without exploration.

'First we must… first you must make certain that we have discovered all that Gollum might know,' he said slowly, trying to work through the necessary progression with logic instead of fear. 'If you learn anything new, we must consider it: perhaps it might change the situation or make plain a sure course. If it does not, then you must return at once to Rivendell and tell Elrond what we have learned. Elladan and Elrohir can be sent West to learn from my people whether there have been unusual watchers or trespassers in or around the Shire. They can get word to Halbarad to double the watch.'

This last very nearly made him flinch. Already the old watch upon the Shire had been doubled once, when Bilbo's hard parting from his Ring had first raised Gandalf's suspicions in earnest. To double it again would leave the rest of Eriador under a bare patrol indeed. Yet it would have to be done: there was nothing more important than this.

'I must go to Rivendell? I must tell Elrond? And the Peredhil brethren shall bring word to Halbarad and your men?' Gandalf recited. 'Where, pray, will you be going?'

'Nowhere,' Aragorn sighed wearily, mortified but determined to be truthful. 'Not for weeks, perhaps months. I am weak and as you have said I am unwell. My foot is not fit to be walked on: who can say how long it will be before it can bear the road through the mountains? I cannot even endure a day of sitting if the chair is not cushioned and I have no one to wait on me. How shall I fare in the Wild?'

There was silence. The fire crackled cheerily, making the shadows dance. Aragorn stared down at his naked knees where the dirt of his long road had ground in to stain the flesh. The hooked tail of the spider-scar showed scarlet below the hem of his braies, and he slid his hand surreptitiously to cover it. Then warm fingers were sliding over his clenched left fist, coaxing it open so that Gandalf could grip it bracingly.

'Give yourself a week,' he said. 'Eat diligently, as diligently as a hobbit. Try your weight upon your foot, and keep on with your strange stretches and exercises. Sleep, bathe, stay warm and rested. Then let us see what you make of your prospects. When I am ready to depart, perhaps you will be also. I have the Lórien steed yet, stabled here. I will speak to Thranduil about finding a horse for you as well. Perhaps you are not fit to walk the mountain passes, but surely you can make yourself fit to ride.'

Aragorn raised his head in some surprise. So accustomed had he grown over the years to propelling himself under his own power that it had not even occurred to him that he might ask the loan of a horse. Certainly such things were done: in happier times they had been often done as folk travelled between the Elven realms. Messengers could be sent from Imladris to return the horse, much as they would be sent to Lothlórien if Gandalf had made such a promise. Aragorn looked to see if the wizard had any wryness or uncertainty in his eyes, but they held only earnest conviction. He dared to smile.

'No doubt Thranduil will be delighted to furnish me with a mount, if only to be sure he can rid himself of my presence,' he said. 'I have brought little peace to his household.'

Gandalf gave a weary chuckle that wiped some of the fog of unsettled worry from his eyes. He squeezed Aragorn's hand and then got to his feet. 'In the meantime the steward will be coming with some supper,' he said. 'We ought to make sure you are fit to be seen before he does. It will surely dishearten him if he sees how little his fine cooking has done for those ribs.'

Aragorn flushed, but let the gentle jibe pass. They both had hard work before them, but he was forced to admit that his would be the more pleasant. Barred from the cells he might be, but that was more a boon than a penance. As desperate as he was to know the rest of the truth, whatever it might be, he was not arrogant enough to think that he had to be the one to unearth it. Gandalf was right in something else as well: whatever was coming, he would need his full might of body, mind, will and hope to face it. It was his duty now to replenish all four.

Chapter LXVI: Prospects of Healing

Gandalf did not break his fast in the Ranger’s room the next morning, and so Aragorn overslept himself. When he awoke it was to a parched throat and crusted eyes, his sore body semi-prone to keep his weight off of his back. The chamber was gloomy, for the fire had burned almost to ash. In the faint orange glow he rose clumsily, with much awkward manoeuvering to keep his lame limb from any undue jarring.

Once he had gained his foot and crutches, Aragorn went to the table and drank greedily of the cold water left for him. He drank his fill, until his mouth felt cleansed and his head clear, and his stomach sloshed in disapproval. When he ran his tongue over his lips, feeling the roughness of newly-healed fissures and cracks, he was surprised to find that they did not sting. The scabs and sores were gone; only the hard crust of temporary scars remained.

He lowered himself onto the footstool with his leg stretched out before him, so that he might stir up and feed the fire. Then he climbed up into Gandalf’s chair, which was nearer the washbasin, and set to work with cloth and soap. He had just tugged his shirt back down around his waist when Lethril came in bearing a fresh robe and clean bandages.

It was a quiet afternoon. Aragorn broke his fast as heartily as he dared, and gave his overgrown hair a thorough combing. Then he turned his attention on his ankle, putting it through a series of flexing motions to limber up and strengthen the joint. At his request a plate of bread and cheese was brought to him at noon, and two hours later a dish of broth. By the time he was halfway through that, he was beginning to feel uneasy in his belly. He laid aside the dish. Settling back in his chair, mindful of his riven back, he put up his good leg next to his bad upon the stool in a luxuriant stretch that he felt all up the length of his body. He tucked his arms over his ribs and tilted his head to rest on the high back of the chair. Then, incredibly, he dozed.

He awoke to a soft rap at the door. Though he knew even in that first instant that he was in a place of safety, his body’s reflexes ran deep. His head snapped up too swiftly as his eyes flew open and his right hand jerked not towards a blade that was not there but across to his left wrist, groping for Gollum’s rope. Aragorn grimaced at this display, thankful that he was yet alone, and raised his hand unsteadily to knead the side of his neck where it was tender from its long stretch.

‘Please enter,’ he said, glad that his voice did not creak with the effort. As the door opened and Gandalf came in, the Man made his best attempt at an encouraging smile. ‘You have kept your promise; I thank you. You must have learned something, if you have left him so soon,’ he offered hopefully.

‘The roots of the mountains must be roots indeed,’ Gandalf muttered. He rested his staff against the jamb and reached for the drinking water. He filled both goblets and gave one to Aragorn. Then he picked up the half-empty bowl and frowned at it. When he looked up accusingly, the Ranger raised his hands, palms outward in token of parley.

‘Have mercy upon me, Mithrandir!’ he said. ‘It was my third meal of the day.’

Gandalf’s lips tightened in what was not quite disbelief. ‘Very well,’ he said. He took the other chair and drank deeply from his cup. ‘Your mood seems much improved, at least, if you are ready to make sport of my concern.’

‘I was sleeping,’ Aragorn told him gravely. ‘Having rested comfortably all the night, I found myself drowsing in mid-afternoon. Thus I slept even where I sat! It is most peculiar. I believe it is what the Shire-folk call a nap.’

Gandalf seemed briefly flummoxed. Then he laughed; a deep and earnest laugh that warmed the room. ‘Well, it has done wonders!’ he said. ‘I had worried perhaps that your private wellspring of mirth had frozen along with your fingertips.’

‘What was that you said about the mountains?’ asked Aragorn, taking the opportunity offered by the moment of merriment to raise the pertinent question without peril. ‘Gollum said something like that yesterday, did he not? About their roots?’

‘I believe so,’ Gandalf said. ‘More to the pint, he has said it today. He passed beneath the earth not merely to escape Yellow Face, but to seek all the secrets buried in the deep places.’

‘I see.’ It sounded much in keeping with Gollum’s grandiose fantasies, bent though all of them now seemed to be on vengeance. ‘And did he find them?’

‘He found nothing but emptiness and the ageless dark,’ said Gandalf, a melancholy note to his words. ‘He is a sorry creature, living only for malice and misery. Almost, I think, he has forgotten the good and lovely things in life.’

‘He remembers how much he hated daisies,’ Aragorn muttered ruefully. Unpleasant memories were assailing him unbidden. The stink of Gollum clung still to the wizard’s clothes, though it was not so strong as in past days. Perhaps the prisoner had washed after all.

‘How he hated them then, or how he resents them now?’ asked Gandalf. ‘After long lifetimes in blackness, is it such a wonder that he would teach himself to hate all that he had left behind?’

‘You pity him, then,’ Aragorn said softly.

‘Do you not?’ Gandalf’s brows arced high with the question.

‘I do,’ said Aragorn. ‘Or at least in certain ways and at particular times I can. It is… it is difficult to separate the aggravation and misery from what I know to be fitting.’ He closed his eyes and groped deep within himself for the clemency and the nobility of heart he needed to forgive Gollum his hatefulness. ‘When I think of what he must once have been, I cannot but mourn the ruin of a life.’

‘That is the very essence of pity,’ breathed Gandalf. Tension left his shoulders, and Aragorn realized that the wizard had truly feared that the ugly journey had wrung the last drops of mercy from his heart. ‘You need not feel any fondness for him to know that.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it, for I feel none,’ said Aragorn dryly. ‘I would be content never to lay eyes upon him again, though I suppose it cannot be avoided.’

The wizard was clearly about to ask what he meant by this in light of their bargain when he abruptly understood. ‘You would not leave without a final inspection of the measures in place to secure him. Ever the consummate Captain.’

‘It is not that I distrust Losfaron and his folk,’ said Aragorn. ‘But Gollum’s size and his wretchedness give an impression of helplessness that is so far removed from the truth that it is scarcely to be believed.’

‘The messengers from Lothlórien said you seemed excessively wary of trusting him into their care,’ Gandalf said mildly. ‘I think the more senior of the two was somewhat offended, though he would not admit it.’

‘We were under the open sky, and close on the border of the wild lands,’ Aragorn explained. ‘A moment’s inattention and he would have been long gone. I did consent to Lord Celeborn’s offer to hold his rope while I bathed.’

Gandalf’s eyes glittered. ‘I am sure he was honoured by the gesture.’

Aragorn smiled earnestly at this, and was surprised to find that the muscles of his face did not strain against an unfamiliar motion. ‘Have you eaten?’ he asked. ‘I am not the only one who must husband his strength for what is to come.’

‘I have asked that a meal be brought here, if you will pardon the intrusion.’ Gandalf said. ‘Thus I may have companionship at board, share what little I have learned, and witness your fourth meal all at once.’

‘Which is but to say you do not trust me,’ Aragorn declared genially. Then more gravely he said; ‘Have you learned anything more from Gollum?’

‘Sméagol,’ said Gandalf. ‘I am striving to use his true name in my dealings with him. If there is any hope for healing, it will begin there.’

‘Healing?’ All trace of amusement faded like a doused candle, and Aragorn sighed wearily. ‘Do you earnestly believe there can be any hope of that in one so twisted with malice?’

‘It is a slim hope, I grant you,’ said Gandalf. ‘The One Ring is a terrible force, corrupting its bearer by degrees until it seems all good is rotted away like a limb slowly putrefying from within. Yet you have saved a gangrenous leg or two in your time, have you not?’

‘Yes,’ the Ranger admitted. ‘But never one so far gone in rot as Gollum is in wickedness.’

‘Perhaps.’ Gandalf watched him wordlessly for a moment before speaking again, very softly. ‘But tell me this, Dúnadan. If it were not Sméagol of the Gladden Fields thus corrupted and brought low, but Bilbo Baggins of the Shire, would you not at least try?’

Aragorn was stricken dumb. His innards churned and his throat prickled. Gandalf was right: of course he would try, with everything in his power and to the very end of his strength, if there were the thinnest hope to save Bilbo from such a fate as Gollum’s. In that sickening moment it was difficult indeed to remember that it would never come to that. Bilbo had broken free of the Ring and he was safe, and yet the nearness of that escape was haunting.

‘You see it now,’ Gandalf murmured. It was no question. ‘Fear not, my friend: I would not charge you with such toil. You have already borne more than your share of this. But we will be leaving him in the charge of gentle jailors. Though they must be prudent they may also be kind. Perhaps, given time and due care, Sméagol may be cured of his poisoning and restored to himself in some small way.’

Aragorn was not so certain, but he could fault Gandalf neither for his hope nor for his generosity.

‘So long as they maintain their vigilance, they may be as kind as they wish,’ he said. ‘I doubt that I could catch him a second time.’

‘I doubt that I could ask it of you,’ Gandalf muttered dourly. Then he grabbed hold of the armrests and hauled himself to his feet with a grunt of effort. ‘We had best arrange ourselves for eating now, the better to enjoy a hot meal ere it can cool on us. I confess the morning’s work has left me chilled and weary.

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Gandalf had learned little more from Gollum that morning, and he gained still less that afternoon. The following day was a busy one in Aragorn’s little room. The tailor came back with the lining of his cote – thankfully unbleached linen and not a fine sapphire silk or somesuch – to fit the sleeves. Then the king’s cordwainder arrived to make lasts to fit the Man’s feet. The swelling of his ankle was much reduced, and Aragorn thought the fit would be adequate. The shoemaker prepared the sculpted wooden forms on site, so that he could make continual comparisons to his model. He worked with plane and chisel, hands flying with deft skill that spoke well of his talents. While he carved, he talked with Aragorn of pleasant things: of the birthing of spring beyond the palace gates, and of the preparations to welcome the King’s emissaries home from Dale. Aragorn also had tidings (almost a year old but fresh to his listener) of some of the cordwainder’s kin who dwelt in Rivendell.

In the afternoon Helegond performed a thorough examination of his patient. The improvements in the foot were noted, and the spider-bite was pronounced well healed. The bruising on Aragorn’s flank had faded by now to bilious yellow, and upon palpation the organ beneath was tender instead of tortured. His hands, though now hard and horny as a hill-troll’s, were quite recovered from the frostnip. But for the peeling skin, so were his feet. The bites on his arm were cleansed of infection at last.

The one concern was the rattle deep in his lungs, which was still wet and clearly audible to the healer’s Elven ears. He sounded Aragorn’s chest thoroughly and shook his head, but there was nothing either of them could do about the lingering fluid save to wait and hope that time and proper nourishment would remedy it before the problem bred.

Still it had been a day of heartening doings, and when Gandalf came from the cells that evening he found his friend in good spirits. He looked the man over and nodded approvingly.

‘You are much improved already,’ he said. ‘Your colour is better and that worrisome sag is gone from your shoulders. Clearly staying away from our captive and his perpetual reminders of your ordeal has done much to mend your heart. If once we can begin filling out your hide again, you will be well on the path to recovery.’

Gandalf’s day had borne fruit also, though it was neither plentiful nor sweet. He had learned more of Gollum’s life before the ill-fated birthday and, indirectly, of his friendship with Déagol. Gollum was back to insisting that he had no part in his friend’s death. Yet it was clear the memories haunted him.

‘I have also confirmed some of the rumours we heard in Rhovanion,’ said Gandalf gravely.

‘Which rumours specifically?’ Aragorn dreaded the answer, but could not help but ask.

Gandalf’s voice dropped low and he cast his eyes to the fire. ‘It seems we have caught the cradle-robber.’

Sixteen years ago, trying to pick up a trail long gone cold, they had come upon a homestead huddled under the eaves of Mirkwood. There dwelt a couple, aged and childless, whose hopes had fallen prey to the strange and bloodthirsty terror that had roamed the wood many years before. Thranduil’s people had heard many such rumours, but it was eerie to have one confirmed first-hand. One night while the woodman and his wife slept, something had come in at the window and snatched their young babe from his basket. Even so long after, the mother’s anguish had been raw and hard to witness.

Now Aragorn shuddered in remembrance. There had been that awful moment in Grimbeorn’s hall, too: when small Svala had gone crawling so blithely to Gollum. No doubt she had thought she had found a new friend, but those quick fingers would have closed so easily about her plump little neck. What madness had seized him, Aragorn wondered now, that he had brought such a deadly thing into that home filled with merry children?

‘What of his capture?’ he asked now, trying to distract himself from horrors real and imagined. ‘Has he said aught of that?’

‘Of his first capture or his second?’ Gandalf asked sourly. ‘Of the second he has much to say. I believe he still harbours a hope of convincing me to join sides against you. What is this about raising blood from a stone?’

Before Aragorn could scoff at Gollum’s latest absurdity, it came back to him. It was shrouded in a fog of fever and hot, purulent agony, but the memory was there. ‘Not from a stone, with a stone,’ he said. ‘I had to debride my arm where he bit me. I think it was that task that first convinced him of my mettle.’

Gandalf clicked his tongue. ‘Doubtless. You cannot perhaps appreciate it, but that is not a performance fit for for the squeamish.’ He sighed tiredly. ‘But in answer to your question, no. He said nothing of his time in Mordor, nor anything about the signs we found in Harondor. He will not admit to ever having been anywhere south of Tol Brandir. He will not even confirm that you caught him at Dagorlad.’

‘I assure you I did,’ Aragorn said with a cynical lilt.

Gandalf rolled his eyes. ‘Then I suppose I shall have to believe you. Yet surely you can forgive my skepticism: you were raised by such a cool prevaricator.’ He sat down and began drumming on the arm of his chair. ‘We do not know when he was captured, or where. So we cannot know how long he was held. As for escaping the dungeons of Sauron…’

‘Only you and Beren have ever managed it, and he with enchanted aid,’ said Aragorn. ‘Fear not: that claim stands untarnished. Either Gollum was set free, or the servants of the Enemy created such conditions as to make escape a virtual certainty. It is no easy thing to get out of Mordor, much less its fortresses.’

‘How did you do it?’ asked Gandalf, his voice swift and grave.

‘Inelegantly,’ Aragorn said flatly. ‘And I never came nearer to Barad-dûr than a half-day’s march.’ He kept the shudder from his voice if not his bones. That half-day’s march had seemed like a handspan. He tried to redirect the conversation. ‘My last whisper of him placed him beneath the Mountains of Shadow two or three years ago. It seems impossible that he was held that long, but he may have dwelt in other caverns or tunnels.’

‘I will see what he has to say about it tomorrow,’ the wizard promised heavily. He raised two fingers to massage his temple. ‘What have your healing arts to offer me for a sore head?’

‘Little wine, much water, and a good night’s sleep,’ Aragorn answered. But he took his crutches and rose smoothly to his feet before his friend could protest.

Drawing near and gripping the props to him with his elbows, he held out beckoning hands. Gandalf leaned forward into his grasp, and Aragorn cupped each side of his skull so that his thumbs were on the temples and his fingers fanned down the back of the wizard’s head.

‘Perhaps I may ease it a little,’ Aragorn murmured. He walked the second and third fingers of each hand in towards his palms until he found on both sides the hind end of the thick shell-shaped muscle that curled above the ear. Thin though they were against the skull, they were fraught with tension.

‘You have laboured long,’ he said in a soothing, melodious voice, pressing firmly with his fingertips and moving his thumbs in small, steady circles in the hollows of Gandalf’s temples. ‘It is trying work, and it wears harder on the body than most heavy toil to which I have bent my back. I know the toll it has taken all too well.’

Now it seemed that he could feel his friend’s pain, not merely imagine it: the piercing throb across the brow, coming from deep within, and the outer ache of muscles seized too long in the effort to clamp down upon angry and unproductive words. Aragorn felt the beat of Gandalf’s heart in the vessels beneath his thumbs. His own pulse quickened to thrum along in time. He breathed slowly, deeply, steadily, drawing in warm air through his dry nostrils. The head in his hands bobbed slightly as the wizard did the same.

Nimbly Aragorn’s fingers drummed up towards the crown and then back again, this time right to the root of the jaw where each of these muscles met another, more powerful one. It was warped into painful knots just behind the mandible. Aragorn pressed these with his forefingers. Gandalf hissed sharply was the pain flared, into his mouth and deeply through his head. But after a few seconds of steady pressure Aragorn felt the tension release beneath his touch. Then he placed both palms upon the wizard’s head and drew them swiftly along the contours. Coarse callouses and newly healed cracks snagged on the fine grey hair, but a moment later Aragorn released his hold and reached to adjust his crutches.

Gandalf raised his head, eyes warm with relief. ‘My thanks,’ he said. ‘You have indeed the gift of your kindred, as well as the generosity to ply it in such trivial matters.’

‘Such a headache is never trivial to the sufferer,’ said Aragorn. He shuffled into a turn and swung back to his own seat. ‘Have a care that you do not neglect my other advice. Water and rest, and try not to clench your jaw so often.’

‘It is clench your jaw or bite your tongue with that miserable creature,’ spat Gandalf. ‘I have seen you do the same.’

Aragorn lifted his right foot back onto the stool and began to roll his ankle determinedly into its exercises. ‘That is how I know the pain it breeds,’ he said. ‘You are not immune to the hurts of the body, Gandalf.’

‘No, I am not,’ the wizard grumbled. He was touching his jaw wonderingly as if unable to quite believe the result. ‘I shall have much to say on the matter, should I ever be asked.’

‘Are any of us ever asked?’ Aragorn asked, lightly but not without a certain arch significance.

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Gandalf did not come at noontide. He did not come in the drowsy afternoon, when again Aragorn found himself napping before the fire like an aged hound. Nor did he come when Galion brought the evening meal. Aragorn ate more heartily of it than he had at any time in months, even daring to taste of the vegetable dishes. This supper sat uneasily in his stomach, and he passed an uncomfortable hour waiting for it to settle. Still he did not lose the good of his meal and he sat at last, satiated and heavy of limb and of lid.

He knew that Gandalf would come when he left Gollum, for it was his part of their bargain. When he came he would be weary and almost certainly discouraged. Further, he might be in need of counsel or at least a ready ear; for what but some success could have kept him so long? If he came and found his confederate abed, asleep or no, he would force himself to be brief if he tarried at all. Therefore Aragorn kept the watch, so much more luxurious than any he could have imagined on the bitter, wakeful nights of his northward journey. Yet the struggle to remain alert was just as difficult as it had been on any of those cold and sleep-starved vigils. He was exceedingly, almost excessively well-rested now, and he had passed an indolent day. All the same he found himself fighting for consciousness against slumber’s soft allure.

When at last the knock came, it caught Aragorn at the nadir of the cycle of drifting and clawing back. He cleared his throat with a hasty, shallow cough that rattled more deeply than it ought to. Then he bade the caller come.

It was Gandalf, for who else but Gandalf would have come at so late an hour? He had already changed his clothes, and his beard and forelocks were damp where he had splashed while washing his face. Nevertheless he was pale and haggard, hard duty showing in the crevices at mouth and brow and the shadows beneath his eyes. He went at once to the table and poured them each a cup of water. Aragorn accepted his gladly, and rinsed the downy sleep-taste from his mouth as the wizard eased himself into the chair with ginger care.

‘May I never again endure such a day,’ he said, and his voice was hoarse. He drank, blinked ponderously, and said a little less roughly; ‘I do not think there is any question posed in these many days that I did not repeat today.’

Aragorn scarcely dared to ask whether Gandalf had made any progress, for neither his tone nor his expression suggested the smallest triumph. Yet neither of them had ever shirked from unpleasant truths. ‘Did you learn anything of use, then?’

‘Of use? Perhaps not,’ said Gandalf. ‘Of interest, certainly. Perhaps most importantly, I have firmly established the limits of his knowledge of Bilbo.’

‘And?’ Aragorn braced himself against this. What they had already learned was damaging enough.

‘And it is less than I had feared. From Bilbo himself, dear foolish hobbit, Sméagol learned his name. From the songs and tales of the Men of Dale and Esgaroth, he learned of the Shire and of hobbits, and much of Bilbo’s role in the slaying of Smaug. He knows that Bilbo had extensive dealings with dwarves and that he came with Thorin Oakenshield from the West.’

Aragorn’s dismay, unsurprised but no less stricken, must have shown in his face. Gandalf smiled kindly. It softened the lines of exhaustion and despite the circumstances it was heartening.

‘Remember, dear boy, that not all Men share Strider’s broad understanding of the scope and vastness of the world. Nor do they all assume the Misty Mountains to be the great dividing line between East and West.’

Aragorn nearly laughed, as much at his own stupidity as with relief. ‘Of course!’ he said gladly. ‘To the Men of Dale, from the West would mean west of Anduin.’

‘Precisely,’ said Gandalf. ‘In fact, the earliest intelligence they seemed to have had to provide to Gollum was of the respite given my little band of adventurers by Berorn. It seems the Dwarves did not care to boast of being driven up fir trees and rescued by Eagles.’

‘But surely Gollum himself must know that they came through the mountains,’ said Aragorn. ‘He met Bilbo beneath them, after all.’

‘True: he did. But again, what seems a road straight and true to a widely-travelled scholar of maps may not be nearly so apparent to one who has never wandered with a course and a method.’ Gandalf raised his eyebrows comically. ‘Gollum knew of Bilbo’s theft of his own Precious. He learned of the dragon-hoard and the abduction of the Arkenstone. In his eyes our friend was a burglar indeed, travelling far and wide to deprive good folk of their rightful possessions. To our captive’s way of thinking, Bilbo’s travels were driven not by geography so much as by advance intelligence of the locations of the great treasures of the world. His Ring, naturally, being foremost among them.’

‘Naturally,’ sighed Aragorn. The words my Precious would dog his dreams for years to come.

‘It took many years for Sméagol, or what by then was left of him, to grow desperate enough – hungry enough – to come forth from his hole and brave the Sun to search for the Ring. We know he went to Esgaroth, and even to the foot of the Lonely Mountain itself. Then, it seems, he went off in search of the Shire.’

He took another long draught from his cup and shuddered slightly. Aragorn wondered how many twisted byways of enraged gabbling the wizard had been obliged to follow in order to string together such a straightforward narrative.

‘He began his search, so far as I can tell, in the lands his own folk had populated so long ago,’ Gandalf went on. ‘It was a natural enough assumption, and he made a thorough search of the west banks of Anduin before reasoning that perhaps the vales on the other side might hold the land he sought.’

The convoluted search pattern was almost humourous: east, then west, then east again, and west. Then a third time east, it seemed. Small wonder that their own hunt had proved so tangled and senseless. Aragorn’s chest seemed to ache with exhaustion at the mere memory.

‘It was during this stage of his quest that Gollum heard another rumour: a rumour of a great power gathering in the South. It had no love of Elves or Dwarves, no affinity for the woodmen or the Beornings who drove him away from their cots and henhouses. It was a power that promised great rewards for loyalty, and revenge upon the West. Knowing as he did that Baggins had come from the West, Sméagol believed that they would be only too glad to help him find his Precious.’

‘No doubt they would,’ muttered Aragorn. ‘Help him find it? Assuredly. Let him take it? Never.’

Gandalf inclined his head in agreement. ‘He was no doubt drawn thither by more than whispers,’ he said. ‘That same bedevilment that has plagued Gondor and Wilderland would have had its effect on him, too: the dark muster of wickedness to the secret summons of Mordor. Yet he was clever. He shunned the Black Gate on sight, and if ever he came within eyes of Imlad Morgul he will not admit to it. Neither does he cringe or cry overmuch at my admittedly secondhand description of the city. I think he followed much the same path you and I reconstructed: creeping near the border between Mordor and Ithilien until he came to the – ah – conducive climes of Harondor.’

‘Bog and swamp and mild winters,’ Aragorn said sardonically. ‘And from there, in the end, he passed into the Ephel Duath.’

‘Yes.’ Gandalf plucked at the sleeve of his night-robe and shook his head. ‘How long he lurked there, snooping and prodding and risking disaster, I do not know. Yet there is no doubt that in the end he was caught, and questioned, and put to terrible torment. There is no doubt that he told all that he knew. And I believe you when you tell me he could not have escaped unaided.’

‘And as for why he was permitted to escape?’ asked Aragorn. ‘Would he say nothing of that?’

‘Nothing,’ Gandalf confirmed grimly. ‘He is adamant that he had no aid: that he got away by his own wits and wiles. He will not admit to being taken, but he is most effusive about getting away. When I pointed out that he had not even managed to escape from you, a lone Man short on sleep and sustenance, he hissed at me and would say no more on the matter.’

Aragorn pinched his lips into a moue of affected hurt. ‘I am saddened to learn how little you think of my abilities, if the slaves of Sauron must be the more diligent guardians.’

‘I have no strength to soothe your pride tonight,’ Gandalf rejoined. ‘If you know not your own worth by now, I can be of no assistance at this late stage.’

There was a contemplative hush. Each nursed his cup of water while the fire crackled and the stillness settled soothingly over the room. At last Aragorn was able to pluck a coherent question out of the cloud of muddled musings that circled his head.

‘How long do we try to squeeze more out of him ere we admit it cannot be done?’

Tired eyes lifted to find his face, and Gandalf’s shoulders shrugged leadenly. ‘I must have a day of rest myself. Mayhap spending that day alone and without an audience for his acrobatics will soften Sméagol’s resolve to silence. I am loath to give up on it quite yet, but I fear that we are nearing the end of any reasonable expectation of more. Even his fear of my staff pales before his terror of Mordor, though one is in the room with him and the other hundreds of leagues away.’

‘We have learned more than I would have thought possible,’ Aragorn admitted. ‘And what we do not know firmly is plain enough to deduce.’

‘I will try once more, regardless,’ Gandalf decided. ‘But today’s gains were slim gleanings indeed. There is little left in the field.’

Aragorn was silent. He was but two days into his week’s trial, and though he trusted his friend’s word he also knew his temperament. If Gandalf made swift work of Gollum and Aragorn’s recovery dragged on, would the wizard find the patience to tarry with him?

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Aragorn returned from a walk in the quiet stone corridors to find a guest in his chamber. It was late afternoon, and Gandalf had gone to bathe. He too relished the rare luxuries of a pleasant waystation, so rare in the Wild. The Ranger had taken the opportunity to venture out on a longer excursion with only one crutch. With each step he placed a little weight on his bad ankle and the rest on the prop under his opposite arm. The first few rangar were sharply painful to walk, but he found a rhythm and the flare dulled to a dim, glowing ache. He misliked the trembling weakness that gripped the whole limb, not the ankle alone. It only drove him to strive harder, however, and he made a broad loop through the tunnels. Ache stormed back into anguish before he was done, and he took the last two dozen strides awkwardly hopfooted, his right foreleg tucked up behind.

He was pale and perspiring when he reached his door, and he swung it open upon the discovery that he was not alone. He had to fight to hide his discomfiture.

‘Your Majesty,’ he said courteously, inclining his head to the fair figure occupying his usual chair.

‘It is good to see you once more upon your feet, even if you presently have three,’ said Thranduil earnestly. ‘Your healers speak well of your recovery, and from my Captain I have learned you have been to question the prisoner yourself.’

‘I have,’ Aragorn said. He stood on the threshold, trying not to look awkward or taken aback when in truth he was dithering. He could not stand here swaying on one foot; he was already worn and light-headed from his exertions. But maneuvering with one crutch was ungainly business, and he was unaccustomed to the available chair. ‘I am more grateful than my words can tell for the hospitality and care I have been so freely given.’

‘Freely and gladly,’ Thranduil pledged warmly. ‘You will always be made welcome in my realm, Lord of the West. You have proved a most genial and undemanding guest. But will you not sit? You have taken your exercise and must surely be tired.’

A thin smile was all that Aragorn could manage. With tremendous concentration far disproportionate to the small act at hand, he navigated around to sit. It went more smoothly than he had feared, which was fortunate because Thranduil watched his every move with appraising eyes. When he was seated at last, laboured lungs gurgling with each quick breath, the Elven-king relaxed in his chair.

‘You do look much recovered,’ he said, perhaps a little too brightly.

‘But not fully, I fear,’ said Aragorn. He looked down at his hard-weathered hands, this time scrupulously clean. ‘I do not know whether Gandalf has spoken to you,’ he ventured softly; ‘regarding our plans for the return to Rivendell.’

‘He has not,’ Thranduil said. ‘I assumed you would both remain in my court for some time yet.’

‘For some time, verily,’ said Aragorn. ‘But not over-long. I will not be fit to march the mountain passes for many weeks, and I cannot linger here so long. I must take council with Master Elrond and return to my people. When it is time for me to depart, I would esteem it a great boon if your Majesty would grant me the use of a horse. I can make arrangements to have it returned by the messengers of Imladris.’

The request hung humbly in the air, sounding suddenly piteous in the silence. Aragorn’s eyes dropped again to his lap, and his ears prickled uncomfortably. Then Thranduil laughed quietly, and Aragorn’s eyes snapped up to his smiling face.

‘Forgive me!’ the King chuckled, clapping his palm on the armrest. ‘Forgive me, Lord Aragorn, but I had naturally assumed – I mean to say that with the crutches and the want of boots, the length of the road and the long years’ delay in these tidings, whatever they be, I assumed you would need a mount. Particularly as Gandalf has one himself. I did not expect you to trot along beside him like a sheepdog.’

‘Oh!’ Aragorn smiled abashedly. ‘I feared to trespass still further upon your generosity. If you will grant me this I will be deeply indebted to your kindness.’

‘There are no debts between friends,’ said Thranduil. ‘Tell me, will you be recovered enough to join in our revels three nights hence? The envoys who wintered in Dale will be returning, and we shall welcome them home with all the splendor we can: as a King welcomes his cherished ambassadors, and as a father welcomes his son.’

Aragorn was not at all certain he would prove equal to such pageantry, but he could refuse his host nothing in good conscience: certainly not so pleasant an invitation. Surely he would be able to sit quietly in a corner and watch the Wood-Elves at their merrymaking. There would be good food and glad company, and it would certainly go some way towards convincing Gandalf that he was indeed well on the road to healing.

‘Good King,’ he said with a gracious smile; ‘it would be my honour and my delight. Provided my garments are finished, nothing could prevent me.’

‘Oh, they will be finished!’ Thranduil vowed, eyes twinkling with play. ‘I shall drive my tailor like a dray-horse until they are.’

Then cheerfully he took his leave, and Aragorn was able to rest.

Note: I have nothing but admiration for Bilbo: this suff is NOT easy!

Chapter LXVII: Finery, Flattery and Flight

'I do not know whether to quantify it as a triumph or a defeat,' Gandalf announced as he strode into the little bedchamber shortly before noon the following day; 'but it is over.'

Aragorn was standing behind his chair, his full weight firmly on both feet while he counted slowly to fifty. Relegating the numbers to a corner of his mind where they could run their course as he spoke, he asked; 'You feel we have learned all there is from him, then?'

'All that we will be well-served by learning, anyhow,' said the wizard heavily. 'Perhaps we could go on trying to wring from him the particulars of his captivity. I do not know what it would serve, save to probe cruelly into wounds that should be left to heal as best they may. I believe we have learned all that we can hope to without resorting to that, and further that we have learned far more than he wished us to.'

'Then say a strategic withdrawal, and not defeat,' said Aragorn. 'We have what we need: why press on?' He took a steadying hold on the chair and lifted his right foot to rest.

'Yes.' Gandalf set his staff in the corner and turned to wash his hands. 'It remains to decide what is to be done with all we have discovered, but happily that burden need not rest on our shoulders alone.'

Down came the foot again, with its customary shaft of pain that faded swiftly back into a deep, unmistakably healing ache. 'Has our host served you with an invitation to tomorrow's festivities?' Aragorn queried, before either of them could sink too deep into anxious mulling over impossible questions.

Gandalf turned in some surprise, caught his eyes, and read his intent. 'He has,' he said with a lazy lilt to his voice. 'It has been many years since I have witnessed the woodland folk at their revels. It will undoubtedly be a splendid evening.'

From Aragorn's recollection, the ordinary nightly banquets were quite splendid enough. He smiled, a little tiredly. 'Of that I have no doubt. I have promised Thranduil that I shall attend, provided I may do so clad more suitably than I am at present.'

Gandalf pulled a most unpleasant face. 'I hope you did not put it to him like that,' he said. 'You are liable to find yourself bedecked like a dressmaker's doll!'

'I suspected as much,' Aragorn said. He lifted his foot again, once more careful to grip the chair. His left leg was steady, but it would not do to take chances at this juncture. 'I merely asked for the raiment they are preparing for my westward road. The Elvenking's tailor and I had a spirited discussion about what was and was not suitable for one of my station in life.'

Gandalf chuckled, and from the gleam in his eye it was clear he had a very accurate sense of how that conversation had unraveled. 'Your station in life is no easy thing to decipher,' he said. 'You may find yourself surprised by the results.'

'Let us hope not,' said Aragorn dryly, his voice not faltering at all as his foot came down again. It was a grim little victory, and he curled his lip appreciatively.

'You're looking very smug,' Gandalf observed. 'Just what are you doing back there?'

'Standing unaided,' Aragorn said in a tone that clearly conveyed the magnitude of the achievement. 'Not idly do folk remark upon Strider's prowess on his feet.'

'There is no need for sarcasm,' Gandalf said archly. 'If you are impatient with your recovery, remember whose stubbornness impeded it.'

Aragorn was about to open his mouth in his defence, but there was a circumspect knock at the door. Gandalf glanced swiftly in that direction, just as susceptible as any Ranger to instinctual alertness. Aragorn, who was expecting no one but stood with his back comfortably to an interior wall, pleasantly bade the caller enter.

It was the cordwainder. He bowed respectfully to Gandalf and then approached Aragorn's chair before making a second courteous obeisance. 'My lord,' he said, holding out the articles he held with such care; 'your boots are finished.'

Aragorn had to lock every muscle in his face and hood his eyes against surprise and dismay. He had taken such pains to make his requirements known to the tailor, but he had not troubled to do the same with the shoemaker. He had not paused to think that the definition of so simple a word as boots might differ so greatly between two Elven realms. Such had not at all been the case in Lothlórien, in that long-ago spring when he had stumbled upon its borders, weary and heartsick. And then Galadriel's craftsfolk had not even had the ruins of his old boots to work from.

He was accustomed to the snug, high-fitting boots of Noldorin make, cut to fit as smoothly as a second skin from toe to knee. They had turned soles of double thickness, so to protect his feet, yet still supple enough that he could feel the terrain beneath him. These before him now, the handiwork of a people who wore soft-soled shoes whatever the weather and wherever the road, were evidence of an entirely different concept. To begin, they were only of a half-calf height: no good at all for fording streams or tramping through marshland. They were snugly fitted to the ankle and no doubt sculpted perfectly to his feet, but higher up they had an ornamental outward flare that was well-nigh as impractical as a crimson satin surcote.

The soles were set, not turned, with a stout decorative seam standing out all around. The leather of vamp and body was dyed a luxurious dark green, which was extravagant but certainly functional. But it was thick and stiff to accommodate the dramatic shaft and the elongated toes which tapered to a showy point. Every conceivable effort had been made to embellish these impractical boots, from dainty tooling at vamp and ankle to elaborate cut lozenges and curlicues in the body, showing off a lining of bright spring green leather.

Dumbstruck and struggling to appear pleased, all the while wondering how he could possibly explain the misunderstanding, Aragorn moved without thinking. He scarcely felt the loose grinding of his ankle as he stepped around the chair unsupported and took the boots mutely. He turned them, looking at the hard, thick soles with their stacked and pegged heels. A man who tried to walk far in these boots would swiftly cripple his feet.

'We did not discuss colour and ornamentation, my lord,' said the cordwainder. 'I inquired of your garments, and as they too are to be predominantly green, I thought…'

'The colour is not—' Aragorn began, but he could not continue. They were beautifully crafted boots: many hours of skilled labour and much costly material had been lavished upon them. But they were not at all suitable for a long road through mountainous terrain. It was a dreadful moment for his skills in diplomacy to forsake him, but he knew not what to say.

'Very fine,' Gandalf observed lightly. He had come up behind the shoemaker. Now he was looking from the boots to the Man's face, reading there the thoughts that were masked from any who did not know him well. The wizard smiled. 'Very handsome, and very suitable for a journey ahorse.'

Aragorn's innards untwisted and he shot his friend a look of great thanks. In his startled alarm, he had forgotten that he would not be walking back to Rivendell at all. A hard boot was no disadvantage in the saddle, and the stacked heel that would be the ruin of a walker's legs were perfect for keeping a tired foot in the stirrup. He could certainly make do with these, until he was once more in Imladris under the care of his own trusted bootmaker.

'Most suitable,' he agreed warmly. The cordwainder was beaming proudly. 'Your work is of extraordinary loveliness. Will you stay to see me try them?'

'I would be honoured, my lord!' the Elf said eagerly, holding out his hands for the fruit of their labour. 'Would you allow me to assist in their donning?'

Aragorn assented readily: it was not a mere offer of courtesy, but a ritual to complete the making. To witness the fit for himself was an act of pride and affirmation for a shoemaker. Aragorn yielded the boots and moved smoothly to sit.

The cordwainder knelt and slipped the felt shoes from the Ranger's feet. He took up the right boot first, for it was that one that was the cause for lingering doubt. The foot in question had still been markedly swollen when the last had been carved. Aragorn raised his foot and slipped it into the ready-held boot. The cordwainder drew up on the back of the shaft and pushed his other palm against the arch. The foot slid easily into place. The fit was impeccable: snug but not too tight.

When the other foot was clad, the shoemaker sat back upon his heels and the Man rose. Only now and just in time did he remember his slowly mending ankle, and he lifted himself without its aid. Yet although Gandalf moved to fetch the crutches, Aragorn crossed the room on his own feet. He turned and rocked, considering the feel of the leather and the freedom of his toes. He walked slowly back to the chair, conscious now of the ache in his ankle and the sharp sting that came with each step. His right knee trembled also, but his walk had borne the intended fruit. The boots did not chafe or pinch. It would take longer wear to be certain, but he thought they would serve very well.

'The fit cannot be faulted,' Aragorn said as he drew near the Elf again. 'You know well your craft. You have my most earnest thanks, and I shall commend you to His Majesty.'

'Thank you, my lord,' said the cordwainder earnestly, bowing again. 'It was my honour to outfit you.'

Then Aragorn sat, his healing leg only too glad of it, and Gandalf showed the Elf to the door. He did so with some of his own quiet words of praise, and then made his way slowly to his chair. He settled comfortably and straightened his robes before he spoke.

'I take it those were not at all what you expected,' he said at last. 'Can you wear them without harm? If not, we need only explain the mistake.'

'For riding they will serve,' said Aragorn. 'I could sustain a short march in them, but only perhaps ten miles at a stretch. Not,' he added with a rueful flick of his foot as he planted the stiff rim of the heel on his stool; 'that I could manage even ten miles at present, even on the downiest of turf.'

'You made a very clean circuit of the room,' Gandalf observed. 'How did it pain you?'

'Remarkably little,' said Aragorn honestly, looking down at his foot in its princely new wrapping. He could not recall when he had last gone so ostentatiously shod, but he thought perhaps it had been for the marriage of Denethor and Finduilas. 'I shall not be dancing with the blithe and the beautiful tomorrow, but I believe I may now lay by my right crutch.'

'Do not overexert yourself,' Gandalf warned. 'There is not so much need of haste that it would be worth the risk of doing yourself further harm.'

Aragorn shook his head. 'I vow I will not,' he said. 'Neither can I take naturally to idleness, however. If we are through with questioning Gollum, we ought to settle upon a date for our departure.'

Gandalf smiled fondly. 'You have changed your tune, Dúnadan. Remarkable what a difference four days makes when one may rest spirit and body alike.'

'I will not be restful in my spirit until we are once more in Rivendell and may have Elrond's counsel on how to proceed,' said Aragorn. 'Lingering here is of little use to me. As soon as I am able to walk a mile unaided, we should be gone.'

There was a hush then, while Gandalf studied his face. Their eyes met, and Aragorn could feel his thoughts turning over of their own accord as the Istar peered into his heart. First rose the chill apprehension of all that was to come. For a moment it was almost suffocating, but then it faded into Aragorn's satisfaction with and quiet pride in the short stroll he had taken. This was followed by his abashed and perhaps a little embittered amusement in the fact that he was reduced to taking pride in such humble deeds. There was a terrible moment when the deeply buried tangle of dark thoughts and hidden torments stirred and began to uncoil with sickening speed. But at once it slithered back as Gandalf withdrew, retreating respectfully from what he knew Aragorn was bearing as best he could. Instead, doubtless for the benefit of both of them, he reached for the delicate light of hope. It was unquenched still and burning stronger now than it had in many weeks. As it warmed his mind, Aragorn felt the contact falter and then cease as Gandalf closed his eyes and turned away.

It was poor etiquette to ask what the searcher made of his findings, and so Aragorn sat quietly, waiting. At last, plucking thoughtfully at his beard, the wizard spoke.

'When you can walk a mile, then,' he assented softly. 'I too will sleep easier in the Last Homely House. The Elven-King's halls are fair and kindly, but the shadow of Dol Guldur is too near for comfort and I confess that I miss the open sky. I wonder you are not wilting yourself, unaccustomed as you must be to walls of stone.'

'I have slept away so much of the time that I scarcely noticed,' said Aragorn. Yet now that it had been brought to his attention the room seemed very small. Well-ventilated though it was by unseen means the air now had an oppressive closeness.

Gandalf saw him shift in his chair and gave a small, knowing jerk of his chin. 'You are shod now,' he said. 'When you feel able to undertake the walk, there is no reason you cannot venture out into Thranduil's forests. Though scarcely the gardens and orchards of Imladris, they have their own particular beauty. Spring has broken and the days are mild.'

Grown used to bearing witness to each minute change of the seasons, Aragorn found this almost incomprehensible. He had come here through winter's last bitter cold, and even in the shelter of Mirkwood the snows had penetrated. To think of a world now budding with new growth beneath a gentle Sun was strange.

'Not today,' he said, regretful but fully aware of his body's need for gentle handling. 'Perhaps if I survive the merriment of the wood-Elves I may seek the open air the day after tomorrow.'

Gandalf chuckled, but only thinly. It seemed that he, too, was apprehensive about the long evening's revels and what toll they might exact.

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Thraduil's tailor had played a shrewd trick. He came on the morning of the banquet with Aragorn's new garments: cote, hose and three sets of body linen made to measure. The outer garments were of wool, as discussed, and they were indeed made only in drab green and rusty brown. However within those limits the cote was so riotously embellished as to be difficult to look upon with restful eyes.

It was made in green, but liberally bedecked with appliques of brown wool held in place by the tiny silk stitches that only nimble Elven fingers could make. Oak and acanthus leaves wound around cuffs and collar, subtle at any significant distance but splendid in in their artful complexity. Around the hem and up the riding slashes a parade of woodland animals cavorted: fawns and harts and bears and birds and badgers all rendered in the finest detail. Their features and contours, furs and feathers were picked out in dainty embroidery – also solely green and brown so as not to trespass the agreed-upon terms. The seams were overstitched in a complex herringbone, and the lacing eyelets were sewn to look like tiny blossoms.

It must have taken half a dozen pairs of swift, skilled hands labouring almost without surcease to produce such a garment in so short a time.

There was naught to be done but accept it, of course. It met, in its own showy way, all of the requirements Aragorn had named. It was warm and stoutly made, and it would draw no eye at a distance. Profligate though the garment was, it was perfectly functional and it was finished. To request another tunic after having been presented with this practical if cheeky work of art would only serve to insult his host and increase the waste of cloth and labour.

Still Aragorn felt rather absurd as he ascended to the banquet-hall with Gandalf that night. He should have been relieved to lay by his invalid's weeds for proper, well-fitted raiment both clean and whole. Instead he felt (as indeed the wizard had warned him) precisely like a dressmaker's doll. He had been provided for the evening with a mantle of palest blue edged in deep golden brocade, and it was affixed at each shoulder with a matched brooch of gold. These were wrought in the shape of oak leaves and had come, so his dresser had told him, from the Elven-King's own coffers. On his brow he wore a fillet of gold wire intricately woven and hung with a single pale beryl. Beneath it his long dark hair had been brushed smooth and loose, sweet-smelling and free from snarl or knot. Only his faithful old belt, buckled still to the next-to-last of his hastily cut notches, gave any sign of the true nature of his daily life.

The one consolation was that Gandalf had not laughed. He was himself clad in silk robes, unadorned grey but girded with a belt of silver plaques. He had looked Aragorn over, in his borrowed finery and the ludicrously ornate cote and the showy half-high boots, and he had nodded approvingly.

'All that is wanted is Narsil at your side, and none could mistake you for anyone but the Heir of Isildur,' he had said with a quiet, almost proprietary pride.

Now they came together to the tall doors spread wide to admit the revelers. The attendants bowed to greet them, and Aragorn nodded his gracious thanks. However he might feel, he was this night a great lord of Men. A certain standard of behaviour was expected of him, and this was how it began. He raised his head and let his eyes glint regally, and he passed into the hall.

It was gloriously adorned with garlands of evergreen and young ivy. Bright sprigs of colour stood boldly among the greenery: the year's earliest flowers. Candles by the hundreds in sticks of gold and silver and gorgeously carved dark wood rendered the vast vaulted space as warm and brilliant as a noonday meadow at high summer. The tables were laid with cloths of green and white, set with silver dishes and well supplied with flagons of fragrant wine. The folk of the Greenwood, no less colourful than the flowers, moved gracefully among them with glad words and laughter. Some were seated already, but many more were wandering.

Adjusting his hold on his lone crutch, Aragorn moved with all the grace he could towards the table that stood along the hall to his right. He had to conserve his strength for the long night to come, and taking an inconspicuous seat at once seemed the wisest course. He was greeted several times as he went, sharing his weight between his bad ankle and the crutch when he stepped with his left foot. He knew none of these folk by name, but of course they were all aware of his status as the King's honoured guest. Some had aided at one time or another in the search for Gollum, and wished to proffer congratulations on his success.

Gandalf was still better known in this land, and so more enthusiastically waylaid. After only a few minutes they were separated. There was an uncomfortable moment when Aragorn stood alone, unable to draw any nearer to the invitingly unobtrusive bench at the foot of the lowest table. Then a gentle hand lighted upon his arm and a maidenly voice remarked; 'Lord Aragorn! It cheers my heart to see you so much recovered.'

It was Lethril. She had laid by her customarily practical garb for a gown of shimmering satin and her hair was freed of its plait. It rippled down her back, twined with bright ribbons and wood violets. She was very lovely, her patient healer's countenance softened to sweetness. Looking upon she who had tended his ugly hurts and clipped spider-silk from his filthy hair, Aragorn could not help but smile.

'You are beauty itself tonight, lady,' he said. 'And were it not for your skill and kindness I should not be here to behold you now.'

She smiled radiantly and moved to take his free arm. As she did he felt the strength in her wrist and elbow and knew the gesture was as much an offer of support as a social preamble. 'May I lead you to your place?' she asked. 'Let the admiring and the well-wishing seek you out. This is to be a night of pleasure, not toil.'

Aragorn acquiesced gladly, but he was taken aback when she guided him into a gentle turn towards the head of the hall, where the high table stood upon a canopied dais. Lethril must have felt him tense in protest, for she leaned in to whisper; 'There is no help for it, I fear. You are my Lord King's honoured guest. He will not suffer you to sit out the night in quiet obscurity.'

He supposed he had known this all along. Meekly Aragorn let himself be led, focusing on keeping his unequal gait as smooth as possible so as not to jar Lethril's arm. He did not care to be put on display as a rarity – a wild mortal neatly groomed and bedecked in the raiment of an Elven lord! – but he could see that was unavoidable. As he drew nearer he recognized that Thranduil's high table was arranged differently from that in the banquet hall of Rivendell.

In his home Master Elrond sat at the head of the table with guests and ranked members of his household seated down each long side to face one another, half their backs to the rest of the hall. Here, the King's chair stood in the middle, facing the populace. To his right and his left were seats for those he honoured, but the near side of the table had neither chairs nor benches. Those seated on the dais were displayed before the crowd. It was the custom in many courts, Gondor included, but it made of dining a performance for the masses.

Aragorn was relieved when Lethril showed him not to either of the lofty places at the King's side, but to the chair third in precedence upon his left. The healer drew out the seat for him and, when he was settled, took from him the crutch. She set it against the wall behind him, in the shadow of an arras. She was about to speak when a clarion horn sounded from the minstrel's gallery above the hall.

'That is the call to be seated,' she said. 'I must go. I wish you a joyous evening, my lord.'

Swift as a doe she was gone, but others were gathering to the high table. Gandalf approached, deep in conversation with a pale-eyed Elf clad in glinting mail. He ushered the wizard tot eh right of the King's place, and the second seat in precedence. This was as it should be, and dispelled another of Aragorn's unspoken concerns. He had been seated higher than the wizard on prior occasions, through error or the need for subterfuge, and it had always left him profoundly uncomfortable.

He was further put at ease when the chair below his was drawn out and Captain Losfaron sat down. 'I had hoped you would attend,' he said. 'I have set my finest lieutenant and her choice guard to watch our prisoner tonight, and they will not themselves make merry. Therefore we may enjoy the evening free from care.'

'Not free from care, surely,' said Aragorn. 'In dark times no soldier may make that claim.'

'Perhaps not,' Losfaron allowed. 'But at least he can play at it a while.'

There was to be no formal procession, Aragorn saw: Thranduil was already mounting the dais with a lady upon his arm. She was Orophel, his sister and the greatest maiden of his realm, and she had her brother's proud countenance and stately bearing. She stopped to speak to another of the ladies, already seated, and Thranduil walked on. His raiment was splendid, of velvet and satin in hues of spring green. Upon his breast he wore the emeralds of Girion, the five hundred stones seeming to cast their own grassy light from the settings of the necklace. He had upon his head his spring crown now; purslane and forget-me-nots entwined with leaves of elm and ash. That the last were unfurling already meant a dry summer to come, so Bilbo Baggins would have said.

The Elven-King stopped to speak to Gandalf, who turned in his chair to greet him but did not rise. Thranduil beckoned to a fair Elf clad all in white with a collar of emeralds less numerous than the King's, but darker. There was a youthful lightness to his steps and a smile upon his young and yet ageless face. Gandalf nodded as if in remembrance and spoke to the unknown Elf, whom Thranduil clapped upon the far shoulder in a half-embrace. A proud smile was radiant upon his face.

When the King passed by his own tall chair, the other Elf at his shoulder, Aragorn shifted his good foot so that he might rise. Thranduil, anticipating him, held out his hand in a staying gesture. 'Peace, Dúnadan. You are my guest, not my subject. May I present to you my son and my most trusted emissary; Legolas of the Greewood.'

The white-clad Elf bowed, and Aragorn inclined his head. Thranduil nodded approvingly. 'My son, this is Aragorn son of Arathorn, Chieftain of the Dúnedain of Eriador.'

'The great huntsman!' the King's son said merrily, stepping forward and offering his hand that they might clasp wrists. 'I am told you have triumphed in your quest and brought a strange creature into our safekeeping.'

'Verily,' said Aragorn, though still he felt anything but triumph. 'I am grateful to the folk of this land for consenting to such a charge.'

'Great deeds were done upon the northward road to bring the creature hither,' said Thranduil. 'Perhaps Lord Aragorn will favour you with his tale, of which I have had only a part.'

'It is no tale for a night of merriment, sire,' said Aragorn solemnly, managing to keep the revulsion from his voice. He would not speak of that journey willingly, least of all among those he scarcely knew. To Legolas he said; 'I presume you were the chief ambassador to winter in Dale. How fare her folk? I have travelled there of a time myself.'

'They are much as they ever have been,' said Legolas. 'Proud and honest and perhaps a little dreary on a long night. Still, it is a pleasant duty to attend upon the court of King Brand. He is a bold lord and a sound strategist: a worthy ally. He lays a fine board and he thinks much of my lord father.'

Thranduil laughed and again put his arm around his son. 'We must go now, and sit,' he said. 'If we do not begin to feed these hordes we shall have a rout on our hands.'

'It is an honour to have met you, Aragorn son of Arathorn,' said the younger Elf. 'I hope one day I may indeed hear your tale, when the mood is fitting.'

'Forgive me, Legolas son of Thranduil,' Aragorn said with a wry little smile; 'but I hope so dark a day may never come.'

'He has a rare wit, and a sharp tongue,' Thranduil confided to his son. 'Come now: take your place and be ready to speak in your turn.'

'Yes, my father!' Legolas said crisply, but with a teasing glint in his eye. Clearly this was something of a game between them: paternal chiding and heel-tapping obedience. It was a variation upon a string that Elrohir son of Elrond was wont to pluck.

They went to their places: the Elven-King in his great chair and Legolas upon his right. The Lady Orophel took her place at her brother's left, and between her and Aragorn sat Lord Telfeir the Watchful, who had stood with her father in that first hasty charge at Dagorlad. His countenance was grave and gaunt with grim knowledge, but his single eye was bright and he spoke in a voice as melodious as a running river. He greeted his fallen lord's daughter first, as was fitting, and then spoke briefly and courteously to Aragorn as a hush began to fall over the assembly.

When silence fell at last, Thranduil rose. He held out his arms as if to encompass the entire room.

'My people!' he said, and his voice resonated from the stone walls and the very arches above them. 'My people, it is a joyous day. We have welcomed in the spring, but now we may welcome home our cherished children, our beloved brethren, our faithful friends. Two and twenty we sent eastward. Two and twenty have returned to us with words of peace and honour from our loyal allies in Dale. Such fortune has not always been ours, and we know not what the next year may bring. Therefore let us raise our cups in gratitude and in hope, for we have much cause for each!'

All then raised their vessels: gold at the high table, silver for all the others. The candlelight lanced off of them like four hundred twinkling stars. Aragorn raised his own cup had been filled, though he could not say who had done it. He turned his shoulders towards the Elven-King and lifted it in salute with all the others. Then Thranduil drank, and all the rest did the same.

Aragorn took a temperate sip of the wine, tasting the sweet succulence of the Dorwinion vintage with the pleasure of one too long removed from such luxuries. Even the mouthful of wine he had taken with Gandalf after their first joint questioning of Gollum paled to this. Then they had been drinking of an ordinary wine, suited to everyday table service. This was the Elven-King's finest reserve, full-flavoured and aged right to the pinnacle of perfection and not beyond. It tasted of the distant vineyards beneath a loving Sun, of well-cured casks and perfect slumbering shadow. It was glorious.

He took another swallow, this one more generous, and then willed himself to set down the goblet. It had been more than a year since he had last had his fill of wine, and if he did not pace himself he would soon grow tipsy. There were servers now moving along the table in both directions, having begun with the King, and they were bearing platters of bread and cheeses. Others came with dishes of winter fruits, and still others with delicate sculptures of pastry and cream. As the high table was served, other bearers appeared to attend the other tables. The feast had begun.

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For many hours they sat, and there was talk and laughter with each course. The Elven minstrels played their sweet music above the voices of the throng, and between each service there was some showpiece presented before the company. The long tables were set with a wide aisle up the centre of the room, from the doors to Thranduil's very feet. Here a singer would wander, his voice raised in a hymn or woodland ballad. Or dancers would come, supple as willow saplings in the wind, their white arms swaying and their nimble feet flying. Between a course of savoury game stews and one of various tarts and sweetmeats, a lady with alluring eyes and a fine contralto voice strode the length of the hall and told the tale of the coming of Moon and Sun. So compelling was her voice and her passion in her words that the assembly, all of whom had heard the story many dozens of times before, were spellbound. During another pause, Thranduil's son rose and presented to his father and the assembled court the greetings of King Brand of Dale and a brief accounting of his winter's work.

In the break following the next course a minstrel knelt before the King, his harp upon his knee, and sang of the downfall of Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies that had followed. It was a gesture to honour Gandalf, and the wizard smiled benevolently upon the singer and was the first to laud him when he finished. Thranduil was pleased by this gesture, and sat in clear satisfaction as the next course was presented.

The food was rich and wondrous, but Aragorn found he could eat little of it. He made an effort to taste of every course, though it was not possible even to consider every dish. There were soups and sauces and savouries beyond count, all manner of pastries and baked delights. There was fruit fresh and baked, boiled and candied and roasted. There was meat and fowl of every kind: beef and pheasant and venison, but also hare and boar and dainty little game birds glistening in fragrant glazes. There were blackbirds garnished with berries that must have been cultivated under the direct supervision of the most skilled of Elven gardeners, so far out of season were they. And there were dishes of such skillful spicing and presentation that the simplest of roots and vegetables were made into wondrous things. Platter after platter of dainties were brought before the king, and there was always more to come.

By the sixth course, Aragorn's stomach was rebelling uneasily. It had less to do with what he had eaten than it did with the sheer abundance of provender passing before his eyes. He knew that little would be wasted. What was not eaten in the banquet-hall would be dispersed among Thranduil's servants, and what they could not eat would be passed on to the wood-folk, and so on. But the sight of such bounty after his months of near-famine was dizzying. So he sipped at the wine and nibbled what he dared, and tried his utmost to appear restful and merry. Once he caught Gandalf staring down the table at him with evaluating eyes, but he thought he was carrying it off quite well.

Then they came to the end of the seventh course – river oysters in heavy cream, an assortment of compotes, and delicate sugary creations made to look like flowering trees – and another minstrel came down before the king. This one carried a lute, and she curtseyed low before the king while a lithe page brought out a carven chair.

'Gracious King!' she declaimed, then gestured with the arm not cradling her instrument to encompass the rest of the high table. 'My lords, my ladies, honoured guests and friends old and new.' She turned next to the crowd behind her, long skirts sweeping the stone floor. 'My kindred, my people. Let me sing for you a song never yet heard in this fair hall! It is a song of the South, a song of Men. It is a song procured for me by secret means, and brought to you to delight your ears and ennoble your hearts. It is a song of the noble realm of Gondor: a song of one of their great heroes – not of old, my kindred, but of our very time. It is a ballad known as The Flight of the Eagle, and I pray you listen well, and remember!'

With an uncomfortable feeling of certainty, Aragorn gripped the arm of his chair and pushed himself up straighter within it. His other hand closed upon the stem of his cup, nearly empty though it was. He had refused each offer of a refreshing measure, trying to keep his head clear by limiting himself to the one cupful. Now he wished it were brimming. A song out of Gondor; a song not of heroes past but those of the present time; a song bearing in its name the word eagle; it could scarcely be anything else. Thranduil had honoured one of his guests already this night. Now it was time to pay tribute to the other.

As he set his face into pleasantly interested lines and curled his fingers more tightly on the cool golden goblet, the minstrel began to sing.

Down in dawn from Anduin,
slender ships were sailing.
Night swept on through Tolfalas
as the day was failing.
Swift and silent swelled the sails
through the dark sea churning.
All Dol Amroth stood and mourned
for brave ones ne'er returning.

Sailor, soldier, sable Guard,
rode the darkling ocean.
Feared they neither doom nor death
in their proud devotion.
He who led them on those seas
into untold danger,
tall Thorongil, Captain bold:
Gondor's son and stranger…

Raising the cup to his lips, Aragorn let his eyes travel the room. All were watching the minstrel with the eager interest of lovers of song rarely favoured with new fare. None of them knew, of course, that the man of whom the lady sang was seated before them. They could not know, for that Aragorn had lived for a time as Thorongil was a truth that had been almost as jealously guarded in the North as Thorongil's origins and ancestry had been guarded in the South. But of course Gandalf knew, and from the way Thranduil's eyes were now taking the Ranger's measure, so did the Elven-King. His son did not, for he was watching the singer raptly. Beside Aragorn, Telfeir was listening with a faint smile upon his thin lips. But Losfaron was watching the Man.

He took the nearest flagon of wine and leaned to refill Aragorn's cup. 'You must pardon her,' he whispered. 'She is trying to offer you a taste of your homeland: she does not realize that the Men who dwell West of the mountains have little in common with the Men of the South.'

Aragorn looked at him in some surprise, and found himself smiling. If he had let anything in bearing or countenance betray his discomfort, it had been readily and understandably misinterpreted. He shook his head ever so slightly. 'It is an unusual song,' he murmured as he lifted the vessel to his lips. 'I have never heard it before.'

That was certainly true. It was strange to sit thus, listening while one's own deeds were memorialized in song. It was stranger still to hear how one night's dread and bloody work had been elevated to the cool purity of legend. In the song there was much of glory and courage and vision, of the red glow of fire and the sweeping oars of victory. There was nothing of the sharp stink of acrid salt smoke tainted with the smell of burning flesh, of the terrified screams in the darkness, of the bodies silhouetted black against orange waters as they jumped from the bulwarks. There was the music of steel ringing against steel, but none of the soft squelch of a sword driven into a man's unarmoured abdomen. The song told of the desperate dancing duel on the quays; the two Captains with eyes and blades and wills locked fast. But there was nothing of what had come after that final blow and before the swift withdrawal that had made of the carnage a triumph.

At last the minstrel came to the final lines of the song, though Aragorn knew it before her audience did. This part at least he was interested to hear, for all that his heart ached to recall that bitter morning.

Silent slipped their little boat
to bear him thence away.
Eastward then he turned his face,
to where the Shadow lay.
Grey mists cloaked him from their sight,
and left them on the shore.
To the City that he loved,
Thorongil came no more.

So that was how they remembered him in Minas Tirith far away: a lone figure in the fog with his eyes fixed upon the Mountains of Shadow. It had a ring of legend to it, no doubt of that; the wistfulness of a hero vanished into mystery. If any in Gondor should be told what had come after that cold grey dawn on Anduin's far bank, they would doubtless refuse to believe it. Their puissant Captain disappearing into the darkness he had fought so diligently, doubtless to fight on – that was a fitting end to the tale. Penury and pillories, thirst and deception and orc-whips had no place in myth. No one wanted to know what happened to the hero when he passed from their tale: it was too disheartening.

Approving voices were lauding the song, and the singer rose and swept her deep curtsey again. Thranduil plucked one of the forget-me-nots from his crown and tossed it to her. She caught it and dipped again, the dainty blossom clasped in her slender hand. Flushed with the thrill of the song and the favour of her King, the maiden withdrew. As she went the servers came forward, bearing yet another decadent course to be presented before the high table.

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When even the greatest of appetites had surely been sated, boards were cleared and the lower tables moved swiftly off to one side. The candles in their tall stems were brought into an immense circle, and by their light the dancing began in earnest. Thranduil lead the first pavane himself, palm to palm with his sister. This stately ritual was followed by a livelier ring dance, fleet feet flying and silks whirling to the merry melody. The dances of the wood-elves were a sight to behold, for they moved almost faster than the eye, tireless and elemental in their joy. Aragorn, well into his second goblet of potent Dorwinion wine, leaned upon the arm of his chair and watched wordlessly.

Most of the others had descended from the high table, either to join in the dancing or to mingle with the other revellers. Losfaron had slipped from the room to look in on his soldiers and their unpleasant charge. Aragorn's other seatmate was now at the far end of the hall, conversing intently with a pair of Elves with the bearing of warriors. The Ranger turned when the vacant chair scraped back and Gandalf slid into it.

'How are your reserves holding up?' he asked quietly, settling back as if in perfect comfort although his eyes were sharp and searching.

'Well enough,' said Aragorn. He sipped of his wine and curled his lip. 'Did I pass your test, Mithrandir?'

'It was no test,' said Gandalf. 'It was… an unfortunate and unintended consequence of what I thought at the time to be an act of great circumspection and no small wit.'

'Circumspection?' Aragorn chuckled darkly and swirled the crimson fluid so that it danced against the smooth golden bowl of the cup. 'That is an interesting word for it.'

'It is a fitting word,' Gandalf said. 'Thranduil wished to know what I had found of such interest in Gondor. I provided him with something I had brought back that was of great interest to me, and will prove to be of still greater interest to others among my friends. Naturally I had to explain why it was so interesting, or he would not have taken it to be all there was to tell of.'

Aragorn's eyes narrowed. 'That is why you gave it to him?'

'Only that.' Gandalf shrugged. 'I might have come up with something more creative, but I had not the wit after my long battles with Sméagol. I might have told him it was none of his affair, but the Elven-King can be dangerous when his pride is wounded. This seemed a ready solution, particularly as I had the song and tabulature in my possession, and in a hand other than my own. They were transcribed for me by a very obliging young musician who told me it was one of the most popular in his repertoire.'

'So you had him write it out that you might make sport of me?' Aragorn asked. He knew this was not fair, but the words seemed to come of their own accord. He took another swallow of the sweet, strong wine.

'I had him write it out because I thought you would be interested to see how you are remembered,' Gandalf said levelly. 'And because I thought it would be an appreciated addition to Elrond's stores of song and story. And because I knew that Bilbo would be proud and delighted to hear you thus memorialized in a song written by another, after all his own hard work to that end.'

'It is an uncomfortable thing to hear of oneself in song, particularly when one was not consulted before its crafting nor even warned it was to be performed,' said Aragorn irritably.

'I know,' said Gandalf, amusement in his voice and in his eyes.

Aragorn looked at him in some surprise and then sighed. 'Of course you do,' he said.

'It is the price we pay for our valiant deeds,' Gandalf declared stoutly. 'Once in a while, someone actually takes notice and commemorates them.'

Aragorn opened his mouth to protest, realized how absurd any argument would sound, and closed it again. He shook his head in wonderment, and was surprised to find it did not stop spinning when his neck fell still. He looked down at the cup and its ruby heart. He felt a pleasant hovering detachment from his body. 'Denethor must hate it,' he said.

'Oh, assuredly,' said Gandalf, nodding sagely. 'I had to go all the way down to the Fourth Level before I could find a minstrel willing to attest to its existence at all. It is not precisely a forbidden song, for the denizens of Gondor would frown upon that as oppression worthy of the Enemy, but it is certainly an unwanted song, at least wherever the Steward should chance to sup.'

Shaking his head in mingled amusement and disbelief, Aragorn took another sweet draught of the wine. Before him the Elves had broken off into couples again for a galliard. There was not an unskilled dancer in the lot, and all were possessed of an agility and grace almost beyond description. Watching them turn and leap and land in elegant forms was entrancing, and he drifted in a waking dream of beauty and flying colours in candlelight. Beside him Gandalf settled quietly, now and then drumming upon the arm of the chair in time to the music. At such times Aragorn stirred a little from his sleepy torpor, but only to push himself up a little straighter with his good left foot or to sip again of the wine.

The candles seemed to sway before his eyes, the whirling colours of Elven finery blending together into a bright rainbow of silk and ribbons. The music dimmed in his ears, and he could hear the steady beating of his heart instead. He felt removed from his slowly mending body and its omnipresent aches, severed from the lingering consequences of hurts now old and weary. He seemed to float outside of his own mind, beyond the reach of fear or dread, or shame or self-doubt. He was beyond the reach even of regret, and that was sweetest of all. He had only to draw breath, and to watch the blurred beauty of the swirling word before his drowsy eyes, and to hover peaceably here, where there was no pain.

Someone was speaking in a low and euphonious voice that reminded him dimly of firm and gentle hands easing him back down upon soft cushions. Another voice answered, and that was Gandalf. Aragorn knew not what he said, but it was Gandalf and no mistake. He would have known that voice even in death. Then someone was coaxing him out of the chair and onto his strong foot. He felt his crutch against his side and gripped for it, finding the handle on the second pass. He tried to speak, but words eluded him. He felt as drowsy as one drugged, and dimly he knew it was the wine: easing his heart and lulling him to sleep although he had scarcely even trod the border of tipsiness. The weary road had indeed worn thin his endurance for such genteel indulgences.

He felt a slender shoulder against his right side, and a strong arm reaching around his waist from the left. Lethril's hand touched the crook of his right elbow. At his other ear Gandalf said; 'Come now, my dear boy: let's get you off to bed.'

Aragorn tried to shake his head, but it felt very heavy. They could leave him in the chair, he would have said if only he could have found the means. He would have been content to doze there like a dotard in the warm candlelight. But they began to walk and he found his own feet following. His body seemed to know how to move with the crutch, even when he was not thinking about it. There was a precarious moment at the edge of the dais, when the stair downward briefly thwarted his escorts. In the end he simply stepped down, left foot leading, and forced them to come with him. He had walked many hard and lonesome paths, after all: one stone step could not possibly stop him.

There were other voices as they moved through the room, all of them merry and all filled with glad wishes and cheer. Then cool air caressed Aragorn's face as they moved from the busy hall into the quiet of the corridor. Lethril spoke, but he did not heed her. He was occupied in moving limbs that seemed far detached from his essential self. He walked between the wizard and the Elf-maiden with steady determination, and he did not stumble. By the time they turned into a small, dark chamber, however, he was scarcely aware of his surroundings. He did not feel as they relieved him of his finery and unlaced the warm and extravagantly stitched new cote, nor when the low boots were slipped from his feet. And when he was flat upon his back in the soft bed, he half fancied that he was walking still; walking on and on into a dreamy night while the hurts of his heart were left farther and farther behind. Aragorn felt a calloused and weathered palm gentle upon his cheek, and he slept.

Note: I'm on my way to a leave-taking celebration of my own right now, so I'm posting before I've had a chance to reply to all my wonderful reviewers. Fear not! I haven't forgotten you, and I'll write soon. I just didn't have the heart to keep the chapter back.

Chapter LXVIII: Westward Away

Four days more they lingered. Each morning Gandalf came to the Ranger’s chamber and the two of them went walking. They found Thranduil’s spacious but sparsely seeded library. They paid a visit to the kitchens, that Aragorn might thank those who had worked to meet his strange requests. On the second day they went up to wander the Elven-King’s cultivated glades beneath the open sky. On that excursion Aragorn brought both his crutches, that he might relieve his ankle when the need arose. He was glad of them ere he reached his destination, but on the following day his feet bore him unaided from his quiet room to the splendid audience chamber that housed Thranduil’s throne. It was a distance, so their host claimed, not much less than a mile, and Aragorn made it almost halfway back before having to set down his crutch. There could be no argument that the terms of the agreement had been met.

Aragorn was eating more reliably as well. He had suffered no ill effects from his careful grazing at the feast, and from his wine-whetted slumber he had awakened clear-headed and better rested than at any time in recent memory. He successfully reintroduced his stomach to the staples of Elven travel fare, and although he was still not able to eat much in a sitting he seldom felt nauseous or even uneasy afterwards. He could not partake of anything too rich or too extravagantly spiced, but that would be no hindrance on the road. He had made no noticeable inroads with into filling out the hollows of his face and his ribs, but that would come in time. Even Gandalf was not dissatisfied with his progress.

By the close of the third day they were decided, but they tarried one more to make ample preparations. Aragorn oversaw the allotting of travel provisions and the assembling of a few basic bandaging supplies and salves. Gandalf sought the other sundries for a well-equipped journey, from sewing needles to bedrolls to crisp tinder for their fireboxes. All but the most essential items were packed into four spacious saddlebags, with a few necessities that might be needed mid-ride tucked into the satchel that Aragorn had brought from the house of Grimbeorn. Their intention was to travel lightly enough to allow the fleet Elven horses to make an easy thirty-six miles a day over level country, while still ensuring they were well-supplied enough that they need not fear hunger. They would be able to resupply at the Town at Carrock if need be, but that was the last waystation before Rivendell.

On their final evening in Thranduil’s palace, the two hunters paid their last visit to Gollum.

The first and most notable thing upon entering the guardroom was that the ghastly stench was very thin upon the air. It was still present, but only beneath the dark smoky scent of the charcoal brazier and the spices of the guards’ lately-eaten supper. Aragorn felt no stirring of hateful memories as he followed Gandalf into the room, though the sight of the low-backed chairs made his thickly crusted shoulder blade itch.

Behind the Man came Captain Losfaron and the King’s son, who it seemed was active in the royal Guard when he was at home. The two Elves on duty rose respectfully as this high-ranked entourage entered. The wizard moved only far enough into the room to admit those behind him before stopping to scent the air.

‘Did you persuade him at last to bathe?’ he asked, frankly impressed.

Losfaron grinned. ‘He shunned our soap and the hot water brought from the springs, nor would he suffer our aid. So I ordered a tub of cold river-water brought fresh and we left him at last to his own devices. Such a splashing and a floundering I have never heard, and when we opened the door there was more water on the floor than in the tub. Yet is it not far more pleasant for us all?’

‘Quite,’ said Gandalf dryly. Yet his eyes were alight with hope at the Captain’s words.

‘He is now upon his third pallet, for the last would have soon been moldy from its soaking, We took from him his garment, also – if garment it could rightly be called.’ Losfaron wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘I ordered it burned. He has refused warm clothing, but consented to replace his rude draping once we had one cut of cloth woven in Dale. It seems he scorns Elven handiwork, but he is not wholly without shame.’

‘You must continue to treat him as you have been,’ Gandalf instructed. ‘If your efforts are rebuffed, try some other means of approach. We must have hope: mayhap time and kindness may cure what long cruelty has marred. Be patient with him, and generous in your hearts. Though he is repugnant, he is wounded almost beyond imagining.’

Aragorn had moved to the cell door, and he was listening to the sounds behind it. He heard the snuffling wheeze of Gollum’s breath and knew that he hung upon every word. Even after nine hundred miles’ journey, however, the Ranger could not make a credible guess as to what the prisoner might make of what he heard.

‘Take care lest your watchfulness should lapse, either from pity or familiarity,’ he said. From the other side of the door came a terse hitching of breath that wrenched at his innards. It was a terrible thing to be so blindly feared, even by such a miserable being, and his own discomfort did nothing to make his next words more gracious. ‘Perhaps you cannot conceive of his wiles, but know that he is stronger than he looks and he is swift as an adder. Think of all you have heard of him, and consider what mischief he might do if he were free.’

‘He must be guarded ceaselessly,’ Gandalf agreed, holding first Losfaron and then Legolas in his stern gaze.

‘He shall be,’ the King’s son vowed. ‘There will never be fewer than two guards upon him, and more when the occasion shall warrant it. As was agreed in the beginning, we will secure him: the cells of Thranduil shall never again be breached!’

Gandalf smiled at this and looked to the Ranger. ‘Are you satisfied, Dúnadan?’ he asked earnestly. ‘Will you rest easy in your mind knowing that others have faithfully taken up the watch?’

It was impolitic, even hurtful, to hesitate; yet Aragorn had to. He needed a moment to weigh the matter properly, for Gandalf’s question was a grave one. Could he truly lay by his charge? Would he indeed rest easy in his mind? After all the wretched weeks of sleepless vigilance would such a thing ever again be possible?

It must be, he decided with cold resolve. He could not live out his days as the sedentary jailor of a lone prisoner. He had done his part and borne his burden. Now it was time to entrust the charge to others, and these good Elves had proved unswerving in their compliance with the agreed measures.

‘I will,’ he said. The clipped finality of those two words had the same savour of release that he had tasted when the rope was cut from his wrist; of freedom from long bondage. Turning to the solemn-eye Eldar watching him, he bowed his head in thanks. ‘I am grateful for your fidelity, and your willingness in this hard duty. You know not the greatness of your gift to all the Free Peoples in taking this charge.’

‘It is our privilege to aid in the fight against the Shadow however we may,’ said Losfaron.

Gandalf then dusted his hands with neat finality. ‘Well, my friend?’ he said, and his eyes glinted with gentle teasing. ‘Shall we look in on him, that you might take your leave face to face?’

Aragorn cast him the blackest of looks as an involuntary shudder overtook him. ‘Never,’ he spat, the disdain earnest where the irritation had not been. ‘Let us be gone.’

Gandalf laughed, but his eyes were grave.

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Dawn was breaking beyond the high hill when Gandalf and Aragorn stepped out into the crisp damp of early spring. They were clad for the trail: Gandalf in his hat and weather-stained robes, and Aragorn with Sigbeorn’s warm cloak obscuring his new garments. Gandalf bore his staff and had Glamdring at his side. Aragorn still wore his long hunting knife. Each had a leather bottle filled with water and the contents of their pouches, but they carried no other baggage. The rest of their gear had been brought out the night before.

Upon the stone causeway Thranduil was waiting with two attendants. ‘It is a brave morning to embark upon a journey,’ the Elven-King said in greeting. ‘You shall have a pleasant road today at least.’

‘And let us hope for many days to come,’ said Gandalf. ‘You have my earnest thanks for your hospitality, and your generosity on our departure.’

The two of them went on together, conversing quietly, but Aragorn’s attention was drawn by a low whinny of recognition. From along the hillside Thranduil’s Master of Horse was guiding a fair dappled gelding with the delicate bones and proud head of the horses of Lothlórien. The steed was saddled and laden, with soft bit and bridle. The light shoes rang upon the stones as both stepped up onto the causeway. Behind came another pair: Elf and horse approaching with quiet grace. It took Aragorn a moment of looking with unseeing eyes before he recognized Losfaron and the sleek dark mare who followed him.

Swiftly the Ranger strode forward, now long accustomed to the persistent healing pain across his foot. He passed Gandalf’s steed and halted where he could reach to stroke Moroch’s velvet nose. She nickered happily and nuzzled his hand.

‘Captain, I cannot!’ Aragorn protested softly. Moroch was in full travel tack, the two fat saddlebags on her hips with an oilcloth-wrapped blanket across them. ‘I was meant to have the loan of a horse from His Majesty’s stables, not your own dear steed.’

Losfaron laughed softly. ‘You have trusted me with your captive: surely I can trust you with my light-footed lady. She will bear you with swift and steady stride, even in the high places of the mountains.’

‘It is a harsh road, though it be spring,’ Aragorn argued. ‘She will fare better here. I could not presume to take her from you, not for so many weeks. I will wait while another horse is saddled.’

‘What gives you to think she would permit any other to bear you?’ Losfaron asked merrily, nodding at Moroch.

The mare was rubbing the side of her head lovingly upon Aragorn’s shoulder now, making soft glad noises deep in her throat. One hoof pawed the cobbles, almost prancing. When Aragorn cupped his left hand over the far ball of her jaw, her eyelids fluttered low. Reflexively, the Ranger clicked his tongue in fond acknowledgement.

‘Yes, gentle heart: I am well,’ he murmured. This time the Elven tongue was no surprise to Moroch. She merely nudged him with her nose again and nibbled at his cloak as she might nibble the withers of another horse. Having first seen him so low and wounded, she was pleased and relieved at his clean and healthful scent now. Scratching the side of her neck with his fingertips, Aragorn could not find it within himself to resist any further. He looked at the Captain, and saw only earnest generosity in his eyes.

‘I will care for her as if she were my own,’ Aragorn promised quietly. ‘And I shall ensure she is brought home to you by capable guardians, as swift as may be.’

‘Fear not for that,’ said Losfaron. ‘I shall not be riding abroad for some time; certainly not until all my guards have been properly trained in the tending of the prisoner. It will be a joy to know that she is contented and active in the free air while I must bide below.’

Aragorn bowed his head, stricken momentarily dumb by the Elf’s generosity. ‘I thank you,’ he said at last. ‘For this and for all, I thank you.’

‘You go back into toils for which I lack the fortitude,’ Losfaron murmured. ‘It is I who have the greater cause for thanks.’

There were a few further words of farewell from Thranduil, and final thanks from the two travellers as they mounted. At length both were in the saddle, though some adjustment of Moroch’s tack was needed to bring the stirrups to the proper height for her long-legged rider. This Losfaron took care of with a dexterity that made plain that he did not always ride her Elf-fashion. Then he offered her a nibble of sugar and stroked her neck, murmuring softly in words none but she could hear. Then the Captain looked up at the rider watching him with soft eyes, and he smiled.

‘Bear him well, my fair one,’ he said, kissing her swiftly upon her brow. ‘I do not think he often has such respite.’

Moroch raised her head and tossed it proudly. Then Losfaron stepped back and Aragorn gathered the reins loosely in his left hand. ‘My thanks again, Captain,’ he said. Then turning in the saddle he bowed his head respectfully to Thranduil. ‘My thanks, Elven-King. When next we meet, I pray the hour is happier.’

‘May the wind go with you, Aragorn son of Arathorn,’ said Thranduil. ‘And may Elbereth smile upon your next great venture, whatever it might be.’

‘Keep that prayer in your heart,’ said Gandalf. ‘You know not how gravely we have need of her grace.’ Then he turned his mount and touched a heel to the gelding’s side, and they were off.

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The day was cool but pleasant, and they rode in easy comfort. Moroch knew the Elven road well, and so Aragorn led the way with Gandalf and the Lórien-steed a pace behind. The noises of spring were manifold in the shadowy woods: the chirp and twitter of birds in search of mates, the scurry of small animals awakening from winter’s lazy routines, and the steady drip-drip of meltwater from the canopy high above. At first they kept up a trot, not wanting to seem too eager to be gone nor to push themselves too swiftly into the rigours of the saddle. But after their noontide halt they went on at a steady canter, trusting always to Moroch’s knowledge of the land. She was indeed a gentle beast, and she bore Aragorn with the same care and smoothness she had shown upon their first meeting. As they rode, Aragorn told Gandalf of it in as much detail as he felt comfortable – for even now he was reluctant to make plain just how desperate those last days of his journey had been.

They broke once in the late afternoon to take a small meal, and then rode on through the twilight. By the glow of Gandalf’s staff they went on even after darkness fell and the eyes appeared to either side of the road. They seemed far less threatening now, in the company of the wizard and the two calm horses, than they had during Aragorn’s limping eastward trek. He could pick out the owners with ease when he tried: here an owl, there a ferret, and there a fox. Of the green-eyed great cats he saw no sign – neither of the she-lynx whose mate he had slain nor of any of her kindred.

When at last they halted, Aragorn was very nearly dozing in the saddle. He was glad of Gandalf’s tactful decision to let him call the halt, and he did not abuse that trust. He was steady on his feet when they dismounted, if somewhat stiff in the thighs and back. Losfaron had spoken aright: seldom did he have the luxury of riding, and there was always a period of uncomfortable adjustment when he set out to do so.

They made camp at the edge of the road, where the horses could graze in the undergrowth. It was doubtful that any dark thing would attempt to waylay them, for the wizard and the Ranger together did not make a tempting target and the Elven horses had about themselves an air of untouchable grace. Gandalf gathered brush for a fire, which Aragorn laid. They ate a simple supper of Elven bread and smoked venison, and Aragorn drank of the bottle of milk he had been provided with. There was enough only for a few meals, but it would serve to taper him off the strict building-up regimen he had followed in the Elven-King’s halls.

Gandalf insisted upon taking the first watch, but he woke Aragorn when the time came to change. That too was a promising gesture of trust: he was taking the Man at his word that he was well enough to bear his part of the nightly responsibilities. They settled upon a system of four short watches instead of two long, at least for this leg of the journey. So it was Aragorn who laid out breakfast and woke the wizard when the dawn was breaking in a green haze behind them.

The second day they travelled more slowly, for there was no cause for haste and the horses too were adjusting to the long road. It was colder that day, and by sunset the air was near freezing. Quite warm in his new garments, Aragorn had only to dig out the mittens from his satchel to ride in comfort. His hands, it seemed, were still uncommonly sensitive to the cold. Now and then a wet cough stirred deeply in his chest, but that was unsurprising on such a chill evening.

On the third day they heard the click and chatter of spiders away to the south, but they were not waylaid. The gelding feared these noises, and trotted on with uneasy hooves and ears flat upon his head. Moroch only tossed her head back at her rider, as if to bid him be on his guard, and went on as though quite untroubled. She was used to such sounds, and trusted Aragorn as she trusted her own master to safeguard her. The horses moved swiftly, and they covered nearly fifty miles that day.

It was on the evening of the fourth day that the faint filtering glow of sunset burst suddenly forth in brilliant scarlet and orange before them, as with a few long strides the horses broke out from the eaves of the forest and into the wide, brown spring lands that rolled on to Anduin. The ditches were choked with meltwater and mud and the hillsides were thick with last year’s dead grasses, but even in the dying light the first signs of new growth were plain. There were wild blossoms in the high places, and signs of wild birds bathing in the low, and the new shoots of clover and wild oat were showing.

The night was cloudless, and they rode on under the stars for a time. It was a pleasant change after the gloom of the forest, and Aragorn’s fatigue was salved for a while by the glory of the Firmament. Gandalf rode in silence for perhaps three miles, until Mirkwood was well behind them. Then he reigned in his horse and announced that it was time to make camp.

‘You have been a stalwart traveller these last days, but do not think I cannot see that you are weary,’ he said as Aragorn swung down from the saddle and began to unbuckle the straps beneath Moroch’s warm flank. ‘There is no cause to press on with such haste. Urgent is our errand, but it is not desperate.’

‘If I do not press myself, I will never strengthen,’ Aragorn argued, clearing his chest with a thin cough. They had halted in a place where a hillock rose dry above the mud, and he spread the saddle carefully over an obliging stone. Moroch lowered her head, that he might remove the bridle with ease. ‘We agreed upon our pace, and I am eager to be home.’

‘Too eager, perhaps,’ said Gandalf, but he did not argue further. They ate their supper cold, neither being inclined to range too far in search of fuel. Then the wizard spread his blanket and lay down beneath his cloak, and Aragorn sat with his back to stone and saddle, and watched the stars whirl in their slow dance above.

lar

By early afternoon they had reached the edge of cultivated country. When Aragorn had passed by these holdings with Gollum, the land had been lifeless beneath a thick covering of snow and the farmhouses shut tight against the bitter winter winds. Now the fields were busy: men driving teams to draw broad harrows, or running along after ploughs; children picking stones and chasing one another gleefully in the dark, fertile mud; women hoeing rows for gardens. The travellers with their fair steeds were the object of some mild interest but no derision. Now and then someone called out a greeting, which was returned with a raised hand and a courteous nod. At one cottage, two small children came out and ran after the riders for perhaps a quarter of a mile before cheering them on and trotting back to their mother.

All this Aragorn watched from his lofty seat upon Moroch’s strong back, and his heart felt muddled with conflicting warmth and discontent. It was good to travel unreviled and unharried, but it only served to remind him of past indignities and the return to shabby obscurity that awaited him when he went back to his daily labours in the West. This journey was nothing but a small respite in a life now almost wholly given over to lonely roads and uncertain tomorrows.

Still his spirits rose high within him when, as the sunset sank to dusk before them, he caught sight of the twinkling lanterns close by the ground and spaced at perfect intervals. When last he had seen them, coming from Anduin, he had found within himself only the strength to drag his frozen bones over the last tortured ells to the sanctuary behind. Now he cast back over his shoulder and laughed, beckoning to Gandalf.

‘Come!’ he cried, urging Moroch on to a gallop with the lightest of touches from his knee. ‘It shall be an early halt and a merry fire tonight!’

The gate was open wide, as it had been on that bitter night when he would not have found the strength to climb it. The yard was empty of snow, and there were flowers budding already on both sides of the path. The fat domes of the beehives stood black against the darkening land, and from within came the buzz and murmur of the great honeybees settling to their rest after a day abroad. There was a nip of frost on the air, but the scents of spring were everywhere. Aragorn guided Moroch up the path to the sheltered court before the door of the house, and he dismounted even before Gandalf reached its edge.

‘Goodness, Dúnadan, what kind of a welcome did these folk give you?’ he asked as he caught up at last just before Aragorn knocked. ‘I cannot remember when last I saw you so joyous at the thought of a night’s company.’

It was true. Aragorn felt a buoyant gladness that he would have thought himself incapable of experiencing even a few days before. His troubled heart was silent once more, and his dark thoughts at least half forgotten. He knew only that warmth and fellowship waited on the other side of this door, and that tonight he would be both well enough to relish it and free from dark duties that would keep him from reciprocating. He glanced back at the deep purple of the sky, and wondered whether they might be early enough to have caught the children before bed.

The door flew open, and Grimbeorn’s broad shadow was silhouetted against the golden light that spilled across the traveller’s faces. ‘Who’s abroad at this time of night?’ he asked, his deep voice rich with welcome. Then his gaze moved from one face to the next, and he laughed. ‘Back so soon, Chief of the West?’ he asked, stepping down to clap Aragorn on the shoulder. ‘And with a different kind of scoundrel at your side this time, I see!’

‘Have a care who you call a scoundrel, son of Beorn,’ Gandalf warned merrily. ‘I have not forgotten my old tricks, and they work just as well upon large feet as little ones.’

Grimbeorn laughed again, and the sound was like the blaze of his broad hearth. He gave Aragorn’s shoulder one hard, bracing shake, and his eyes flicked tellingly over the Ranger’s body when he felt it strong and stable beneath his grasp. ‘And horses, too,’ he said. ‘Beautiful horses. Where did you come by such stock?’

‘We have our ways,’ said Gandalf. ‘They would doubtless be glad of a good rubdown and a night in your fine stables, if you have a son to spare for the labour. If not, then with your leave we shall see to them ourselves before we step across your threshold.’

‘See to them yourselves? Before you’ve had a chance to sup and rest your feet? My wife would beat me with her distaff if I allowed that!’ Grimbeorn said. He cast his shaggy head back over his shoulder and roared; ‘Sigbeorn! Urdbeorn! There’s work to be done!’

The boy was swifter than his uncle, or else he had already been hovering near to see who had come calling so late. He appeared in the doorway in a moment, already flinging a cloak about his shoulders. When he saw Aragorn he grinned. ‘You’re back!’ he said. ‘The little ones will be pleased!’ Then he saw Gandalf and his eyes grew wide. ‘It’s… you are… that is…’

‘It is and I am,’ said Gandalf with a smile. ‘Take good care of our horses and I’ll let you ask half a dozen questions, if you can get them out.’

Urdbeorn bowed hastily and ran to take the gelding’s reins. Sigbeorn was coming out into the twilight now, taking in the visitors without remark. He took the lines from Aragorn’s hand, and nodded frankly at the Ranger’s smile of thanks. He would have introduced the youth to Moroch and bade her goodnight, save that Grimbeorn was already herding him over the threshold.

‘Look, my love, who’s come back to us out of the night!’ he cried as they stepped into the room. ‘And not frozen even a little this time, either! I checked.’

At the long table the women were sitting: Una and Clothilde with sewing in their hands and Eira with a stout pair of shears with which she was attacking a length of flannel. Comfortable in her father-in-law’s chair sat Freya, a shawl draped over one shoulder to shield the tiny bundle in her arms. Against her elbow kicked a tiny foot: the babe she had been bearing within her when Aragorn had last sheltered here short weeks before.

Eira rose to her feet with a cry of welcome, and before Aragorn knew what was happening she had her strong arms around him in a glad embrace. ‘Well met and welcome!’ she said. ‘Come in and sit. Let me see your fingers… ah! Well, that answers my first question!’

She had found his wrists beneath the cloak she had given him, and had drawn out his mittened hands. She smiled proudly and nodded, then put an arm around his back as she led him on into the room. ‘And you, Gandalf the Grey,’ she said. ‘Do off with those mucky boots and come in yourself. I see you two have found each other at last. Are you pleased with your errand-boy? You ought to be. Shame on you for sending a friend on such a hard road!’

Aragorn opened his mouth in defence of his companion, but it was no use. Eira was already giving orders to her granddaughter and the wife of Randbeorn, and from the other side of the room a chorus of eager voices rose as small feet scampered up to surround the visitors. The children were awake after all, and it was impossible for either visitor to speak as they all began to talk at once.

‘Oh, you’re back! Did you meet any spiders?’

‘That’s Gandalf, Delbeorn: I told you about Gandalf—’

‘—the ugly little thing this time? He smelled dreadfully…’

‘… story again? Sigbeorn does not tell it right, not at all!’

‘—just missed supper, but I’ll run and fix you some eggs if you like, just like last time! May I fix you some eggs?’

‘But were there any spiders?’

‘Did you have good luck? Did you see any Elves?’

‘Is he truly a wizard?’

‘Please? Please, may I?’

‘Mother, he’s back!’

‘Hush, children, hush!’ laughed Gandalf, his voice rising above the din with a note of glad command that was both pleasant and impossible to disobey.  Six eager mouths popped shut, and twelve wide eyes riveted upon the Istar. In the sudden silence there was a happy exclamation of; ‘Pah!’ as Svala sat back upon her bottom in satisfaction and batted at the hem of Aragorn’s cloak.

‘Well met, little beauty,’ he said, and he stooped to pick her up. She seized upon the edge of his cloak as Aragorn took a moment to find the most natural way to curl his arm beneath her. When last he had held her it had been in a moment of panic and peril. Now her plump little weight was a consolation. He spread his palm across her back, mittened thumb beneath her arm. He could feel the rhythm of her breath through the wool and her soft little frock. Smiling radiantly, he looked down at the eager throng about him. ‘Yes, children: I’m back,’ he said. ‘Let me but sit a while, and I will answer all your questions.’

‘You look much recovered,’ Una said, slipping between slender young bodies and holding out her arms for the baby. Svala, who had given up her hold upon the Ranger’s cloak and was now toying with the silver star that clasped it, pretended that she could not see her cousin’s hands. ‘Still too lean, but your eyes are clear and your colour much improved.’

‘I fear you did not see me at my best, young mistress,’ said Aragorn quietly. He took his hand from Svala’s back and tugged the mitten off with his teeth before removing the other with finger and thumb. He tucked them both into the crook of his arm next to the baby’s hip and held his free hand out for Una’s inspection. ‘Your diligent care has borne fruit, as you can see. The skin will soften in time, and I do not think any of the sores will scar, save perhaps that on the second knuckle of the forefinger.’

Una took his hand with both her own and studied it judiciously, a healer’s apprentice gauging the results of her work. She pointed to a mark in the web of finger and thumb. ‘This was not a blister?’ she asked, half certain.

‘Nay, a cut,’ said Aragorn; a teacher’s gentle reminder. ‘The consequence of climbing trees when one is long past the optimal age.’

At his hip Halla giggled, and all at once the children were chattering again – this time chiefly amongst themselves. Gandalf had taken a seat on the bench by the door, and now he flung aside his tall black boots with some satisfaction before striding to the table and taking Baldbeorn’s chair. Of the elder sons of Grimbeorn there was no sign.

Una finally managed to disentangle Svala’s little fingers from Aragorn’s brooch, and she took the child. Aragorn rolled the mittens into a ball and unclasped his cloak. At once young hands reached to relieve him of it: twelve-year-old Harlbeorn, stepping up to help. Aragorn moved to take the seat below Gandalf, and suddenly Torbeorn was crouching at his feet.

‘May I take your boots?’ he asked. ‘And did you see any spiders?’

‘I did,’ Aragorn said, no small bit amused. Clearly the offer of assistance was motivated purely by the desire to have his question answered. ‘I saw one, and I slew it – but not before it nipped me. My arm was quite numb for the better part of two days.’

The boy’s eyes grew enormous with awe and admiration, and he removed the short Elven boots as if handling priceless artefacts. Otkala, who had drawn near to lean against the arm of Aragorn’s chair, frowned at them as the boy bore them away.

‘Those are not the ones you mended,’ she said. ‘Those are green.’

‘The ones I mended did not last me long,’ said Aragorn. ‘If once you must resort to such measures, your boots have few miles left in them.’

‘Aah.’ The little girl nodded her head wisely, then rounded the chair and put her knee up against his shin. She was trying to climb into his lap, but she could not quite make her leg stretch high enough. With a quirk of the lip, Aragorn boosted her up. She settled contentedly with one shoulder against his chest.

Gandalf had been watching all this with sparkling eyes. Now he pursed his mouth playfully. ‘It seems that Strider has amassed himself an army of admirers,’ he said.

‘So it seems,’ said Aragorn placidly, though his heart was singing. That he had gained the trust of all these children despite the ungallant state in which he had come to was a source of earnest pride. Few of his deeds this past year could claim as much.

Now he looked up the table to Freya, who had moved her infant from breast to shoulder. The tiny mouth parted in a little round bud as the baby let out a dainty belch. ‘I am pleased to see you healthfully delivered, lady,’ said Aragorn. ‘Have you a daughter, or a son?’

‘A daughter,’ said Freya proudly. ‘A sennight old today.’

‘She is Halla’s sister,’ said Otkala pertly, folding her hands in her lap with a contented sigh. ‘When she is older, she will sleep in Halla’s bed, and I shall sleep with Svala.’

‘Another blossom to grace the gardens of Grimbeorn,’ Aragorn murmured, watching the wee sleepy face scrunch up into a grimace before softening to serenity again. The bare feet beneath the short gown kicked spiritedly against Freya’s breast.

‘Have you chosen a name?’ asked Gandalf courteously, though his eyes were not on the babe. He was studying Aragorn’s face with thoughtful eyes.

‘Inga,’ a deep voice announced, rich with pride. From the side door beyond the table Baldbeorn came striding, bearing beneath his arm a cradle-basket lined in lamb’s-wool and blankets soft as swan’s-down. He set it upon the table and leaned to kiss the crown of the baby’s linen cap, reaching to caress his wife’s shoulder. ‘She makes a neat half-dozen. Welcome, Aragorn son of Arathorn. I did not look to see you again so soon.’

‘My errand is done, and I return now to my own lands,’ Aragorn said. ‘Without the generosity of your hands and your house, I do not doubt I would not now be set upon that westward road.’

Baldbeorn looked at the scattered sewing implements, and then around the room. Una still lingered, swaying from hip to hip with Svala in her arms, but Ufrún and Halla had disappeared and Eira and Clothilde were gone. ‘They’ll be laying out a supper for you,’ he said knowingly. Then with a broad sweep of his hands he gathered it all – cloth, tools, skeins of thread and books of needles, half-cut clouts and half-stitched shirts – into one big bundle which he deposited unceremoniously in the willow basket at the foot of the table.

Satisfied, he took his newest daughter from her mother. His strong hands looked impossibly large when curled about the little body, but he handled her with deft gentleness that spoke of long experience. He turned her onto her back and cradled her for a moment before settling her in her soft bed. The baby stirred, yawned, and then snuggled against her father’s fingers and slept on.

Freya was rising from the chair, fastening the dome-shaped brooch that held the strap of her overdress. As she took her feet she swayed, and Baldbeorn moved swiftly to catch her by the elbows, bearing her up. Her face was suddenly very grey, and despite her height she looked shrunken and fragile. Gently Baldbeorn eased her back into her seat.

‘Be still, my wife,’ he murmured, love and worry plain in his voice. ‘You are not yet strong.’

Freya moved her lips wordlessly, and then shook her head once, as if profoundly weary. ‘Go ask your grandmother for a dish of milk, Delbeorn,’ she said softly, nodding to the little boy who had been standing between the Ranger and the wizard and looking from one to the other with great interest. He trotted off obediently, blithely unaffected by what had just happened.

Aragorn’s eyes travelled to Una, whose hold upon her young cousin had tightened. She was watching her mother with anxious eyes, and her own rosy cheeks had gone wan. Worry was writ in every muscle. The natural question rose to the Ranger’s lips before he recalled that among many peoples such things were not for men to know of, whether they plied the healing arts or no. He was unsure of the Beornings’ customs regarding matters of childbed, and he did not wish to give offence. He could approach Eira privately when the opportunity arose, and ask it of her. He felt sure that one of her capable good sense would not take offence even if it broke a taboo, provided he was discrete.

Delbeorn came back with a drinking bowl brimming with frothy milk, and gave it to his mother. Freya sipped cautiously at it, with a guarded set to her jaw that Aragorn recognized only too well from his own recent struggles. She was unsure if her stomach would tolerate the nourishment, though she knew she must take it.

‘Will you tell about the spider?’ Torbeorn asked, plucking at Aragorn’s sleeve. ‘Please?’

‘Not at board,’ Aragorn said earnestly. ‘I promise to tell you of it before I depart.’

Torbeorn was disappointed, but strove admirably to hide it. ‘Very well,’ he said stoutly. Then he ran down to the kitchen door as someone called his name, and held it wide for the laden women.

Eira led the way, with a broad wooden tray piled high with dishes. Clothilde followed with a heavy jug of mead and a platter of honey-cakes. Ufrún and Halla each had burdens suited to their size, and in a few swift minutes the table was laid: supper for the guests and sweetmeats for those who had already eaten. Otkala slid down from Aragorn’s lap and hurried to take her place near the foot of the table. As the children were climbing onto their stools, Sigbeorn and Urdbeorn came in from settling the horses. Randbeorn was with them, cheeks ruddy from exposure to the crisp night air and a massive heap of firewood in his arms. Sigbeorn fetched two more chairs from the far end of the hall, and soon everyone was seated.

As promised, Ufrún had prepared some of her coddled eggs. Though he was tired of all such convalescent’s fare, Aragorn made sure to eat a healthy portion and to praise their young maker. The girl flushed with pleasure, and Eira chuckled.

‘You mustn’t be too extravagant with the compliments, Aragorn!’ she said. ‘She’ll grow up to be conceited.’

‘It is no conceit to take pride in a job well done,’ Aragorn said, and he winked at Ufrún. She very nearly muffled her squeak of delight, and tucked her head diligently over her honey-cake.

Naturally Grimbeorn and his sons had questions about the last leg of Aragorn’s eastward journey, and how he had come to be disposed of his burden. There was little that the Ranger wished to say of either, but he was spared the appearance of rudeness by Gandalf. The wizard kept the men busy with requests of his own: tidings of Grimbeorn’s people, news of their prosperity and the health of their crops. When he fell to questioning about the readiness of the farm-folk and the people of the town to defend their lands, Aragorn realized this was not merely pleasant conversation.

Soon they were talking, all six, about the difficulties of safeguarding widely spread holdings and the most defensible positions in the region. The town with its stout walls would be a natural haven, but with some small adjustments and the construction of lookout platforms along the hedge the land around Grimbeorn’s house could be readily fortified at need. Into this conversation Eira entered, offering her opinions on accommodating and feeding the people from the surrounding farms in the event of an attack. None of the young children seemed interested in this adult talk, but both Una and Urdbeorn listened gravely. Aragorn could see that they, too, were puzzling over what they might contribute if the need arose. Baldbeorn was blessed in his offspring.

At last the little ones were dozing over their empty plates, and Svala was fast asleep in Una’s arms. Torbeorn tried to hide an enormous yawn behind his hands, and Halla had the dreamy look of one quite ready to tumble into bed. Eira clapped her hands on the table and got to her feet with great authority.

‘Of to bed now, my lambs!’ she said. ‘Wash those sticky fingers and be sure to lay your clothes neatly by. Una, give that little dove to her father and see your mother off to bed. I’ll be up in half an hour to be sure she’s settled.’

Una nodded gravely, the worry once more in her eyes. Eira was stacking used dishes with brisk efficiency. ‘Clothilde, love, you can help me with the washing-up: the children have had quite enough excitement for one night. Go and help them undress, Urdbeorn, and be sure they wash properly. If I find smudges of honey on the pillowslips, there’ll be trouble. Husband, show our guests to their bed. No pallet by the heart this time, Lord Aragorn,’ she said. ‘It’s upstairs with you, and a taste of proper hospitality.’

‘No one could justly fault your hospitality, lady,’ Aragorn said. He rose smoothly to his feet, feeling only a twinge in his right ankle now. Riding was kind to that joint, though his lower back and hips were stiff. ‘But I beg you; let me be the one to aid you now. It is the smallest of repayments for all you have given me, I know, but it would salve my conscience somewhat.’

He began to gather the remains of their supper onto the tray, aware of Gandalf’s puzzled frown and the raised eyebrows of Randbeorn’s wife. The wizard rose to his feet, one of the last to do so. He jerked his chin at Grimbeorn, drawing most eyes. ‘Who are we putting out tonight?’ he asked amiably.

Their host chuckled. ‘Why, Sigbeorn, of course! If he doesn’t want to bring home a wife to fill his broad bed, then he must suffer being turfed out of it when the need arises. Fear not: he’ll bunk in with Urdbeorn tonight, and Delbeorn can nest between his cousins. We shall all be quite comfortable tonight – though perhaps there will be three young lads who don’t get much sleep for tittering.’

Harlbeorn snorted at this, but not in scorn. He grabbed little Delbeorn by the hand and sprinted off towards the door that led up to the bedrooms. Sigbeorn, a chagrined smirk on his face, shrugged expansively at Gandalf.

Baldbeorn was helping Freya gently to her feet, while Una stood close at hand to take her mother’s arm. The lady moved slowly, as if taken by dizziness, and Aragorn’s hands worked of his own accord as his eyes tracked her. Her colour was very bad, and as she crossed the room she seemed to grow still greyer. Her husband watched her warily, standing at the corner of the table with a protective hand spread over the basket in which their new babe slept. Eira’s sharp eyes darted between the dishes and her daughter by marriage.

‘Do not tarry too long,’ Gandalf said, cupping Aragorn’s elbow briefly and shooting him a significant look. ‘Remember that most labours can wait until the morrow, and all would be better executed by a well-rested hand.’

Aragorn nodded reflexively, lifting the laden tray across his forearm and picking up the half-empty jug of mead. As Freya and her daughter disappeared from the main room, he was free to focus on his burden and the path to the kitchen door. Eira was already striding ahead, and Randbeorn hastened to hold open the door with the hand not occupied in holding Svala on his shoulder. He was occupied in making a count of the straggling children as they mustered towards bed. His wife was at Freya’s other side, helping Una walk her to bed. No one looked likely to follow the mistress of the house and her guest into the kitchen. Aragorn was glad: it seemed he would have his private word with his hostess earlier than he could have hoped.

Note: It's a totally self-serving announcement! If you haven't reviewed the previous chapter, favourably or otherwise, now's the time to do it! I don't think only one (lovely!) person had an opinion of it ... 

Chapter LXIX: Repayment in Kind

The kitchen was a busy and welcoming space, even half-lit and tidied for the evening. Shelves and corners were crowded with pots, pans, wooden and earthenware dishes of every description, and baskets, bins and buckets filled with eatables. Braids of onions and garlic hung from the rafters, and there was a sideboard laden with boxes of herbs and spices behind a generous workspace. The room was headed by a great cooking hearth where a young fire danced in the centre of a broad bed of embers.

Eira went straight to the broad worktable and set down her burdens deftly. Then she took a pot-hook from the rack of fire-tools and used it to swing a large iron kettle out from the back of the hearth where it had been steaming. She hefted it with ease by its wooden handle-guard, and poured a measure into a shallow wooden tub already half-full of tepid water. She tested the temperature with her fingertips, added another splash of hot water, and then returned the heavy vessel to its place.

Aragorn set down his tray and the jug, and he reached for the wrung-out rag that lay at hand. His hostess came back just in time to brush his fingers away.

‘There’s no need: I’ll see to that,’ she said. She took the first stack of plates and settled them into the water. ‘If you’re set on helping, you could wipe them.’

She nodded to a towel, spread to dry after the supper washing. Aragorn caught it up and accepted the first clean dish from her, drying it with care.

‘I thought that Grimbeorn made it plain before you left us that there could be no question of indebtedness,’ said Eira softly, keeping her eyes decorously upon her work. It was a kind consideration, meant to spare him embarrassment. Had he indeed been trying to discharge his obligation in this way, it would have been greatly appreciated. ‘You are not beholden to us for anything.’

‘And if you did hold me thus, I could not erase my debt if I were twenty years your scullion,’ Aragorn said with a smile. Eira glanced up in surprise, saw it, and laughed softly. Nonetheless she did not speak: she was waiting for him to continue. ‘Yet I desired a quiet word with you, lady, and this seemed the readiest way to withdraw from the throng.’

‘I see.’ Eira rinsed another plate and gave it to him. ‘Yes, our throng can be intimidating at times, particularly when one has a sensitive matter to discuss. Is it something to do with your feet? I wondered how you would fare, striding off into the snow so soon after thawing – and with such dilapidated boots.’

‘Nay, though you wondered with good cause,’ he said, a little wryly. Then gravely he pressed on. ‘I must ask you, mistress: what ails the wife of Baldbeorn? The child thrives, but plainly her mother does not. Was there some complication in the birth?’

Eira’s brows lifted in surprise, falling swiftly into furrows of care. ‘The birth was perfect,’ she said. ‘How much do you understand of these matters?’

‘I am not without experience,’ said Aragorn. ‘I was taught the principles by the most accomplished of masters – the greatest healer known in this Age of the world. I have overseen several births, not all of them easy. Though I do not say it to boast, I have saved children ere this, and on at least one occasion the mother also. That the babe is healthy is a blessing, but if there is anything I can do to help Freya I beg you to let me try. From your look I take it that this is not the custom of your people: I suspected that such might be the case, and that is why I did not raise the question in the hall.’

Eira’s eyes were fixed on the dishwater, watching intently as her hand slipped into one of the prettily etched cups. She swallowed painfully, and her fear for her daughter by marriage was plain. ‘You take it aright,’ she said. ‘It is not our custom to admit men to the birthing room, and even among our healers this is women’s business. Yet I have overseen many births myself and spared my own share of babies from death, and I have never before seen such a case. All my efforts have proved for naught, and each day she weakens.’

‘Tell me what went wrong in the birth,’ Aragorn urged softly. ‘You and I may speak frankly here, may we not? Before I go up to see her, it would be best for me to know as much as I can.’

‘The birth was perfect!’ Eira’s voice cracked and she looked up at him, hazel eyes glassy with bewilderment and uncomprehending guilt. How she might have erred she knew not, and yet plainly she felt that she had. 'Her pains were bearable and her labour swift. The child was well positioned and prompt to breathe, and the afterbirth followed within the hour. On the second day Freya was abroad from her bed, and by the third we all thought her recovered. But in the afternoon of the fourth day she began to bleed. It is not a heavy stream, as such things are accounted, but it is far heavier than a woman could expect from her monthly course, and it is constant—’

She stopped, colouring a little at her frank words, but Aragorn nodded gravely. ‘She has been bleeding then for three days,’ he said.

‘I have tried all that I know to do,’ said Eira. ‘I put pressure on her womb from without, and I have seen to it that she nurses Inga diligently. That is thought to be a sure way to stop the birth-blood, but what it can do for this ailment I do not know. For days there was no sign that anything was amiss, and now this!’

‘It is not unknown,’ said Aragorn, searching his stores of knowledge for what his foster-father had taught him. He did not have a midwife’s range of experience, for it was usually by some chance or mischance that he proved to be on hand when a birth occurred. He had had his part in sixteen deliveries in his lifetime (an average of less than two for each decade of his life) and only those of Halbarad’s children by design. He had successfully overseen three breech births and one case where the placenta had not passed as it ought. He had salvaged another confinement that would otherwise have ended in tragedy and, on one especially memorable occasion, had prevented a premature birth from taking place at all. But he had never had first-hand experience with a case such as this.

‘It is usual for the application of skilled hands to the lower abdomen to halt the bleeding, even when it does not immediately follow the birth,’ he said at last, lighting upon the information he sought. ‘There was no tearing in the labour? And what of the afterbirth: was it whole?’

‘There was no tearing,’ said Eira. She had her eyes closed and her features schooled into calm lines. She was acting now as midwife, not grandmother. ‘Inga is small, as you saw, and she is Freya’s sixth. The afterbirth passed completely. It was not whole: the babe had a caul. But Una matched it to the gap in the afterbirth and I too examined it. The edges were perfectly fitted: none was retained.’ Then she looked at him again, and her eyes were desperate and brimming with pain. ‘Lord Aragorn, if you know aught of these matters that I do not, I would be glad of your counsel. All my skills have availed me nothing, and it is impossible that Freya can continue much longer as she is.’

Aragorn wiped his hands with the dishtowel and passed it to Eira. ‘Take me to her,’ he said softly. ‘Now.’

‘Surely when you have slept—’ Eira began, but the words died on her lips as she looked into his eyes and read there nothing but grave urgency. Hastily she dried her hands and flung the towel aside. ‘Come,’ she said, dishes forgotten.

lar

She led him swiftly across the corner of the hall, where Baldbeorn stood in close conference with his father, one palm resting on the chest and belly of the baby in her basket. They both looked towards the striding woman and her follower, but neither questioned. It seemed that Gandalf had been shown to Sigbeorn’s room already, for he was not present to argue. Aragorn would have had no difficulty in convincing him that so trivial a matter as sleep could wait for such an errand as this, but he was glad to be spared the time. Three days of unremitting bleeding would sap even a strong body of its vigour, and Freya’s weakness upon her feet was not encouraging.

Up a narrow stair with one sharp landing Eira led him, and down a corridor lit by a single sconce. They passed doors both closed and ajar, from beyond which came the chatter of children happily preparing for bed. They were in the west wing of the house, over the kitchen.

Eira came at last to a closed door and stopped, rapping lightly upon it. ‘Una?’ she called. ‘Is your mother abed?’

The door popped open and the eldest of Grimbeorn’s grandchildren peered out. ‘Not yet: she’s just finished washing. Why would you stop to – oh.’ Her eyes found Aragorn, and her question answered itself. ‘You too are a healer,’ she murmured, hope swelling in her bright eyes. Glancing back over her shoulder she dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Do you know of these things? Can you help her?’

‘I can try,’ Aragorn pledged, wishing that he could offer some firmer promise. ‘Have her put on her smock and get into bed, but fold back the blankets and draw up the sheet. She need not lie down if she is uncomfortable doing so.’

Una glanced at her grandmother, and then nodded obediently. She moved to shut the door, but Eira stepped into the narrow gap. ‘I’ll help her, and try to explain,’ she said. ‘Find your aunt and tell her to bring hot water and the good rags. And a fresh pot of soap.’ She turned to look up at Aragorn again. ‘I dared not pack her too deeply, for fear of bringing on a childbed fever, but if you think it best—’

He shook his head. ‘That is never best, and assuredly the way to bring on a fever. Please, reassure her that I will be as discrete as I may.’

Eira nodded determinedly, though again she swallowed as if in pain. She changed places with Una almost without seeming to move, and the door closed tightly behind her. Left in the corridor with the young maiden, Aragorn turned his attention upon her.

‘Do as she bade you,’ he said. ‘But go to your father afterwards and explain. I grew to manhood in a place where such matters were not the purview of women alone, but of all who ply the healing arts. I have not the Lady Eira’s breadth of experience, but this is not the first birthing bed I have attended. If it will put his mind at ease to speak to me himself, he may come.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Una said breathlessly. She dipped a reflexive curtsey and was gone at a run, whipping around a door near the head of the stairs and into the room beyond.

Aragorn waited. From behind the door came murmured voices and a sound unsettlingly like a muffled sob. At last he heard the telltale creak of bed-ropes, and Eira’s steady footsteps coming to the door. A sliver of light grew to a pool in the gloom of the passageway as she opened it.

‘Come in, my lord: she is ready,’ she said gently.

Aragorn stepped across the threshold and bowed respectfully to the lady in the bed. Freya was propped against the headboard with several cushions behind her. Her knees were bent and the sheet draped over them, but it had been untucked from the foot of the bed and folded back to show her bare toes where they sank into the mattress.

‘Lady, I hope to help you,’ he said. ‘Forgive me: I know this is not the custom of your folk.’

‘I have four daughters, Lord Aragorn,’ Freya said hoarsely. Her voice quavered, but it was firm with resolve. ‘I wish to witness the day when each of them is wedded and brought healthfully to bed with babes of their own. If there is any hope, I will seize it.’

He smiled comfortingly and drew nearer the bed. Eira was peering out into the hallway, awaiting Randbeorn’s wife and the articles she had requested. Aragorn extended his hand, and was glad when Freya reached to grasp it.

‘There is always hope,’ he assured her. ‘Have you pain?’

‘Only a dull aching,’ she said. ‘And the ordinary tenderness in my… down where… that is…’

He nodded. ‘I understand. But in your lower belly, only a dull aching? May I touch you?’

She stiffened and glanced at her mother-in-law. Eira felt her eyes and tried to smile encouragement. Realizing he had been misunderstood, Aragorn corrected himself. ‘Your belly,’ he said. ‘Straighten your legs, and I will be able to feel what I must through the sheet.’

‘Oh!’ she breathed, and a faint blush of colour rose in her wan cheeks. Had she been less robbed of blood, she would have been crimson with embarrassment. She lowered her knees and smoothed the linen sheet over her lap. Carefully, wishing neither to jar nor startle her, Aragorn sat upon the edge of the bed. Fresh straw crackled beneath him, and for a moment the scent of rue and lavender brought him back to his first night at Grimbeorn’s hearth. He would help her, he resolved. It was not enough merely to try.

Gently he touched his fingertips to her abdomen, feeling for her navel and finding it deftly. Travelling down, he felt the flesh, still soft and distended from its sudden deflation. As he worked, he watched Freya’s face to see when it grew drawn with pain. Only twice did she grimace: when he pressed into the hollow of each hipbone. Beneath the skin and tissue and muscle, he could feel the mass of her womb: more engorged than it ought to be, but not hard with infection. He touched her hand again, and then her brow. There was no fever: Eira had wisely guarded against that by refraining from trying to staunch the bleeding from within as a lesser midwife might well have done.

The door opened wider, and Clothilde came in. She cast a worried look at her sister by marriage, and set down a pitcher of steaming water on the washstand. She had the pot of soap in the crook of her arm, its waxed linen cover still snugly sealed. Behind her came Una, carrying a basket of clean rags.

‘Should I go?’ she asked quietly, looking from her grandmother to the visitor to her mother as if she did not know who ought to decide the matter.

‘No, child,’ said Eira. ‘Not if you wish to learn.’

‘Stay, love,’ Freya murmured, trying to keep her voice from breaking. ‘Tis a comfort to have you with me.’

Clothilde stepped back into the inner corner nearest the foot of the bed, where a squat ceramic stove sat on three stout legs. She opened its latticed iron door and stirred the coals within, sending a ripple of warmth into the air. It seemed that she, too, was reluctant to leave. Aragorn was glad: he would soon have need of someone to go gathering other materials, and he did not wish to press that duty upon Freya’s daughter.

‘All is much as it should be, a week after the birth,’ he said reassuringly, giving his patient another small smile as he rose. He went to the washstand and folded back the thickly broidered cuffs of his cote. He rolled them twice, almost to the elbows, and then shoved up the far thinner cloth of his shirt. He scrubbed his hands, wrists and forearms. There was nothing unusual upon palpation, save that the womb was of a size better suited to the second or third day than the seventh. He might have to make a more invasive examination after all, though he wished to spare Freya both the pain and the mortification of that if he could.

‘I know that Lady Eira has already tried to halt the bleeding with pressure,’ he said. ‘With your leave I will try again. Sometimes luck will smile on a fresh pair of hands.’

The woman nodded, and Eira moved to the other side of the bed. She sat down where her son was wont to lie, and took the hand of his wife. Freya cast grateful eyes upon her.

‘It will go easier on you if you lie back,’ said Aragorn, nodding to Una. Understanding wordlessly, she went to move the pillows as Freya shuffled down in the bed. Eira kept the sheet over her legs, but her bare toes wriggled uneasily as she settled. Aragorn came back to her side, stopping to take the thick edge of piled bedclothes in his hand. He drew the blankets up over Freya’s knees, so that they covered her up onto the thigh. He could remove them again if he had need.

‘This may pain you,’ he said as he sat again and placed the heels of his hands with care. He did not yet apply any force. ‘For that I am sorry, but it is the only way.’

She nodded tersely. She knew how it would hurt: she had endured it before. Freya’s lips were white, so tightly pressed together were they, but her eyes were hard with determination and courage. Such courage, thought Aragorn. It was one of the great wonders of Ëa that women faced the dangers of childbed with such fortitude, in many cases hazarding them night after night throughout their fertile years, all for the sake of bringing children into the world. What love they had, for their offspring and for their husbands, to meet such peril and chance such sacrifice.

‘I will do it now, lady,’ he said softly. Firmly and with careful rhythm, he began to massage Freya’s abdomen. He put pressure most strongly where he felt the inflammation of the tissues, but he worked around those areas as well. Now and then he stopped, letting the heels of his hands rest deep in her flesh. He worked by feel, watching not his hands but his patient’s face. At first she cast her eyes away, making a pretext of staring at her hand where it gripped Eira’s. Then she flicked her gaze to his for a brief moment before closing her eyes. At last she met his and he held them, filling his mind and his heart with calm and encouragement and hope. He put forth thoughts of healing, of fine tears clotting with dark blood that hardened to seal them, of lax muscles tightening and vessels awakened by nature's need quieting again into sleep. He willed the bleeding to cease, even as he willed the woman before him to believe that it could.

‘That’s it,’ he murmured. ‘Try to relax. It is not the sinews of your legs and back we wish to tense, but the muscles deep within. Think of your new daughter: how beautiful she is, how perfect. Such tiny feet: the nails no bigger than a trout’s shining scales. Think of Una: once she was every bit as small as Inga is today.’

Freya’s gaze broke from his for a moment, but only so that she could smile up at her nearly-grown daughter, standing now at the head of the bed with a consoling hand on her mother’s right shoulder. ‘Every bit as small,’ she breathed. ‘And how you have grown, my brave one!’

There was a creak of floorboards at the threshold. Aragorn did not need to turn to know that Baldbeorn stood there, his ruddy face now grey with worry. Freya’s eyes moved to him instead, and their love and the apology within them were plain. She feared that she had failed him in falling ill, just as Eira believed she herself had failed them both by being unable to put this right. Neither assessment was just, but it would do no good to argue that now. The best thing that Aragorn could do for them was to restore Freya to health.

Yet there was only so long that either patient or healer could endure such a treatment. At length Freya’s breath was coming shallowly, her eyes watering with pain, and the joints of Aragorn’s hands ached in a deep, pernicious way that they never would have done before their long leagues of freezing exposure. He eased back his palms, lest too sudden a release of pressure should undo any good he might have done.

‘You have changed your cloths for fresh tonight?’ he asked. ‘Just before I came in, once you had washed?’

Baldbeorn muffled a cough of discomfiture with his hand, and Freya closed her eyes in embarrassment. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘How often have you had to change them today?’ Aragorn asked. It was the only way to measure if the bleeding slowed.

‘Every two hours,’ Una answered neatly, sparing her mother the ordeal. She spoke with the calm voice of a practitioner of the arts physic. She would make a good healer when her education was complete. ‘By then they are sodden.’

‘I shall leave it to you to track the time,’ Aragorn said. ‘When two hours have passed, you may judge for us all whether there has been any change in that.’

He straightened his back but did not rise. He was considering his next move. It was a shame that spring had come, he thought. When last he had been here, the yard had been glutted with snow that might have been gathered to make a cold compress. His idle regret was cut short when he remembered that he was in a prosperous household with many strong men constantly in residence, and in a land like his own where winter was long and deep.

‘Have you an ice house?’ he asked, turning at last to Baldbeorn. ‘Is it stocked?’

‘Yes: we have and it is,’ he said in his deep, sombre voice. ‘But why?’

‘I will need a basin of ice, broken into large chips,’ Aragorn instructed. ‘A thick towel, also, and a piece of oilcloth to keep the bed dry. There is some among our baggage, wherever it was put. I regret, dear lady, that I must put you through further unpleasantness,’ he added, facing his patient once more. Already Baldbeorn was striding off: in another breath he could be heard thundering down the stairs. ‘Cold will slow the flow of blood, and reduce the inflammation of the organ and its surrounding tissues. If we can quiet the swelling, it may stem the bleeding.'

Freya nodded bravely, but Clothilde made a sound of unease. ‘She may take a chill,’ she protested.

‘You may stoke the fire,’ said Aragorn. ‘And we can bundle her shoulders and legs in blankets. It will be uncomfortable, but it is certainly worth the attempt.’

‘What else?’ asked Eira, looking far younger than her years as she watched him with utmost trust and fragile hope.

Aragorn caught himself before he could shake his head. He was not given to falsehoods and he had been taught that equivocation in the sickroom did more harm than good, but he did not know how it might be taken if he told them frankly that he did not know. He had but once had a patient whose bleeding did not respond to all that he and Eira had already tried. He had staunched it in the end, but only with the aid of a herb known in the West as Melesta’s Slipper. It was a gold-blossomed plant with leaves of a distinctive blue-green, and it was known to encourage the shrinking of the womb after delivery – though in too potent a dose it was a poison, and it was deadly even in small amounts to an unborn child. Yet like athelas and galenas and a number of other weeds of varying usefulness, this plant was native not to Middle-earth but to Númenor. It was found only in places where the Dúnedain of old had dwelt: it did not grow east of the Hithaeglir, save perhaps in distant Ithilien.

‘Bring the babe, that she might suckle,’ Aragorn said, needing something to fill the silence. Eira was correct in this, also: somehow the consolation of a feeding infant seemed to ease bleeding in the hours after birth and aid in the contracture of the womb. It was not wholly beyond possibility that the same might hold true now. At the very least it would be a comfort and a distraction for Freya when it came time to pack her hips with ice.

Clothilde nodded and slipped away. Eira and Una were helping Freya to sit up again, wrapping her shoulders and upper body snugly in a thick woollen blanket. Aragorn lifted the bedclothes higher so that the lady could draw them almost to her hips. His mind was wandering in the vast vaults of herb-lore stored up within his mind, trying to reason through the puzzle. Perhaps there was some other herb, something indigenous to these lands that a well equipped home might have in supply, that had similar properties to the one he needed. He could not match the desired trait, for he knew of nothing else employed for this purpose. But its other, grimmer characteristics might lead him to the plant he wanted.

It was of no use to consider other weak poisons, for those would not be found in a kitchen or a country herbarium. The use of such medicines was a highly skilled art, perilous and almost never practiced outside of the great citadels of ancient learning. Yet there were herbs that could be used harmlessly in most that would bring evil upon a pregnant woman, and he sifted through these in his mind. He wanted one that did not cause disordered spasms of the womb, but would bring on an early course or cause true contractions to come too soon if taken in sufficient amounts.

A sudden small smile broke upon his lips. ‘Shepherd’s scrip,’ he said. ‘Have you any shepherd’s scrip?’

Una looked bewilderedly to her grandmother, but Eira was nodding. ‘Of course we have,’ she said. ‘It makes a pleasant flavouring in a pasty, and you can add it to—’

Clothilde was coming back into the room with the babe in her arms. Inga was still asleep, though she began to root encouragingly as she was lowered into her mother’s embrace. Freya opened the throat of her smock and tucked her daughter into the shelter of the garment to give her the breast. This at least did not seem to be a cause for discomfiture, even before a man who was but lately known to her. Of that Aragorn was glad.

Now he turned again to Randbeorn’s good wife, who was waiting with the air of one longing to be helpful but unsure what to do next. ‘Fetch a handful of shepherd’s scrip,’ he instructed, demonstrating with his own cupped fingers. ‘The pods if you have them, though the leaves will do. Make of it a strong tea: no more than half a pint of water. The mead you serve at board is a mild one. Have you any twice-brewed or else distilled?’

‘Twice-brewed, yes,’ said Clothilde. ‘There is brandy if you fancy something stronger.’

‘It is not for me, lady,’ Aragorn said with a spark of amusement. ‘Use the brandy: mix one part of it with two parts of the tea, then bring it hither.’

When she was gone, Eira shook her head. ‘Shepherd’s purse has no value as a medicine, Aragorn. It is a foodstuff, though if a woman eats too much of it when she is early in her bearing…’ Her eyes grew great and her mouth formed a knowing circle as she reached his conclusion.

He nodded. ‘I have never used it for this purpose, and I cannot be certain it will help,’ he said, now able to be honest without seeding despair. ‘Yet it cannot harm the Lady Freya now, and it is worth the attempt.’

‘Yes,’ Eira said breathlessly. ‘Yes, it is.’

The wait was a painful one. All three generations of women were nervous, and Aragorn’s own uncertainty was not inconsiderable. Still he kept up a quiet rill of gentle, encouraging talk. He asked of the baby, and Freya spoke for a time as all new mothers do. Then Una stepped in and took hold of the conversation, guiding it deftly through channels clearly favoured by her dam. Eira too was doing her utmost to keep the ailing woman calm and distracted.

At length there came footsteps in the corridor again, but this time they came not from the stairs but from the other side. Knowing who approached, Aragorn rose from the bed and went swiftly to the door, drawing it to a narrow gap that his long body filled almost to the lintel.

Gandalf looked up at him, frowning. ‘I take it you are not going to your bed,’ he said. ‘Not for some hours at least.’

‘I cannot,’ said Aragorn. ‘The wife of Baldbeorn is not well, and I believe I can help her. There have been complications from the birth of their daughter. I will do all I can, and then I shall sleep. When I am through, there will be nothing more to do but wait.’

The wizard studied his face carefully in the diffuse light of the distant candle, but though the furrows in his brow deepened he did not argue. ‘So long as you understand that you need not be the one to sit the vigil, I am content.’

‘Need not and should not,’ Aragorn said. ‘It is strange enough for these good folk to have a man consult in such matters. The more intimate duties I will quite rightly leave to our hostess, whose experience in midwifery is greater than my own. It is only that the situation transgresses the bounds of common knowledge.’

Gandalf gestured in a way that was both dismissive and imploring. ‘Tell me no more,’ he said, rather hastily. ‘A man may consult in such matters at need, but it is no business for wizards; thank my good fortunes! Tend to her. She is blessed to have one of your skill and education at her bedside in such an hour. Then come to bed. Remember your own body as soon as you may.’

Aragorn gave a tired little smile and inclined his head obediently. Gandalf reached to clap him on the elbow, and then retreated back towards the room that belonged to Sigbeorn.

Baldbeorn and Clothilde returned at the same time: one with a huge wooden bowl piled high with chunks of ice, and the other with a steaming teapot and a mug. For a time Aragorn was busy, piling the towel loosely with ice and folding it into a pad. Freya drank of the strange toddy, though she grimaced with distaste at the first bitter mouthful. She sipped it more eagerly once the pack of ice was in place around her hips and across her lower abdomen, for the warmth was welcome. Though she shuddered at the first contact with the slowly seeping meltwater, she did not complain. Eira yielded up her place to Baldbeorn, who sat up against the headboard with his arm about his wife’s blanketed shoulders that he might hold her close. His discomfort with these proceedings and his presence before them was obvious in his eyes, but nowhere in his manner. He was a good man, and determined. He would stand with his wife whatever his personal unease.

The cold would be taking effect, and the liquor and the herbal infusion reaching her blood: three different treatments all designed to quiet her womb. But the fourth was no longer feasible: sated, Inga had released her latch upon her mother and she was now blinking sleepily as Freya burped her. It would have been better, Aragorn realized too late, to wait to feed the child while the rest was happening.

Yet here again circumstances favoured him. He turned to Clothilde. ‘Does Svala still take the breast?’ he asked quietly. He had forsaken his place on the edge of the bed, and was now leaning against the tall footboard to take the pressure off of his mending ankle.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said the lady, as if unsure she had heard him aright.

‘She is but seven months by my guess. Is she yet unweaned?’ he rephrased, somewhat more delicately.

‘Yes,’ Clothilde answered with the swiftness of one who is surprised into a reply to an unimagined question. ‘She takes a taste of honey-cake now and then, and she is almost immorally fond of butter, but—’

‘Have you fed her in the last four hours?’ pressed Aragorn. The matter was too important for him to worry over the rudeness of interrupting.

‘No…’ Now she spoke with the hesitancy of a woman who has no idea where the line of questioning might lead, but only that it was treading upon grounds usually reserved for the family. ‘I was about to give her the bedtime feeding when Una fetched me.’

This was what he had hoped to hear, and in his moment of elation it was hard not to laugh aloud. ‘Will you allow Freya to feed her?’ Aragorn asked, almost breathless. Among his own people this was common practice: for sisters or dear friends to share the feeding of their infants when one or the other was otherwise occupied, or for some reason abroad. He did not know what the Beornings thought of it.

‘Why, yes! I’ve fed Inga,’ said Clothilde. Then she flushed prettily, no longer shamed but only rather shy. ‘Do you think it will help her?’

‘I do,’ said Aragorn earnestly. A healthy babe of seven months would have a much greater capacity than a small newborn: he hoped that Svala might suckle until Freya was dry. ‘Please bring her. Wake her if you must.’

Svala was brought with all speed from wherever she had been biding. Aragorn scarcely had time to explain himself to Freya when the smiling child was in the room. She was not at all sleepy, but indeed feeling quite sociable. She babbled happily at the sight of her grandmother, and put her arms out to Una at once. Instead her mother brought her to the bed, and the maiden collected her newest sister and retreated to a chair near the stove to rock her.

Svala was at first reluctant to nurse: she kept trying to sit up in Freya’s arms. She looked enormous, held as the much smaller babe had been, and when she planted one plump foot in Freya’s belly where the smock was darkened with wetness from the ice-filled towel below, Baldbeorn opened his mouth in obvious worry. When he saw that Eira and Aragorn were both unconcerned, the tension ebbed a little from his shoulders, and he used his broad left hand to help Freya wrangle Svala down into the proper position. Once there, she knew what was offered and she took it hungrily, reaching up to toy with Freya’s trailing plait as she suckled. Her bright eyes rolled around, trying to watch everyone at once, but she was hungry and soon she fell to feeding in earnest.

Aragorn replenished the ice around Freya’s hips once, after an interval of half an hour without. She drank three cups of the unproven concoction, though by the end it was clearly a great effort to do so.  Long since satiated, Svala slept at the foot of the bed, flat on her back with arms and legs akimbo. Neither Grimbeorn nor his other sons drew near the room, but Baldbeorn did not move from his wife’s side. Soon Freya was drowsing with her head on his shoulder. By then there was no more to be done, save to help her out of her sodden shift and put right the bed.

‘It is two hours,’ Una said softly, just as Aragorn was about to speak. Freya stirred at the sound of her voice, and Clothilde bent to take the baby from her niece.

‘We two will withdraw,’ Aragorn said, nodding to Baldbeorn. The other man began gently disentangling himself from his wife. ‘She may change her wet garment also, and the bed should be made with a fresh top sheet. I think the other has escaped a wetting. When you are finished, call for me: I will be waiting without.’

Eira assented, and began giving quiet instructions so as not to wake the two babies. Aragorn held the door that Baldbeorn might pass through it first. In the corridor all was dark. The candle in its sconce had been snuffed, and from the children’s rooms came no light at all; only the soft huffs and sighs of sleep. There was a single band of candlelight up the passage on the other side: in Sigbeorn’s chamber, Gandalf was awake. From the same direction came the sonorous snores of a man who, having worked hard and worried much, was asleep at last. Whether it was Grimbeorn or his second son Aragorn did not know.

A strong grip closed upon his forearm, and there was a lancing pain in the snarl of scars where Gollum’s bites had at last been cleansed of infection only a week before. Baldbeorn’s voice came low and fervent in the darkness.

‘Aragorn son of Arathorn, Chief of the West and lord of ancient lineage,’ he said; ‘for what you have done this night there can be no repayment.’

‘Then all is indeed repaid,’ said Aragorn. ‘For in my own hour of desperate need you gave me warmth and sustenance, and so life. I only wish that I could offer you more surety. We do not yet know if my labours shall bear any fruit.’

‘They will. They have,’ said Baldbeorn, and his voice was now thick with inexpressible feeling. ‘Even if Freya… even if she does not… does not recover, now my mother will not blame herself. If the worst should indeed befall us, at least each one of us will have the comfort that all that could have been done was done, and more. We will all be able to live with the loss, as might not otherwise have been. Yet I do not think it will come to that. Beyond that door you have left nothing but hope.’

For a moment there was silence, Aragorn incapable of speech and Baldbeorn apparently finished. Then the heir of Grimbeorn added in a deadpan voice; ‘Hope, and a wet length of oilcloth.’

Aragorn could not help himself: he laughed. It was only a chuckle, judiciously muted out of deference to the sleeping children nearby, but it warmed his heart. When Baldbeorn too let out a low chortle, the corridor seemed markedly less dark and the stakes of Una’s exam less mortal. Baldbeorn clapped Aragorn’s other shoulder, and Aragorn reached with his left hand to hold Baldbeorn’s elbow. The moment of camaraderie lingered only briefly, for the door opened and Clothilde beckoned Aragorn in. Baldbeorn looked over the dainty woman’s head, caught a glimpse of the scarlet rags in his daughter’s hands and turned hastily away. He cleared his throat.

‘I am going to fetch a tray of mead,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘We could all use a taste, I think.’

‘We could,’ Aragorn agreed decisively, and he went into the room.

Una looked to him at once, wide-eyed. Her mane of dark curls was wild about her head, and she looked both older and younger than her age: childlike with hope and womanly in her reasoned certainty.

‘It is less,’ she said, nodding to the stained cloths. ‘I know that it is less. Look: there is white cloth yet showing. That has not happened once, not in all these days.’

Joy and relief burst bright in Aragorn’s chest, but he was too well-versed in the vagaries of mortal bodies to risk unmasking them wholly and breeding high expectations that might yet prove false. Yet he did smile. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That is the most promising sign yet.’ He looked to the bed, where Freya lay tucked warmly to her chin. Already she was drifting in half-waking dreams. ‘Let her sleep, but when she wakes – or the babe wakes her – check again. There will be some showing of blood for the next day or so, even if we have stopped it entirely. Yet if it is not significant we will know she is well.’

Una nodded, but she could not speak. She was weeping silently, stalwartly. Eira hugged her shoulders and guided her to the stove to fling the bloody cloths on the fire. Even before the flames flared, the aged woman was washing her granddaughter’s hands as tenderly as she must have bathed Inga on the day of her birth.

Aragorn turned to Clothilde. ‘Will you sit the vigil with her?’ he asked. ‘Baldbeorn should not bide here tonight, for there will be work to do that is beyond his scope.’

‘I will,’ said the lady. ‘Send him to bed with his brother, and you should go to your own rest. I know little of the use of arcane herbs and I have no healing touch, but I do know the intricacies of nursing.’

‘She must be kept warm and quiet,’ said Aragorn. ‘Do not allow her to rise, and do not allow her to sit. If needful she may leave bed to use the chamber pot, but someone must walk with her and hold her if she does. When the babe is hungry, let Freya feed her – Svala, too, if she does not sleep through the night. Give her water when she will take it, but no food tonight. In the morning, if all is well, she may eat as heartily as she is able: cheer her with that thought if her stomach troubles her. If anything changes, or the bleeding does not abate, wake me at once.’

From Clothilde he received a not, and Eira and Una were listening as well. When he finished, the wife of Grimbeorn hugged her granddaughter to her and kissed her fair brow. ‘You too must away to bed, my strong girl,’ she said. Una parted her lips to protest, but Eira shook her head. ‘You have done good work, but it is time to rest.’

‘A healer must know when to take stock of her own needs, as well as the needs of those in her care,’ Aragorn affirmed quietly. ‘You can do nothing for your patients if you are yourself prostrate with hunger or exhaustion.’ He went to her and clasped her shoulders, looking down into her eyes with earnest admiration. ‘Sleep well, child of Baldbeorn son of Grimbeorn. You are worthy of your birthright tonight: Beorn himself did not surpass your courage, though his may have been its equal.’

Una smiled, at first tremulously and then with well-earned pride. ‘Thank you, Chief of the West, for tending to my mother,’ she said. ‘If ever you have need of my aid, Una daughter of Freya and of Baldbeorn shall be yours to command.’

It was a grave pledge, and a valiant one. Aragorn bowed his head in deep respect. ‘I am honoured by your faith, lady. I thank you.’ Then he raised his eyes again and smiled as he released one arm and patted the other paternally. ‘Now to bed!’ he said cheerily.

‘And you as well,’ Una scolded, wagging her finger at him as she sidled for the door. ‘You may not be half-frozen or covered in chilblains now, but you’re still gaunt and grim-faced when you don’t take a moment to smile!’

‘Una!’ Eira huffed, but the girl was gone. Aragorn shrugged his shoulders to show that he took no offence. Eira sighed. ‘That child,’ she said. ‘She’s always had a streak of impudence, but she’ll be quite insufferable now!’

‘She has earned it,’ said Aragorn. ‘Tonight was not the first night she stood unwavering and did all she could, watching her mother fading by degrees.’

‘No,’ Eira said, and her pride in her progeny shone forth. ‘No, it was not.’

So Aragorn took his leave, the offer of mead forgotten, and went to join Gandalf in the room made vacant for them. It was a delicious thing to undress to his linens and stretch out in the bed – indeed big enough to accommodate tall, husky Sigbeorn and a lively young wife, if ever he settled upon one. Gandalf had no sharp words for the Ranger, but only one quiet question about Freya’s condition. Side by side on the thick straw mattress with the warm bedding over them, they each slept long and deep.

Chapter LXX: Anduin Again

When Aragorn awoke, alone in the rustic comfort of Sigbeorn’s bed, the Sun was already high into the morning sky. He rose and bathed his face, ran his hands through his tousled and overgrown hair, and dressed swiftly. It was a simple pleasure to don well-fitted garments in the dappled warmth of a quiet room, and he spared a moment to look out from the high window upon the holdings of his host. He did not linger long, however, for he was anxious to see how Freya fared.

It was Una who answered his quiet knock with the spry, tireless airiness that was the sole province of the very young. She was clad in fresh garments, her overdress of a cheery madder hue, and her riotous curls were tamed into a fat plait. She was smiling radiantly. She said no word in greeting as she opened wide the door and drew him in by the arm. Aragorn smiled in return, but it was fitting that he should speak first to his patient. He moved swiftly to the bed.

Freya was lying on her back, much as he had left her the night before. She was awake, and had been petting the flank of tiny Inga. The baby was sleeping belly-down upon the woman’s front, one hand curled against her dainty chin. Freya moved her hand to the small of the infant’s back, and raised her eyes to Aragorn.

‘How do you fare this morning, lady?’ he asked kindly, keeping his voice low and musical so as not to disturb the slumbering child. He let his eyes travel subtly over her face. Her colour was no better and her eyes were deeply shadowed, but the lines of care were softened to the ordinary contours of early middle age. Someone had brushed her hair and fixed it into two braids that peeked out from beneath her cap, and there was about her and about the bed a freshness, a wholesomeness, that had not been there the night before.

‘I am tired, though I cannot sleep any longer,’ she said. ‘Yet my strength will come back to me, so Eira says. Now that the bleeding has ceased…’ She gestured with her fingertips, not raising her palm from Inga’s back.

‘The bleeding has ceased?’ Aragorn said, and he turned to Una for confirmation of this remarkable claim.

‘So Grandmother has said,’ Una reported, her smile still resplendent. ‘There is still a showing on the cloths, but this morning it was scarcely necessary to change them after four hours – though I am told that is best, lest she take an infection?’

‘Your grandmother knows her craft well,’ said Aragorn with heartfelt admiration. To Freya he explained; ‘You will continue to show blood throughout the day, and perhaps into tomorrow. Your body is cleansing itself of what has already been shed, but if the flow has slowed then we may take it as a sign that your travails last night were not in vain. All that remains is to keep watchful while you regain your strength.’

Freya closed her eyes. Her lips trembled, and she pressed them tightly together. Her other hand, too, found her child and held Inga close. ‘Oh, Lord of the West,’ she sighed. ‘Blessed was the night you stumbled to our door.’

‘It was blest for me also, lady,’ Aragorn murmured. Then he smiled gently and asked; ‘Do you feel able to eat? It would be best to break your fast, if you can stomach it.’

Una laughed and Freya was surprised into a lovely grin. ‘In truth, I feel I could eat a breakfast worthy of Father Grimbeorn himself,’ she said. ‘I suppose you will have strict instructions as to what foods are forbidden me?’

Aragorn shook his head. ‘No. Choose whatever you most desire, for your body will yearn for what it needs. Do not fear gluttony: eat your fill. All that I would advise is that you dine liberally on black walnuts to strengthen your blood. I know they grow upon your land.’

Una stifled a giggle. ‘Because Sigbeorn threw them at you?’

Aragorn schooled his amusement. ‘He was very young at the time,’ he said.

‘Hmm. He’s not that much more sensible now,’ she said dryly. Then she looked at the door. ‘Will you stay with her while I fetch some breakfast?’

‘Of course,’ said Aragorn. Una slipped out, and he turned his attention back to Freya.

She was smiling ruefully. ‘She’s right, but it isn’t very polite of her to say it,’ she said with the indulgent air of a mother now appreciating her children afresh after fearing to be taken from them.

‘Truth must sometimes supersede good manners,’ said Aragorn. He came to the end of the bed again, but did not sit. That was no longer appropriate, now that the situation was no longer dire. ‘Have you any questions about your care? You have so patiently accepted all that I have done.’

‘I was right to accept it,’ said Freya. ‘I will be well again because of it, will I not?’

‘I truly believe that,’ Aragorn told her, and she smiled delightedly. ‘I would have you keep to your bed as much as possible today, though if you wish to be propped up for a time I do not think it will be dangerous. The most important thing is that you rest. If you wish to pass the time with any of your other children to entertain you, they may be brought – but only one at a time. Too much stimulation will make your heart beat hard and fast, which can open fragile wounds. And it is a wound, lady; deep within you. You must be patient while it mends.’

‘I will be,’ Freya said. ‘Mother Eira told me that I am to keep on feeding Inga. Is it true? May I? If I do not, I fear I will lose my milk. Clothilde could take on that duty if need be, but…’ Again she gestured vaguely, not quite able to explain.

‘But it is you who are Inga’s mother, and it would be a sad thing to forego this most motherly of tasks,’ Aragorn finished for her. She nodded, swallowing hard. He smiled. ‘Fear not, lady. I would beg you to do it if you were at all reluctant. It will do you more good than anything else I can prescribe.’

The gratitude in Freya’s eyes made him feel rather self-conscious.

lar

When his patient was sitting up in bed, eating heartily from the tray her daughter had brought, Aragorn took his leave. Downstairs he found Gandalf and Grimbeorn sitting in chairs drawn near the hearth, deep in earnest conversation. Ufrún sat cross-legged on one of the platforms around the edge of the main room, brow furrowed with concentration as she stitched something that was of a size to be meant for the baby. At twelve she was still a novice sempstress and even Aragorn could see that she was not plying her needle very smoothly, but the effort was extremely endearing. Of the other children and the sons of Beorn there was no sign, but Randbeorn’s wife was sweeping the room briskly with a willow broom. She looked up as Aragorn came down and smiled.

‘What would you fancy for breakfast, my lord?’ she asked. ‘You’ve missed the family meal, but we did not like to wake you. Gandalf said you would not be wanting to move on today anyhow.’

Aragorn glanced up the room to the wizard, who nodded knowingly. ‘He is correct,’ the Ranger said. ‘I wish to see Lady Freya at least a full day on her path to recovery, promising though her state may be. As for breakfast, a share of whatever is left from the table will be quite satisfactory; particularly if there is a honey-cake or two.’

‘Oh, there are always honey-cakes!’ Clothilde said, and she slipped gracefully from the room.

‘Come hither, Aragorn,’ said Grimbeorn, motioning to another of the chairs near the fire. It seemed that on nights they did not have a vagrant sleeping on their hearth, the elders of the family gathered here after the children were abed. Aragorn crossed the long room easily, remembering how difficult those few steps had been scant weeks before. He sat, and at once his host was leaning forward intently.

‘My wife tells me that there would have been no hope for Freya without your ministrations. You have my gratitude and that of my whole house. She is a dear daughter to me and the finest of mothers, the sweetest of wives. Between your house and mine we have forged a bond of blood that can never be broken.’ Grimbeorn reached out to clasp arms with Aragorn.

‘We have, lord,’ said Aragorn solemnly. ‘For my part it shall never be forgotten.’

Gandalf cleared his throat. ‘All this is very well,’ he said; ‘and I am the first to be pleased by your amity. Yet we must decide how long we will tarry here, and what implications it may have on our errand.’

Grimbeorn chuckled. ‘I understood your errand to be complete,’ he said. ‘Have you found some other wretched thing to hunt?’

‘It is more a matter of what may soon be hunting us and those under our protection,’ Gandalf said grimly, stroking at his beard. ‘But no: this errand is that of the message-runner. We have tidings for Elrond of Rivendell that cannot long wait.’

‘If all is well with the wife of Baldbeorn, we can depart tomorrow,’ Aragorn said. ‘She is in the most capable of hands with Lady Eira. All that I would be assured of is that the bleeding truly has ceased. We have little enough need to resupply,’ he added with a wry smile at Grimbeorn. ‘We have been but six days out of Thranduil’s halls, and the wood-elves left us well provided-for. Yet I would be glad if we might fill the vacant corners of my baggage with your waybread, lest the crossing of the mountains be slow.’

‘I have already asked about that,’ said Gandalf. ‘By the labours of Grimbeorn’s men, the High Pass is still clear of goblins and the like, and the stone giants have yet to awaken from their winter’s slumber. Our greatest dangers will be the weather, which is unpredictable this time of year, and the melt, which as you know is equally changeable. The Elven horses should prove light-footed enough for the trail, though not always perhaps with two-footed burdens astride. Are you confident in your legs, Strider?’

‘Confident enough,’ said Aragorn, not without a twinge of unease. He had known the mountains would not likely be perfectly passable, but he had given that little thought. Happily the wizard’s remarks raised a more pleasant questions. ‘Have our horses been seen to? The mare I ride is very dear to her master, and I have promised to care for her as if she is my very own.’

‘Sigbeorn is our horse-master,’ said Grimbeorn. ‘He would treat a dilapidated mine-pony like his very own, never mind a beautiful steed like yours. They have been thoroughly curried and their hooves checked, and I understand they are getting along splendidly with their stable-mates. I imagine the littler lasses are out there feeding them chunks of apple as we speak.’

Clothilde came back shortly with a breakfast tray: honey-cakes in abundance, and new bread with butter or honey or jam, and dried blackberries in a sweet syrup, and crisply fried vegetables with savoury herbs. There was a jug of milk and a pot of tea, and a smaller jug of cream. Aragorn mixed himself his usual convalescent’s drink with the first and the last, and drank it down before touching anything else. Once he began to eat, he did so eagerly – almost greedily, he thought with some chagrin. But the honey-cakes that had seemed so overwhelmingly sweet to a mouth fed on squirrel and pine bark were scrumptious now, and all the rest was equally wonderful. When he had eaten his fill he found himself pleasantly sluggish and only too happy to settle back down by the fire and listen idly to Gandalf and Grimbeorn talking of old times.

He might well have drifted off into another one of those naps. The novelty of that still had its shine. Not so long ago, a couple of hours’ sleep in the middle of the afternoon was not a restorative little interlude, but a ration of wary rest that often had to suffice for days. But just when Aragorn’s eyelids were beginning to grow heavy, there was a clamour of laughing voices and stamping feet as the other children trooped into the hall with Urdbeorn herding them from behind. Eager cries went up when they saw their favoured guest abroad, and the tall boy had to spring into action to keep them from tracking their muddy feet all over the floor.

‘Here, now, off with those shoes first!’ he laughed, kicking off his own so that he could dance around to the innermost arc of the happy crowd. ‘Delbeorn, take off your cap and sit on the bench: I’ll help you in a moment. Halla, don’t drop your cloak on the floor! Now I know you’re excited, Otkala my pet, but you need to stand still a moment so that I can unfasten your… there!’

Gandalf had stopped his talk and was now watching in amusement as a chaotic gavotte began in the entryway. After only a few minutes’ wrangling, Urdbeorn had all his young charges shed of their outdoor things and the wet shoes lined up in their proper pairs under the bench by the door. The cloaks found their pegs, and caps and scarves were heaped into a basket. Rosy-cheeked from the chilly spring morning and the exertions of their play, the children came hurrying to crowd among the three seated men. Halla went first to kiss her father’s bewhiskered cheek, and Urdbeorn stood back and watched his herd with proprietary amusement. All the others, however, crowded around Aragorn.

‘Oh, you’re awake! Is Mother going to be well again?’ asked Ufrún. She had abandoned her sewing to join her peers. ‘Grandmother says she will.’

‘Yes,’ said Aragorn, meeting the girl’s eyes. ‘I earnestly believe she will be well again quite soon.’

‘Thank you!’ Ufrún breathed. Delbeorn frowned at her.

‘Mother’s not well?’ he asked, a worried finger plucking at his bottom lip.

‘Not as well as she could be,’ Grimbeorn said. ‘But you heard Lord Aragorn: she’ll soon be strong again. It’s a tiring thing, bringing a baby into the world.’

Delbeorn nodded wisely, as if he was very much a man of the world well acquainted with such matters. Then Otkala, clearly feeling that if he was allowed a question she was also, looked up at the Ranger and said; ‘Will you tell us a story?’

‘Yes, yes!’ Halla cried, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet and clapping our hands. ‘Tell the one about Beren and the lady again: Sigbeorn can’t tell it right!’

‘Don’t be so unforgiving, my dear!’ Sigbeorn laughed from the other end of the hall, striding towards the children and snagging a chair as he went. ‘I only heard it the once, the same as the rest of you. Mayhap Urdbeorn can listen, too: then between us we’ll surely get it straight next time. Always provided you don’t mind a second telling, Aragorn?’

‘I do not.’ The Ranger smiled and looked around at the eager young faces. ‘Go and fetch your stools, children, and I shall gladly tell it.’

The middle ranks tore off at great speed for the table. Ufrún and Harlbeorn walked more sedately, conscious of their dignity as ones who had taken their chairs at the family board. Urdbeorn loped after them, grinning. But Otkala lingered behind and, realizing she was not following the others, Delbeorn rounded back to join her.

‘Help me up?’ the little girl asked, putting out her arms to Aragorn.

‘Now, Otkala,’ said Grimbeorn. ‘Be a good lass and fetch your stool like the others. Lord Aragorn doesn’t need a lapful of little Beornings.’

‘Yes, he does!’ Aragorn declared gladly, leaning forward and lifting Otkala onto one knee. Delbeorn’s little chin quivered, but only for a moment. Aragorn slapped his other thigh, and the boy came hurrying. The two little ones cuddled up comfortably, each against one of Aragorn’s shoulders with their feet sticking out straight off the ends of his knees. Otkala was smirking proudly as the bigger children came back and began to gather in a loose, vaguely semicircular group before and beside the Ranger. Urdbeorn, who was last to come, set his chair near Gandalf’s and glanced at the wizard as if for permission before settling in it. Gandalf’s eyes were sparkling with amusement and good cheer.

‘Tell it! Please tell it!’ Halla begged.

‘Yes, tell it!’ said Otkala.

‘Tell it,’ agreed Delbeorn.

Only Torbeorn seemed glum, hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. ‘He promised he’d tell about the spider,’ he muttered to no one in particular.

‘That’s so: I did,’ Aragorn said, surprising the boy into a straight back and a wide-eyed look of hope. ‘I shall tell the tale of the spider, first, for it is the shorter. Then we may travel together to the woods of Doriath in an Age long ago. How does that sound?’

There was a chorus of approving voices, Torbeorn’s loudest of all. Gandalf stretched his neck languidly and settled back in his chair, head tilted to one side. Clearly he too wanted to hear this story, even gentled as it must be for tender ears.

‘When I last left your marvellous home, I was bound for Mirkwood,’ Aragorn said. ‘I reached the eaves of the forest without incident, and travelled for the better part of four days unharried. I came upon a wild boar and her piglets, but she saw me as more irritant than threat and she did me no harm. Remember that in the wild you must never touch or pet or otherwise interfere with a young animal. Odds are that their mother is somewhere at hand, and she will fight you for the sake of her offspring.’

‘We know that!’ scoffed Halla. ‘The barn cats are just the same. Until the kittens open their eyes, they’ll scratch you if you come close.’

‘Precisely,’ said Aragorn. ‘But a bear or a boar will do far worse than scratch you. Always have a care.’ He looked around at his audience, last of all at the two in his lap. They seemed to be taking this warning to heart, and Grimbeorn was nodding approvingly. Stories were made for teaching, after all, and this was an important lesson. Satisfied, Aragorn went on. ‘I crossed over the enchanted stream, the waters of which a traveller must never touch lest he fall into a sleep of many days. That was on the fourth day, and I was already in spider-country. I was wary, and my companion skittish.’

‘He stank,’ Delbeorn announced.

‘Indeed he did,’ Aragorn said, not without a degree of sourness. ‘And he was sly. He had warned me in time to avoid the piglets, and when he sounded another warning I was fool enough to heed him. Off the path we ran and into the underbrush—’

‘If ever you travel to Mirkwood, children, never leave the path!’ Grimbeorn said sternly. ‘Lord Aragorn is a mighty huntsman and an experienced wanderer. He may make such choices, but ordinary folk must not.’

It seemed strange to hear the bonny descendants of Beorn the Skin-Changer described as ordinary, but Aragorn knew that Grimbeorn was trying to impress a point upon the children. ‘As your grandsire says,’ he affirmed seriously; ‘it is very dangerous to leave the path if you cannot be sure of your skill in finding it again. Even I, who had no difficulty in that quarter, fell into trouble when I abandoned the road: for we two came crashing out into a clearing, and something plucked at my cloak. It was a length of spider-silk. At once I looked around, and lo! there was one of the great spiders hanging in her web.’

Otkana and Ufrún gasped, and Torbeorn’s eager eyes grew still wider. The little ones’ mouths formed silent rings of awe. Pleased to have so captivated his listeners, Aragorn went on; ‘I was looking for danger, for my companion had shrieked, and I had my knife already in my hand. It was well that I did, for the spider was trying to entrap me and I had to cut her lines. But though spiders are swift on their legs, their silk can only fly so fast, and I proved faster.’

Torbeorn’s fist swung tightly in his lap, triumph in his grin. Urdbeorn looked quietly impressed. The others were all listening breathlessly, even the consciously aloof Harlbeorn. ‘Another thing to remember about spiders,’ said Aragorn; ‘is that they are very vain. It is easy to provoke one to anger with a few well-placed insults, for they understand the speech of Men very well and they can mimic it themselves – though not in a way that does not torment the ears. So I fell to taunting her. “Attercop!” I cried. “Come for me if you dare!”. And the spider came.

‘Once she was down upon the ground, I had the advantage. She was about the size of a pony-colt, and she was lean and wasted: not much of a huntress. She was also alone, which is as unusual as it was fortunate. I might have fared far worse against half a dozen of her kindred.’ Aragorn paused to consider. He would say nothing of Gollum’s treachery, he decided, for the wretch had been in these children’s home. He did not want to afflict them with nightmares. ‘For a while we danced,’ he said. ‘She trying to trap me in her silk, and I leaping out of the way or whirling to cut a cord that caught my clothing. Sigbeorn’s cloak was a great help to me, for it was distracting to her. The smaller the spider, the less clever it will be.

‘I carried no weapon but this knife,’ he said, drawing it from his belt with care so as not to disturb Otkala. He held it out so the children could see, hilt and the first few inches of blade resting in his palm. The Elven steel glittered, and the young eyes widened still further. ‘It is not a very useful thing against such a foe, for spider-legs are far longer and tipped with claws. So I caught up a fallen branch and used that to goad her, all the while keeping her back at a distance. I tell you, children, at no time in all my journey did I wish for my sword as fervently as in that moment.’

‘Then you do have a sword!’ Torbeorn cried triumphantly. ‘Where is it?’

‘I have two,’ said Aragorn with a lopsided smile; ‘though one is more practical than the other. Both are now in the Last Homely House in Rivendell on the far side of the mountains. A sword is a heavy thing to carry, and can be at times more of a hindrance than a help to a traveller. My errand was not one of war but of discovery, so I left my sword at home.’

Torbeorn was dissatisfied with this answer. ‘If I had a sword, I should carry it always,’ he declared. Then he pointed at Gandalf. ‘He has his sword.’

‘Yes,’ said Aragorn dryly. ‘But I have been doing far more climbing, and sneaking, and swimming than he.’

Gandalf snorted, but with laughter or annoyance it was impossible to say. When Aragorn glanced at him he merely pursed his lips in apology and wafted a hand to indicate that the story should go on.

‘Without a sword, I had to take the chance of the spider drawing near so that I could finish her with my knife,’ Aragorn said. He was keeping his voice light and playful, as if telling of a merry mischance instead of a hardscrabble struggle against a foe that had proven only just inferior after all. ‘I tried for her eyes with my knife, but now it was she who was too quick. It was just about then that I fell.’

‘You fell!’ Otkala cried. ‘Did the spider jump on you?’

‘To be sure she did,’ Aragorn said, jogging his leg a little so that she bounced. He smiled sunnily to be sure she understood that all this was amusing instead of frightening. ‘And a good thing, too. For when she tried to come after me with her fangs I feinted right. She sunk one into my shoulder, but the other missed entirely, and because she was atop me I was able to get my knife up into her belly and finish her. And that was an end to the spider!’

Halla laughed aloud, more in relief than mirth, and Ufrún clapped her hands. Harlbeorn made a savage little nod as if to say serves the beast right. Torbeorn looked as though he had just been given the greatest of gifts. Otkala seemed satisfied, but Delbeorn twisted in Aragorn’s lap and looked worriedly at him. ‘Did it hurt?’ he asked. ‘When the spider bit you?’

‘A little at first,’ Aragorn answered truthfully. ‘But very quickly such a bite is numbed by the spider’s venom, and I had gotten just enough of a dose that my arm went dead for many hours but I did not fall into slumber. It was very much like when your foot is asleep and you can pinch your toes and never sense it. By the time feeling came back, the wound was already healing.’

‘That’s good,’ the little boy sighed, satisfied.

‘Quite the tale, Aragorn son of Arathorn,’ Grimbeorn said respectfully. ‘I see your reputation is well-deserved, if indeed I had ever had any doubt.’

‘It was not a very elegant encounter, I’m afraid,’ said Aragorn. ‘Certainly no more than a foolish story now.’

‘I think it’s wonderful!’ Torbeorn sighed worshipfully. ‘When I’m grown, I shall be a warrior and a traveller and a spider-hunter.’

Halla snorted. ‘Last week you wanted to be a beekeeper.’

‘That was last week!’ Torbeorn said indignantly. ‘Besides, you can be a beekeeper and an adventurer!’

‘So long as your beekeeping is not a lone venture, you certainly can,’ Aragorn said. ‘I have a friend who keeps bees on his farmholding. When he is wandering abroad, his wife cares for them very well.’

‘The story’s over now,’ Halla said pointedly. ‘Will you tell us about the lady with the long, long hair? I couldn’t remember her name, and Sigbeorn doesn’t know.’ She shot an annoyed look at her uncle.

‘Her name was Lúthien,’ Aragorn began. ‘And she dwelt long ago in the hidden realm of Doriath…’

 lar

In the dark before dawn the two travellers rose and dressed by candlelight. Aragorn made the bed while Gandalf was combing his beard, and they descended quietly to the hall. It had been decided by universal accord that it would be best to be up and gone before the children were abroad. It would only mean delays and chaos and noise. Aragorn had said his farewells to all the young ones the night before, soothing the parting with one last story for them to take to their beds. It was no tale of spider-slaying or high legend, but an amusing little hobbit yarn about three strange spinners and a poor farmer’s daughter who went on to be a queen. Each of them had thanked him and given him a tight hug as they trooped off to their rooms; even Harlbeorn.

Now at the table were Grimbeorn and Eira, Baldbeorn and Una and no one else. Urdbeorn and Sigbeorn were outside preparing the horses, and all the others were still abed. A plentiful breakfast, hot and wholesome, had been laid, and the two travellers ate their fill. There was still a sheen of freshness about that, too, and Aragorn savoured it.

Then there were quiet words and pledges of mutual support and respect, and earnest thanks from both sides. Eira hugged Aragorn tightly, much to Gandalf’s amusement. And Una swung her hips playfully and teased them both. It was Aragorn’s turn to be amused, for while he had grown accustomed to her manner the wizard was not. Gandalf huffed and puffed in surprised discomfiture until Grimbeorn laughed and slapped him on the back and told him to bear up and be brave. This narrowed the wizard’s eyes to slits, and brought a cool but peaceably meant retort.

At last they were out in the courtyard, checking the straps and girdings on the baggage and tack. It was not that they did not trust Grimbeorn’s youngest son and eldest grandson: it was simply a sound practice for any experienced horseman. With a last farewell to their valiant host, they mounted up and were swift away. The Elven steeds trotted smoothly along the rutted road while the sky grew rosy behind.

‘It was most illuminating to see you with the children,’ Gandalf said presently. ‘They seem to enjoy your company immensely.’

Aragorn could not help grinning. ‘So they do,’ he said contentedly. Even the little pang of regret that came from departing a place so filled with love and fellowship could not dampen his spirits. The spring air was cold and sweet, and the land budding with new life all around them, and he was with his dearest friend on the homeward road. A traveller could ask no more.

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Ten miles. It was a torturously endless distance when frozen and limping and famine-struck. It was an easy walk when well-fed and rested. It was scarcely a dalliance when mounted upon an eager Elven mare who rejoiced to be running under the open sky. Midmorning was scarcely upon them when the travellers caught their first glimpse of the Carrock, and it was not yet ten o’clock by Aragorn’s guess when they reached the stones of the easterly ford.

By then the sun was warm, and both had their cloaks flung back from their shoulders to bare their sleeves and the front of their garments. They dismounted, though it was doubtful that the horses needed such guidance. They would have to get down to lead them onto the ferry anyhow, and there was no cause to show off. As they rounded the side of the towering monolith of ageless stone, the ferry could be seen mid-river, drifting down towards them. The river was running swiftly, and the sunlight glittered off its crests and eddies.

‘Thranduil gave you coin?’ Aragorn said. It was only just a question. They would be taking the toll-road into the mountains: Gandalf would not have forgotten to account for it in his preparations.

‘The dowry of a prince’s daughter,’ Gandalf said archly, pulling from his robes a tooled pouch so burgeoning with coin that it did not even jingle. ‘The fare is still a silver penny for a man and three for a horse?’

‘A silver penny for a man, aye,’ said Aragorn, still watching the low raft as it drew near. There were several passengers and what looked to be a pack-mule. Yet even at this distance his keen eyes could pick out the cloaks and bearing of the ferryman and his eldest son. Without taking his eyes away, Aragorn held an outstretched palm to Gandalf. ‘Give me a gold piece,’ he said. ‘And ten pennies for the fare, in case it has risen since last you rode this way.’

‘A gold piece?’ the wizard said doubtfully, but he obeyed. As the coins clattered into Aragorn’s palm he at last looked down, hefting them experimentally. Here was a strange feeling: the weight of money in his hand, and the knowledge of the ease and comfort it could buy. He thought of huddling on the far dock in the freezing air, waiting wretchedly in the hope that some paying customer would come along that day that he too might cross. He quirked his lip. Not this time.

The ferry drew first to the pier with its ladder, so that most of the passengers could disembark with no danger of wet feet. Then Makan and his brother dug in their poles and their father steered the ferry around to a low place where the rock came almost to the level of the water and there was an outcropping just below the surface. Here the mule and his driver disembarked, splashing clumsily and very nearly slipping on the slick stone. Aragorn guided Moroch nearer to Gandalf’s mount so that the man could pass with ease, and as he went he doffed his cap and murmured humble thanks.

The ferryman was on the shore now, smiling welcomingly. ‘Good morrow, my lords!’ he said. ‘Bound for the town, are you? Handsome steeds you’ve got there. A silver penny a man, three each for the horses.’

Gandalf gave Aragorn a sidelong look, and the Ranger stepped forward, Moroch’s reins in his hand. He had done off with the mittens as the day began to warm, and he plucked up the eight coins nimbly and gave them to the ferryman. The Beorning closed his fist around them and wagged it appreciatively in the air. ‘On you get, my beauties,’ he said to the two horses. ‘I’ve cloths to blind their eyes if they don’t like water.’

‘No need for that,’ Gandalf said. With a soft word in the ear of the Lórien-mount, he clicked his tongue. The horse trotted placidly across the stony face, placed one hoof delicately in the water, and stepped up onto the deck of the ferry. The two younger men watched flabbergasted, and the ferryman’s eyes widened in awe.

‘Go on, fair one,’ Aragorn murmured to Moroch, using the Elven tongue. ‘I shall come after in a moment.’

The mare bobbed her head, nickering her acknowledgement. Aragorn hooked the reins across her withers, and she danced daintily after the other horse.

‘I’ve never seen the like!’ the ferryman said as Gandalf brushed past.

The wizard lifted the hems of his robe and took a long step up onto the deck, foregoing the water entirely. He cast a brief look and a nod to the ferryman’s sons, and went to stand comfortably at the shoulder of his gelding. Aragorn and the ferryman were left alone on the Carrock.

‘And you, my lord?’ the man said, pleasant but clearly without any recognition. ‘Are you coming along? You’ve overpaid if you aren’t.’

‘I am coming,’ Aragorn said. Then earnestly he went on. ‘When last you bore me, I said that it was my hope that I might one day be able to repay your kindness. Coin is no fair exchange for mercy, but perhaps it will do a little to defray the labour exerted on my behalf.’ He held out the gold piece.

The ferryman goggled at it. It was as much as he might earn in a very busy day, if even then. He looked at Aragorn and shook his head. ‘Forgive me, lord: I don’t know you. I have no idea what you’re speaking of.’

‘Do you not?’ Aragorn said. He made his head snap forward, chin to his chest so that his hair whipped down to obscure his face. He let his back stoop and his shoulders hunch, and he fixed unseeing eyes upon the ferryman. It was as near as he could come to aping the miserable aspect he had presented on his last crossing.

The man frowned, brows deeply furrowed. He squinted. He leaned nearer. He glanced at his sons, who had given up staring at the horses. The younger one had come to the edge of the deck, clearly curious. At his oar Makan was suddenly very rigid – quicker than his father, it seemed.

‘No…’ said the ferryman. He shook his head uncomprehendingly and then scoffed out a half-laugh. ‘No, not the ragged fellow with the twisted naked thing at his heel!’

‘Even so,’ Aragorn said lightly, straightening his spine and raking his hair back from his face. ‘You gave me your pity when most I had need, and spared me a swim that no man should make. I shall always be grateful. Please, take the coin – in earnest of the fare of the next passenger who cannot pay, if nothing else.’

The ferryman took it, stricken speechless. Aragorn nodded his approval and cupped the man’s shoulder briefly before turning to the vessel. ‘Shall we away?’ he asked, looking back at the empty road. ‘It does not look like any further custom is near.’

‘Yes, my lord! Right away, my lord!’ the ferryman gasped. He scurried to the waterside and held out his arm to hand Aragorn up.

‘That is not necessary: I thank you,’ Aragorn said, springing up onto the deck with his off-foot first so that he landed not on his fragile ankle. The elegantly tooled Elven boots sang upon the planking.

The ferryman hurried up after him and took the tiller again. ‘Shove us off, son,’ he said to Makan.

But the ferryman’s eldest son was frozen, looking Aragorn up and down as if his head were that of a fuller’s hammer rising and falling in a proscribed rhythm that could be stopped for nothing. He was taking in the boots, the fine wool of the tunic and its exquisite embellishments. At this distance, every detail of the cavorting animals, the vines and the leaves could be seen. The silk thread had an unmistakable sheen despite its drab colours. Sigbeorn’s thick cloak showed only the faintest of stains from the blood that had soaked it, and those could not be seen with the garment thrust back. The silver star could, however, glinting proudly in the sunlight. Makan saw the clean hands, the knife now polished to its proper state, the face that – if still with hollow temples and too-prominent cheekbones – was no longer pinched with hunger and misery, and the clean hair brushed out to its full length, and he trembled.

‘My lord… good sir… that is… I did not…’ he stammered.

Aragorn fixed him with cold eyes and a dispassionate countenance. ‘You did not think there was anything about me with the least bit of worth,’ he said coolly.

‘I am… forgive me!’ Makan yelped, drawing back a pace and clutching at his oar as if his very life depended on its anchorage. ‘I am but a simple man… we see so many beggars that… I did not know!’

‘Of course you did not: how could you?’ Aragorn asked. He softened his eyes to pitying patience and tilted his head as the lofty lines of his face settled into a less daunting configuration. ‘But that is my point. Any beggar who passes this way may be a man of worth or wealth, or a lord, or even a king. If you will not treat each one as though he were, at least show them that same simple courtesy you would show a farmer or a woodsman with a silver penny to spare. I am not angry with you, nor do I begrudge my harsh treatment at your hands. But if you do not mend your ways, Makan, your life will be much diminished for it.’

Makan’s lips moved wordlessly, his face contorting in acrobatics of dismay and misery and shame. He seemed unable to speak. With his thumb Aragorn hooked the left edge of his cloak and tugged it down to cover one half of the splendid tunic Thranduil’s tailor had made him in jest. He did the same with the other side, masking his own inner glory again as he did so. Still it was not until he turned away to take his place by Moroch’s head that the ferryman’s son found his voice.

‘I will,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I promise I will. I… will you forgive me, my lord, for striking you? For my hard words? I did not know.’

Aragorn cast his gaze back over his shoulder and offered the man a small, sad smile. ‘But I have already forgiven you,’ he said softly. ‘I told you thus that day. Do you not remember?’

Digging in his pole, the younger son pushed the ferry off into open water. Makan had to close his hanging mouth and tear away his wide, wondering eyes in order to attend to his oar.

Chapter LXXI: The High Pass

For the ferryman’s son, it was a most uncomfortable crossing. Not only was he riding with one he had used so ill, now splendidly arrayed in ornate garments and very showy boots, but every time he glanced across the low deck he found Gandalf watching him with one of the blackest looks of which he was capable. Aragorn had seen the Istar’s eyes more gentle in battle than they were at present. Makan had little time to squirm, for they were fighting the mighty spring currents. The oarsmen were strong and the ferryman knew his path well, and they won through at last to the breakwater that formed the little haven by the western bank of Anduin.

Here the two younger men changed their oars for long poles and guided the vessel in towards a shallower landing where the horses might disembark. Aragorn led Moroch off, less out of need than out of a wish to be occupied. He had eased more tenuous situations than this, but at present he did not wish to be the mediator between the hapless Makan and an indignant wizard.

Happily Gandalf seemed to realize this, for he disembarked with a polite word to the ferryman and one last hard glare at his son. With the gelding now on dry land there was no reason to tarry. Aragorn mounted smoothly, in this moment thankful that it had been his right foot, not his left, that had fallen prey to Gollum’s treachery. A soft click of the tongue was all the invitation that Moroch needed. She began to walk daintily up the rocky slope.

‘Again, my thanks,’ Aragorn said, looking back at the ferryman. The man bowed respectfully, and Aragorn offered a gracious smile. Beside him Makan was fidgeting with something in his strong hands. He looked anxious to speak, but seemed unable to work up the resolve to do so. Deciding that it was no obligation of his to help the man find his words, Aragorn straightened in the saddle and let Moroch carry him up the narrow twining path that climbed the cliffs to the town.

Before, eyes long accustomed to empty vastness had seen the square as a burgeoning basin of human activity. Now Aragorn saw how truly sparse the traffic had been upon that cruelly cold afternoon. Now the streets that fed it were thick with walkers and beasts of burden. The square itself was positively overrun. There were market stalls set up on the cobbles and hawkers working the crowds. The doors of every shop were flung wide, and patrons came and went in colourful clutches, laughing and calling out to friends. Children ran about, merry in the gentle spring morning, and the sounds of their glee brought Aragorn no pain this time.

Even with the streets so crowded, folk stepped respectfully aside to let them pass. Gandalf was known here, and many recognized him. Others merely deferred to what they saw: two travellers on splendid horses, obviously travelling lords of some kind. Such visitors were common enough that they were not the objects of awe, but the prosperity of the Town at Carrock was built upon its passing trade and all were respectful.

They had no business in the Town, and so passed through by the most direct way they could find. Aragorn had no wish to be seen by the baker Kvigir. The encounter with Makan had been uncomfortable enough, and he was not walking this road for the purpose of opening unseeing eyes. He did not fling his cloak back from his shoulders again until they were out on the road winding west through the farmholdings, either, though he felt warm enough to do it. He was discomfited by the knowledge of how smugly vindicated the Elven tailor would have felt to know the impact his work had had on the ferryman’s son.

When they had been journeying about an hour through open country, Gandalf (who had been riding a couple of paces ahead) fell back so that the Lórien-horse was in step with Moroch.

‘Are you going to tell me,’ he said with ponderous insistence in his voice; ‘what passed between you and the oarsman when last you came this way?’

‘I think you have already guessed much of it,’ said Aragorn. ‘Without the ferryman’s good grace and generosity, I know not how I could have crossed the river. Even now such a swim would be foolhardy. On that day it would have been deadly.’

‘Hence the gold piece,’ Gandalf acknowledged. ‘But what of the rest? He struck you? I have known few men who would have dared that.’

‘I have known few moments in my life when I was brought so low in countenance and circumstance,’ Aragorn muttered uncomfortably. ‘He took me to be no threat at all, but only a nuisance and a pauper. Makan fancies himself a hard but fair man. What he is – or, I earnestly hope, was – is a bully, and an uncharitable one at that.’

Gandalf opened his mouth as if to say more, thought better of it, pursed his lips, frowned and then scowled. Then he shook his head irately and huffed; ‘While you are forgiving to a fault, and charitable where a lesser man would find no cause to be.’

‘I am fortunate to be in a position to be charitable,’ Aragorn said, looking up at the rolling blossoms of clouds high above. He leaned to pat Moroch’s neck without watching his hand. She nickered and picked up her pace a little, joyously. Gandalf’s mount kept neatly in step.

‘Grimbeorn told me something of your visit to his home,’ said the wizard presently. Aragorn stiffened, fearing the course the conversation would now take. ‘He told me of Gollum and the babe. In my heart I questioned your wisdom in moving on in such haste. Now I understand: forgive me my doubts.’

Aragorn turned his gaze upon his friend, wishing that his eyes were hard but fearing they were anything but. ‘In a less needful hour, I should never have brought that wretch beneath a roof with children,’ he said tersely. Then he fixed his eyes upon the road again, and they rode on in silence.

They passed that night in the home of one of Grimbeorn’s foresters, Gandalf having no compunctions about requesting lodgings on the strength of his name. The forester and his wife were in their middle years, with two children yet at home. The elder was a boy of about Una’s age, who helped Aragorn to make the horses comfortable in the little cowshed behind the cottage. The younger was a girl of about twelve years, gangly and very shy, who spent most of the evening watching the guests with wide, wary eyes from the doorway of her parents’ bedchamber.

The forester was accustomed to housing travellers, and he had a straw mattress and bedding ready in the loft above the home’s main room. After pleasant conversation and a hearty meal of venison stew and oat bread, Aragorn and Gandalf retired quietly. Below they could hear the sounds of the family’s nightly rituals, and they moved as smoothly as they could considering how they were obliged to stoop beneath the slope of the roof. The position was not favourable to Aragorn’s lungs, and when he was slipping off his hose he was taken by a series of deep, wet coughs that were only eased when he gave up trying to stand.

Gandalf, who on the other side of the humble bed was unbuckling his sword-belt, looked sharply at the Ranger. ‘Are you taking ill?’ he asked.

Still breathless but now seated on the floor as he loosed the lace of his cote, Aragorn shook his head. ‘It seems stooping disagrees with me,’ he gasped as cheerfully as he could.

‘It has never done so in the past,’ Gandalf growled. He shed the outer layers of his robes unceremoniously and knelt down to crawl into bed. When he was beneath the covers he remained sitting, hands in his lap and hard eyes on the Ranger. ‘Did Thranduil’s healers agree that you were well enough to travel?’

Thranduil’s healers had not at any time known what to make of the famine-sickness their patient suffered, of which the fluid in his lungs was the last and most insidious sign. Yet both Lethril and Helegond had assented that his wounds were no longer worrisome and his stamina was much recovered. ‘They agreed,’ said Aragorn. ‘There is nothing to be done about the cough save to wait: it is not a sign of any particular illness and it will resolve itself in time. Each wholesome meal advances towards that aim.’

Gandalf grunted doubtfully, but lowered himself onto one elbow as Aragorn folded his cote neatly and ran a hand through his hair. ‘It is always amusing to watch you care for your clothes, Dúnadan, considering how hard you wear them,’ he said fondly as Aragorn slipped into his side of the bed.

‘It is because I know their value,’ Aragorn said. ‘After this journey, more deeply than ever before.’

‘How far did you travel in that light summer garb you were so reluctant to bring into a northern winter when last we parted?’ Gandalf asked. ‘It was your excuse, after all, for persisting in the hunt.’

‘As well I did,’ Aragorn said, turning onto his side. It was not his choicest position for sleep, but it put his back to the wizard and would discourage further talk. ‘It seems almost all of our questions have been answered at last.’

‘Yes…’ mused Gandalf. ‘Yes, they have, have they not?’

Both walked towards their dreams that night thinking not of the Ranger’s health, but of the great weight of knowledge now upon their hearts.

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They breakfasted with the forester and his wife, the children being still abed in the hour before dawn, and set out with the first indigo gleam of sunrise at their backs. The Elven horses liked starlight as well as they liked sunlight, and they cantered eagerly up the well-kept road. At midmorning they halted to take a little refreshment and to stretch their legs: Aragorn was still not quite accustomed to riding, and Gandalf had been doing rather too much of it of late. The travel-cakes of Baldbeorn’s skillful making made a very pleasant luncheon in the early afternoon, which they ate by a lively little stream made cold and exquisitely clean by mountain waters. They were amid the foothills now, and the rocky slopes rose high on either side of the road. The mountains themselves had gone from a craggy blue line a handspan above the horizon to towering snow-capped peaks that seemed almost to eclipse the sky. The way was winding, but still easy: the Beornings tended this road well.

It was about three o’clock when they rounded the foot of a squat tableland and came in sight of the last outpost of Grimbeorn’s people. There was a stone lodge, long and narrow, and a stone barn and a low stone guard-tower about thirty-five feet in height. It was manned with two archers above, and half a dozen men below. This was the dwelling of those who kept eastern side of the High Pass clear of goblins and other such perils. It was also the tollhouse.

‘We will halt there for the day,’ Gandalf said, reining in his horse and nodding ahead at the cluster of buildings. ‘One more night beneath a tight roof will do neither of us any harm.’

‘There are nearly five hours of daylight left to us,’ argued Aragorn. ‘We could be well up the shoulders of the mountain by nightfall.’

‘And there we may camp in the damp and the cold, without shelter or comfort,’ said Gandalf, his tone as dousing as a pail of chilled water.

‘We have blankets and oilskins, and we will be among the trees for a few days yet: we can easily fuel a fire,’ said Aragorn. ‘Have we ever before let comfort tempt us from our road?’

‘Sometimes, when it is most needed,’ Gandalf said grimly. He did not rake his eyes over the Ranger, but he did not need to.

‘If you think I am unfit for the road, say so now,’ Aragorn challenged.

Now Gandalf did look at him, eyes flashing. ‘If you think that you are fit, say so yourself!’

Aragorn felt a hot flush creeping up his neck. ‘I cannot swear to my fitness,’ he admitted, keeping his voice firm and determined. ‘I cannot promise that the crossing of the mountains will prove easy. It is a hard road even for a man at his full strength, which I am not. Yet even in my somewhat reduced circumstances I am the equal of many a traveller who has ventured this way, and more fit than many of them. Would you deem me less able to tread those heights than Thorin Oakenshield and his dwarves?’

‘Never,’ Gandalf pledged, his voice less hard now. ‘Yet I feared less for Thorin than I fear for you.’

Aragorn turned his mouth into a small smile. ‘Yes, that is the crux of it,’ he said softly. ‘We worry most where most we love, whether the worry is proportionate to the danger or no. If it eases your mind, I would rather forego a night’s shelter than delay by even five hours my return to Imladris.’

Gandalf sat for some moments in silent debate, reading Aragorn’s eyes and then his own heart, gauging the fitness of the horses and considering the road ahead. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘But we shall avail ourselves of their fire, and eat and warm ourselves before we go onward.’

To this Aragorn agreed: compromise was essential in a joint venture, and Gandalf had yielded more than he. They came swiftly to the tollhouse and were greeted by the Beornings. Here both of them were known, and their welcome was warm. They sat among the men and ate of their meat and drank of their mead, but they tarried not even three-quarters of an hour. Then Gandalf took out the purse Thranduil had given him and paid their toll, and they rode on upward into the first leg of the mountain pass.

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Time and again on his unhappy road, Aragorn had dreamed of the moment he might start across the Hithaeglir towards the home of his heart. Now the moment had come at last, it was quiet and prosaic and neither joyful nor glum. The incline of the road was steep enough that the horses had to keep to a moderate trot, but not so steep as to cause any discomfort or excessive exertion. The way was rocky, but not rocky enough to make Moroch jar him even as much as a horse of Gondorian blood would have done on smooth land. His companion was quiet, but not quite silent: he brooded but he did not broil. The air was no colder than it had been among the foothills, and the pines and firs rose tall upon either side of the path, fading ahead to a mossy mass upon more distant slopes.

They found a reasonably level place to camp not long after dusk, and they laid a small fire. On the fallen needles of yesteryear they laid their blankets, and between his watches each slept in far more comfort than could usually be found in the Wild. Aragorn slept more readily here than he had in the forester’s cottage, for the air was sweet and open and there were no noises of strange folk stirring below.

The following day they made good progress. There was no question of covering thirty-six miles a day in such terrain: they would be swift indeed if they kept to twelve. The horses seemed tireless, however, and the riders did not need to dismount to rest them. From Grimbeorn’s storehouses they had fat sacks of grain to feed their mounts in the high lands ahead, but here there was still plentiful forage. Whenever they halted to rest, they picketed Moroch and the gelding and let them graze. That night was colder than the first, and Aragorn put on Eira’s woollen mittens when he sat his watches.

On the third day their progress was slower, for they stopped frequently in areas of deadfall to gather fuel. On the heights they would have the greatest need of fire, and the least means of procuring it. Gandalf insisted that they each bear a bundle on their own backs as well as strapping one to each horse. To Aragorn it looked like wood enough for a signal-fire, but he said no word in argument and hoped that such a thought was nowhere near the wizard’s mind.

They were well up into the mountains now, and when by chance a clear line of sight opened behind them they could see the foothills and the farmland of the Beornings like a child’s sculpted mounds and valleys in a bed of sand. Once Aragorn turned and found that he could see Anduin, far away like a twist of fine silken cord laid upon the darker velvet of the land. Although perhaps he should have wondered at its smallness from this vantage, when its great breadth had proved such a barrier to him on two recent and most memorable occasions, he found himself thinking instead of the handwork of his beloved.

Then, he realized, he dared at last to think of the Lady herself: Arwen Undómiel, most beautiful and best-beloved. All through his labours he had shied from thoughts of her, skirting them with care even beneath the eaves of fair Lothlórien. On that bitter journey he had not dared to let himself taste too deeply of his longing for she whom he loved, lest the temptation prove too much in some moment of utter misery. But now, with his quest fulfilled and his captive secure in the hands of others, with his handsomely-booted feet upon the narrow homeward road at last, he dared. He dared, and his mind was filled now with the image of her beauty, the brilliance of her eyes, the glory of her laugh, and the crisp keenness of her wit. She would enjoy the tale of the tailor and his handiwork, he knew – and the tale of the two children of the Mark, which Gandalf had not troubled to pursue.

He was unsure what more of his journey he could find the strength to tell her, but perhaps he would not need to say more. Since the breaking of those first few awkward days in Caras Galadhon long years ago, there had always been a nearness between them that oft times transcended the need for speech. So often she knew what was in his heart without having to ask, or even to search there. It was perhaps the most priceless and most intimate gift of love.

‘She will doubtless be equally eager to see you,’ Gandalf said, breaking the spell of Aragorn’s fond imaginings and bringing him back to the cool air of the mountain trail.

‘What?’ he said, caught unawares and not quite listening. ‘How did you…’

‘Because you look like a child dreaming of sugar-plums,’ said Gandalf in gentle amusement. ‘All wistful eyes and tremulous smiles. Is that the real reason you are so anxious to be home, Aragorn? Because you know that she is waiting?’

‘In sooth, I had scarcely thought of it before this,’ Aragorn admitted, quite truthful. ‘There are few thoughts more perilous upon a hard road than those of the one enticement that might make a traveller turn from it.’ He shrugged his shoulders and pulled the warm cloak more snugly around his body before finding the reins again. ‘I may be a lovelorn fool, but I am not so reckless as that.’

‘Take your joys where you may find them,’ Gandalf advised. ‘There is little enough on such roads.’

Though he did not part his lips to give it voice, Aragorn’s heart was singing. 

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By noon on the fourth day, the air was so cold that the travellers had to halt to arrange their garments. Aragorn had the cap and muffler provided him by Grimbeorn’s household, and from his own baggage Gandalf produced a long scarf and a pair of fleece-lined leather gloves. They took the time to give the horses a thorough currying, though with only the one brush it was a lengthy endeavour, for it would excite the blood to their skin and help to warm them as they walked. The way was steeper now, and because they did not want their mounts to sweat a trot was out of the question. Besides, the path curled up the side of a mountain now, and below there was nothing but rocky gorge and a few scrub pine. It was a little dizzying to look over that edge when one’s horse drew too near it.

Moroch was not unfamiliar with high places, if not quite so high, for she had been bred amid the little mountains of Mirkwood. The gelding, however, had never had occasion to climb like this, and he was restive. Gandalf kept him calm with low Elvish words and the strength of his will, but it made for an uneasy day’s travel. The rumbles of the spring thaw were all about them: the distant drumming of a landslide, the echo of a tumbling boulder loosed from the breaking snowpack, and the constant riotous music of rills and springs in every direction. More than a few of these crossed the path, and there was never a want of clear, fresh water. Remembering the days of desperate thirst in the Ephel Dûath, Aragorn was profoundly grateful for these snowy heights.

Even twelve daily miles were not achievable now, for they moved so slowly and rested so frequently. The flora was growing sparse, and at their mid-afternoon halt they gave the horses each a measure of grain. Their own appetites were much whetted by the invigorating cold and the lofty way, but they ate sparingly. Rather, Gandalf ate sparingly and Aragorn took only just enough to satisfy the wizard that he was not about to lapse back into a starved stupour. The care that his friend was taking for his health was endearing, but it was also irksome.

They could not find a level place that night, nor even an especially wide place. They had to settle for a convex curl of the path where they could put their backs securely to the rock wall. It was hardest on the horses, for they bore the worst of the wind: a place that was leeward at dusk was buffeted from every side in turn long before dawn. For his part, Aragorn found himself hard-pressed to keep from coughing, knowing it would surely wake Gandalf and rouse him to anxious imprecations. The next morning the travellers rose stiff, sore, and sour, and continued on their way.

It was later that day that they passed the treeline. The towering pillars of the foothills had given way slowly to firs that would have been well-suited to a dooryard windbreak, and they to trees of a comely proportion for a hobbit’s garden. Last of all were little scraggly things hardly knee-high upon the tall Ranger. To the untrained eye these stunted pines looked pitiful, but they were the mountains’ hardiest survivors. They clung to life even here, where the air was thin and the soil stony and the cold unremitting even in high summer. It was at once encouraging and troubling when they left the last of these matted shrubs behind and went on into bare brown country where the springs cut dark rivulets in the rock.

The cough he had successfully held back that night now plagued Aragorn. It stirred deeply in his chest and for a time he could fight it. Then it would burst forth in a series of barking flurries that unsettled Moroch and earned him stern backward glances from Gandalf. The way was narrow here, and they could not go abreast. Aragorn knew the pass well, but it was one of those few places that Gandalf had travelled more frequently: he had many centuries’ experience in crossing these mountains. They had not taken a false step or a wrong turn yet.

It was still the cold that was the most worrisome, for there was no broad place to lay a fire. When evening came they sought out a leeward niche as they had before, and built their little hearth in the middle of the path with Gandalf two paces above it and Aragorn two paces below. They brought their horses as near as they dared, and the two brave steeds stood stolidly through the windy hours of darkness. Neither wizard nor Ranger slept much that night.

The sixth day brought them mercifully to a canyon between the cloven peaks of a great nameless mountain. It was a relief to move on with solid rock to either side, even if the way was rough and undulating. Here at last they had to dismount a while, for the horses were labouring heavily and had to be spared. At first this was easy and even pleasant: stretching legs and resting thighs and back weary of the saddle. Soon enough Aragorn’s healing ankle ached and his heels protested the unfamiliar slant of the riding boots. He endured both quietly, reminding himself that he could take ten miles in such footwear without imperilling his legs. Still he was glad when Gandalf proposed they mount again.

They were still climbing: well was the High Pass named. At these heights the Great Eagles flew, but few other birds. They had seen neither goat nor marmot all day, and the air was very dry. When Aragorn felt a hot tickling touch upon his lip he knew what had happened even before he tugged off a mitten to touch his face. His nose was bleeding again. He blotted at it with one of Una’s handkerchiefs, and rode on. Brave young Moroch kept her determined hooves upon the path, and nodded her head as if to cheer her rider whenever he reached to stroke her neck. Ahead, the Lórien-horse trudged with stooped neck bowed against the wind.

The rocks fell more frequently here, and they were high enough that patches of snow still clung to the crevices of the mountainside. Once a great boulder bounded down the path just short of Gandalf’s horse. Away in the distance came a deep, resonant roar like the thundering of the sea in a rocky cove: the sound of an avalanche on some other peak. The High Pass was less susceptible to such cataclysmic stirrings of the mountains, but it was not immune to them. There was always the chance of being swept off the cliff face – or worse, buried alive – by the rolling sheets of snow and debris.

The Valar smiled upon them that night, for about an hour before dark they found a cave large enough to accommodate two lean travellers and their bowed horses. It was not the most pleasant of positions for Moroch and her companion but they tucked their heads gladly, as grateful as their riders to be out of the wind. Gandalf laid a fire at once, for its light as much as its warmth, and the horses drew as near to it as they dared.

Here Aragorn had to stoop much as he had in the forester’s hut one week before, and it proved worse than ever for his chest. He had scarcely begun his careful inspection of their shelter when he was taken by a fit of paroxysmal coughing that brought him to his knees and left him with black spots swimming in his vision. Gandalf was crouching before him, gripping both bony shoulders and staring worriedly into his eyes. When Aragorn was able to meet them with some measure of clarity in his own, the wizard released his left shoulder so that he could tug off his glove with his teeth. He pressed the back of his hand to Aragorn’s brow and frowned.

‘No fever,’ he said.

‘It is no infection,’ panted Aragorn, hoarse and scarcely able to draw breath. ‘Give me the water.’

Gandalf obeyed, opening the bottle as well and guiding it to Aragorn’s lips when he took it in an unsteady had. ‘What is it, then, if not an infection?’ he demanded.

‘I have water in the lungs,’ said Aragorn, too tired and dizzy to dissemble. His head ached, too, and Gandalf’s questioning never helped that sort of malady. ‘It is a natural consequence of undernourishment, and it will resolve itself with time.’

‘It does not sound as if it is resolving itself,’ Gandalf argued, brows knit darkly. ‘It is worse now than it was before.’

‘Walking bent double does not help,’ Aragorn huffed. He took another long draught of the cold water, no longer quite so grateful for its chill purity. He would have liked a mug of hot tea far better. ‘And the air is dry, which aggravates my nose and throat.’

‘I can see that,’ muttered the wizard. ‘There is a dark crust in your nostril: why did you not tell me it was bleeding?’

‘Because it scarcely matters,’ Aragorn said. ‘That too is a result of want, and it has been happening at intervals ever since my crossing of Gladden. It happened on the day you broke Gollum’s resolve to be silent: did you not notice?’

‘No.’ Gandalf’s tone was now equal parts indignation and bewilderment. ‘No, I did not. And you say all this is natural? It does not seem so to me.’

‘I assure you it is,’ sighed the Ranger. He got his feet out from under his thighs and leaned back against the wall of the cave. ‘If you wish to tend my needs, finish the search of our shelter. We do not need to tumble into dark places in the middle of the night.’

Gandalf laughed once, a hard, barking sound that made Moroch raise her head as far as she could. Deciding the wizard was neither a threat nor in need of her aid, she bent down again to nibble at her helping of grain. ‘The lessons learned from childhood’s pet tales always linger longest,’ the wizard said as he went about thumping the walls with the butt of his knife.

‘At least we have not had thunder,’ Aragorn said, regretting the words the moment they left his lips. Gandalf shook his head ruefully, but knew better than to tempt fate with further remark. ‘How far do you think we are from the apex of the path?’

‘As the Eagle flies? No more than seven leagues. As the path is measured in miles? Perhaps thirty-five. As weary feet must climb it? Too far for comfort,’ Gandalf answered. He had come around to the mouth of the cave again, and he scratched the gelding’s withers vigorously. ‘The way grows steeper ahead. We may not often be able to ride.’

‘We knew that point would come,’ Aragorn said, because he could say no more and be neither disheartening nor foresworn. His chest was tight from the coughing fit, and the long sinews of his legs and arms burned as though he had run a long, swift race instead of plodding a slow trail. He took off one mitten and spread his cold hand over his brow. It was soothing to the throbbing ache in his skull. ‘Shall we toast our honey-cakes?’ he asked, trying to sound cheerful. ‘A hot supper may mend many ills.’

‘Yes,’ Gandalf said, tossing the packet of sweet waybread to Aragorn. He frowned as the Man’s hands fumbled and he succeeded only in batting the parcel into his lap. ‘Many, but not all. I will keep the watch alone tonight: you must have uninterrupted sleep.’ Aragorn opened his mouth to protest the unfairness of such an arrangement, but Gandalf held up his hand in a stern command for silence. ‘I am no healer, and I am no child of the line of Lúthien, but I can see the need for this treatment well enough. If you will not sleep, I shall compel you.’

‘Compel me?’ Aragorn laughed thinly.

Gandalf nodded stoutly. ‘A good clout to the back of the head ought to do it,’ he said, making a fist and rocking it ominously. Then he too grinned. ‘However hard the road, it is more pleasant than many a gentler path for being shared with you.’

Aragorn nodded his agreement with this, but did not trust himself to speak. The longings of the lonely road were stirring in his memory again. He unwrapped two of Baldbeorn’s twice-baked cakes and set them near the new embers to warm. Outside the mouth of their small cave, the wind wailed with a thousand mournful voices. They did his pounding head no favours.

Note: In comparing the Misty Mountains to similar 'young' fold ranges in our own world, and in judging the altitudes of our own 'high passes', as well as considering the topographical details in 'Over Hill and Under Hill' (The Hobbit), I have settled on a workable maximum trail altitude in the High Pass of around 13 000 feet above Sea level. 

Chapter LXXII: A Last Bitter Blow

From an indistinct cocoon of warmth and darkness Aragorn was dimly conscious of someone calling his name. Where ordinarily he would have awakened at once to full alertness and, if need be, battle-readiness, he found himself instead surfacing slowly as if from a vat of treacle. Calloused fingers patted his cheek and his name was spoken again, more urgently. His lips parted without a sound, and someone took hold of his shoulders and gave them a firm shake.

'Aragorn!' Gandalf exclaimed, still more sharply.

His eyes opened at last and he blinked to clear them of their fog. 'What is it?' he croaked hoarsely, thoughts muddled with memories both recent and distant. 'Is there danger? To arms?'

'No danger, save to my old heart,' the wizard sighed, sitting back on his heels. 'Seldom have I known you to be so slow to wake, especially in the Wild.'

Aragorn lifted his head from the satchel on which it had been pillowed and reached to push his hood back from his face. He was lying on the floor of the cave, with their two oilcloths beneath him and the thick Elven blanket over him, and his cloak snug about his body. The dying embers of their fire cast the grey morning light in a somewhat ruddier hue. As he got his elbows under him, he could see that the horses were already saddled, awaiting only the bedding and their burden of fuel. Gandalf had left him to slumber as long as he possibly could.

'I was weary from the day's journey,' he mumbled vaguely, rolling onto his side and pushing himself up onto his hip. 'I am better for my night's rest.'

In perfect truth he felt as if he had been fed a dose of nightshade. His mouth was dry and his eyes stung, and there was an ache in his legs that he thought he remembered from the night before. He scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand and tried to complete the task of waking himself up.

Gandalf passed him one of the bottles, and he drank. The water eased the worst of his discomfort, wetting his throat and clearing his head somewhat. His temples were still throbbing dimly, although deep sleep should have cured him of his headache. He sat up properly and swept off hood and cap so that he could rake his hair away from his face before replacing them more comfortably. 'You should have awakened me to help with the packing,' he sighed.

'There was no need,' said Gandalf. 'Fear not: I've kept out your breakfast. It should be pleasantly warm by now.'

He gave Aragorn a honey-cake and a generous handful of hulled chestnuts, and set about bundling up the blankets and oilskins while the Ranger ate. For the first time in days, Aragorn's stomach seemed uneasy at the prospect of food. He had to fight a low but persistent nausea to work through the simple meal, and even that would have been impossible without frequent swallows of water. In the end, however, he was fed and back in his boots. Recalling how stooping the night before had precipitated a painful coughing fit, he crouched instead of standing and moved out of the cave in that inelegant fashion once Gandalf had led the horses back onto the path.

When he got to his feet Aragorn was taken by a bout of dizziness, but he had anticipated that and was ready. He had a firm hold on the base of Moroch's dark mane even before he was quite upright. With his other hand he stroked her neck, leaning in with one shoulder until the danger passed. Gandalf, who had been occupied in strapping the bundle of firewood to the gelding's back, was mercifully unaware of the momentary weakness.

The air was bitingly cold, particularly after the warmth of a cosy cave heated by a healthy fire and four living bodies. Aragorn fished his mittens out of the woollen satchel hung across the front of his saddle, and tugged them on. Gandalf was doing the same with his own gloves.

'I think we ought to take it in hourly turns today,' the wizard said. 'Riding, then walking, then riding again. It will spare the horses, and it will keep us warm. Spring may have found the lowlands, but on the path we will be treading it never truly comes.'

Aragorn nodded, occupied with tying his muffler comfortably about his throat and mouth. He hoped it would not grow cold enough to need to cover his nose as well, for if it fell to bleeding again the tickle could swiftly become maddening. He guided Moroch as near to the rock wall as she could comfortably stand, and rounded her to mount. He did not in truth recall having left the narrow canyon the previous afternoon, but they must have done it: the path overlooked a deep gully that plunged for many hundreds of feet before the view became obscured in darkness. Perhaps it was a deeper gorge; perhaps a forested valley. Either way, it was a vicious fall.

Again Aragorn relied upon his hold on Moroch's mane, gripping a thick hank near to the roots so that he did not hurt her. His foot in its absurdly ornamental boot missed the stirrup on the first pass, but before he could try again Moroch was drawing back with one foreleg extended and the other bent beneath: bowing so that he could mount with ease.

'Thank you, fair one,' he murmured as he settled in the saddle and rocked with her as she rose. 'It is kind of you, but not necessary this time.'

Gandalf, who was already astride the Lórien-horse, looked back with a sharp question in his eyes. Rather than dwell upon the present, Aragorn shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head apologetically. 'It was Moroch who bore me the last few miles to Thranduil's halls,' he said. 'I could not mount her properly with my twisted foot.'

'No,' said Gandalf, settling back into a forward-facing position and gathering his reins. 'I do not suppose you could have. Come now, timid walker: onward!'

This last was addressed to the gelding, who shook his head with a convulsive whinny that was not quite a protest before starting along the stony path that wound crookedly on up into the heights.

lar

The first hour dismounted was not unpleasant. It did indeed warm the body to get one's limbs moving, and the way – though steep – was not too difficult. They crossed an uncertain-looking rock arch over a rushing rivulet, and soon enough found themselves approaching a fresh peak. This one was almost as sharp as a spire, shooting slenderly upward to vanish into the low-hanging clouds. But of course the clouds were not low-hanging in the least: the travellers were now thousands of feet above the vale of Anduin and climbing higher all the time. Aragorn half wished for rain, for his nose was bleeding again in the cold, dry air, and although not heavy the flow was tiresome. He swabbed at it with Una's handkerchief, now liberally marred with rusty stains and fresh scarlet blossoms, and he tried not to sniffle. When he did that he could taste the blood in the back of his throat, and it did nothing to ease his stomach.

His ankle was just beginning to pain him when it came time to resume their saddles. The wind was high and above them dislodged rocks kept breaking free of the snowpack and tumbling down. Gandalf rode hunched low over the gelding's neck, and Aragorn did the same. He tried to keep watch out of the corner of his eye for any debris that might threaten to strike Moroch's patient head. She walked on steadily, never faltering even when the stones beneath her hooves shifted or crumbled. When that happened, she merely lifted the offending limb daintily and tried again to find a foothold. Her southern cousin was much less patient: he would shudder or nicker unhappily, and once or twice he balked. Aragorn feared that the wizard was not having a gentle ride of it in the least.

Their second turn at walking came early, when they reached a grade too steep for the horses to manage with riders. It was indeed too steep for them to manage without guidance also, though fortunately the way was wider here. There was plenty of room to manoeuver, and they had need of it. In vain Gandalf tried to coax the gelding to follow him, which was as sure a measure of the poor beast's fear as any Aragorn could have imagined. For any animal to prove reluctant to trust the wizard, great terror must surely be in its heart.

'Let us go first,' he suggested, having to raise his voice to be heard above the wind. His throat stung as he did so, and the throbbing in his head rose in a sharp crescendo. 'Moroch is no stranger to stony roads: perhaps if he sees how she goes he will follow.'

Gandalf furrowed his brows into a frown, but it was one of frustration rather than defiance. 'We had best try something,' he said. 'It was a choice between two, or I might have fared better. Poor timorous thing: likely even the plains of Eastemnet were strange beneath his hooves.'

He drew his horse in near to the rock wall, and pressed his back against the creature's outer flank. It comforted the horse and kept him safely still while Aragorn and Moroch passed between him and the edge. The fall was not so precipitous here, for a sharply angled descent ended in a scree pit between three rock walls, but it would have meant broken limbs and no way out had either of them slipped. But Moroch was steady and courageous, and she had placed in her rider a loving trust that he knew he had done little to earn. Where he led her, she followed.

The same held true throughout that uncertain climb. Even with the thick-soled riding boots, Aragorn's feel for the earth beneath him was sound. He had not forgotten the ways of the wild during his few weeks' rest, and he picked his path with care. He might have clambered up at three times the speed at which he now moved, if sounding a safe path for two legs only. As it was he felt his way with care, ever on the lookout for unstable terrain. Where larger stones lay in the path, he kicked them aside: off the edge and out of the way of Moroch's hooves. She followed him calmly, placing her feet with the care of a young dancer first learning the steps. And seeing her go with such serene confidence, the gelding mastered his fright and consented to be led at last.

It was not one hour's walking, but nearly three before they mastered that steep ascent and came at last to an easier slope where the horses could once more bear their riders. By that time Aragorn's chest was tight with the effort of holding back all but the very worst of the coughs, and his headache was an incandescent torment behind his eyes. His legs ached from the slow going and the unsuitable boots, and his hands were remembering their brush with frostbite by awakening in sharp tingling pain despite the mittens. He was almost wretchedly grateful to mount again and relieve at least his legs and feet, if nothing else.

From behind came a bellowed question, and Aragorn twisted in the saddle to look back. He shook his head and cupped his mittened hand near his well-buried ear. Behind him, Gandalf tried again.

'If we can find a place to shelter from the wind, we ought to stop and eat!' he roared. 'It's coming up on six hours since breakfast!'

The Ranger smiled at the fervour in his friend's voice. Six hours between meals was no hardship, but a luxury. Often on their joint travels they halted but twice a day. When pressed, a nightly morsel might be all there was time to take. And on Aragorn's most recent road, spans between sparse feedings had been measured in days instead of hours. Still, it was comforting to have the wizard so careful of his welfare: doubly so now, when he felt so miserable.

So when they came to a place where two great slabs of stone intersected to form a deep corner off the path, Aragorn guided Moroch in and eased himself into a careful dismount. He felt uncommonly lightheaded and had no wish to fall. He was giving the mare her nosebag with a judicious measure of grain when Gandalf and the gelding rounded the corner into the slender shelter. Once out of the wind the cold was much more bearable, and it was almost pleasant to find an obliging rock to sit upon and to stretch out stiffening legs.

Gandalf brought out a packet of smoked venison furnished by the kitchens of the Elven-king, and slices of apple that had been spiced and dried by Eira and her son's wives. Wordlessly he handed a share of each to the Ranger and took a smaller portion for himself. Just as wordlessly, Aragorn accepted the wisdom of this. He could not lose ground in his recovery by eating too frugally, and they were yet well-supplied. They had, by his estimate, food enough for eight comfortable days or twelve lean ones, and they were already almost halfway through the pass.

He unwrapped his muffler and moved to remove the mittens, but thought better of this last. His hands were still tingling in protest of the mountain chill, and flesh once frozen was vulnerable to such re-injury for many months after. He tore off a piece of the meat with his teeth and chewed it ponderously, fighting a stomach that had no interest in food.

'Shall we build a fire?' Gandalf asked.

Aragorn looked up from the pointed toes of his boots and frowned questioningly. 'A fire? Why? We shall not tarry long, surely.'

'You look cold,' said the wizard.

Trying to quell irritation at this coddling, Aragorn shook his head. 'I am not especially,' he said. 'My hands do not like it much, but my garments are more than adequate to keep the rest of me comfortable. Even this chill is nothing to the bitter bite of a blizzard in the lowlands.'

'Yes…' Gandalf muttered. He shook his head and made an effort to make his tone more cheerful. 'I have been thinking that when we reach Rivendell you really ought to have Bilbo compose one of his songs about your journey – since he seems to be the minstrel of your choice.'

'My journey? A fine song that would make!' Aragorn scoffed. Lilting his voice lyrically, he mocked; 'His ears he froze, his toes he froze. He froze his fingers and his nose!'

Gandalf laughed, deeply but not too loudly: large noises were never wise in the high places. 'There, you see?' he said. 'You've made a good start already.'

'There might be some poetic scope in the tale of crossing six rivers,' Aragorn said ruefully. 'I could not have chosen a wetter course if I had set out to do so apurpose. Yet in a choice between cold duckings and Ringwraiths I could have done no other. What do you know of Fangorn?'

The question came so readily to his lips that he recalled only after it was out his earlier qualms about uttering it. Yet what seemed a mark of impudence from an invalid's bed had more the cast of a traveller's rightful query in this high and lonely place.

Gandalf considered for a moment, then swallowed and spoke. 'It is an ancient place: as ancient perhaps as any yet left untouched in this world. With that agelessness there comes a certain feeling of knowing, as though the land itself could see and thing and judge. You have walked the Old Forest: you know of what I speak.'

Aragorn had not thought of the Old Forest while he walked beneath the strange eaves of Fangorn, but now he saw precisely what his friend meant. There was a timelessness to both places that left a wanderer with the distinct impression that he was not alone to reason in the wilds. Yet the Old Forest had a more homey feel to it, like an old grandfather dozing by the fire at the end of his day. Fangorn had felt differently: like a slumbering warrior ready to awaken at the least touch.

Or perhaps those were only the musings of a swordsman who had himself proved rather too hard to rouse this morning, and who felt as if he could stretch out on the stony ground and sleep right here, cold air or no. He was exhausted. The steep climb had drained him and he dreaded the thought of stepping back out into the pass. His weakness shamed him, though it was only to be expected. He could not have hoped to return to his full vigour so quickly. He had known from the moment it had been proposed that this journey would be a trying one.

'If we are to go on, let us do it,' he said suddenly, thrusting the remains of his meal unceremoniously into his pouch and launching to his feet. For a moment he was taken with a terrible lightheadedness, but his body knew its equilibrium even without his mind and he did not sway. 'There is no sense in squandering daylight hiding from the wind.'

'No one is as stubborn as a man with his eye upon home,' Gandalf grumbled, but he too rose and went to unfasten the feedbag from his mount. 'If you grow too cold in the saddle, we will stop and build a fire, daylight or not. I do not want to be responsible for freezing those feet afresh, when they have only just stopped flaking. Think of how uncomely that would be before your beloved!'

Aragorn laughed. 'You will not rule me with appeals to my vanity, for I have little left,' he said as he hoisted himself back into the saddle. Moroch tilted her head as if to look back to him, and he patted her neck. 'My interest in keeping my feet unfrozen lies more in avoiding the chastisement of Master Elrond.'

'A still greater incentive,' Gandalf said, but he seemed satisfied. He wheeled the horse carefully about and urged him back out onto the path.

lar

For nearly four hours they made good progress, but Aragorn was finding the spells of walking to be more and more onerous. His boots were ill-suited to any prolonged perambulation, and the steady climbing over changeable terrain was more difficult than most. Soon the soreness in his feet extended to knees and calves as well, and his thighs of course had been aching steadily for the last couple of days. During the second stretch after their brief luncheon, he found himself frequently short of breath even though the wind had died down as the cloud cover thickened. He plodded on beside Moroch, grimly determined but wheezing deeply in lungs that rattled with fluid. When he did succumb to the urge to cough, it left him breathless and dizzy. The hour was not yet spent when he at last stopped at a wide place in the road and called ahead to Gandalf.

'I must halt!' he gasped, dropping Moroch's reins and stumbling to lean against the cliff face. He bent his knees as if sitting and clutched them, the small of his back against the very slight slope to keep him upright. His breath was very shallow in his chest, and he could not seem to draw it any deeper. Black spots danced in his vision in a way that reminded him of nothing so much as fireflies on a moonless night. The nausea that had been plaguing him since morning now crested dangerously towards his clavicles.

Gandalf had dismounted and successfully turned the gelding. Now both were coming back with as much haste as the downward grade allowed. 'What is it?' the wizard cried as he came. 'What has happened? Are you harmed? Were you struck from above?'

He motioned upward, from whence stones of many sizes had been raining all day. Aragorn shook his head, still trying to force a deep breath. His muffler was smothering him, and he raked it away from his face with a clumsy mittened hand. Instead of returning to his knee, it clutched his burning side. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on his breathing. In slowly through the nose, out smoothly through pursed lips… but although the first he managed, the second brought on a wet cough that left him more winded than before.

'What is it?' Gandalf asked again, this time far more softly. He was at hand now, gripping Aragorn's shoulder and leaning near. 'You're panting. Have we been moving too rapidly? Pressing too hard? Is it your lungs? Can you speak?'

If he did not speak, Aragorn realized, this litany of questions would continue endlessly until they both were driven mad. 'I need… I must… must catch… my breath…' he puffed, managing despite the high twitching of his chest to impart some recognizable rhythm to his words.

Gandalf bent nearer, wrapping his arm about Aragorn's shoulders. It took the Ranger a moment to realize he had carried the corner of his cloak with it. 'My dear boy, you must be half frozen,' Gandalf murmured, drawing him close. It was a mark of the depth of his concern that there was no scolding left in his voice. 'You should have said something long ago: a fire is no hardship to light.'

Aragorn tried to shake his head, but the first swing filled him with such terrible dizziness that he did not dare pursue it. 'I am not… cold…' he panted. 'Scarcely… cold at all…'

He did not know how to make Gandalf believe him. He had known cold: such cold that he had believed he could never be warm again. He had known the cold that lay beyond shivering, when the stuporous lure of sleep in a pillowing snowbank seemed a welcome release from life's petty and wearisome efforts such as fire-lighting. He was not cold now. Well, the tip of his nose was, a little, and he supposed his fingertips must be, for they tingled. But his head was warm and his chest was warm, as were his legs even below the skirts of the cote where they had only the tightly-woven wool of his hose to cover them. His feet were warm. He was notcold.

Gandalf made a fond, humouring sound deep in his throat. To call it clucking would have been beneath the dignity of both of them, but it was a very near thing. 'Aragorn, if you truly believe that then you have gone beyond feeling it and must be warmed at once. Your lips are blue.'

Something deep and startled stirred in Aragorn's breast, though it took a moment for it to penetrate the fog of a brain still trying to take command of the body's most automatic of reflexes. He turned in towards the wizard and the warmth of his body where his cloak was open – warmth that touched Aragorn's face with neither relief nor pain and confirmed once and for all that he was not, was not, cold. He looked up and found his friend's anxious, kindly face.

'My lips?' he mouthed around two more shallow pants.

Gandalf nodded. 'Blue as those Gladden irises you found so fascinating. Let me fetch the blankets, and then I'll lay a fire.'

He reached to unclasp his cloak, that he might leave it around the Ranger's shoulders. But Aragorn was already clawing off his mittens. He spread his hands, palms outward, and stared at the tips of his outstretched fingers. There were his nailbeds: so vividly blue that they might almost have been dipped in cobalt paste. He touched his lips, as though he could feel the difference there, and he knew with a terrible, sickening dread what was wrong with him.

He had blamed his exhaustion on his diminished state and his continuing convalescence. On the same he had pinned the aches in his limbs. He had ignored the grinding headache as an irritant, and dismissed the bleeding nose as a mere continuation of a long pattern. But now he could not slow his breathing, and his lips and fingertips were blue. They were far above the treeline, almost at the very apex of the High Pass. And although such things had never before plagued him in any of his many crossings, he had come hither this time with his lungs already flooded and their capacity diminished.

'It is the mountain sickness,' he sighed, trying to restrain the urge to howl aloud at the unfeeling skies. Instead he bent low over his lap and dug his fingers into his hair, pushing aside the wool cap as he did so. 'We have ascended swiftly, and the air is thin. My lungs… my head… I cannot breathe…'

The grip upon his shoulder tightened as Gandalf grew rigid with dismay. 'It has never troubled you before,' he said.

'It is troubling me now!' Aragorn snapped, unable to bite down upon his frustration after all.

For a few moments the wizard was silent. Now that he was no longer moving, Aragorn found that his breathing was beginning to slow and to deepen. The dizziness abated a little and he felt some measure of strength return to his knees. Yet still he burned with wrath at this last betrayal by a body that had always before borne up under every trial. For the only remedy for mountain sickness was time: the one thing he was most bitterly loath to spare.

'We must retreat apace,' Gandalf said decisively. 'We can return to the alcove where we ate, and pass the night there—'

'And squander half a day!' Aragorn spat. He was seething with rage and helpless discouragement. Mountain sickness, of all accursed things, and it had to strike now, when they were so near the summit of the pass and yet not near enough to argue that it would be better to be over it first and descend the other side. Withdrawing to a lesser height and allowing the body to rest was all that could be done.

'Better to squander half a day than to have you taken with brain fever,' the wizard said, his tone patient and perfectly reasonable and utterly infuriating. 'Or to have you swoon away and fall from the saddle and down the mountainside. That alcove is the best shelter we have seen all day. Your lips were bluing even there: do you recall how I asked if you were cold?'

Aragorn did, and now it made perfect sense: not coddling after all, but an earnest question prompted by a clear observation. But he could not bring himself to repent of that irritation while still grappling for his sanity with this one. His fingertips dug deeper into his scalp and his shoulders shook. 'Never, never before,' he snarled under his gradually levelling breath. 'And now, when most…'

His voice cracked ominously and he did not dare to continue, but Gandalf had an arm around his back again, holding him more firmly than before. 'Now, when most you long to be home,' he murmured. 'It is a bitter blow to bear, Dúnadan, and yet I must be grateful that it is something for which there can be some help. Come. I will turn your horse, and we shall go back down. After a night in a lower place, you can climb again.'

'Aye, and retreat again when I have,' Aragorn said bitterly. 'And climb, and retreat, and climb, and retreat. And so what should have been a journey of twelve days from beginning to end shall last for twenty or more, while we grow ever shorter of provisions, patience and civility. No. This is not how this quest shall end: with a miserable limping homeward and bitter quarrels all the way. Scout ahead a little and see if you can find any better place than this to rest, and we shall make camp here. By morning I will at least breathe a little easier, and we can go on.'

'For one so anxious to avoid bitter quarrels, son of Arathorn, you are sowing a mighty one now,' Gandalf said, the warning rumbling as deep in his voice as the first tremors of an avalanche upon the peaks.

'My hands are not swollen,' Aragorn said, looking again at those almost comically blue fingertips and trying to convince himself that he was undaunted either by the wizard's incipient wrath or by the consequences of dealing too lightly with his ailment. 'What of my face?'

'Your face is as gaunt as a skull,' said Gandalf curtly. 'Or as gaunt as that of the prisoner we left behind, if nowhere near as unlovely. You are the very picture of affliction and want.'

'If my face is not swollen, it has not progressed far,' argued the Ranger. 'The discolouration is alarming, I grant you, and the breathing…' He shook his head very slightly, not daring to swing too far. He might long for speed. He might wish in vain that this misfortune had not seen fit to fall upon him. And yet he could not be hasty: could not give in to his craving to press on with all swiftness. He had to do the prudent thing, the wise and the sensible thing. Much as it galled him, he had to turn back.

'We are so near the tipping-place,' he said. 'If we push on as fiercely as prudence allows, we can descend as rapidly as you wish once we have passed it. For tonight, we can retreat one hour's walk and find the best shelter we may. I cannot countenance the wasting of eight.'

The ache of his yearning to be once more in Rivendell was greater than any pain of the body. The need for that hallowed, healing place was, if not greater than his need for air, at least not incomparable. At this moment, faced with the prospect of days of sawing senselessly up and down the same section of the pass and gaining only a mile or two each day, he felt closer to true despair than he had at any time since the terrible moment in the Dead Marshes when he had given up his hunt. Then he had been delivered by fresh footprints in the mud. What rescue would come to him now?

'An hour and a half,' said Gandalf quietly. 'The horses will have to descend more slowly than they have climbed, particularly your young mare. Descending with a rider is delicate work.'

Of course he would have to ride, though Aragorn had not paused to think of it. The mountain sickness was much aggravated by physical exertions. Perhaps if it had not been for their policy of resting the horses it might not have smote him at all. He repented at once of that thought, long before it could crystalize into a wish. To wear so heavily upon their animals would have been heartless and unkind, for they could not have suspected this. In his addled state he could not now recall how many times he had taken this pass, but it was enough that he could have had no reasonable expectation of this malady. Had his body only been stronger, or his lungs only been hale: either, not both, and he would have made a clean crossing. Again the temptation to quail utterly before his fortunes rocked him.

But he was not alone, and these last short weeks had been replete with blessings great and small. This latest misfortune was maddening, and further delay would claw at his heart, but it was not grave. They would lose time, yes, but there was nothing pressing upon the hours of their journey but his own selfish longing for home. A few hours' delay today, a few more tomorrow and the next day and perhaps even the next, and that would be an end of it. Aragorn gathered his resolve about him like a garment. He would not flail bitterly against the fetters of his hard-worn body, but take courage instead in what he had been spared. He would withdraw tonight, but not in retreat. In the morning he would do battle again, from more advantageous ground. Determined but too weary to quite muster the resolve to lift his head, he rose. Gandalf stood close beside him, lest he should stumble. He did not.

Chapter LXXIII: Choicest Misfortunes 

In the end, it took three and a half days to break the top of the High Pass. The first night was perfectly wretched. Having withdrawn the negotiated distance, the travellers found no better shelter than an outcropping that formed a coarse corner into which Aragorn might set his back. He dared not try to lie down, for although the desperate panting had abated he was still breathing very shallowly and his lungs crackled with fluid. He would have been no more comfortable supine in any case, for the ground was stony and undulating. Every joint in his body ached with a pernicious smouldering constancy that set his teeth to clenching. The hammering in his skull abated a little, but not until well after dark. By then his exhausted wakefulness had him almost in a delirium of mortal misery.

Gandalf built a fire near to Aragorn’s feet, and did his utmost to make the suffering Ranger comfortable. He folded one blanket into a thick pad for Aragorn’s back and hips, and tucked the other neatly about him. He emptied the wool satchel of all but the bandages, and curled it about the nape of the Man’s neck so that his head might have some better support than the bare stone. He unsaddled the horses and somehow contrived to picket them a few paces down the path where Aragorn could follow Moroch’s shadowy form in the dark.

Gandalf tried to coax his friend to eat, but Aragorn’s nausea was such that he could scarcely countenance the thought of food. In the end the wizard ceased his efforts, but it was plain how much this abstention worried him. Still he made every attempt to be cheerful and encouraging as he worked, and when he was finished he knew without being told that the time had come for quiet. All that long and painful night he sat in the stony path, tending the fire and keeping the watch. He rose at intervals to offer water and quiet words of encouragement, and with these patient ministrations Aragorn found the fortitude to endure the long night.

With morning came the need to move, and a bitter struggle against bone-deep fatigue. It took most of Aragorn’s will and all of his strength to drag himself up onto heavy feet. Even then he had to lean against the rock wall, wheezing, until he felt steady enough to attempt to mount. There was no question of breakfast, for his stomach felt little better than it had the night before. Yet the pain in his limbs had improved somewhat, and his head no longer felt ready to rupture with the force of the pounding in his temples.

They rode as far that day as Aragorn’s body could withstand. When the mountain began to reel unsteadily around him and his breath was once more beginning to come in swift, inadequate puffs, they turned and retreated. Although it was only mid-afternoon there was nothing to do but make camp, and this time they found shelter beneath a low overhang. It offered welcome protection from the falling stones and the clumps of snow that tumbled from the melt-edge no longer far above, but little from the wind.

Gandalf laid out the bedding in the very back of the shielded space, and Aragorn was only too glad to stretch out upon it and rest his reeling head. He shaded his eyes with the back of his wrist, and lay long unmoving before he felt able to sit and attempt to eat. The sweetness of the honey-cake the wizard offered repulsed him, but the soft, nutty waybread of Mirkwood proved tolerable. Aragorn took only a few mouthfuls, but he could see the relief in Gandalf’s eyes as he did.

‘Perhaps we should advance more slowly,’ the wizard suggested softly as he filled the horses’ nosebags with their ration of grain. He had made no firm edict in all the time since they had first turned back; it was as if he feared to press too hard upon a strained wall, lest it should crumble. ‘There is no sense in wearing yourself to the precipice for the sake of a day or two.’

‘There can be no true relief until we are once more below,’ Aragorn said hoarsely. His voice, like the rest of him, seemed strained and threadbare. ‘It is a choice between three measures of discomfort and two, not between some and none. I would as lief bear all I can now, in earnest hope that lasting surcease may come more swiftly.’

Gandalf was not pleased with this answer, but still he bowed his head in acknowledgement of the logic. ‘If your breathing grows too laboured, I will insist,’ he warned.

‘I would expect nothing else,’ said Aragorn. He drew his cloak and blanket nearer and tried to turn his face from the wind.

For a while there were only the soft sounds of the horses feeding and Gandalf setting right their little camp. There were a couple of muttered oaths as he tried to light the fire with flint and steel, and then the scrape of leather on stone as he moved the saddles in to form a windbreak. Soon the crackle of ignited wood was heard, and Aragorn felt slow radiating warmth lapping his hip and flank. He wondered idly how long their fuel would last. They had carried as much as they could and at the time he had thought it almost prodigal, but they had not accounted for a delay in these barren heights.

The wind against his head and shoulders was dispersed when Gandalf came to sit near him with his back to the rock-face. A strong, wizened hand reached to grip the Ranger’s arm beneath its woollen wrappings. It squeezed in wordless consolation, and then settled into firm reassurance that was neither patronizing nor anxious. Grateful but too spent to speak, Aragorn lingered long upon the rim of slumber.

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Rising on the second morning was less excruciating. Either the aches had abated somewhat, or Aragorn was growing accustomed to a new constant of pain. Whatever the case, he did not have to struggle to find the barest resolve to rise. It turned out to be a day plagued with the slow trickle of blood from his nostrils – both, this time, and from high up in his sinuses. He rode with his head bowed far forward to keep it from trickling down his throat instead. Within two hours, Una’s painstakingly hemmed handkerchief was a pulpy crimson lump that stained the palm of the Ranger’s mitten.

There was no leisure for heartache and homeward longing that day. Soon they came to a place where the horses could not bear riders. Moroch tried valiantly, but even her steady legs and loving determination could not overcome the changeable earth and the steep, narrow slope. Aragorn stayed her with a gentle word, ere she could do herself harm, and dismounted cautiously. Despite Gandalf’s obvious worry it was plain there was not other way, and at least the Man’s breathing was level, if still too shallow. Aragorn fixed his eyes high upon the crooked path and climbed.

His legs burned and his feet in their unfamiliar boots slipped and scrabbled. More than once he had to brace himself against the rock wall with the hand that did not hold Moroch’s reins. From behind he could feel Gandalf’s anxious eyes upon his back, but even at full strength he would have struggled with such terrain and footwear. A half-hysterical urge to shed the boots and fling them down the mountainside so that he could continue in his hose alone filled Aragorn’s heart, and it roused from him a thin, breathless laugh.

‘What is it?’ Gandalf called, concern and frail hope in his voice.

‘The boots!’ Aragorn answered, turning back so that his voice would carry with little effort from his lungs. ‘I believe I despise them, however fair.’

Then Gandalf, too, chuckled, and the horses both walked with a greater will for several dozen steps.

Soon enough, they came to a place where the way was so steep that even the weight of baggage and saddle was too much for Moroch to carry. Below, the gelding was having similar difficulties. They had come at last to the dry portage, where like boatmen before impassible rapids they had to bear their belongings on ahead before they could hope to mount again. On the westward road, it was most weary; on the eastward road, most perilous. In any other crossing Aragorn would have been glad to take the former. Now, however, it filled him with a sense of pitiful helplessness. He could be of little use this time, and all the labour would fall to his friend.

Yet there was nothing for it but to retreat some paces, guiding the horses meticulously backward, until they were at a place broad enough that the two riders could navigate safely the narrow channel between their steeds and the plunging edge of the path. Aragorn came back first, watching his feet with care because the hard soles did not allow him to feel the earth accurately enough to trust to touch alone. When he was at the gelding’s head, with Moroch’s dark tail swishing patiently beside his leg, he took the reins from Gandalf. His palm he planted on the mare’s rump to comfort her: he did not think she truly needed restraint if she knew it was his will for her to stand.

The wizard ungirded his steed and set about slinging the baggage over his own shoulders. He managed to arrange all of it quite well, even the dwindling bundle of firewood, but he would have to return for the saddle. Carefully he moved past Moroch, pausing to murmur thanks in her attentive ear. Then he planted his lead foot with care, tested it, and hefted himself up onto the steeper grade. For the first three rangar he was as reliant upon his hands as Gollum had always been, and then Gandalf found a rhythm to his climbing and straightened somewhat. He vanished around a curve in the path and out of sight, though for a time Aragorn could still hear the grinding of his boots on the sand and pebbles of centuries.

It seemed like hours before the wizard returned, inching downward with thrice the care that had been needed in the ascent. By the light, Aragorn knew that it could not have been more than a quarter of an hour. Gandalf relieved Moroch of her baggage and repeated his climb, then returned twice more to recover each saddle.

‘The way is clear to the gully,’ he said when he returned the last time and took the lines of the Lórien-mount so that Aragorn could return to Moroch’s head. More to fill the silence than from any illusion that his travelling companion had forgotten these landmarks, Gandalf went on. ‘The peak is cloven, and we can ride abreast with solid mountain on either side. From the look of things, it was choked with snow only a week or two ago. Perhaps our leisurely departure from Mirkwood was for the best.’

Aragorn did not answer. He was steeling himself for the climb. He harboured no shred of overconfidence. This was going to be hard going with his body in its present state, and it seemed almost impossible that he would win through to firmer ground without some aggravation of his sickness. All that he could do was level his breath as best he could and hope that neither his feet nor his balance failed him until he had once more some small quarter for weakness.

‘Swift and steady, my brave lady,’ he whispered to Moroch, leaning near enough to her ear that he could feel the brush of her forelock against his cheekbone. She nickered gently, as if to offer him what small assurance she could. She trusted him, but also she feared for him: his present state was no secret from her.

He pulled off his mittens and tucked them into his belt. Moroch’s reins he wrapped once about his left wrist before taking a firm hold of the leathers. Then Aragorn bent his will upon the way ahead, and began the difficult ascent.

Again the boots were as much a hindrance as a help, but he found that if he walked out-toed and dug the hard lip of the rand into the thin layer of sand and grit he could secure decent leverage even without the responsiveness of pliable soles. His bare hand upon the cliff face offered further aid not only in balance but propulsion, and the need to focus utterly on his smallest movements blotted out the soreness of his body and the agony behind his eyes and even the smothered, stifling struggle to breathe. Unburdened and trusting, Moroch followed spryly behind.

Each of Gandalf’s trips had seemed to drag on endlessly, but Aragorn’s own was over almost before he knew it. All of a sudden feet that had been digging for purchase skidded easily over almost level ground, and legs that had been straining to hoist him trembled with sudden relief. Moroch left the last of the treacherous incline behind her with a clatter of eager hooves, and trotted up abreast of her rider with a happy little prancing step. Only a few feet ahead the path passed into the shelter of the cleft, rutted with rills of the runoff that had ceased, as Gandalf had rightly estimated, no more than a fortnight before. Aragorn stared at these grooves with bleary eyes for a moment or two before remembering that they had to clear the way so that their travelling companions might win through to the high ground also.

He took three heavy, not-quite-stumbling strides forward, with Moroch keeping step. Then the reeling sickness that he had been fighting back all through the exertions of the climb overcame him utterly. Dropping the reins, Aragorn stumbled and fell to his knees. He turned his face from the mare’s nimble hooves, slapped his palm upon the rock wall to brace himself, and cast up the remains of his frugal breakfast into the dust.

He scarcely heard the clatter of hooves and the rustle of robes, or the gelding’s worried whinny as the wizard dropped the lines. But ere he was through with his convulsive retching Aragorn felt a strong hand buoying each shoulder and the mercifully reassuring presence of a trusted body at his side. When at last his stomach ceased its spasm and he spat the last of the thin acid from his mouth, one arm drew him back away from his mess and against the firm support of a chest and strong shoulder. The other hand was gathering his hair back from his clammy face. Gasping thinly and trying to orient himself, Aragorn was only too glad to lean into the wizard’s hold.

‘There,’ Gandalf murmured. ‘You have made the hardest climb of our road. It is all behind you now. We can rest a while before we go on, Aragorn. You can rest. But we should go on, for I do not fancy having to backtrack past that tonight.’

Aragorn nodded unsteadily. Of course they would go on: they had not even gained three miles today. But doing so immediately or even with reasonable promptness was out of the question. Gandalf helped him to his feet long enough to lead him away from the puddle of foulness, and then eased him to the ground and went to search the pile of baggage and tack that had been waiting for them. He returned with a cloth, one of the bottles of water, and the Ranger’s blanket. This last went about his shoulders, while Gandalf wet the rag. He held the bottle so that Aragorn could drink, first taking a mouthful to rinse the vile taste from his throat before sipping cautiously between shallow gasps of air. Then with deft and tender hands Gandalf bathed the Man's face, wiping away dust and sweat and the residue of his sickness.

After that, mercifully, Aragorn was able to lie down for a time whilst the world spun beneath him. First it whirled very rapidly, seeming to wobble alarmingly after every fourth or fifth rotation. Then it slowed to a more deliberate rhythm, like a dancer in a tight repeating turn. Finally it swept as sedately as a spinning wheel left to purr quietly to a stop. After that he merely lay there, chest still heaving of its own accord, and relished the stillness and the fading of the manic lights that leapt across the backs of his eyelids like Gandalf’s fireworks in a midnight sky. He could hear the hush-whush of the currycomb as the wizard rubbed down the horses after their exertions.

When at last Aragorn felt able to rise and to ride, they went on. The way was gentler here, but still it rose towards the pinnacle of the pass. This time they did not wait until the border of the Ranger’s endurance before withdrawing to halt for the day: it had been tried sorely enough on the deadly slope. That night despite his pains and the wild drummers beating out their rites within his skull, Aragorn slept almost without interruption until dawn.

The third day was the easiest. At last he dared to hope that his body was learning that if it endured the upward rigours it would get its surcease in time. The headache persisted with a brutal ferocity that would have been quite terrifying without such a clear cause to explain it. His joints, however, were less tortured and with Moroch’s gentle gait he rode in tolerable discomfort instead of steady anguish. As for his breathing, it troubled him little apart from the persistent cough. That night they retreated a shorter distance, which was a balm to Aragorn’s spirit. He was struggling to keep back the frustration that welled up within him whenever he thought too long on the delay and its cause. Much as he might understand that such measures were necessary, his heart had its own longings. Though he might master them he was powerless to change them. He lay awake long into the night, listening to the noises of the mountains and trying to think of anything but his destination.

On the fourth morning, neither pain nor breathlessness nor the persistent dim perception of unbalance could have kept Aragorn under his blanket past dawn. He had to restrain himself from leaping up to saddle the horses when Gandalf seemed to be moving too slowly. All that prevented him was the certainty that if he overexerted himself now and brought on a fit of gasping, it would be two hours or more before he would be able to convince his travelling companion that he was well enough to move on. So he waited as patiently as he was able until it was time for him to mount, and then settled on Moroch’s strong back and tried not to slump beneath the weight of persistent exhaustion that was on him. He knew that he was strong enough to ride even in his present state, but that did not make it easy, or pleasant, or even free from torment. Yet he had endured far worse than this in his long life, and indeed upon this very quest. He endured again.

That was their longest day of travel since the mountain sickness had grown too obvious to be explained away, for about an hour after midday they came to the end of a broad horseshoe-like ascent that ended in a sudden outward curve. Rounding this, they found themselves all at once looking down upon the other side of the pass.

It wended its twisted way along the side of the mountain and out of sight amid great prows of rock and curves of stony contour and blind corners that thrust themselves out at impossible angles, but it was unmistakable. And further away on the high shoulders of the neighbouring peak it was taken up again, leading away towards a place where the summits themselves grew shorter and shrank away in time to low, tree-covered mountains and then to craggy foothills and finally to the scattered slabs and gullies of the Trollshaws on beyond Imladris.

But Aragorn had no interest at all in what lay beyond Imladris. He cared only for the fact that from this point on each step would carry him nearer to that beloved valley. No more would he have to drag himself forward just to limp back again two miles or more so that he might regain his breath through the night. No more would he have to bear the grinding discouragement of losing a step for each two that he gained. And with each forward yard, the tightness in his chest and the ache in his bones and the agony in his head would all ease. In that moment, his weary thankfulness burned in his breast like the hot tears he refused to shed.

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In that glorious moment the breaking of the pass had seemed almost like the end of the road, but it was not. The downward grade was for many miles a gentle one, and that evening Aragorn lay in almost as much discomfort as he had endured on the first night of prudent withdrawal. It was impossible to gauge by any measure how far they had descended, but his body told him plainly that it was not far enough. Morning found him short of breath, riddled with pains, and well nigh ready to claw into his own temples if only it would stop the hammering between them. He swallowed two mouthfuls of waybread and a small slice of dried apple, but his stomach was again threatening rebellion and he dared not take more. Aragorn rode in stooped misery, leaning low over Moroch’s neck with one arm hugged to his ribs. There was a sharp sting deep in his lungs now, and that boded little good, but there was nothing better he could do for it than to press on as quickly as circumstances allowed.

Gandalf knew this also, and was no longer quite so inclined to offer the chance of a halt at any moderately widened place in the trail. He insisted on stopping near noontide, and again in mid-afternoon when they came to a bubbling rill that danced down over the path. Here the wizard refilled their bottles, and the horses were allowed to drink their fill and feed a little. Their grain, like the riders’ provisions, was holding out well. That evening, however, it became plain that they were nearing the end of their firewood.

When Gandalf had laid the frugal little hearth, he examined the remains of the last bundle of wood and sighed. ‘It seems I should have had us gather more,’ he said grimly. ‘I had not anticipated spending so many days above the treeline, and we have yet more before us. It is always in such matters that my foresight fails me. Wizards too may fall to overconfidence: let no one tell you otherwise.’

‘Let us have no words of blame in this matter,’ said Aragorn, trying to find a more comfortable position in which to sit. His back was against a jutting promontory of stone that arced out above and to his left to cut the wind. ‘For we have no third party to judge who is most culpable. I am the reason for the delay, after all, though it please you to forget it. As for the fuel, we brought more than I should have done, had the decision been mine. We have no grave need of fire.’

Gandalf did not look so certain of this, but he inclined his head in vague assent. ‘Let us warm our supper at least, and enjoy the embers while they last,’ he decided. ‘The wind at least is not too fierce tonight.’

‘No…’ Aragorn murmured, looking aloft and scenting the air as best he could through blood-crusted nostrils. There was a change in the wind beyond its lesser speed, though its prime direction was constant. It was an intangible shift, like and unlike a new taste in a long-familiar dish. In the lowlands he would doubtless have been able to pinpoint the difference and what it might forebode, but he had not spent time enough in the lofty places of the world to know by instinct what was amiss. ‘It is not too fierce tonight.’

‘What is it?’ asked Gandalf, his voice low with unease and his eyes bright with fresh wariness.

‘I do not know,’ Aragorn admitted uncomfortably. ‘There is something in the air: can you feel it? What it is I cannot say. I will take the first watch tonight, and attend any further change.’

‘I think it best if we wait for that until tomorrow,’ Gandalf said levelly. ‘It is not as if you have slept well these last few nights, barring perhaps the one.’

‘That may be,’ Aragorn allowed, trying not to feel ashamed of being caught out. ‘Yet you have had no rest at all, and it will do neither of us any good if you are not at your keenest when I am incapable of my own. You may possess endurance beyond the scope of your form, but if you are too long without sleep your faculties will still be blunted.’

Gandalf’s lips twitched in discontent, but he could not argue this. They had travelled together too often over the long years: Aragorn knew the limitations of the wizard’s strength as well as the wizard knew the Ranger’s. At length Gandalf gave a curt nod. ‘You may watch for three hours, if you will not be dissuaded,’ he said. ‘But if you fail to wake me, I promise you will feel my heartiest displeasure.’

‘That is only just,’ Aragorn said, easing his grave tone with softly smiling eyes. He would have attempted as much with his lips as well, but with the rest of him his jaw was fissured with aches. It was easier to keep as still as possible.

They ate a sparing supper, for if their wood could dwindle the other supplies would do likewise in time. Then Gandalf made ready for slumber. He spread the oilcloths to shield him from the cold stone, and laid out his blanket. The other he refused to use, insisting with dreadful earnest that Aragorn must keep warm as the fire slowly died. He left a full bottle of water within the Man’s easy reach, so that he should not need to stir for anything less than calamity. Then he unbelted Glamdring and lay down with his sword and staff between his body and the mountainside. He tilted his hat over his face to shade his eyes, and soon enough the deep, slow breaths of sleep rose from beneath the broad brim.

Left now with nothing to do but listen to the growl of falling stones and the grinding creak of breaking ice high above, Aragorn found himself hard pressed to keep his mind from roaming dangerously towards anger and impatience. It was true that they no longer had to play the aggravating game of advance and retreat, but it would be some days yet before he could hope to endure a reasonable pace. Until they reached a height at which his body could shake the manifold miseries of the mountain sickness, they could not press too hard. And for many miles the descent would be slower than the climb, for it was delicate work for horses to navigate down a moderate slope with the precision needed on these narrow paths. Already this afternoon the gelding had show a worrying wish to trot, though Gandalf had managed to hold him fast. On a steeper descent, the problem would be magnified.

Again Aragorn found himself humbled with gratitude for Losfaron’s gift of Moroch’s company. She had been as steady today as at any other time on their journey together, obeying his signs promptly and fully. In the pains she took to keep from jostling her rider, she showed an almost matronly concern that was remarkably endearing. Although she would never hold in Aragorn’s heart the place reserved for his own sturdy Northern steed – stabled in luxury in the selfsame valley that now intruded upon his every idle thought – he would always think fondly of the brave young mare. She stood near him as he watched, still nibbling thoughtfully at the grain in her nosebag. When he clicked his tongue, she drew nearer and shook loose her mouth so that she could nuzzle at the side of his head.

‘In a few more days, we shall be in Imladris,’ he promised her softly, whispering so as not to rouse Gandalf. ‘There you shall rest and run free, unsaddled and without my sorry bones to carry. When you are ready, feet fleeter than mine will run homeward with you.’

She nickered softly and nibbled at the warm brown wool before lowering her head near his shoulder so that she too might sleep a little. Just beyond her, the Lórien-horse was already deep in a stuporous rest. Aragorn wondered if the grooms and horse-handlers of Rivendell would be able to coax the poor beast up out of the valley at all, once he had a taste for its comforts and serenity. At the moment, he wondered how he would be able to coax himself.

At the appointed hour he woke Gandalf. There had been no further change in the wind, nor in any other quality of the alpine night, and Aragorn had nothing to report. He lay down in the wizard’s place, his sore body relishing the warmth that lingered in the blanket. He drifted to sleep with more ease than he would have thought possible, while Gandalf settled with his back to the stony slope and warmed his hands over the last dying embers of the little fire.

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An icy slap across cheek and brow awoke Aragorn with a start. For a dazed and awful moment he did not know where he was, but felt certain that the ice had broken and Gollum was scrabbling at the rope. Any moment now he would be off down the swift-flowing current and he would be lost forever…

But Gandalf’s irritated exclamation brought him back to merciful reality. Not so merciful after all, he realized as he opened his eyes just in time to be struck again with a backsplash of water off the rocky ground. The familiar percussion of falling rain reached his ears at last, and he got up on one aching elbow with a low groan.

‘Sudden as the tipping of a washtub!’ Gandalf muttered, climbing to his feet and ramming his hat wrathfully onto his head. It was the time just before the break of dawn when the world was illuminated faintly in an eerie almost twilit glow. Even in that poor light, the pelting rain could be seen as paler streaks in the blueness. It was hammering down with enough force to splash up off of stone that moments before had been perfectly dry, and it would surely drench them within minutes.

Illogically, Aragorn tucked his face into the fold of the blanket so that he might salvage just a few more moments of consoling warmth and near-comfort. He could hear Gandalf moving swiftly around, no doubt trying to secure the flaps of the saddlebags before the rain could creep in and soak all their foodstuffs. He knew that he ought to get up to help, but his mind was sluggish and his body reluctant to obey it. He lost several seconds that might have been spent in action as he came to the slow realization that this must have been the change he had felt the previous evening: the inexplicable alteration in atmosphere as the rains rolled it.

It was a bitterly cold rain, too: so cold that it was almost a wonder that it did not come down in shards of ice instead of thin, stinging drops. When he finally found the wherewithal to emerge from his woollen shell and creak up into a sitting position, Aragorn could not suppress a shudder as the frigid water found his skin once more. Hastily he slid from the oilcloths and snatched them up off of the ground before they could be soaked on both sides. He retreated as far under the outcropping as he could and shook out the blanket, folding it deftly before beginning to roll it. Gandalf was doing the same with the other, wizened hands working with swift efficiency. In the moment of clear need and keep purpose, Aragorn forgot his aches and the persistent, grinding fatigue that clung to him much as his clothes soon would. High mountain rains were relentless and slow to move on.

He put the blanket on the drier side of the oilcloth square, and began folding the tawny tarp around it. If they could keep the blankets dry, they would at least have something to huddle under when the storm passed at last. Aragorn flung the other square to Gandalf, just as the wizard tossed a pair of binding thongs to him. Experienced wanderers both, they needed no conference to execute this hasty breaking of the camp.

The next important business was to saddle the horses before their backs grew too wet. Aragorn rubbed Moroch down with a corner of his cloak before hoisting the tack over her. She made a soft, happy sound at the pleasant sensation, but it was meant for her health rather than her pleasure. On a wet back a saddle might easily chafe and raise sores.

Quickly the horses were girded, and then there was no reason to linger here. The shelter of the shelf above was inadequate: already the water was beginning to pool on the path and run back towards the root of the mountainside. If the travellers were going to be wet and miserable, they might as well be wet, miserable and moving. The saddlebags were swiftly slung, and the covered blankets lashed atop them. In what Aragorn thought to be a fit of delirious optimism, Gandalf picked up the shrunken bundle of firewood and settled it across the gelding’s hips. Without a word the two friends mounted, and the wizard and his gelding led the way down the westward path.

It took twenty minutes for the first icy fingers of damp to penetrate the heavy wool of Sigbeorn’s cloak to tickle Aragorn’s ears and neck. By the one-hour mark, the whole garment was a sodden weight across his back and bowed shoulders. The hood dripped a steady curtain of water before his eyes, and chill rain was trickling into his hair. Less than half an hour after that his wet linen shirt was clinging to his back and arms, draining away his body’s native warmth. It took little more time for his front and his lower garments to be similarly sodden.

After that, there was nothing to do but shiver. He kept a firm hold of the reins, first with wet mittens and then – when their soggy, squelching weight was more a torment than a comfort – with bare, reddened hands. Moroch bowed her head against the lashing torrents, but she walked on as gently and as steadfastly as before. Ahead, Gandalf was a bedraggled grey lump upon the back of the long-suffering gelding, his hat bowed and dripping. The going was slow indeed, for they could not risk stumbling unknowing into a washout or a sudden flood from some swollen spring. Yet it was better to keep moving than to halt and freeze utterly.

The dreary hours dragged past, and as soon as the initial rush of urgent purpose left him, Aragorn’s pains and exhaustion settled back. The cold weight of his hood only served to to deepen rather than ameliorate his pulsing headache, and not one of his tender joints appreciated the frigid weight of his clothes. As he had feared when first he saw them, his boots with their artfully flared tops caught the rain and funneled it neatly down to bite at his toes. His most determined efforts to ignore all these bodily distresses succeeded only in settling him into a sort of muted delirium of unreality. He seemed one with Moroch, rocking with her as she walked, swaying forward when she took a steeper downward slope, swaying to one side when she moved to follow a sharp curve of the trail. Cold and wetness and dull, weary pain were his constant companions all that long, dreary day.

 lar

They found no shelter better than a towering boulder that night, but in its lee they crouched with the horses picketed close beside. The question of fuel was irrelevant now: there would have been no chance of catching a flame or keeping a fire alight in this downpour. By wordless agreement they kept the blankets snugly wrapped, though they did remove them from the saddles and tucked them into the driest corner of their sparse sanctuary. Gandalf brought the baggage too, but there was no use in removing the tack from the horses: it was better to keep the flesh beneath it dry. Neither steed seemed to question this necessity, and they both fell upon their measure of grain with a single-minded eagerness that Aragorn envied.

His own stomach was still unsettled, and a supper of damp and crumbling honey-cake did little to comfort it. The rain had crept into the saddlebags after all, and what of their breadstuffs they did not eat in the next day or so would soon moulder. The fruit would keep a little longer, though it would be an unpleasantly slimy, sticky mess from now on. The nuts and parched grains would stay edible longest, and these they would hoard for last. All these choices, too, were self-evident: there was no need for discussion as there would have been with less experienced or less familiar company.

Shoulder to shoulder with their doused backs to the mighty rock, Gandalf and Aragorn settled in to wait out the night. They drew up their knees under their sodden cloaks and tucked their heads to keep the worst of the runoff from their faces. Neither slept, precisely, though now and then Aragorn was conscious of drifting in indistinct half-waking dreams of warm rock pools in summer. At other times he could feel Gandalf’s weight more heavily upon his side as the wizard drowsed shallowly, head nodding beneath his now-misshapen hat. Pressed so near to one another, they shivered less than they might have done, but the night was wretchedly cold.

All the next day the rains persisted in their violent assault. They had come to a steeper section of the pass, and had to dismount and lead the horses much of the way. The one bright spot to this slow and unpleasant venture was that Aragorn became very quickly aware that his breathing was much improved. The deep crackle was still present in his chest, and at times he lost himself in painful flurries of coughing, but never did he find himself sucking in swift, shallow gasps that seemed incapable of sating his need for air. They had reached a level where he could respire without duress, and surely the other signs of the mountain sickness would fade in due time as well. Already his nose bled with less frequency, eased no doubt by the rain as well as the lower ground.

As evening fell the hammering floods withdrew to a steady, smoother rain that offered no prospect of drying out but at least did not beat upon head and shoulders like hard, drumming fingers. They fared a little better in that night’s quest for shelter. Searching the dusk with eyes that were still keen despite weariness and a sore head, Aragorn spied a low hollow in the rock. It was not quite a cave, but was large enough to accommodate two huddled bodies provided they were willing to lie upon their sides and press close against each other. With his legs tucked up and Gandalf near at hand, Aragorn managed a couple hours’ sleep – though he feared the poor patient horses found little.

By morning the rain was little more than a heavy mist. It offered them no hope of drying their sopping garments, but at least they could fling back soaked hoods and relieve their necks of the weight. Their breath came in billowing clouds, and the horses’ nostrils sent up flares of vapour. Aragorn’s hands burned with fiery needles, and after a time he surrendered his hold upon the rains and tucked them up under his arms. Even there he was not dry, but at least his fingers warmed a little. Moroch did not need him to guide her here, for they were far down the shoulders of the mountains now. It was impossible to tell if his joints were any better for the change, for Aragorn’s body would have ached as much with the incessant shivering as it ever had with the mountain sickness.

Still on they journeyed, now riding in dogged discomfort, now walking in boots that squelched and wept water. There were places where the trail was flooded and the horses’ hooves sent up plumes of splash, but they found no washouts and fell afoul of no mudslides. It seemed as if the mountains were choosing which misfortunes to shower on the travellers, and that they seemed determined to settle upon the most unpleasant but least deadly. Aragorn supposed there was some call to be thankful for that.

That afternoon, at last, the clouds dispersed. When they did so, they vanished with startling speed. One moment, so it seemed, the travellers were enshrouded with the penetrating mists. The next, they were bathed in the golden glow of springtime down below as the sun broke through in a broad swath that warmed their faces almost at once and cheered their hearts still more swiftly. The last mile and a half of that day’s trek were almost pleasant, and when they halted it was at a place where the path grew broad as a highway. The thin earth was already dry, and almost without a word the two travellers unsaddled the horses. Then they began shucking layers of waterlogged clothing. They wrung out what they could, and spread cloaks and cote and robes to air.

Moroch and the gelding, glad to be free of their burdens again, pranced happily about the broad space that after the cramped passages above seemed gloriously broad. Only the temptation of the nosebags finally calmed them enough that Gandalf could give them each the thorough brushing they needed. With only the one brush, Aragorn’s conscience was salved a little as he sat in a patch of orange-tinted sunlight and rested his pounding head on his knees. He felt as thoroughly wrung out as his raiment, and his lower ribs burned broadly within him, but his spirit felt lighter than it had since first his head had started to plague him on the upward slope. He could feel the sinking sun upon his forearms and his shoulders and the crown of his head. It was warming the wet cloth of his hose and would soon reach through to shin and knees. Best of all, the storm had kept them moving at a slow but constant pace – without any of the frequent rests on which Gandalf might otherwise have insisted. Every step upon that wet, frigid road had been one more step towards Rivendell.

The wood was too damp to burn well, and so they did without a fire that night. The blankets, however, had escaped the worst of the soaking. They were each damp in places and they reeked strongly of linseed, but they made for a welcome guard against the night’s chill. Leaving their outer garments to continue to dry as best they could, Aragorn and Gandalf each bundled up in a blanket and sat back to back in the shelter of the mountain. As the last of the light faded, Aragorn realized with tired awe that he could make out the branches of the squat little trees on the slope across the gorge below. They had almost reached the treeline.

Note: Chapter title from “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter LXXIV: At Journey’s End

Before they set off in the morning, Aragorn took the opportunity to check his feet. He had been too far gone in the throes of the mountain sickness to spare them any thought in recent days, and it was with some apprehension that he removed his hose now. The sight was much less disheartening than he had feared. This much could be said for the elegantly impractical boots: they fitted him perfectly. He had no blisters, not a single hot place, and no new callouses. There was some bruising at the base of each great toe, doubtless from climbing duck-footed, and a fresh purple blotch had blossomed in the crease of his right ankle, but there was nothing more serious to be seen. Even the days of wet feet had done no notable harm. It was another small stroke of good fortune to which he might cling.

The night had proved inadequate to dry their outer clothing, but at least it was no longer dripping. It was unpleasant to pull on the chilled, damp garments and feel the wet soak slowly through the body linen, shivering until the heat of their bodies warmed their raiment. Gandalf had the worst of this, for his robes were more voluminous and hence far heavier, wet or dry, than the Ranger’s new cote. Aragorn noticed with a troubled eye how the wizard’s shoulders stooped as he buckled Glamdring to his hip, and the stiff-legged way in which he mounted. The hard days of travel and long nights spent resting on unyielding stone were taking their toll.

Aragorn’s own pains were more localized now, and due as much to the vigours of the road as to the lingering sickness in his bones. His back and his hips ached from the hours in the saddle. His fingers were stiff and brittle, both because of his hold upon the reins (now truly necessary as they rode so often downhill) and because of the cold that they had not yet left behind. His neck pained him, and a low and grinding headache yet lingered. This last at least was a welcome improvement from the awful, sundering pressure behind his eyes. He might have wished for some relief from the cough and the deep, sharp pain in his ribs, but on the whole his condition was somewhat improved.

The morning’s ride was uneventful, and they reached the treeline shortly before midday. By dusk the trail was bordered on one side with the spidery roots of hardy mountain pines, and on the other by their slender, tapered tops. With the trees came a more substantive layer of soil, with moss and newly sprouted grasses on which the horses could graze. Whenever they halted, both Moroch and the gelding began to feed at once. The grain was sufficient to keep up their strength from day to day, but it did not satisfy their stomachs as fresh forage did.

Gandalf again consented to dividing the watch, provided he was the first to take his turn. Aragorn conceded that this was fair, and settled himself for a few short hours of deep, stuporous slumber. He never would have been able to find such sleep in the Wild had his ordeal on the heights not left him so worn down with weariness. Yet he woke promptly when Gandalf called to him, and that was a marked improvement.

Aragorn’s own watch was not unpleasant. The skies were clear and the stars bright, and amid the trees he heard the comforting sounds of life. Small animals scurried, and a marten chittered gleefully. Now and then there came the swoop and flutter of a diving bat. Nonetheless his throat stung with fatigue, and when the dawn came and it was time to move on, Aragorn felt only the sorry urge to sleep again. Yet rise he did and on he went. Neither doom nor dragon-fire could keep him from his destination now, and the petty discomforts of the road certainly would not.

Gandalf made no further attempts to stay the pace. He too was anxious for the haven ahead, and he knew there could be no true rest for either of them until they reached it. From the piercing looks that followed each bout of coughing, Aragorn could see how deeply the wizard’s fear for him ran. They moved onward as swiftly as the terrain and their stamina allowed. Here, where the way was not so narrow and the gullies looked less alarming, the gelding was far more cooperative. He needed a tight rein on any earnest descent, however, because he showed an inexperienced horse’s natural tendency to build up a dangerous speed at the cost of control. Moroch managed nearly as well as she had on the heights, thought it was obviously tiring for her.

In this way they moved through that day and the next without incident. They seemed to be in a tidy pattern of divided watches, steady riding, and progressively less palatable meals. The dried fruit swiftly began to taste rancid, and so they were soon left with their store of nuts, supplemented by whatever young greens they chanced to spy near the path. Aragorn’s appetite had not yet recovered from the mountain sickness, and he felt no craving for more varied fare. Neither he nor Gandalf had energy to spare for hunting. It was best to use the time they might have squandered in such pursuits pressing on towards the bountiful tables of the Last Homely House.

It was midmorning on their third day below the treeline when they came to a parting of the ways. To call it a crossroads would have been too aggrandizing, but the downward path was fractured into three distinct passages. One swung away to the northwest, carpeted in soft, sandy soil and sheltered on both sides by sheer cliff faces. The due westerly path ran along a streambed now riotous with runoff. The one that hooked to the west-southwest was the roughest and rockiest of the three, and by far the least appealing. This was, of course, by careful design. It was the path that led on, through several more false turnings and hidden ways, to Rivendell.

It was the middle path they took first, however. It led by way of an arch of pale rock to a narrow valley seeded with spruce and hardy maple. Here the stream met a rise in the stony land and spread into a shallow pool before spilling over in a small waterfall to continue its journey. It made a pleasant place to bathe on a hot summer’s afternoon, but with the stream so cold that was unappealing today. Instead the two travelers took turns to stand watch while the other washed his hands, face and neck. The horses drank and grazed in the young grasses near the water.

The icy water was invigorating, and it restored to Aragorn something like his usual clarity of thought. It was with eager impatience and fresh resolve that he mounted again, and he had to restrain himself from urging Moroch on to a gallop. The burst of enthusiasm did not last long, of course. They still had several hours of travel before them, and these dragged by as the last stage of a long journey always must. Soon Aragorn was again bowed in the saddle, his body swaying idly with the mare’s gait. His bleary eyes began to pick out familiar landmarks: a leaning rock, a particular gnarled tree, a bend in the path. When the small hairs at the nape of his neck began to prickle with the sensation that he was being watched, he knew they were drawing near. By then, however, he was too weary from the day’s long travels to muster much interest.

They rode on perhaps half a mile from that point before the silvery laughter of a wood-elf rang out. At once the gelding stopped, one forehoof raised and ears perked eagerly. Gandalf gave a tired little chuckle and called out; ‘Guardians of Imladris, show yourselves! We have travelled far, and are in no mind to play.’

‘But Gandalf, one should always be of a mind to play! Without joy, what is life?’ the laugher asked merrily, from somewhere among the trees upon the left-hand slope.

‘A worthy question, and one I will gladly debate with you when I have supped and slept,’ Gandalf said with admirable patience. ‘Come out if you would speak with us, or leave us ride on.’

‘Who have you brought with you this time, Master Wizard?’ another voice asked from the opposite side of the path. ‘One of our kindred from the Greenwood? I know the make of those boots.’

‘It is I, Faundir,’ Aragorn said softly, brushing back his hood so that the watchers could see his face. At once from both sides went up sounds of welcome and merriment.

‘Ah, Estel! Come back to us at last!’ Faundir cried, though still he did not show himself. It was a game the wood-elves loved to play with travellers, and they did not spare those who were too long familiar with it merely because they gave little sport. ‘All the house shall be glad tonight!’

‘Where have you been to, and what have you done?’ asked another. ‘We ought to be the first to hear of your deeds occasionally, you know!’

‘There is little to say this time,’ said Aragorn; ‘and I am too weary for tale-telling tonight.’

‘Too weary for tale-telling?’ cried Faundir, dismayed. ‘Then hurry onward! There are soft beds and blazing fires awaiting you, and you must be in sore need of them if you cannot muster the will to talk! Go on: the lord of the house will be wanting to see you, and it has been many long years since we have tasted his wrath!’

Another chorus of irreverent laughter sang through the trees, and the two riders went on. The happy chatter of the wood-elves died away as they passed from sight and the guardians of this path fell silent once more. Of the armed sentries there was no sign, for these travellers were known and ever welcome. The last quarter mile slipped indistinctly by, as Aragorn quietly marshaled his remaining strength and his composure.

Then they broke out of the narrow channel of stone and into the fir forest that edged the highest slopes of the valley. The fragrance of spring was rich upon the land, and the air grew warmer as they descended. The woods gave way to the high grazing lands. The shepherds were abroad with their flocks, and there were glad cries and eager waves of greeting. Gandalf returned these with a courteous nod or a wave of the hand that held the gelding’s reins, but Aragorn was too exhausted to do more than offer the smallest of smiles as Moroch rode on. She seemed to appreciate that they were drawing interested eyes, for she tossed her head merrily and stepped high and proud.

So late in the day, the grain-fields were empty. The tiny shoots speckled the dark, fertile earth, and the scent of loam and new growth was strong and sweet. The peaks beyond the western walls of the valley were stained crimson with the setting sun as the horses moved on amid the budding orchards and gentle meadows. By now the air was warm enough that the low chill that clung to Aragorn’s jaw and brow began to disperse. It had been a constant minor irritant since they first begun their earnest climb, and the relief brought with it a wave of deep exhaustion that he did not truly understand.

Gandalf slowed the gelding so that Moroch drew up beside him. ‘Here we are at last,’ he said softly; ‘and see who has come to greet you.’

At last Aragorn raised his blank gaze from the back of the mare’s graceful neck, and forced himself to focus on the path ahead. There, spread out amid the bright hues of springtime, was the Last Homely House, and before its doors stood a handful of graceful figures. Central among them was Elrond himself, tall and fair in robes of blue and silver. And beside him, clad in green with her dark hair in twin plaits down her back, was Arwen Undómiel, Evenstar of her people.

For a moment it seemed that Aragorn could not breathe. So long had he wished for this in the secret places of his heart. These last many days it had been all he could think of. Yet the reality of this homecoming now struck him with the awe and piteous joy of a dreamer who awakens from the blackest nightmare to find himself safe in his own bed in a peaceful house with nothing to fear. His lips parted soundlessly and the reins slipped from his fingers.

‘Come, now,’ Gandalf said. He was not speaking to the Man, but to Moroch. Her ears harkened eagerly to the gentle command in his voice. ‘You have borne him this far: now take him home.’

As his determined young steed picked up her pace to an eager trot, Aragorn was jolted out of his stupour in time to catch up the lines. Gandalf and the gelding were now behind, and all at once the Ranger felt a coolness fall across his face as he passed into the long shadow of the house. Moroch drew up daintily upon the greensward before it, just at the edge of the cobbled way that swept before the great doors. She stopped before the Master of the house without any order or signal, for she could discern his majesty and his intense focus upon her rider.

Elrond hastened forward, graceful but not in the least sedate. A moment later he was at Aragorn’s stirrup, and a groom was stepping forward to take Moroch’s reins. Aragorn surrendered them unthinkingly and braced his palm upon the saddle as he kicked his right foot free and swung his leg into the dismount. A strong hand found the small of his back as the sole of the hard boot struck the ground, and when he had his left foot down as well he found himself drawn at once into a loving embrace.

‘Welcome, Estel. Welcome home,’ whispered Elrond. One hand was planted between Aragorn’s shoulder blades, unwittingly atop the scars of the lynx-claws. The other cupped the back of his head, laid bare when he had pushed back his hood on the heights. Aragorn found his own arm curling to hold his foster-father, and his head drooped forward to rest upon the strong and slender shoulder. He closed his eyes and his throat at once, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity despite his weariness and his numb wonder that he was here at last, after everything. Elrond held him closer and murmured; ‘Always I rejoice when you return to us whole and living.’

Then he drew back, forcing Aragorn to bear the weight of his own head again. Elrond’s hands slipped down to grip the Man’s, grey eyes searching the haggard countenance before him. ‘You have walked a hard road: it is writ upon your very brow,’ he said. ‘Come inside and lay by your burdens a while. There will be time for tales later. Welcome, Gandalf!’ he announced then, turning his eyes but not relinquishing his hold as the wizard dismounted. ‘When together the pair of you set out, I confess I did not dare to hope you might return in the same company. It is seldom that you may walk so long upon a shared road.’

‘To my shame, we did not, Halfelven. Not for long,' Gandalf sighed as he passed off his lines to another groom and dismounted himself. There was a rush of motion against Aragorn’s cloak as Moroch was led off.

‘Care well for her,’ he called hoarsely, turning his head in the hope of following the mare’s course. A wave of dreadful dizziness took him, however, and his vision blurred. Still he finished delivering his needful order. ‘She was given into my care by a loyal friend and compatriot, and she has been faithful indeed. Moroch is her name.’

‘Yes, Lord Aragorn,’ the groom said earnestly. ‘She shall be cared for, and stabled or let to wander as she wills. The valley is a haven for all travellers, be they two-footed or four.’

Moroch gave a little nicker, equal parts worry and reassurance, as she was led gently off. Aragorn tried to clear his sight that he might catch a last glimpse of her for the evening, but he could not master himself. The hands that had been holding his moved now to his elbows.

‘You are unwell,’ Elrond said softly, so softly that of those assembled around them only Gandalf could hear. ‘Aragorn. Aragorn, look at me. What has befallen you?’

Numbly Aragorn lolled his head back towards the figure before him. He blinked sluggishly, and the tender eyes grew clearer. Still he could not speak.

‘That is too long a tale to tell in the dooryard,’ Gandalf said. ‘Let us retire within, and perhaps I can explain.’

‘Yes…’ Elrond murmured, still studying Aragorn’s face intently. ‘Yes, perhaps that would be best. Come, my child. Let us not keep you swaying on the doorstep.’ He turned and gave Aragorn his arm, while Gandalf took hold of the other. Between them Aragorn was led over the cobblestones to the foot of the steps, where he hesitated. That was perhaps too dignified a word: he balked, like the gelding on the mountain path. This was not the aspect he would have chosen to present to his guardian, to the household of his youth, to his beloved.

And there she was, standing now just off to her father’s side with loving eyes and a face of such ethereal beauty that Aragorn felt he could not breathe at all. A sweet, sad smile touched her lips. ‘Come in, Estel, and rest,’ she said. ‘You are weary from the long road. When you have been tended I will come to you.’

Aragorn’s lips parted, but he could not speak. Without the strong shoulders to either side of his own, he doubted his knees would bear him up. When Gandalf took the first stair, he found his own foot following of its own accord. Arwen stepped back, hands folded serenely, and let the trio pass. Someone opened the lofty door, and they passed through into a vestibule already lit with candles against the day’s dying.

A voice was speaking, and faintly Aragorn realized it was Elrond’s. ‘… to your chamber?’ he asked.

Gandalf shook his head. ‘Let us not trouble with the stairs,’ he said. ‘There are ready beds in the infirmary rooms, are there not?’

‘Always,’ said Elrond, and Aragorn found himself being led off into a side passage.

‘I am not wounded,’ he managed at last, as the scents of herbs and soap and clean linen reached his nose. ‘That is to say, the wounds have healed…’

‘Nay, you are not wounded!’ Gandalf scoffed. ‘Only exhausted and aching, weak from the mountain sickness and lingering starvation, and brewing a cough to strike fear in the hearts of all who know you.’

Elrond’s steps faltered. ‘The mountain sickness? It has never troubled you before.’

‘No,’ sighed Aragorn. The blind anger that thought had brought only days before was gone. It did not matter now: the delays were past and he was here. ‘I misjudged the endurance of my lungs. I did not think… I should have thought…’

He was guided over the threshold of a room bright with the crimson of day’s end. A moment later he had been turned and was sinking down upon the edge of a soft, sweet-smelling bed.

‘Leave us now, Gandalf,’ said Elrond kindly. ‘There will be a hot supper brought to your room shortly, and orders have been given for a bath to be prepared. You have need of rest yourself; that is plain for all to see. I will tend to him now.’

Aragorn’s dim eyes found the wizard, and witnessed the ebb of care from his weathered face. The worry remained, but it too was eased. ‘I am glad for it,’ Gandalf said quietly. ‘I have been of little help, and I have feared for him. You may find him stubborn: all the rest of us have. I wish you luck.’

Elrond laughed softly as the wizard withdrew, closing the door to the little booth behind him. Then the nimble, capable hands were unclasping the star at Aragorn’s shoulder.

‘Have you need of water?’ the Elf-lord asked as he eased the cloak from the Ranger’s back and let it lie across the coverlet. The brooch he placed on the table by the bed. ‘Food will soon be brought. I can see you have need of it. You are very thin, Estel. What privations have you endured in your wearisome hunt?’

Startled by the realization that no word of their success had yet been spoken, Aragorn raised his head with more vigour than he had imagined he might yet possess. ‘Not in the hunt, but in the escort of my prisoner,’ he said. ‘Gollum is found, and he has been questioned. I led him North with what speed I could, but the road was hard. We must take council at once, for what we have learned will—’

‘What you have learned can wait until the morrow,’ said Elrond gently. He had unbuckled the worn leather belt and he drew it from Aragorn’s waist. He balanced the knife hanging from it and held the leathern strap in his hands, fingering the line of notches from the cracked place to which it had been girded when the Ranger last took his leave of Imladris to the hastily cut holes, to those punched in Lóthlorien. His fingertips lingered on the last two: the furthest obviously used, and the second freshly stretched by the tongue of the buckle. His eyes fell on Aragorn, mournfully knowing.

‘Ai, Estel,’ he breathed. Then he closed his eyes and drew in a deep, level breath. When next he spoke, it was with the calm gravity of one asking tidings of a traveller from afar. ‘You were separated from Gandalf, and then reunited?’

‘We parted ways in Harondor,’ Aragorn murmured, tilting back his chin as Elrond reached to loosen the lace of his cote. ‘He to make for Minas Tirith in search of… of corroborating evidence; and I to the East to continue the hunt. I despaired at last, but in that very hour – or near enough – I found him, the stinking little wretch. We two had a long and lonely road to Thranduil’s hall. There was little time for rest, and oft did we both go hungry. I confess that is the chief ill I have done myself, but it could not be avoided.’

‘I see.’ Elrond’s voice was still perfectly tranquil, but there was a tumult of torment in his eyes. ‘And the wounds of which you spoke?’

‘A twisted ankle, a few claw-marks,’ said Aragorn, not feeling that it was important at this time to mention where he had come by such marks, or what manner of creatures had caused them. ‘There was bruising to my flank that harmed the right kidney, but that has healed of its own accord as such hurts must. The healers of Thranduil did all they could to aid me. It is my lungs that are most troublesome now…’

‘So I can hear,’ said Elrond. The cote was open to the waist now, and he slipped his hand inside to spread it over Aragorn’s ribs through the fine linen of his shirt. Unfailing as always, he found the place where the ache was deepest. ‘Breathe for me, Aragorn.’

He drew in a deep, slow breath through his nostrils, and then tried to exhale steadily through pursed lips. But his self-control failed him and he burst into a series of wet, anguished coughs that sent him bent double over his lap. Elrond’s hand followed the curvature of his body, keeping its steady pressure. The other lent support to Aragorn’s shoulder as he crumpled forward, wheezing thinly between explosions of rattling air. When at last he was left to shallow gasping and watering eyes, Elrond withdrew his hand.

‘Gandalf spoke aright: it is starvation,’ he said. He went to a table beneath the window, and returned with a chalice of water. ‘Drink, and try to catch your breath. Small wonder you fell prey to the mountain sickness if you can scarcely find air enough in the valley. Why did you not linger longer in Mirkwood? It is no burden for Thranduil to house you.’

From over the top of the silver cup, Aragorn cast agonized eyes upon his father. Elrond’s puzzlement faded to deepest comprehension and sorrow. A moment later he too was seated on the side of the bed, and drawing Aragorn to him in a gentle embrace. He guided the Man’s head down upon his shoulder and held his far arm with the other hand, as he had held him in his boyhood.

‘You must tell me, when you are able, what burdens your valiant heart,’ Elrond whispered. ‘For now, let it be enough that you are home at last. You must eat a little, and then you may sleep. I will see to your other hurts tomorrow, if you will give me your word that the cough is the worst of it.’

‘It is,’ Aragorn sighed. ‘Of the hurts of my body, it is now the worst. All the rest are healed or healing.’

Elrond nodded, unquestioning as Gandalf would not have been. He stroked Aragorn’s hair, somewhat matted from the trail but still cleaner than it had been for most of his journey. ‘I praise Elbereth that you have returned to us, Estel,’ he said. ‘Whenever you walk the dark places it is a gift and a mercy to have you come out again, however you do so. Remember that.’

Aragorn gave his silent oath that he would try.

lar

He awoke befuddled and still weary to the bone in a sunlit room. The fair carven beams above the bed left him for a moment disoriented and certain that he had not wakened at all, but slipped into a deep and bittersweet dream of his childhood home. In that moment, Aragorn’s heart was wrung with bitterest despair. Soon, if not at once, he would have to wake up, and when he did he would find himself in some lonely, desolate place and shackled to the most loathsome companion Morgoth himself could have conceived.

But then he heard the call of a lark beyond his window, and he felt the soft contours of the feather bed beneath him, and he saw how the ephemeral shadow of the fine cambric curtains shimmered on the wall, and he knew that it was true after all. He was awake, and he was in Rivendell, and his long and terrible journey was behind him. It was a sweet spring morning, and he was home.

The effort required to rouse himself from bed was a great one.  His body ached as though he had been flung from a great height and then pummelled by a hill-troll. Just pushing back the bedclothes took a concerted act of will and might. When he was at last sitting with his feet on the floor and his elbows on his knees, Aragorn felt as if he had run the perimeter of the valley twice over. He coughed shallowly, praying it would not awaken any deeper spasm. Mercifully it did not, and he slowly uncurled to face the day.

He had dim recollections of being helped out of his cote and hose by Master Elrond, and of being presented with a tray of food from which he could only graze. He had been too tired to chew, and his stomach more interested in resting quietly against his spine than in relief from its emptiness. In the end he had been put to bed, as he confirmed now, in his travel-soiled body linen. His garments were draped over a chair in the corner of the room, and he eventually roused himself to put them on.

It was with some amusement that Aragorn laced up the artfully embellished tunic and put his feet into the handsomely tooled boots. He was at last in a place where such garments belonged. He was grateful for them at this moment, too, for if he had come to Imladris in the rags he had been wearing when brought before Thranduil, there would have been no hope of being put so swiftly to bed. Each rent and tear and bloodstain would have had to have been investigated upon his body, and the tending of those scabs and scars and shadows of old hurts would have lasted long into the night.

He washed his face and hands, and raked back his hair from his face. Reconsidering, he picked up the comb that sat on the washstand, and returned to the chair to brush out the tangles. It was a tiring business, and left him sorely tempted to crawl back into the kindly shelter of that bed. It was surely his imagination, but it seemed so much more comfortable than the one he had been given in Thranduil’s palace. Certainly the air was sweeter, with the freshness of spring coming through the narrowly opened window. When he felt able, Aragorn rose and went to it, pushing it to its full range and letting the dewy air come in. The Sun was on the other side of the house, and by its shadow Aragorn estimated that he had been abed for at least eleven hours. He felt much stronger for it, though by no means wholly restored.

His stomach, at least, had awakened. He found that he was ravenous. Drawing back from the window he made a last cursory search of the room. Sigbeorn’s cloak was gone, no doubt for cleaning, but the silver star of the Dúnedain still stood on the table by the bed. Aragorn took it up and pinned it at his breast, fingertips hovering upon it for a moment of reverent wonder. He had believed it lost forever when he had fled the orcs in Ithilien. The tale of its discovery and how it had found its way back to him was one of the most wondrous of the entire journey.

The infirmary corridor was quiet, and all the other doors open upon vacant rooms. Aragorn left his own similarly ajar, for the sheets would have to be changed and the wash-water carried off. At another time he might have started in on these chores himself, but at the moment his desire for breakfast was clouding any other thoughts. He had just reached the end of the corridor when a quiet voice called him back.

‘Lord Aragorn?’ The sombre infirmarian had come out of the dispensary, wiping his hands on a snowy towel. ‘I was to fetch your breakfast once you wakened.’

Aragorn smiled, feeling it in the very deepest places of his heart. The air of Rivendell always seemed to have that effect upon him: it enhanced and enriched his joys, and muted his sorrows. Even the manifold aches of his hard-used body seemed healthy rather than pernicious this morning: the first rebuilding of strength after his idle convalescence.

‘I am well enough to seek my own breakfast, Ancalimon: thank you,’ he said. ‘Have you also instructions to inform my father of my waking?’

Mourning eyes brightened just a fraction. Sorrowful and so often silent, the infirmarian had nonetheless been very fond of a certain young pupil of the arts physic, and that fondness had carried forward through the years. ‘You know the Master well, my lord,’ he said.

Aragorn nodded. ‘As well as it is possible for a mortal to know him, I think,’ he said. ‘You may be relieved of that duty: I shall seek him out myself. There are tidings he must be given, and no doubt he will have questions.’

‘No doubt,’ said Ancalimon, but he asked none of his own. Circumspection was an infirmarian’s most valuable trait, apart from compassion. ‘Go and eat, my lord, and I shall see to the room.’

Aragorn thanked him, and went on his way. The infirmary was handy to the kitchens, though far enough removed that the scents of cooking would not disturb patients unsettled in their humours. There he was greeted eagerly by such of the cooks as lingered there in mid-morning. His polite request for food was not necessary: at once they sat him down and laid a bountiful breakfast before him. His eyes could scarcely take it all in, much less his mouth, but he took a thick slice of the fresh Elven bread, still faintly warm from its baking, and a small helping of eggs. His appetite proved far smaller than its voice, for after those were devoured he had space only for another little piece of bread before he could eat no more. Reassuring the head cook that his skill had not diminished, but only the diner’s capacity, Aragorn took his leave.

By now, no doubt, Gandalf had briefed Elrond on the particulars of their parting and the worrisome reunion in the halls of the Elvenking. Aragorn knew the wizard too well to suppose he had disclosed the details of Gollum’s interrogation or the contents of Isildur’s strange record. These were matters of vast import and consequence, and fit for a formal council between the three of them. But the other he certainly would have shared, and in that Elrond would likely have taken the greater interest last night. It was likely that the Master of the house would be in his study at this hour, and it was there that Aragorn hoped to find him.

First, however, he stopped to make a request of those who saw to the needs of the household that a bath be drawn in his chambers. He would feel far more able to cope with his foster-father’s questions if clean and clad in his own clothing. The fine cote that Thranduil’s tailor had orchestrated for him was certainly elegant enough, but it was also a reminder of his dependency and of the ignominious circumstances that had brought him to the point of needing it.

He was in the front corridor, striding stiffly for the stairs, when the voice that most often lived only in the secret places of his heart rang out to him. ‘Estel. You awaken.’

Aragorn’s heart faltered in his breast as he turned and beheld her, thrice as lovely now as she had been the night before. Her hair was loose beneath its net of stars, and her gown was of a pale coral hue perfectly suited to the season. Upon her brow rested wisdom and grace, and in her eyes there was radiant love.

‘Vanimelda,’ he murmured, unable to say more. Beauteous and beloved: was there any more perfect description of his lady?

They did not run to one another, for she was too stately and he too sore, but they closed the distance between them swiftly nonetheless. Arwen held out her hands to him, and Aragorn took them from below. They clasped one another palm to palm, his roughened fingers curling over to touch delicate knuckles with skin soft as velvet. For a moment they looked into one another’s eyes with tenderness and that deep abiding love that neither time nor distance nor bitter labours could dim. In that perfect instant, Aragorn felt a bliss that he had almost forgotten himself capable of feeling. It was as if the miserable road behind him had never been walked at all.

Then Arwen’s eyes changed, widening and seeming to darken all at once. Her lips parted in dismay and she closed the chaste distance between them – half of each of their arms’ easy reach, as they always stood where Master Elrond might see them and be pained. Suddenly she was near enough that her right shoulder nearly touched Aragorn’s left, and she was no longer straight before him.

‘Your hands!’ she cried softly. She held his left now with both of her own, her fingers searching the cracks and fissures and the coarse new skin growing over frost-blisters and chilblains. Her gaze was still fixed intently upon his face, searching it with the piercing eyes of their shared kindred. How disconcerting it was, Aragorn thought, to have such eyes trained upon himself! ‘What has happened to your hands?’

Aragorn used his suddenly bereft right palm to cup her slender elbow. His fingers snagged on the fine silk, and through it he could feel her warmth, her realness. ‘The hands of a swordsman are always rough,’ he demurred.

The sweet pity in her eyes shamed him before she could voice their clear protest: not like this. He cast down his gaze. ‘I was caught bare-handed in winter lands,’ he confessed. ‘It is naught but the cost of hard weathering. They shall soften back to their customary coarseness soon enough.’

The worry upon her brow dimmed a little, and she was able to tear away from his face. Reflexively she looked down, twining her fingers with his while her other palm stroked the back of his hand as if she might speed its healing. Then her mouth moved in fresh horror and she snatched for his right hand as well, pushing back his sleeve to bare the wrist. Only when she stared from one arm to the other did he understand. She had seen the scarlet bracelet of scarring where Gollum’s rope had chafed away his skin, and she was looking for its mate upon the other wrist.

‘My captive’s halter,’ Aragorn explained. ‘I could not always be trusted to keep hold of it, and my first rope was poorly made.’

When she looked up at him again, her silvery eyes were glittering with tears that she refused to shed; tears not of sorrow, he knew, but of relief. Her thumb grazed the place on his right wrist where there was still the faint white ring of an old mark. ‘You must learn to take greater care,’ she said unsteadily, trying to smile. ‘Did not your mother caution you always to carry your mittens?’

A huff of air that was almost a laugh passed Aragorn’s lips. He knew that he was now smiling down upon her in earnest amusement. ‘Aye, she did,’ he said, relishing her teasing wit. ‘And never before have I so rued being a disobedient son.’

Arwen’s own laugh was light and bright as mithril, painted only a little with the lingering anxiety she could not quite hide. She reached to touch the side of his face, the back of her forefinger stroking from the temple to the hollow beneath his cheekbone. She did not say it, but this too he read clearly in her eyes: how thin you are. Then she swept up a trailing tendril of hair and hooked it lovingly behind his ear.

‘You are quite overgrown,’ she declared. ‘Did you not shear it once all the time you were away?’

‘I cut away the worst of the mats in Lóthlorien,’ he told her. It was good to have her focus on something inconsequential, something which amused rather than wounded her. She knew it, of course. ‘But no. Not once in all the time I was away did I shear it. I did not want to come back looking like a balding cat.’

The truth was that he had hardly spared a thought for his hair unless it was to get it clean again. It was well down his shoulder blades now; as long as an Elf-lord’s, and looking it now that it was combed free of its tangles. Arwen had stepped back a pace, and she was drawing a hank of it away from his head with an appraising eye.

‘When you have eaten I shall cut it,’ she decided. ‘Do not think that you may dissuade me in this, Dúnadan, for I come of strong-minded stock.’

‘Never, my Lady,’ he said with playful meekness. ‘And in sooth I have already eaten. Yet may I beg a boon?’

Arwen tilted her head to one side in scholarly consideration. ‘You may,’ she said, merrily prim.

‘Let me go first and bathe,’ he said. ‘I would like, too, to lay by these garments before Glorfindel chances to see them. You are too gracious to laugh, but he will not be.’ It took a great effort to keep his face grave through this speech.

Again she looked down, this time taking in the garments of drab green and rusty brown, with their extravagant appliqués and dainty needlework. The effect was scarcely muted by the mudstains at the hem. ‘You masquerade as a wood-elf, I see. Yes, I suppose I can suffer you to bathe and to don something less gaudy.’ Lightly she fingered one of the oak leaves picked out at his throat. ‘The stitching is very fine,’ she said, pleased beyond an artist’s mere approval.

Aragorn tucked his head to look at her slender and sublimely skilled hand, the Ring of Barahir heavy upon her first finger in token of their troth. ‘Never so fine as yours,’ he whispered.

Arwen laid her palm upon his breast and her merriment gave way to earnest solemnity. ‘I am blessed to have you return to me, Estel. That you do so triumphant is a secondary matter.’

As ever she saw more deeply into his heart than at first it seemed. This was her gentle way of telling him that the self-doubt that haunted him and the shame of despairing of his quest and abandoning it – however briefly—meant nothing to her. Aragorn’s throat was suddenly tight, and his love seemed to ache beneath her touch. He took her other hand and kissed it, though he knew she now felt the roughness of his lips as well.

‘How can I not return,’ he asked; ‘when such a welcome awaits me?’

‘Remember it,’ she said, almost fiercely. ‘You know not what it is to be the one who waits.’

Aragorn took his leave from her then, ascending the stairs with a firm hand upon the bannister. His right ankle protested this unfamiliar motion, for it had not truly been tried upon such steps before. By the time he reached the first landing, his chest was tight and the cough riding high in his throat. The effort of winning through to the corridor that housed his rooms left him drained to the bone. Yet he went in and found that the fire in his anteroom had been lit. Soft shoes had been set at the hearth to warm, and clean towels and fresh garments had been laid out for him. A large tub had been brought and filled with water that steamed with the scent of fragrant oils. A tray of wine and sweetmeats sat upon a low stool beside the bath. And on its velvet plinth upon the mantel lay the shards of Narsil, waiting for their master to bear them once again. Aragorn stood motionless in this familiar space, unable at first to move or to form any thought but the one that filled his heart and dazzled his reason and soothed his battered body.

He was home.

Chapter LXXV: Gentle Wisdom

Aragorn did not trouble to make a thorough inventory of his healing hurts, for Elrond would want to see to that himself. Instead he shucked his trail-stained raiment and climbed swiftly into the tub. He washed himself slowly, letting the deliciously hot water soak the first layer of ache from his sinews and soothe his sore joints. He lingered until the water grew cold enough to send the occasional shiver up his exposed arms. Then he emerged and stoked the fire so that he might towel himself dry before its merry glow. What a luxury it was, to be bathed and warm and secure in these familiar surroundings.

At last he dressed, donning fresh linens and a pair of half-hose followed by a long, gracefully cut tunic of a sedate slate grey with guards and collar of crimson. It had been well-chosen from his modest wardrobe of Elven garments, for it was of warm wool velvet and exceedingly comfortable to wear, while still giving Aragorn the comfortable feeling of being suitably clad for his environs. In place of a belt there was a soft red sash, which he tied loosely in hopes of disguising how the garment (which until now had always fitted beautifully) gathered into thick folds about his waist. He did not quite have the courage to go into his bedchamber in search of the glass, so he smoothed his damp hair by feel before sitting to knot the latchets of his shoes. Idly Aragorn reflected that he would have to seek out his bootmaker.

At last, clean and clad and cloaked in a confidence that had been beyond him last night, he emerged from his suite of rooms. He had intended to seek out Arwen, as they more or less had arranged that he should, but as he came to the stairs Aragorn found his sense of duty pricking at him. He owed Elrond the courtesy of morning greetings, and arrangements had to be made for the full accounting of what had been learned. So he made instead for his foster-father’s study.

The door was closed, which was unusual and a sure sign the room was occupied. There was no need to close it when its master was absent for none in the valley would be so impudent as to trespass. Aragorn composed himself and drew in a cautiously shallow breath before knocking respectfully.

‘Enter, my son,’ said Elrond from within.

Aragorn remembered how, as a small child, it had so long amazed him that his father could recognize him with the aid of neither sight nor word. It had taken him years to understand, and far longer to gain some measure of that skill himself: the observation of another’s patterns of motion, their customary scent, the sound of their breath. He did not possess the flawless senses of the Elves, but he did well with those he had. He too would have been able to identify a well-loved caller by his knock.

He opened the door and stepped into the room. It was no surprise, given the implicit command for privacy, that Gandalf was seated in one of the chairs by the fire. It was lit and roaring invitingly. The windows of this room faced southwest towards the broad curve of the ravine, and at this time of year the room remained cool well into the afternoon.

‘You look better for your long slumber,’ Gandalf said, his voice perfectly composed but his eyes softened by sudden solace.

‘Why, thank you, dear friend,’ Aragorn said with an impudent grin, making light of his own condition the night before rather than the wizard’s concern. ‘I know what stock you put in my appearance, and I am pleased to be able to meet with your approval.’

‘Sit with us, Aragorn,’ Elrond said, motioning to the empty chair beside his own. That was something that had never lost its mystique. There were several movable seats in the study, before the hearth nd near the desk and on the far side of the room in the alcove of bookshelves. Yet precisely the necessary number always seemed to be where they were wanted when they were wanted, however unplanned the gathering. Today the reasoning behind the placement was obvious, but such was not often the case.

Aragorn drew nearer and sat, having to shift about somewhat until he found a position that did not amplify his aches. His hips and lower back, it seemed, were still strained from the long ride.

‘I trust you have eaten?’ asked Elrond. Aragorn nodded: today this most routine of host’s questions was not in the least rhetorical. ‘I am glad. Gandalf has been telling me of his labours in Minas Tirith. I need scarcely say that what he has found is remarkable.’

‘Perhaps, though at the last it will prove little more than a tool of corroboration, I think,’ said Gandalf. ‘What we have learned from Gollum makes it almost certain that the Ring in question is indeed the One. I no longer have any doubt.’

‘Nor I,’ said Aragorn. ‘Yet each must judge for himself. It is a strange tale, and it came to us in fragments much diluted with incensed ravings – to say nothing of complaints about my conduct.’

Elrond looked questioningly to Gandalf at this. The wizard cast his eyes heavenward, long-suffering. ‘The creature known as Gollum – Sméagol was his name, long ago ere he lost himself to malice – is devoted to the craft of manipulation, though not especially skilled in it. He squandered much effort in trying to turn me against his captor, doubtless hoping to win and use my sympathy. It need not be said that he had no truth on which he might draw.’

Aragorn felt a sickening twist of unease amid his innards, but Gandalf went on and he was compelled to follow.

‘We shall tell you the tale as we have cobbled it together, I think,’ said the Istar. “For if we tried to reconstruct it as we heard it, we three would sit here for many days, and you, Elrond, would be driven half-mad with frustration despite your forbearing nature.’ Elrond motioned gently that the tale should begin, and Gandalf let out a puff of air before setting out with a storyteller’s cadence.

‘Many years ago, there dwelt a little, hole-dwelling folk amid the vales of Anduin. Among them there was a certain family of some wealth and unimpeachable repute. It was led by a stern old grandmother, and of that household was a crafty and curious-minded youth by the name of Sméagol…’

So begun the labourious retelling of Gollum’s strange history. At times Gandalf would lapse into considering silence, or look to the Ranger for substantiation. Then Aragorn would take up the tale a while. When his memory blurred or he came to something he had not heard from Gollum’s own lips, Gandalf would resume the narrative.

It was the first time Aragorn had troubled to think of Gollum’s story in sequence, and somehow that made it yet more terrible. Even worse was to see it all reflected in Elrond’s eyes, though his face maintained its serene smoothness. Dismay at the account of the murder and the taking of the Ring, dawning comprehension as Gandalf explained how they had deduced the location of Gollum’s old home, and ageless sorrow when Aragorn related what the creature had said of his grandmother’s treasures: all these and more played in Elrond’s eyes. He nodded sombrely when the tale intersected with Bilbo’s, and listened with calculating interest to the reconstruction of Gollum’s later travels. He knew much of the efforts to find the creature’s trail during these years. Doubtless he was doing as the hunters had done, and marking the places where the story intersected with their findings.

‘Then having lingered for a time in Harondor, amid a mucky swamp quite sufficient to befoul a man from head to toe,’ Gandalf said at last; ‘it seems that Sméagol turned his eyes upon the Mountains of Shadow.’

He sat back, for his part of the tale was ended. Aragorn swallowed his trepidation and picked it up with care. ‘From what I was able to gather, he dwelt amid a system of caves not unlike that where he had made his home for so long beneath the Hithaeglir,’ he said. ‘It opened on a maintained pass patrolled by the orcs of Sauron, and they were troubled by looting and an unseen spy. I came upon a small passage, impassable to one of my size, through which long toes had propelled a body on its belly, and I believe this passage led – as the door I took my self eventually did – to the pass above Cirith Ungol.’

At last Elrond’s expression changed beyond the shifting of feeling in his eyes. His lips tightened and his brows knit nearer one another. He drew his hand across his mouth and said quietly; ‘That is an evil place.’

‘It is,’ Aragorn agreed soberly. Then he took a firm hold of the right armrest of his chair and pushed himself up more straightly in it. The time had come at last to tell what he had witnessed there. ‘Well named it was, and the Lair adjacent to it. There dwells still a spider in those dread caves. So monstrous a beast I have never seen. More like unto Ungoliant herself it was, vast and terrible. One of the spiders of Mirkwood – accounted by us until this time to be the largest yet left living – fled Torech Ungol. This greater spider followed and trussed it up to be devoured.’

Elrond hissed in hushed revulsion, and Gandalf stiffened in his chair and fixed piercing eyes upon the Ranger. Aragorn strove to appear unaffected by the wizard’s stare and the questions within it. He went on, presenting his report as a soldier must. ‘Whether the pass itself is yet open, I do not know. It is quite possible that this spider permits no one to traverse her doorstep. I came upon it by an avenue unlooked-for, and I did not tarry. It was a choice between returning to that fetid darkness and descending into Imlad Morgul. I chose the latter.’

‘You came through this spider’s lair,’ Gandalf said, slow clarification upon his tongue but fire in his eyes. ‘From the system of caves in the Ephel Duath, you emerged within Torech Ungol, and you witnessed this… unholy ritual. Yet you have not seen fit to grace me with this information until now?’

‘There was no need,’ Aragorn said. His voice was rough, but he could not help it. ‘We had more pressing matters to hand, but now it must be added to the dark lore we have gathered about Mordor and its borders, lest there be need for others to travel where I have walked.’

‘And have you told us all?’ challenged Gandalf. ‘There is much about this journey that you are keeping to yourself, Aragorn, and that gives me more cause for fear and regret than any tale of terrors might.’

Aragorn doubted this, but did not dispute it. ‘I have told all that is relevant to our intelligences,’ he said as levelly as he was able. ‘The rest is best forgotten.’

Gandalf opened his mouth to speak again, wrath and worry flashing in his eyes, but Elrond raised a hand for peace. ‘Let the matter rest,’ he said soothingly. ‘Never has Aragorn’s judgment been proved unsound: ever he tells us what it is needful that we know. Those who walk hard roads are entitled to some measure of privacy, as you known from your own experiences, Gandalf.’ His eyes held the wizard’s sharply. ‘I recall a certain wanderer who would not disclose the details of his foray into the dungeons of Dol Guldur, however he was pressed. And he was under the joint questioning of Saruman and the Lady Galadriel.’

At this Gandalf scowled, but said nothing. Unsure of the wisdom of raising his voice again, Aragorn nonetheless pressed on with his tale. ‘In descending the stairs, I found one lately broken,’ he said. ‘Assuredly less than a year before, and I would guess less than eight months. The edges were little worn by the elements, and even in that hated land the rains must fall. I have no hard proof, but I believe that Gollum went down that way as well, rather than into Mordor itself. If that is so, it is not unlikely that he was taken by the Ularí or their servants.’

Elrond’s face drained of all colour, and of the last pretext of tranquility. ‘Taken?’ he cried. ‘Taken by the Enemy? Questioned?’

‘There can be no doubt of that,’ said Aragorn softly, knowing well the horrors now circling in his father’s mind. ‘From him there can be no doubt that Sauron’s servants wrung the whole tale in the end, much as we heard it in our turn. With that, the Enemy will have the name of Baggins and the knowledge that he dwells in a place called the Shire. Yet fortune has looked upon us, for neither Gollum nor Sauron know where such a land might lie.’

For a moment, the Elf-lord sat in wordless disbelief at this assurance. Then he closed his eyes and sighed, bowing his head to pinch the bridge of his nose. ‘Osgiliath has not fallen,’ he said. ‘Therefore the Nine have not been dispatched west of Anduin. Sauron’s spies will doubtless be searching, but they have not found it yet.’

‘Precisely,’ said Gandalf with earnest relief. ‘The world is wide, and Gollum’s understanding of where Bilbo came from is hazy at best. He seemed to think our friend an itinerant fortune-seeker moving from hoard to hoard based on advance intelligence. His assumption, I think, was that he dwelt somewhere between Celebrant and Gladden, where Gol—Sméagol’s folk lived long ago.’

‘Natural enough,’ said Elrond. His colour was returning, and it was plain that his heart was slowing to its ordinary rhythm. ‘Yet this is not good news: it is only fair to say it is not now disastrous. The watchers of the Enemy will discover it in time, if they must search the whole of Middle-earth to do it.’

‘And it very well may come to that,’ said Gandalf. ‘The Shire is well nigh as far from Mordor as one could hope, without bordering upon the Endless Ice.’

Aragorn nodded assent to this. ‘To Sauron, as to the folk of Gondor, no doubt what was Arthedain is now a deserted wilderness bereft of all but woodsmen and wanderers. Were I in his position, I would not look first that way.’

‘Which way would you look?’ Gandalf asked earnestly. He valued the Ranger’s opinion in such matters; perhaps more than ever now that his instincts with respect to the hunt for Gollum had proved out.

‘First up and down Anduin, as he no doubt is doing,’ Aragorn said. ‘Then westward into the sparsely populated swaths of Gondor between Pinnath Gelin and the Sea. From there, North, but making a thorough search from West to East or East to West at no more than hundred-mile intervals. Impossible for one spy, achievable for many – but not quickly. North of Isengard the land broadens immensely. Sauron must also explore the possibility that the Shire lies not West but East, if he accepts Gollum’s hypothesis of a wandering thief. That search will be swifter, for he can send forth the Nine without first vying with Gondor for the bridge.”

Gandalf wore a look of frank admiration, and Elrond nodded. ‘It seems most logical,’ he said; ‘provided it does not occur to Sauron that Bilbo may have been travelling through the High Pass to Erebor.’

‘If it does,’ said Aragorn grimly; ‘you will be the first to know it.’

Elrond gave him the faintest of smiles. ‘Fear not, Estel,’ he said. ‘The valley is secure even against the Nine. Let it be a comfort that I shall have warning if they pass this way.’ He let a silence drift over the room, giving each of them time to collect their thoughts. Then at last he asked; ‘How, then, did the creature escape Mordor? From you, Gandalf, I know that extricating oneself from the dungeons of Sauron is no light undertaking. Aragorn, you have made it plain before, and again today, that to leave the Black Land is well nigh as difficult.’

‘That is the question that has plagued me since I captured him,’ said Aragorn. ‘He was put to torment, and the marks of it were raw upon his hands when I found him. Doubtless he would never have betrayed his knowledge of his Precious otherwise. Yet to escape such an interrogator he must have had help, or at the least abetment. If they did not turn him loose as their agent with direct orders, he was certainly permitted to escape with ease.’

‘He remains adamant that he did so by his own wiles,’ said Gandalf; ‘but I cannot believe that any more than Aragorn does. What mischief he might have done had he not fallen so soon within the clutches of our great huntsman I dare not guess.’

‘I found him in the Marshes of Dagorlad,’ explained Aragorn. ‘He was crouching by the fell waters, paddling in them as if in a clear-running brook. We grappled hard in his taking, for he is strong almost beyond belief for his size and leanness. Yet I took him at last, and drove him North. The only useful information I was able to extract from him in fifty days and nine hundred miles has already been told.’

‘I see.’ Elrond looked from one traveller to the other, and sighed. ‘We must determine what is to be done, and who else to take into our confidence,’ he said. ‘Yet the hungry must also be fed, and if you will pardon my brief absence I shall go to make arrangements for food to be brought hither. I do not think any among us would be able to enjoy a pleasant meal among the folk in the dining hall just now.’

There was no disputing of this, and Elrond withdrew from the room. When they were alone, Aragorn steeled himself and turned back to face Gandalf.

‘I did not tell you of the spider before because it seemed too dreadful to ponder long,’ he confessed, before the question could be put to him again. ‘When first we spoke of the pass, I was not myself. Since then I have had weighty matters aplenty to prey upon my mind. I must ask that you understand my reticence, if you cannot forgive it.’

Gandalf sighed. ‘It is not a question of faults in need of forgiveness,’ he said wearily. ‘I am in a great part responsible for leaving you to face those perils alone, and I would rest easier in my mind if I knew precisely what they were. You would not have told me of the orcs had I not known to press you, and now there is this. What more are you keeping to yourself? What of your passing through Morgul Vale?’

Aragorn knew his eyes were pleading, but he could not school them. ‘Do not ask me to speak of it,’ he implored softly. ‘I do not wish to think on it.’

Now it seemed he could feel the cold tendrils of despair twining fast about his brain, slithering in through his nostrils and closing about his heart. He could feel the assault upon his mind’s defences: the casual cruelty with which the lone Nazgúl had violated and penetrated his thoughts. The struggle to fend it off had been dreadful enough, but the means of doing so had been its own humiliation. Not the use of Bilbo’s riddle-song, for that had allowed him to cling to his true self beneath the wretched prostration (and quite likely saved him from madness), but the other. It was the need to diminish himself, not merely to seem but to become base and worthless and unworthy of notice, that lingered like the shame of some enforced and unspeakable defilement. He had cowered in the mud of the Dead Marshes to escape the attentions of Denethor’s son. A thousand times that ignominy he had created in his mind to elude the Ringwraith.

Gandalf rose and drew near, standing at Aragorn’s left side and reaching to place a hand upon his shoulder. He could offer no consolation that would erase the evil memories, but he could provide a firm anchor in the safety and the dignity of the present. Clean body, clean clothes, hurts healing and horrors fading: Aragorn was here in this most cherished refuge, among those who loved him and saw his true worth, and beyond that had hope of still greater worth to come. The rest was behind him now. There was no need to remember.

The door opened and Elrond was back. He approached the tableau with searching eyes, doubtless divining the nature if not the particulars of the scene that had developed in his absence. He resumed his chair and fulfilled Aragorn’s most immediate need by saying pleasantly, as though nothing had transpired at all; ‘We shall be served in a quarter of an hour. I have requested cold meats and the like, for I think it wise that we do not dine too heavily before the coming counsels.’

Gandalf grunted his approval before giving the Ranger’s shoulder a last consoling squeeze and returning to his seat. Aragorn fought to counterfeit self-control as he said; ‘That sounds most pleasant. I confess my stomach cannot tolerate fare too rich, though I trust that will improve swiftly now that I may indulge it at will.’

‘Did they not feed you in Mirkwood?’ Elrond said lightly, covering his own hurt and dismay at the thoughts of what lay in the long days behind Thranduil’s tables.

‘Oh, aye, diligently,’ said Aragorn. ‘Yet it seems that organ has shrivelled within me. It was no unfortunate thing on the heights, for glutting oneself on travel fare is never as satisfying as it ought to be.’

‘As if you have ever glutted yourself in the Wild,’ Gandalf scoffed, half teasing.

‘We must discuss your building-up regimen,’ said Elrond; ‘though the particulars can wait. I would like to see you taking of wine at each meal, however, and you must not go to your bed without first feeding.’

Aragorn bowed his head to acknowledge the sense of this, and they passed the minutes until the food was brought in inconsequential talk that not one of the three would afterwards remember.

lar

Elrond closed the door gently behind the attendant bearing away the tray of empty dishes and what food remained uneaten. He stood before it with his fingers on the handle and his back to the rest of the study for a long moment, as if deep in private thought. Then he drew in a steady breath and turned, perfectly composed.

‘Forgive me, Gandalf,’ he said, returning to the hearth. ‘I cannot hope to consider all this in so brief a time. There is much to be taken into account, and I must have time to weigh my thoughts on the matter. You have each had many days to gather your questions and points of debate. I must do the same, though I promise I will take no longer than absolutely necessary.’

‘That is undoubtedly fair,’ said Gandalf soberly. ‘Furthermore, it is wise. We came in haste because we have need of your counsel. It would serve us poorly if we pressed you to hasty advice.’ He rose and took up his staff. ‘I believe I shall take advantage of this reprieve to walk in your gardens. There is no better remedy for dark thoughts than the clear air of Imladris.’

Elrond smiled. ‘There is greater wisdom in that than in any judgment I can hope to make in these great matters. Go, and do not let your heart be troubled today. The labours to come may wait a while, at least.’

Gandalf cast an encouraging look at Aragorn and strode for the door, but the Ranger made no move to rise. His instinct was proved sound when Elrond’s eyes came to rest upon him.

‘Will you stay, Aragorn?’ he asked. ‘I fain would speak with you awhile.’

Gandalf paused only momentarily on the threshold of the study, but the knowing jerk of his head was unmistakable. He might not have anticipated the request, but he understood it perfectly. As he left he drew closed the door.

Elrond waited a tactful span of seconds – neither too brief for Aragorn’s comfort nor long enough to suggest that Gandalf might linger without. Then he turned to the Man with patient eyes.

‘If you wish, Estel, we can remove to the dispensary,’ he said. ‘But I thought perhaps you would prefer a more discreet setting.’

‘You thought aright,’ Aragorn sighed, with the air of one accepting the inevitable. They both knew that was merely the smallest part of his feelings on the matter. However he might wish to bear his hurts with quiet fortitude, this ritual was both a grave necessity and a comfort. ‘How much has Gandalf told you of my road?’

‘No more than he has said in your presence,’ Elrond assured him with a small quirk of the lips. ‘Nor did I ask. Though he may fuss and bluster, Gandalf has too much regard for you to take it upon himself to account for your deeds.’

‘I know that well,’ said Aragorn heavily; ‘but on this journey I have been such a cause of worry for him that I had to wonder.’

‘That much is certainly plain,’ said Elrond. He went to an alcove near the casement, where stood a pedestal holding a basin and the other necessary accoutrements. With his back turned to the hearth, Elrond commenced to wash his hands.

Aragorn reached to loosen his shoes and untie his garters before rising. Swiftly and with neat precision he undressed, folding his tunic with care and laying it and the hose upon the chair. He removed his shirt also, baring his torn back and the too-prominent ribs. When he was clad in nothing but his braies, he turned from the fire with his arms crossed over his chest and said; ‘I am ready.’

Only then did Elrond turn, though he had dried his hands long before. It was an Elven custom, this ablution before ministering to a patient, and it was one of the many things Aragorn had taken for granted until he began to live among Men. Still he appreciated Elrond’s consideration more than his cleanliness at the moment. It was a hard thing to bare his much-abused body, and being permitted to retain a little dignity while he did it was a dear boon.

Still his stomach clenched when Elrond halted after taking his first step away from the washbasin. The fair and timeless face was perfectly serene and the grey eyes carefully guarded, but only dismay would have stayed him so abruptly in his tracks. Aragorn held his head imperceptibly higher and fought with all his will the urge to look away. Only a moment did he have to endure the terrible stillness, for Elrond strode smoothly forward then as if he had never paused at all. He reached to touch Aragorn’s shoulder where the spider’s pincer had lanced him. Expert fingers probed the purplish scar and the tissue beneath it.

‘This is no more than a month old,’ he observed levelly. ‘It was not the work of the beast you saw in Torech Ungol, then.’

‘It was not,’ said Aragorn. The probing had awakened a deep, dull pain in the wound, and he was able to fix his mind upon that instead of on the raw terror he had felt when the monstrous creature had passed him in that sightless passage far away. ‘Had that one set out to smite me, I doubt I would have risen again.’

Elrond glanced searchingly at his face, but his focus was still on the scar. ‘Did you lose consciousness?’

‘No. My arm was useless for the better part of two days, and for the first several hours after the bite I had to fight off sleep like one drugged. That was all. It was well I did not lose all awareness,’ he added, very quietly. ‘It was my captive who lead me into the spider’s clutches, and he would surely have taken the opportunity to finish his work and slay me. It was the third time he tried it.’

‘The third?’ Elrond echoed, unable to keep the dismay wholly from his voice. ‘Once when you caught him, I presume?’

Aragorn shook his head. ‘I cannot count that malicious. He was set upon by a far larger assailant in debatable country, having but lately slipped from the clutches of a dark foe. He believed he was fighting for his life. But once he tried to strangle me as I slept, and in the crossing of Gladden he did all he could to drown or freeze me. He is strong: far stronger than could reasonably be thought. The first time I could not overcome him, taken as I was so unawares. Only the fear of Elven steel drove him from my neck, and that not before he managed to collapse my windpipe.’

Elrond’s nimble fingers abandoned the shoulder and went at once to the Ranger’s throat. Aragorn tilted back his head to make the access easier, and his father felt his neck from the sternal notch to the root of his jaw. He palpated the ribs of cartilage gently, but even that brought a sense of incipient strangulation that sent Aragorn’s heart hammering. He closed his eyes and tried to calm it, knowing that his pulse could be just as readily felt as the prominence of his throat.

‘Your voice appears unaffected today, though you were very hoarse upon your arrival’ Elrond murmured. ‘Has that occurred often since that night?’

‘Afternoon,’ Aragorn said thinly, too conscious of the way the sinews of his neck strained to produce sound at such an angle. ‘I learned swiftly that only under greatest duress would Gollum move beneath the light of sun or moon. We went most often by night. As for my voice, it has often been hoarse these last months, but most often because of ill weather or weariness. It was the latter yesterevening.’

‘Hmm. We shall have to put it to the test when you have recovered your strength a little,’ said Elrond. His voice brightened markedly as he smiled. ‘A song or two should suffice, and will surely please your many friends. Too long has it been since you have graced us with your gentler gifts.’

Aragorn felt a flush rising, and it was not entirely one of embarrassment. For a mortal he had a good voice, if not an extraordinary one. More importantly, he had been well taught from early childhood. It had served him well in Rohan, and it was always an asset when it came time to brighten a winter night in a Ranger-camp, but amid the fair Elven voices of Imladris it was nothing to boast of. He was about to make some modest demurral when Elrond’s fingers stopped in their downward journey from beneath his jaw.

‘Here,’ he said, brushing the tip of his finger across the ridges of Aragorn’s windpipe. ‘Here is where it yielded.’

‘Yes,’ Aragorn breathed, and now his voice was hoarse after all. The memory of that dreadful awakening was suddenly fresh in his mind: the nightmarish feeling of grappling with a foe so obviously inferior in size, who ought to be vastly inferior as strength as well but somehow was not. At no time in the entire bitter journey had his own strength been so utterly inadequate.

‘There is lingering inflammation,’ Elrond said. ‘Not much, and I believe it will resolve in time, but it is there like the long-lasting deformity of the sinews in an ankle healing from an old sprain.’

This was as good a time as any to address that hurt. ‘It was my own ankle that left me on my back so that the spider might strike,’ said Aragorn, trying to keep his voice cool and detached as if he were a healer only, and not the invalid. ‘My toe caught upon something – a root or a stone, I am no longer certain which – and the stitching of my boot gave out. Sole ripped from vamp and my ankle was badly wrenched. It might not have been so grievous a hurt, save that I could do nothing but hobble on as best I could. Then when the she-lynx and her mate attacked…’

He stopped speaking because Elrond was shaking his head in soundless sorrow. He cupped Aragorn’s elbow and moved to guide him to the desk. ‘Sit, Estel, and let me see what has been done,’ he said softly.

Aragorn obeyed, seating himself on the corner of the desk and shifting well onto it so that his toes touched the floor but the rest of each foot did not. He felt absurd, sitting like a child upon a stone wall with nothing to cover him but his nether linen. His discomfort was only heightened when Elrond son of Ëarendil, Master of Rivendell and the greatest of the Noldorin princes yet left in Middle-earth, knelt upon the floor before him and took his right foot into his lap. But the hand that cupped his heel was the hand that had dried the tears of his childhood, and the voice that spoke as fingers searched the joint was one of the most beloved he had ever known. He closed his eyes again, and fixed upon those truths instead.

‘I could not guard it,’ he explained in a low voice that was not quite apologetic. ‘I was fighting for the life of my captive, and quickly enough for my own. But I did the limb far more evil then than was done with the original hurt. The joint was weakened to begin with. I took a tumble on the stairs of Cirith Ungol and twisted it then – not so badly by half, but enough to leave me limping for some days.’

‘It is late to be certain, but I do not think anything was broken,’ Elrond said. He was gradually rotating the joint with one hand while the other danced over the upper foot and the lower shin, feeling the movement of the bones. ‘Here the swelling is not so slight. No doubt the crossing of the mountains did more ill than good: the bruise is fresh.’

There was no chastisement in his tone. Aragorn did not know if he would have been able to bear it if there had. Still he found himself unable to keep from suing in his own defence. ‘I had to return,’ he said quietly, managing somehow to keep any note of pleading from his voice. ‘It was the only road.’

‘I know, Estel,’ Elrond murmured, and the gentleness in his voice was like a caressing hand upon a fevered brow. ‘What is an ankle when weighed against the heart?’

No more could Aragorn sit in eyeless dark, for his mind was too full of tumult. He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze upon the handsomely carved lintel of the study door. He busied himself in trying to name each blossom rendered in the dark, glossy wood.

‘It will heal,’ the Elf-lord said at length, releasing his hold and letting Aragorn’s limp foot slip from his lap. He took hold of the other one and drew it nearer so that he could check the sole and the toes. ‘With tending, and provided you delay any further extraordinary exertions until the ligaments have knitted fully, I do not think your use of it will be noticeably diminished.’

It was what Aragorn had hoped and half-believed, but to hear it from the lips of this mightiest of healers was an inexpressible relief. ‘Thank you,’ he sighed. ‘I know I ought to have taken greater care, but—’

‘But what?’ Elrond asked, rising smoothly to his feet and fixing stormy eyes upon his long-grown fosterling. ‘What else should you have done? Let this lynx of which you speak maul you? Linger in loneliness and heartache in a strange realm, until your hope was vanquished by memories? Or perhaps you ought to have sprouted wings, that you might have flown over the mountains. But no!’ he said with eyebrows raised in a mockery of startled dismay. ‘For your lungs are too weak to sustain such heights, and you surely would have perished!’

Aragorn was surprised into a laugh; not a very robust one, it was true, but an earnest laugh nonetheless. The sound was not beautiful to the ears, but it brought a fond smile to Elrond’s face and, more importantly, to his eyes. ‘There, you see?’ Elrond said. ‘We may find cause for mirth even in this. Now what of these great cats? Of old such creatures ran rampant in the Greenwood, though their numbers are diminished. You fought for the life of your captive, you said. They took a fancy to him, then?’

‘So it seems,’ Aragorn said dryly. ‘Why, I cannot guess. The male I slew, but not before he set his claws into me.’ He reached back over his shoulder so his fingers grazed the first ridge of scar tissue.

Elrond rounded the corner of the desk, and Aragorn shifted his position to allow clearer access. Warm and capable, the slender hands followed these wounds, too.

‘This befell you before you reached Thranduil’s gate?’ he asked.

‘The selfsame night,’ said Aragorn. ‘The horns of the Elves drove off the female ere she could avenge her mate.’

‘Then these are slow to heal,’ Elrond observed, the clinical calm in his voice just imperfect enough that Aragorn was relieved to have his back to his foster-father. ‘Another consequence of undernourishment, as surely you know.’

‘Yes.’ Aragorn took a laboured breath that made his lungs crackle. ‘Thranduil’s healers were quite mystified by that process. They have seen their share of wounds in the Secondborn, no doubt, but starvation is little known among the Bardings.’

The left hand slipped from the longest claw-mark and flew to grip Aragorn’s shoulder as if to keep him from fading suddenly to nothingness. Yet when Elrond spoke his tone was even and calming.

‘Tell me of that,’ he said. ‘What privations did you suffer? Do not think you can dissemble, either, Estel. Not with me.’

‘First it was water,’ Aragorn confessed. ‘This was in the Ephel Duath, before ever I found my prisoner. I was some days without, making do at first with the juice of wild apples gathered in Harondor and then walking on dry. I was spared…’ The faintest of smiles touched his lips as he remembered. ‘I was spared by the mists: water borne to me upon the air, and gathered from a rock. The Valar possess a peculiar sense of humour.’

Elrond did not question him on this remark. He had moved from the lynx-wounds to Aragorn’s spine, and he was feeling each protuberant knob and its neighbouring ribs with care. Aragorn went on.

‘I suffered little from want in Ithilien, though much from boredom with my fare. From Dagorlad into the Emyn Muil I went with some small supply of waybread and dried meat – how I came by those is a strange and wondrous tale, but it bears little on my hurts and Gandalf has his own portion to tell of it. I found roots enough to sustain me to Anduin, though even when hunger tamed him enough that I removed his gag, Gollum disdained them.’ Again Aragorn was touched by a spark of amusement, welcome among these grim recollections. ‘For one so wasted with famine, he proved an extraordinarily particular eater.’

Fond reminiscence was in Elrond’s voice as he said; ‘Elrohir went through such a phase when he was about thirteen. His mother and I half feared he would starve himself or stunt his growth, but somehow he never did.’

‘Strange that Elladan has never seen fit to mention that,’ said Aragorn, welcoming this respite from his tale. ‘I suppose there are some secrets that remain between brothers.’

‘Between twins, certainly: even from their other siblings,’ Elrond corrected. ‘Or so I understand. Elros and I had only each other.’

Now the tenderness and melancholy in his voice were not disguised, and his hands curled around Aragorn’s shoulders. Aragorn reached across his chest to lay his right hand upon Elrond’s left, in acknowledgment of the ancient kinship between them that predated even a father’s love. ‘I was able to hunt once we crossed over Anduin,’ he said. ‘For a time I ate well enough for one travelling the Wild in the winter months. In the days before I reached Lórien I believe I ate little, but in sooth I remember only snatches of that time. I was long without sleep after Gollum’s attempt to throttle me From it into oblivion.’

‘Little food and less sleep,’ Elrond mused softly. His hands slipped away and followed the curvature of the Man’s lowest ribs. ‘Your right flank was bruised, to the bedevilment of your kidney?’ he asked.

‘Aye, in the selfsame fall beneath the spider,’ said Aragorn. He felt the firm navigation of the healer’s fingers, and then stiffened and bit back a gasp as Elrond found the place where soreness yet lingered deep into his viscera. An apologetic palm was pressed where the questing digits had been.

‘Peace, Estel: I did not mean to pain you,’ Elrond said, more mournful now than he had yet permitted himself to sound. ‘Plainly there is some hurt yet lingering, no doubt as slow to heal as the others without the means to feed swift mending. It is as I thought last evening: good food and plentiful rest are what you require most of all. Now what of these marks?’

He had rounded the corner of the table again, and stood at Aragorn’s right. His fingertips touched small elliptical scars now faded to a faint blush against pale skin. It took Aragorn a dim, muddled moment to recall how he had come by such blemishes. He might not have recalled it at all, so full of other more important matters that day and those to follow had been, save that the pattern of the scars was unmistakable. It was the pattern of grasping claws: four fingers in the front and a thumb just above the crevice of the arm behind.

‘An orc,’ he confessed. ‘A black Uruk of Minas Morgul. I was waylaid. They came upon me unawares before the Black Gate, for there I saw—’ A shudder of dread tore through him and his resolve to remain stoic broke. 'Such hateful foulness! The slag hills and the drivers, the wretched slaves straining beneath the whips. Mordor is readying for war; such war as the world has not seen in an Age. I know not what can be done to withstand it! I know not what I can do to withstand it.’

Elrond reached to cup the back of his head, guiding it to his own so that they were pressed brow to brow with the tips of their nose grazing one another. ‘Hush, Estel,’ he whispered. ‘That is not today’s labour. When the time comes you will find a way to withstand what you must, even as you have done upon this road. You will face your toils with courage, as you always have. And if those who love you hold any sway in the matter, you shall never be left to withstand the might of Sauron alone.’

‘This road!’ Aragorn scoffed, though his moment of unguarded dismay was passing and he was feeling the shame of his outburst. ‘What is hunger, or weariness, or cold to the warmongering of the Enemy? There is nothing in this quest that prepares me for the next.’

‘You are too wise to believe that, though it makes for pretty rhetoric,’ said Elrond, both fond and sorrowing. ‘Straighten your shoulders, Estel: not to bear your burdens with any greater grace, but so that I may feel your ribs. The first is not possible, my son, so lay by your shame. Bend your unswerving will upon that, instead of upon the battles of tomorrow.’

Sometimes it was still astonishing how clearly Elrond could read his heart. Aragorn squared his shoulders and drew up his spine, recovering not only his composure but his shaken sense of self as he endured the probing of fingers up and down the washboard of his chest. Where the broad sinews of his shoulders were anchored and down the central column of his torso, the lean but dense muscle disguised his thinness. To either side, however, the slow wasting was plain. Had it not been for his two respites on the hard road and the care of Thranduil’s kitchens afterward, his reserves would have been utterly spent and his body left to gnaw upon its essential strength.

‘You took a blow here,’ Elrond said, spreading a palm across a place where a hobnailed boot had blasted with domineering wrath. He found another. ‘And here. No fractures of the bones, but they have been bruised and some fluid still lingers.’

Aragorn said nothing. There was nothing to say. Those pains were long forgotten, and the fluid too would disperse in time.

‘Gandalf told me you resupplied in Lothlórien,’ Elrond said, continuing his examination by checking sternum and collarbones before testing the tone of the upper abdomen. ‘There is only so much that a man afoot can bear, but I would have expected even that to be sufficient stave off starvation.’

‘I lost my pack in the Gladden River,’ Aragorn said shortly. He did not know whether he had it in him to tell this tale: not to Elrond, who had stood in the springtime of Imladris – likely in this very room – to hear from another starveling wanderer the tale of how his brother’s long grandson had drowned at the mouth of that selfsame tributary.

‘In March?’ asked Elrond quietly. Why he used the hobbit-name the Man could not guess.

‘The second of March,’ he confirmed simply. That at least was safe enough, or so he thought.

Then Elrond said; ‘Gladden is frozen in the first week of March.’ He was silent for the span of half a dozen heartbeats, as if waiting for a denial. When none came, he bowed his head. ‘Ai, my son!’ he sighed. ‘Through the ice?’

‘My captive’s second attempt to engineer my death,’ Aragorn said tightly. ‘I cannot measure how near he came to that, but he was certainly but a hair’s breadth from escape. He is a swift and crafty swimmer, but he forgot that he was dragging a line.’

‘How did you—’ Elrond began, eyes tempestuous with dismay and the very pain Aragorn had hoped to spare him. Then he lowered his lids and veiled the storm, breathing slowly and deeply while his hand, unfailing, found and curled about the nape of Aragorn’s neck. ‘I praise Elbereth that you have returned to us.’

They were the words of the previous evening, but the fervour in them ran far deeper, in currents far darker and more desperate. Aragorn knew nothing to say, but he took Elrond’s other hand and held it, feeling the warmth of the palm and the abrupt chill in the fingertips that came, he knew, from the heart. He had no words of comfort, but after all it was this – his own living presence – that was the only true consolation. For a time they remained thus, unmoving. At last Elrond opened his eyes, and they were tender.

‘So that is the cause of what I see now,’ he said, again the calm and consummate healer. ‘Months of short commons broken briefly by plenty on the borders of Lórien, and then famine betwixt Gladden and the Carrock.’

It seemed Gandalf had said something more of his journey after all, even if it had only been the news that he had bided briefly amid the Beornings. This Aragorn could scarcely grudge, for the tale of his return was Gandalf’s tale also, and made little sense without that piece of exposition.

‘Not quite famine,’ he said. ‘I had a little luck as a hunter, even with my troublesome prey to hinder me. And Kementári herself smiled upon me in my hour of grave need.’

While Elrond checked the range of his shoulders, Aragorn related the tale of his desperate prayer and his impatient stubbornness and its unlooked-for reward. The knowing smile of one who had felt like blessings in his own long life touched Elrond’s lips, and if the fare for which his fosterling had been so thankful pained him he did not show it.

‘The Valar possess a peculiar sense of humour,’ he said with some small mirth when Aragorn finished. He had stopped short of the storm and the wargs. Elrond’s hands moved now to Aragorn’s right forearm, one bracing it from below and the other curling to cover the snarl of twisted scars and lately-healed cuts. ‘Tell me of this,’ Elrond sighed, sombre again.

‘Beset by an unknown and far larger adversary,’ Aragorn said, choosing his words with great care; ‘Gollum fought with every means at his disposal. Of these his teeth proved most effective, though he has only six.’

‘Six teeth…’ Now Elrond looked at the marks with more judicious eyes and some measure of abstract wonder: a healer with many thousand years’ experience beholding something he had never before seen or imagined. ‘The punctures at the wrist I would expect, but the rest is… it defies belief.’

‘Much about Gollum defies belief,’ said Aragorn tiredly. ‘We were grappling all the while, and there was tearing. It took an infection, and I carried out a series of imperfect debridements that doubtless compounded the scarring but at least saved the limb. An abscess was formed despite my efforts, and I drained it repeatedly. The last time was in Thranduil’s palace: the healer had the proper equipment and two hands to work with, and she lanced and cleaned it. Since then it has troubled me little.’

Yet even as he spoke Elrond was feeling the knotted mass of scars with his thumbs, and a sharp, crackling pain broke deep beneath the skin. Aragorn bit down upon the inside of his mouth to keep from flinching away, and he watched his teacher work, half-expecting to see a gout of pus and blood break through the surface. No such eruption came, however, and when another movement of the deft hands brought a second pain almost identical to the first, Aragorn understood. Elrond was breaking adhesions deep within the muscle, where scar tissue had formed at inappropriate angles.

‘We will do this every day until the proper motion of the tissues is restored,’ Elrond explained as he worked. ‘Perhaps the infection was not an unmitigated curse, for if the scars had been left to harden these two months and more there might be little I could do. If we do not keep these webs from settling, then with time there will be contractures of the scars and the strength and motion of the muscle will be impaired. Your feet and your sword arm: are there any members of your body of which you have greater need, save perhaps your eyes?’

‘None,’ Aragorn said, and despite this grim talk his lip curled with an pitiable little joy. So long he had yearned for his father’s healing touch, and at last he was beneath it. The woeful burden of being not only the hurt but the healer had weighed upon him like a millstone, though he had scarcely realized it until this moment when the load was lifted. ‘If you can contrive to put that right, we will have thwarted Gollum’s last design upon me.’

‘I will prepare an unguent to be applied thrice daily,’ said Elrond. ‘It will soften the scar from without and perhaps make these ministrations less painful. Certainly with time it will reduce the deformity. For your lungs I have already begun the making of a tincture: it is distilling even as we speak. As for the rest…’ He released Aragorn’s arm and motioned all-encompassing. ‘Time and proper nourishment are all I can offer you, but all, I think, that is need—what is this?’

Aragorn had been flexing his fingers to work out an imminent cramp in his forearm. Now he froze with his hand in midair and followed the Peredhil’s gaze to his lap, where the curling edge of an angry red scar emerged from the hem of his braies. After so long he had almost forgotten it, save in moments like this when he was all but unclad. Aragorn swallowed painfully.

‘The spider in Torech Ungol did me one hurt,’ he said, fearing that his earlier denial of a bite would be taken as a falsehood. ‘The claw of one leg gored me as she passed. I… I quailed at her approach and dropped to the ground, shielding my head and my belly with the instincts of a small animal.’ A quiver of shame coursed up his back. ‘I could not stand fast. I had been lost in the foul blackness of her lair for hours uncounted – days, I think, perhaps as many as three. The stench and the closeness of the air there are intoxicating, bound about with a devilry of darkness that blinds the very mind. In that blindness, in that terror, I could not stand fast.’ He cast his gaze away and turned his head from his beloved guardian, unable to face his disappointment.

‘Estel, you are forgetting all you know of small animals,’ Elrond said quietly. He was folding up the leg of the linen undergarment to bare the scar all the way to its end high up on the lean thigh. ‘A rabbit does not quail out of cowardice, but out of a desire for self-preservation. A hedgehog hides its head to fend off the fox and guard its little life that it might return to its young. Instinct, you say, and what is instinct? That which dwells within us to safeguard us from our follies. What could you have done against such a beast, addled as you were by the liquor of her darkness and armed only with your knife?’

Aragorn raised his eyes, scarcely daring to hope that these words might break the spell of disgrace his mind had wrought about this dark corner of his quest. But of course Elrond spoke aright. There was nothing he could have done, and in a moment of greater clarity he should have taken swift and shrewd steps to conceal himself or evade her. Flinging himself to the ground so that she might pass over had been nothing more than his body’s attempt to do what his mind was in that moment incapable of managing: to preserve his life where it was not needful to sacrifice it.

He had gone from the black pit of spider-stink and forgetfulness to the meadows of rot and despair in Imlad Morgul below by way of a trial of pain and orc-cordial. He had not been given the chance to consider his actions with a critical eye, much less a merciful one. Had there been anyone to defend, or any purpose to be served in defying the beast there would be no forgiveness for such an act. In the absence of that, with only his life and that of the two beasts of darkness in the balance, the greater shame would have been in vainglorious challenge and senseless death. He had labours too great to be laid aside for arrogance, and duties more important than pride.

‘Yes,’ Elrond said quietly, his hands still investigating the broad but neatly healed scar where once the Ranger had bled to giddiness. There was a knowing look upon the fair and wise face, as if all that had passed through Aragorn’s mind in those moments he had spoken aloud. ‘Your life was never meant to end in the gullet of Ungoliant’s foul offspring. However that twist of destiny had to manifest itself, it was inevitable.’

Aragorn hung his head and shook it, this time not in shame but in quiet awe. ‘Atarinya,’ he murmured, falling back at last upon the old childhood epithet; ‘if not for your wisdom behind me, how could I go on?’

‘How can any of us go on, without one another to lean against?’ asked Elrond. He cupped Aragorn’s cheek with his hand and drew near to kiss his brow. ‘It cannot be this alone that has weighed so grievously upon you. What more is there, clawing at your heart?’

Aragorn met his eyes, and knew that his own were weary and beseeching. ‘Not now,’ he whispered. ‘I have not the strength to dwell on that now.’

Elrond nodded his understanding, so much deeper than words could limn. ‘Let us finish this, then, and you may go to your rest. You have done weary labour this day, though perhaps you will not believe it. As always, Aragorn, your fortitude fills my heart with pride.’

He gave the Ranger’s elbow a swift, tender squeeze, and then removed to the hearth. He leaned his shoulder on the mantelpiece and looked down into the lazily lapping flames and the brilliant embers as if admiring some piece of exquisitely intricate art.

Aragorn slipped off the edge of the desk and set his fingers to untwining the knot that held the waist-string of his braies. Again he was glad of the privacy afforded him, though he did not try to hide either his nakedness or the sharp angles of his hipbones that would be only further proof of his privations. ‘I am ready,’ he said again as he laid aside his last garment.

This final stage of the homecoming examination was always brief and respectful. It was no cause for shame nor any ordeal of outraged modesty, for there was no one in all the world Aragorn trusted as he trusted Master Elrond. Yet there was an inherent imbalance of power between one clothed and one naked, and this the Peredhil took care never to misuse. It was not a time for questions, for lessons or for loving chiding. Elrond sounded the lower abdomen swiftly, checking the integrity of the musculature and organs within. He checked the orientation of Aragorn’s hips. Then wordlessly with a touch to the waist he prompted his patient to turn. He was meant to appraise the curvature of the lower spine, where misalignment or deformity might go long unnoticed until it became suddenly crippling. Instead his breath caught in his throat. Uncomprehending, Aragorn pivoted his neck and shoulder to look back at his caregiver.

‘It is nothing,’ Elrond said, drawing his hand across his mouth and fighting to regain his composure. His eyes were very bright. ‘Beside all we have discussed, it is nothing. Certainly nothing that will not heal long before your ankle is perfectly sound. It was merely a surprise, Estel. I did not stop to think…’

Bewildered, Aragorn twisted further. He could see nothing unusual, nor could he feel anything save the dull ache in his legs. Elrond shook his head. ‘You are bruised,’ he said. He was calm again, and seemed now to be combating irritation rather than dismay. ‘The back of your thighs, the base of your hips. I should have considered it: so many days in the saddle, thin as you are. Mashed between bone and leather, small wonder the skin will bruise.’ For a moment Elrond’s lips faltered, and then he managed a tiny encouraging smile. ‘Dress yourself, child, and let us both rest awhile.’

Chapter LXXVI: Glad Company

By the time Aragorn took his leave of Elrond it was mid-afternoon, and he did indeed feel like one who had done a long day’s labour. His heart was drained of the fierce, tumultuous emotion that had been awakened by the cataloguing of his wounds. He was left only with a weary sense of peace and a hazy desire for sleep. Briefly he toyed with the idea of returning to his chamber that he might lie down, but he decided against it. If he did, he would surely sleep long into the night, and deeply. He might yet be wanted, by Gandalf or by the Master of the house, and if he was he had no wish to be groggy with slumber.

Instead he made his slow, meandering way towards the upper gallery with its sheltered alcoves and inviting couches. The house was quiet at this hour of the day, when most of its folk were abroad in the sunshine or occupied with their trades. Aragorn met no one in the shady corridors, nor on the third landing where he stopped to rest in the casement-seat until his lungs eased out of an ominous tightness. The dull and steady pain within them made him reluctant to cough.

As he sat, Aragorn contemplated Elrond’s words of generosity and wisdom. He has spoken rightly, for Aragorn was plagued with shame at the many faults and failings that lay behind: from his terror of the great spider and his unguarded moment before the Morannon to the misjudgment that had kept him from anticipating the bout of mountain sickness. He was ashamed of his blunders, his moments of doubt and weakness, his miscalculations and his ill-placed trust and the failing of his body’s strength.

Yet what cause had he to cast such stern judgement upon his inadequacies? Though he had known fear and the awful intrusion of the Nazgûl, he had pressed on. Though he had despaired of the hunt, he had found his quarry regardless. He had driven himself ot the very border of his strength, but in the end it had proved to be enough. The crucial information had been extracted and they had at last evidence to support suspicions long held. Behind that lay toils that, if unworthy of song or tale, were at least just cause for the belief that he had in each instance given of his very best, diminished though it might have been.

As he rose and mounted the last flight of stairs, another thought came to him. Now that he was at last at the end of this road, it was his duty to make ready for the one to come. He could not dedicate his efforts to that endeavor if weighed down by regret for those things he could never change. He could neither mend nor mar the choices of these last long months, and agonizing over them any further was imprudent and self-indulgent.

So it was with a quiet spirit that Aragorn came to the long gallery. He stopped at a window that he might look out over the gardens and the birch-woods beyond. Those fair trees were alight with young green, and had about them an almost crystalline beauty in the clear spring sunshine. It was beneath their darker splendour of summer that a young man had walked, joy and pride and lofty hopes in his heart and an ancient lay upon his lips. On that night, now so long ago that it seemed almost the memory of a boyish daydream, his course had been set and his fate fixed, wherever it might lead him in the end.

A gentle hand curled into the crook of his elbow, and in the cool air of the hearthless hall he could feel the warmth of a slender body behind him. Aragorn had not heard her approach, for his faculties were not at their keenest and she moved with the silent grace of her people. Nor was there anything in her that might give his instincts cause to be wary.

Arwen rested her head against his shoulder, looking out with him through the glass.

‘As I walked beneath the birches in the midsummer moonlight,’ she murmured; ‘a clarion voice cried out to me: Tinúviel! Tinúviel! I felt as if I had tumbled unwittingly into legend, puzzled and taken quite by surprise.’

Aragorn turned towards her with a tiny chagrined smile. New warmth suffused his chest. It was wondrous enough to have his beloved come upon him while he roamed in that memory. To know she shared it was more than he would have thought to hope.

‘I was a foolish young dreamer,’ he said softly.

‘I was flattered to be thus mistaken,’ said Arwen. She had taken a decorous half-step back so that their eyes might meet with ease. She was tall, granddaughter of Galadriel and heir of Lúthien that she was, but Aragorn was taller. ‘Amongst they who knew her when she walked in Doriath, the comparison is often drawn. Never before that twilit night had a mortal Man done so, comparing me only to the music and the enduring tales. And you were so very young and earnest,’ she added fondly, with a small silver note of amusement.

‘I was impudent, and I am fortunate you did not scorn me utterly from the first,’ said Aragorn, playfully meek.

‘Oh, but that I could not have done!’ said Arwen with a merry glitter in her eyes. ‘It would have been cruel to mock one so sincere and unworldly – like marring a seedling that has just begun its upward growth. I confess I did not then imagine how the image of you beneath my father’s trees would linger in my mind.’

He reached to take her hand, entranced by the loving remembrance misting her eyes. Then swiftly they changed, grey glinting keenly present once more.

‘I went to see the mare,’ she said. ‘Moroch, you named her to the groom?’

Aragorn nodded. ‘She was entrusted to me by the Captain of Thranduil’s guard. He was most attentive to my demands regarding the care of the prisoner, and he offered me some diversion from the dreary business of resting from my road. It was Moroch who bore me – and, for a wonder, Gollum – the last few miles to the Elvenking’s halls. I confess we have grown quite fond of one another, she and I.’

‘I saw as much last evening,’ said Arwen. ‘I may now assure you that she has been well cared for. She is housed in the south pasture, for I understand she is fond of rolling in the clover.’

This sounded precisely like something Moroch would do, and joyously. ‘It was kind of you to look in on her for me,’ Aragorn said.

‘I owed her my thanks for bearing you home swiftly and safely,’ Arwen said earnestly. ‘I brought her the tip of a cone of pale sugar, and she seemed to like it quite well.’

‘I am certain she would,’ said Aragorn. The little smile left his face as he remembered that he owed his beloved an apology. ‘I must ask your forgiveness, my Lady, for failing to come to you as we agreed. I fell to speaking of our findings with Gandalf and your father, and I allowed the time to overtake me.’

‘I surmised as much,’ Arwen said with a knowing and most gracious smile. ‘It is no matter: you can go about with long, ragged tresses for a little longer. Did you learn all that you needed from the creature?’

The question beneath this was plain. She was asking whether the information had been worth the price exacted for it. Even an hour before Aragorn would not have known how to answer. On one side of the scales sat sixteen weary years of intermittent hunting and its consequent burden upon the lieutenants of the Dúnedain; the misery of the long interrogation; the strain upon Gandalf’s spirit and conscience; Aragorn’s own tribulations, bodily and otherwise; and now the pain in the eyes and hearts of those he loved most dearly in all the world. On the other pan teetered the dark and piteous tale of Gollum’s past; the sure knowledge that Bilbo’s Ring had come out of the mouth of Gladden, and the desperate certainty that Sauron knew that the Ring had been found and that he would now be on the hunt himself.

‘Yes,’ Aragorn said. He spoke without hesitation. Though his voice was taut and husky, his heart was certain at last. He looked into Arwen’s heart, trusting that she could see the gratitude in his own. She had invited him to voice this conviction, and now that it was spoken it felt all the more solid, all the more true. ‘Yes. Between Gollum’s words and Gandalf’s discovery in Gondor, we have learned all that we sought to.’

A host of questions rose in her eyes, but Arwen set her lips into a line of firm satisfaction. ‘I am glad of that,’ she said. Then, choosing her words with care, she added; ‘Are the tidings very grave?’

Aragorn studied her fair and sombre countenance. She knew much of these matters: why Gollum had been sought, what was suspected about Bilbo’s Ring, and the vast ramifications if those suspicious bore out. She understood better than most the dreadful consequences should the One Ring return to Sauron’s hand. Yet despite the stake her own dreads and dreams had in these matters she would not press him with questions. She refused to tempt him to reveal what he should not.

‘They are not as grave as we feared,’ said Aragorn; ‘nor as grim as they might so easily have been.’

He looked around the gallery and, taking Arwen by the arm, led the way down its full length. Every alcove was empty, he saw as he went: they were utterly alone. Aragorn moved to sit at the foot of one of the couches. Arwen settled gracefully at its head, turned in towards him so that they sat almost face to face, their knees not quite touching. Aragorn was silent for a few moments, collecting his thoughts and considering carefully his words.

‘The Ring that eventually came to Bilbo was found by Gollum in the mud of Anduin, upon the very verge of the Gladden Fields,’ he said. ‘There can be little doubt that it is the One, lost when Isildur was slain at the dawn of the Age. For my part, I have no doubt at all.’

Arwen kept steady eyes upon him, and her exquisite features did not alter from there tranquil lines. Yet in her lap her hands were twisted about one another in a desperate, grappling grasp, and there was a whisper of her racing pulse up the length of her white throat.

‘Has it been decided what must be done?’ she breathed at length.

Aragorn shook his head. ‘We wait upon the word of Elrond,’ he said. ‘Gandalf and I have carried this knowledge with us for weeks, and still we do not know what should be done with it. Your father must have time at least to consider his position before we can enter into any debate. All I know is that for now, we are keeping close our counsels.’

Arwen inclined her head in accord with the wisdom of these choices. Then clear thought gave way to gentle concern. ‘Has Master Baggins been told?’ she asked. ‘He has spent much care upon the outcome of your hunt, and more than ever when neither you nor Gandalf returned with the snows.’

‘I do not think he has,’ said Aragorn. ‘No doubt Gandalf will wish to be the one to explain. Word will have to be sent to my men to double the watch on the Shire yet again. Are your brothers in the valley?’

‘No.’ Arwen smiled faintly. ‘They are, in truth, riding guard around the Shire – or so they intended when they road out with winter’s last days. In your absence they have done all they can to aid and strengthen the Rangers. It is an act of love as much as one of duty, for if they could not aid you in your labours at least they could take your place in that.’

‘Threefold over,’ Aragorn murmured, overcome again with the deep and wondrous sense of being cherished and sustained by those he loved. So often in the course of his quest he had felt most bitterly alone. To feel such encompassing care was a gift beyond telling. ‘I will have to send a messenger. It will be some time yet before I will be returning to the Wild.’

Arwen smiled triumphantly. ‘Well!’ she exclaimed, dusting her hands before draping one arm along the back of the couch. ‘You have spared me a quarrel there, for I should have locked you in the bell tower sooner than let you travel before your strength is restored to you.’

‘I hope I may always do what I can to spare you quarrels,’ said Aragorn quietly, aware of the unspoken hope in those words and its timorous fragility.

Her eyes widened at this also, as surprised as he at the speaking of this dearest of longings. Seldom indeed did they talk of it. Seldom even did Aragorn allow himself to think of it, and though he could not speak to her private thoughts when he was far away he was sure the same held true for Arwen. It was too beautiful, too terrible, so nearly miraculous in nature that at times it seemed impossible. Between this present of hidden hopes and stolen moments lay a gulph of darkness beyond which even Elrond himself could not see. It was better not to let themselves imagine what they hoped might lie beyond, when that which they feared more than flame or Shadow seemed so much more probable.

Arwen smoothed her skirts and her countenance. ‘I am pleased to hear it,’ she said as lightly as she was able. ‘For I should hate to waste these days of your homecoming in petty disputes. I will not let you forget that you have pledged to yield to me in the matter of your hair, either, Estel.’

He smiled, as much relieved by the passing of a perilous moment as he was amused by her tender teasing. ‘Shall we go at once, if you are so eager?’ he asked.

‘Nay, for I fear you have had your fill of being poked and prodded today,’ said Arwen, no longer quite so jocund. With a sympathetic arc to her lips, she added; ‘Father has seen to your wounds, has he not?’

‘Such as they are,’ said Aragorn, trying to sound unaffected. Doubtless it was a comfort to his lady to know he was thus tended, but it was not a matter that he yearned to discuss at any length. ‘The worst of it is behind me. All that remains are the pleasures of convalescence: good food, a warm bed, and glad company.’

‘The bed and the food others shall furnish,’ said Arwen. ‘As for the company, she will be as glad as she is able. Certainly she knows nothing but joy that you have come at last.’ She studied him with thoughtful eyes. ‘What do you most desire to tell me of your road?’

For an instant Aragorn was caught unguarded, wondering frantically what he might possibly say that would not wound her. Then he remembered that he had formulated a plan for this moment.

‘I drove Gollum north by way of western Rhovanion, anxious to avoid the perils of southern Mirkwood,’ he said. ‘We passed through Eastemnet, which is a holding of Rohan. It was difficult to move in daylight, for Gollum despised it and feared the Sun. Yellow Face, he called her, and he would send up a mighty protest if I walked long by her light. Therefore in daylight I would try to seek shelter: a copse of trees, or a hedge, or the shadow of a standing stone, anything to quiet him. One day I came to the edge of a little dell, and looking down I saw some hayricks about what I took to be an abandoned cottage. It seemed a pleasant place to rest until dusk, for clean hay makes fine bedding for a traveller, and Gollum could burrow within and hide himself from his hated Yellow Face.’

Arwen looked perplexed, no wonder trying to understand Gollum’s queer imbalance of childlike appellations and monstrous leanings. There were many harmless creatures that preferred night to day and had little truck with the Sun, but to truly despise it was a mark of evil. Aragorn did not wish to expound too much upon this.

‘Down we went into the hollow of the land,’ he went on instead. ‘But where I expected Gollum to be eager to go, he balked. It was then that I saw I was mistaken. The cottage was not a ruin, nor was it uninhabited. There was no smoke from the chimney, which was strange upon a cold morning, but subtler signs of habitation were all about the place. As my eyes sought them out, I heard the squall of a babe, and voices from inside the little house.’

He went on, telling the tale of Osbehrt and Annis, and their courageous young mother with her scythe. He described the children as vividly as he was able, and Arwen laughed when he came to the little girl’s insistence that it was a mouse, not a man, in the hay. She feigned a grimace of dismay at the mention of the small boy trying to carry his infant brother, and she shook her head wonderingly as Aragorn told how the tension had been eased by his fond watching of the children.

‘The woman was kind enough to let me make use of their well ere I took my leave,’ he said, eschewing her edict about his future unwelcome. He would not tell her of Gollum’s attempt to steal the egg, either, for that led on to much darker trespasses. ‘As I led my captive up and away from the little home, I spied shadows far off to the East of the dell: a herd and their keeper. I was glad of that, for I had half feared the children’s father a feint to drive off a wild man. It was welcome to know that I was not leaving so young a mother alone with three small ones to care for.’

‘Three!’ Arwen sighed, and for a brief instant a longing flashed in her eyes. ‘And she so very young, you say?’

‘Not yet near five and twenty, by my guess,’ agreed Aragorn. ‘The Rohirrim wed younger than the Dúnedain, but even so…’ He offered a small shrug of his shoulders. ‘The children were well fed and well kept, though Osbehrt was a trifle grubby. I understand it is difficult to keep a child of that age clean even for an hour.’

‘So I, too, have heard,’ Arwen said, with a teasing twinkle of the eye that made Aragorn wonder what tales she might have heard of a Man-child of not-quite-three. She would not have had such stories from he who stood as father to both of them, but it was certainly not beyond Glorfindel’s remit to brighten a night of worry with such a yarn.

‘The were the first of my kind I had spoken with in many months,’ said Aragorn; ‘and the last I saw before I came to the Town at Carrock. I shall carry the memory fondly all my days.’

‘How far from Eastemnet to the Carrock?’ asked Arwen, a calculating and uneasy look in her eyes.

‘I cannot say,’ Aragorn admitted. ‘It may well be close upon two hundred leagues. But I was not without company, you must remember. I had my withered travelling companion, and I passed two pleasant nights on the marches of Lothlórien. Lord Celeborn himself came to welcome me, though with such a creature in my care I could not walk far into that lovely realm.’

‘That is a pity,’ said Arwen. ‘You might have found rest and succour in Caras Galadhon, and my grandmother could have given you gifts to speed your journey and provide for your comfort.’

‘There was no time,’ said Aragorn. ‘I feared pursuit out of Mordor, even with the river to shield me from the Nine. And I could not very well leave my hard-won charge in the care of the Marchwardens, for Gollum is swift and he is sly, and he looks far less of a threat than he is. They would have underestimated his malice and his strength, and he would surely have escaped them. Yet I was glad of the rest I was able to take, and of the provisions and supplies they were able to provide. The leader of this company was Aithron; surely you know him.’

Arwen nodded. ‘He is strong-willed and fiercely loyal,’ she said. ‘He is well suited to patrolling such a hostile border, for he is little swayed by considerations of the heart.’ She smiled in sudden surprise. ‘But then you will have met Calmiel, for she serves in that company!’

‘She does,’ said Aragorn. ‘She was most gracious to me. She dwelt once in Imladris? It must have been long ago: I do not remember her.’

‘Not so very long ago,’ Arwen said. ‘She is sister to Faliel, whose clever hands coax forth such healthy herbs and blend them into tinctures and medicines. Calmiel rode south with my father in the year the White Council broke the gates of Dol Guldur and drove forth the Necromancer. You would have been a young boy they, unless I am mistaken.’

Aragorn nodded. ‘I was ten,’ he said. ‘I am sorry I do not remember her, and sorrier still that I did not know her then. She has kept the flavour of Rivendell’s hospitality, though it does not endear her to her Captain when plied upon his border.’

‘Lothlórien is more vulnerable than Imladris,’ said Arwen. ‘It is natural that her guardians should be more cautious.’

‘I agree, and they wield that caution well. Lord Celeborn desired me to bring you his love and that of the Lady Galadriel,’ Aragorn said. ‘He spoke most dearly of you, whom he treasures.’

After that, they spent many languid minutes in quiet conversation, talking of mercifully inconsequential things. Arwen told him of recent happenings in Imladris, and Aragorn told her the tale of the shrewd and determined tailor – foregoing any mention of the encounter with the ferryman. Nor did he have to elucidate how desperately he had needed to be fitted for new garments. It was natural to replace wayworn raiment at the close of a hard journey, and if Arwen wondered why he had been unable to wait a few weeks more for that relief, she said nothing.

‘What of the boots?’ she asked instead. ‘I have never known you to go thus shod, though it is not unbecoming.’

‘The cordwainder mistook me,’ said Aragorn with a bare glint of amusement. ‘They proved well-suited to riding, though I know not what is to be done with them now.’

‘They are quite becoming,’ Arwen said coyly. ‘Perhaps one day you shall have occasion to wear them again.’

Aragorn’s heart could not but quicken for a few rapid beats at these words. Was she too alluding to that distant and improbable future? But her expression was easy and pleasant, and her eyes simply merry. They passed again into quiet talk, and whiled away another blissful hour in one another’s company. Often the conversation would lapse into a gentle silence as intimate and beautiful as any love-talk. It was enough merely to savour one another’s treasured presence after so long a separation. When at last they rose and went down together tot ake their tender leave on the threshold of Aragorn’s rooms, their parting was sweetened by the knowledge of the next meeting’s glorious nearness.

lar

That night was an uneventful affair for Aragorn. He supped quietly in his antechamber, partaking of as much of the wholesome food as he felt able, and he was abed ere the shadows grew long. It was a delicious sensation to stretch out in the spacious bed with its familiar hangings. The plump feather tick was in his mind the very paragon of comfort. It was this bed in its every detail that came to his mind when the cold and stony ground began to wear upon his endurance. These small luxuries of home made want and hardship easier to bear.

Still he did not relish the opulence of his position long that evening, for sleep found him swiftly. No dreams of dark or broken things visited him all that restful night, and Aragorn awoke the next morning feeling far better for his slumber.

He rose and lingered indolently over his morning toilette. Today he dared to study himself in the looking glass, and he was not disheartened by what he saw. The bones of his face were still painfully prominent, but the shadows beneath his eyes were much reduced and his lips, though coarse, were no longer blotched with scabs and crevices. His colour was much recovered, and his eyes were clear. He saw, too, why Arwen had shown such an interest in trimming his hair. It was rough with careless combing, where he had torn through in his haste to rid himself of nests of tangles and foul debris, and long though it was there were many places where it had been carelessly cut in the same pursuit. He looked even more shaggy and bedraggled than was his wont, even clean and brushed. 

He bound back the unsightly mass with a cord. It made the slender strands of grey stand out more noticeably at brow and temple, and he regarded them curiously. He had not paused to think of how he had aged in recent years. Some of the wearing was the result of recent privations, but not all. Time had been kinder to him than to those of lesser race, but its incursions were immutable whatever their pace. In this land of timeless faces, no doubt these changes were all too obvious. He could not help but wonder, however briefly, what Arwen made of the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and the pale flecking of his dark head. Their love went far beyond such considerations, but all the same she had plighted her troth with a young man in the full flower of his strength and comeliness. On this occasion she had been met instead by a hard-worn invalid coming into his middle years.

Determined to lay by such self-doubts, at least for a time, he returned to the business of preparing for the day. Such a hasty business in the Wild, it was remarkably time-consuming in a cultured setting. He cleaned his teeth and rinsed his mouth with the hyssop elixir furnished him for that purpose. He felt his neck and jaw to assure himself that they were still smooth. Then he traded his nightclothes for fresh linen and went to the clothespress.

There he stood for rather too many minutes, confronted with what seemed an overwhelming variety of choice. His assortment of garments, most many years old but worn so seldom that they appeared almost new, was modest – even meagre, by the standards of this household – but he was not accustomed even to having a full change of clothing. On his wanderings even a change of undergarments was an extravagant possession, and the variety of stuffs and colours before him gave Aragorn pause. In the end he chose a bilaut that had been cut to be close-fitting and hence did not hang quite so loosely upon his frame. It was of a dark and dignified blue that made a welcome change from his usual palette of drab woodland hues.

He considered his small selection of colourful sashes and handsomely dyed leathers before returning to his old and trusted belt, which he fastened more loosely than he had been wearing it on the road. He left his knife. Though it was a strange thing to go unarmed, it was also a welcome change. Aragorn hoped that it might help him to feel more removed from the unrelenting wariness of the wilderness. He donned half-hose and his supple leather shoes and affixed his star upon his breast, and he was dressed for his day.

As the morning was still young and he felt equal to broader social contact, Aragorn descended to the dining hall in search of his breakfast. As he had expected, he was greeted gladly. Few knew where he had been bound when last he took his leave of the valley, and fewer still knew why he had gone thither. Yet most were aware he had been travelling with Gandalf, and all knew that he had been gone for many months. Aragorn returned each salutation, and exchanged some lengthier words with those he knew well. Soon enough he was seated at one of the mid-ranking tables among a cheerful throng, all of whom were happy to bring him food and offer him all manner of cheerful conversation. Not one among them watched each mouthful he took, nor cast worried eyes over his frame. It was quite pleasant, much though he valued the care he had received from those he most loved. For about three-quarters of an hour Aragorn enjoyed the glad throng, before he began to feel crowded and tired.

Happily all that was needed was a soft word of farewell and a promise that he would soon join the household at board again. The Elves let Aragorn depart with neither question nor worry, for it was well known that he had only so much fondness for such gatherings, however merry; most of all when he first came out of the Wild and was still growing used to the vibrant life of the valley. When seeking solitude there were many places where one might retreat, for Elves valued their quiet contemplation just as much as road-weary Chieftains. The gallery was one but the Hall of Fire was another, still more peaceful and less often visited by those of raucous disposition. It was there Aragorn went now.

The warmth of the dim chamber was welcome upon his hands and face as he entered, for his garments were lighter than those of yesterday and his bones seemed more sensitive to the cold than was their wont. Aragorn made a swift survey of the room with his sharp eyes, and was pleased to see that it was almost empty. When he saw the identity of the lone occupant he was still more glad, for near the fire with his feet crossed upon a low stool and his chin on his breast sat Master Bilbo Baggins himself.

Aragorn approached on noiseless feet, not wishing to disturb the old hobbit’s repose. Bilbo had a cushioned chair suited perfectly to his stature, and Aragorn settled in a low-backed seat well-matched to his own. He stretched his long legs towards the hearth, feeling its heat through the soft soles of his shoes. He was just considering whether or not he ought to try to steal a little nap himself when Bilbo snorted and jerked his head, eyes still closed.

‘Have you come back to pick at my metre, Lindir?’ he asked. ‘A cracked foot may not be an Elvish convention, but there are others among the world’s poets who think it offers an interesting cadence.’

‘So I too have found,’ Aragorn said placidly, enjoying the moment when Bilbo’s eyes flew open at the sound of his voice.

The hobbit’s round, amiable face was instantly alight with joy. ‘Dúnadan!’ he cried. ‘What a lovely thing to see you again! I am so glad you’ve come home safely – though Gandalf says you’re not well, and I see what he means. You’re skinny as a bean-pole, and dreadfully pale even in this light.’

‘You cannot expect to see me plump and brown with winter only just behind us, surely,’ Aragorn laughed. Bilbo’s cheerfully frank speech was always a delight. ‘Has Gandalf been to tell you of our adventures?’

A shadow crossed the hobbit’s face, but he nodded. ‘Yes, he has,’ he said. ‘You’ve found him at last, that nasty bit of baggage. And…’ He looked around the room and shook his head. ‘It seems foolish to be so cautious in Rivendell, but Gandalf has said I’m not to speak of the rest of it where others might hear.’

‘That is sound advice,’ said Aragorn. ‘It is not that we distrust any of the inhabitants of this house, but rather that our counsels are in their infancy and it would be best to keep them close for now. If you wish to speak of these things, we might remove to your room.’

‘Yes, that would be best, I think,’ said Bilbo. ‘Gandalf has a very brisk way of getting to the point, but he’s not much of a one to entertain questions and I do have a few, you know.’

‘Naturally,’ said Aragorn, smiling to show that he was neither surprised nor troubled by this prospect. ‘Why don’t you go on ahead? There is something I would like to fetch.’

‘Is there? How curious!’ Bilbo said delightedly. He got to his feet a little stiffly, not with the jaunty little hop he had always employed in his early years in Imladris. The years were telling on him as well, and with far more telling results. ‘Do give me your hand, Aragorn! It has been far too long.’

Aragorn obliged, and Bilbo shook his hand stoutly, then patted it with his other. ‘Hurry up, now. I won’t be able to wait forever to satisfy my curiosity! And I’ve been fretting, too, as no doubt you’ve guessed. Poor Frodo: it seems I’ve left him in something of a sticky situation, though I certainly didn’t intend it.’

‘Of course you did not,’ Aragorn assured him. ‘And there is hope that the situation may not be so very sticky in the end. I will come very shortly, I promise.’

They parted ways at the door, and Aragorn took the stairs as swiftly as he could, earning a series of shallow, wet coughs for his efforts. He entered his rooms, seeing at once that someone had been in to straighten up, and he quickly found his belt-pouch. Palming the object he sought, he reversed his course and made his way down to the hobbit’s homey room with its suitably-sized furnishings and the door that opened out into the gardens. Often in clement weather the door stood ajar, but when his knock was answered and he entered the Ranger saw at once that it was closed tightly. The windows were as well: Bilbo had taken measures to guard them from accidental eavesdroppers.

He settled himself on a stool near the fire, eschewing the Man-sized chair that Bilbo kept for guests. The hobbit was in his own favourite seat, rummaging about in a basket that sat on the small table beside it.

‘I know it’s here somewhere,’ he said distractedly, not pausing to look up. ‘Just give me half a minute, Dúnadan, unless you’ve just now been up to fetch your own and have hidden it up your sleeve.’

‘My own what?’ asked Aragorn, even as Bilbo gave a triumphant little cry.

‘Here it is!’ he said, lifting a slender velvet pouch out of the assortment of small items in the basket. There were letter-openers, two pen-knifes, spent quills and stubs of Dwarf-made pencils and a string of brightly coloured porcelain beads. But the hobbit was interested only in the little sack, which he passed now to Aragorn.

‘I like to keep a spare on hand, just in case I have a guest who comes unprepared,’ he said. ‘But of course most of my visitors don’t partake, and Gandalf never forgets his. Fill up, Dúnadan, and you can fetch us both a light. With those long arms of yours you won’t even need to rise.’

Realizing what it was he held, Aragorn grinned and parted the drawstring. He drew out a long-stemmed pipe with a prettily carved bowl. Bilbo was already offering him a crock half-filled with very fine-smelling pipeweed. Aragorn took a pinch and began to pack the bowl with care.

‘You are indeed a gracious host!’ he said earnestly. ‘It has been… let me think, now. At least eight months since last I had the pleasure: quite likely longer.’

‘Eight months! I don’t know how you do it,’ said Bilbo. He was filling his own pipe now. ‘My day just wouldn’t be complete without a pleasant little puff, though some of the Elves will put on airs about my habits.’

Aragorn took a taper from the cup on the table and reached to light it from the fire. As prophesied, he did not need to stand. He held the flame while Bilbo drew a smooth column of air through the pipe to coax it in. Then he lit his own and blew out the taper. Not pausing for speech, he drew upon the stem of the borrowed pipe and tasted the fragrant smoke as it filled his mouth. Tipping his head back a little, he sent out a thin column and watched it rise. In a few minutes he might experiment to see whether he had kept the knack for blowing smoke-rings, but these first puffs were too delicious not to be afforded his full attention.

He had not realized how much he had missed this simple comfort. How many winter nights would have been made just a little more bearable by a quiet smoke? He took another long inhalation and savoured the crisp, faintly spiced sunshine scent of the pipeweed.

‘Thank you, my friend,’ he said to Bilbo. Seated on so low a stool, he was nearly at Bilbo’s eye level. It made for more comfortable conversation, especially when grave matters had to be discussed. ‘This is a rare pleasure, and one that I relish most of all when shared.’

Bilbo nodded his agreement at this. ‘Smoking alone is never quite the same,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re busy with a good book or working through a difficult song. Gandalf said I ought to think about composing a piece about your hunt and triumph, but you’ll have to tell me about it first.’

Aragorn restrained the urge to groan. ‘Gandalf ought to let that idea lie,’ he said ruefully, speaking around the stem of the pipe before puffing again. This time he did blow a smoke ring after all, and it rose and expanded just as he wished it. The skill was still with him, it seemed. ‘It was not a journey that would make an uplifting song, however successful at the last.'

‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t have been,’ said Bilbo. ‘That horrid little wretch! How ever did you bear his company?’

‘It was not easy,’ Aragorn admitted, with less discomfort than he had yet. Bilbo had that particular magic about him: he was such a sympathetic listener that he made it painless to admit to even the most uncomfortable of things. ‘I can say with impunity that he did not care for mine, either. You said you have questions about what Gandalf told you. I will be glad to answer them if I can, though we are all adrift amid more questions than there are answers to be had.’

‘Yes,’ said Bilbo. ‘Still it would be good to have what answers there are, and for the rest even a flat “I don’t know, dear silly hobbit!” would be better than no reply at all. Gandalf is a capital fellow, but he’s very private in his thoughts.’

Aragorn made a half-smile at this, for of course it was true and at times a source of frustration for him as well – though he could give as good as he got in that respect. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘All that I may answer, I will. For the rest, I will give you your “I don’t knows” and my “I cannot speak to thats", if that will satisfy you awhile.’

‘It will, Dúnadan, and thank you!’ Bilbo said stoutly. Then with another long draught on his pipe, he began.

Chapter LXXVII: The Questions of Master Baggins

‘What I just can’t understand,’ said Bilbo with a sad little shake of the head; ‘is that if my little ring really is as important and powerful as Gandalf seems to think, why didn’t I ever realize it? I should have at least had an inkling, don’t you think? If all this is true, what’s the matter with me, that I never realized it?’

The uncertainty and brewing self-recrimination in the hobbit’s voice was painful to hear. Still grappling with his own like thoughts, Aragorn wished only to spare his friend such undeserved turmoil.

‘I do not believe you could have known, and never mind “should”,’ he said. ‘For one thing, your good nature kept you from wanting to use the Ring for any nefarious purpose. Had you tried to use it as Gollum did, to eavesdrop and to hurt, it surely would have gained a firmer hold upon you. Had you bent it to loftier goals, you would have doubtless found it had powers commensurate to them. Wisely, you did neither.’

Bilbo chuckled uneasily. ‘I suppose hiding from Sackville-Bagginses on a Saturday afternoon doesn’t quite count as nefarious, does it?’

‘I would call it a bit unwelcoming at the very worst,’ Aragorn assured him with an effortful smile. ‘From what I know of your relations, it sounds most like an act of self-preservation. Yet there may be another reason that you suspected nothing. Rings of Power have a will of their own – or if not a will, at least a purpose to be served. It did not serve the Ring’s purpose to reveal its scope to you. It was best for it to remain a trifle, quietly in your possession.’

‘Do you mean to say that the Ring wanted to be kept in Bag End in peaceful old Hobbiton?’ asked  Bilbo, incredulous but not disbelieving. His utter trust in Aragorn’s words was heartwarming even in such grave circumstances.

‘In a way,’ the Ranger said. ‘It seems perfectly apparent that it wished to be found, and so contrived to escape Gollum. It was a dark year, when you rode with Thorin Oakenshield to defeat the dragon. Sauron’s strength had grown great, and he was bending all his will and malice upon two ends alone. The greatest of these was the finding of his Ring.’

‘That’s just what Gandalf said,’ sighed Bilbo. He frowned. ‘But what was the other thing that could even cross his mind, if finding his Ring was so awfully important?’

Aragorn tilted his head to one side, almost quizzically. ‘Why, the hunt for the heir of he who had taken it, of course. After all, it would be natural to assume such a treasure would be passed down from generation to generation – and in any case there was the question of revenge.’

‘Revenge…’ Bilbo echoed. ‘Oh! On Isildur’s descendants, you mean, because he cut the One Ring from the Dark Lord’s hand when he was overthrown by the Last Alliance.’ He frowned. ‘But the Heir of Isildur was you, even back then! The Enemy was looking for you, wasn’t he? You were only a small boy!’

‘He had no means of knowing that,’ said Aragorn, smiling gently at Bilbo’s dismay. ‘He believed he was seeking for a great lord of Men, a fell warrior or at the very least a plump despot of a village mayor.’ Bilbo laughed a little at this notion, and Aragorn nodded in some satisfaction. ‘But I was well hidden from his sight, and he found me not. His calling to the Ring bore greater fruit, however. It could not hope to escape its underground prison so long as it sat in Gollum’s complacent hands, so it slipped away from him.’

Bilbo frowned deeply. ‘I wish I had never picked up the dratted thing in the first place!’ he groaned.

‘That might have proved disastrous,’ said Aragorn. ‘Imagine if it had been found by a goblin instead. How swiftly then would it have found its way back to Sauron’s hand? It might even have reached him ere he could have been cast out of Dol Guldur. Then the White Council and their armies would have ridden to slaughter.’

‘I didn’t think of that,’ Bilbo mumbled. ‘Do you suppose I did right, then? In taking it, that is.’

‘I believe it was fated,’ Aragorn said firmly. Bilbo should have no doubt of this, however others might later debate its philosophical implications. ‘You were meant to find the Ring, and not by any device of Sauron’s. Look what has come to pass because of that chance. Now we know where the One Ring abides, while the Enemy does not. We are in a position to take action, instead of being left to grope in the dark and await the fatal blow.’

‘What action?’ asked Bilbo. ‘What are you going to do? All of you, the Wise, I mean: not you especially, Dúnadan.’

‘No, I especially. Among others,’ said Aragorn, hoping that his voice was not as heavy as his heart. He might have resolved to prepare himself for the road ahead, but that did not mean he had yet achieved that readiness. ’But here we have reached the first “I don’t know”. Nothing has been decided. Indeed we have not even sat down to earnest debate. But I promise you this: when something is settled upon, I will make sure that it is not kept from you.’

Bilbo looked greatly relieved. ‘Oh, I am glad,’ he said. ‘I know that the great ones have too many cares to spare time for the worries of a foolish old hobbit, but it’s still very hard to wonder and fret all on your own.’

‘Be assured that Gandalf will always spare you the time, even if he is not free with his answers,’ said Aragorn. ‘What else would you have me tell you?’

The round, so often cheerful face crumpled into an anxious frown. ‘Frodo,’ Bilbo said softly. ‘He’s not… oh, dear. He’s not in danger, is he?’

Aragorn reached to offer his hand, and was reassured when Bilbo took it tightly. He fixed his eyes upon those of his friend. ‘Not at present,’ he vowed. ‘The Rangers are keeping watch on the Shire, and word shall soon be sent that they should double it. As soon as I am able I will join that patrol myself. I will do my utmost to protect your nephew, Bilbo. This I swear to you. Whatever is required of me to safeguard him, I will do it.’

Bilbo swallowed very hard, eyes brimming. ‘Oh, Dúnadan, you are so very good to me. I know I’m a silly goose for fretting about such things when the fate of the world is tied up in these affairs, but I can’t help it. We hobbits love best what we know best, and that lad’s very dear to me. It was harder to leave him than it was that ring, in the end. It’s him I miss most, anyhow.’

‘That is only natural, and a sign of the great capacity of your heart,’ said Aragorn gently. ‘Never be ashamed to love, whatever may be tied up around your dear ones.’

Bilbo nodded bracingly, swallowing a small sniffling noise and blinking rapidly to clear his eyes. ‘Those aren’t the only questions I have, you know!’ he announced when he was sure of his composure. ‘Gandalf was all dark hints and oblique remarks yesterday, and I don’t understand the half of what he said. How did you find Gollum in the end? Gandalf said you did it alone. That he left you to go into danger alone. I think he wishes he hadn’t done that.’

‘The dangers could not be helped, and he was right to leave me,’ said Aragorn. ‘He went to Minas Tirith, the great city of Gondor, in search of further proof. He makes light of it, but I believe it will be most important. It will certainly serve to silence any doubters, if what he found is so. I was stubborn: determined to persist in the hunt for another season at least. But it took me into dark and deadly places, and in the end I despaired of ever finding your slippery little rival.’

‘I never should have angered him,’ Bilbo bemoaned, shaking his head rapidly. ‘And I know I should never have told him my name. Gandalf said Gollum may have passed it on to the servants of the Enemy. Baggins and the Shire: they’ll find both in the end, won’t they?’

‘Perhaps,’ Aragorn allowed, unable to counterfeit reassurance where there was none to give. ‘But we have the advantage of knowledge and of time. We shall press both, and thwart Sauron however we may.’ Deciding that he could not allow Bilbo to dwell too long on such things, he pressed on with his tale. ‘I came upon Gollum as I made my way North, meaning to come home in disgrace. I found him in the Dead Marshes, and I had hard labour in his catching. We wrestled in the mud like a pair of mad cats, but in the end I had him, and I drove him North.’

‘You? Wrestle with Gollum?’ said Bilbo. ‘But you’re so much larger, and stronger: I should think you’d be able to pluck him up by the heel and sling him over your shoulder.’

‘I did not think to try that,’ Aragorn said, enjoying a flash of amusement at this image. It was another gift of Bilbo’s: to awaken mirth in the grimmest of recollections. ‘But he is stronger than he looks, and he was slippery. I should have had a tricky time keeping hold of him whatever the circumstances, but he was covered in slime, and that made it worse. I was lucky enough to have a bit of rope with me, and I fashioned a halter. For the first several days I had to deny him food and water, for he was defiant and dangerous. I am thankful that you never had occasion to join him in battle, for valiant though you are I fear you would have had the worst of it.’

‘I’ve always thought so,’ Bilbo said, wrinkling his nose. ‘Horrid stinking thing. You brought him to Mirkwood all alone?’

Aragorn nodded, not wanting to say more. Bilbo was looking at him wonderingly. ‘Gandalf said nine hundred miles in fifty days. How does he reckon that? I’ve never walked those lands, of course, but it seems to me that the Dead Marshes are just about due South of Mirkwood.’

‘I did not take the most direct path,’ said Aragorn. ‘I swam over Anduin and took a westerly route, far from the holdings of the Ringwraiths in the South of the forest. I suspected we were pursued by servants of the Enemy, either seeking to recapture Gollum or desiring to free him from my custody. I do not know which, but I fear he was sent from Mordor on some evil errand.’

‘That certainly wouldn’t surprise me.’ Bilbo took a deep puff from his pipe, and let the smoke out all at once in a great, billowing cloud. ‘From all I’ve heard, he’s good for nothing but malice and mischief.’

‘That is not too far from the truth,’ Aragorn agreed. ‘Gandalf believes there may be some hope for him yet, and that perhaps he can find healing. I confess I am not so certain. We had little use for one another all our long road. But he is safe in the dungeons of Thranduil now, and without any clever burglar to help him escape.’

Bilbo flushed. ‘Another time I really oughtn’t have used the Ring, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Is it true that the oftener you use it, the deeper it grabs you?’

‘It may be so,’ said Aragorn, keeping his eyes gentle with reassurance. ‘But you did not use it all that often, now did you? I imagine there were times when two or three years might pass when you did not even give it a thought.’

‘Yes, there were,’ said Bilbo. ‘That’s what made it all so strange, when I felt I couldn’t leave it behind, whatever Gandalf said and whatever I had agreed. At least I did it in the end.’

‘You did,’ Aragorn agreed. ‘And it may be that your tenacity will make the great difference in the end, particularly to Frodo.’

‘What do you mean?’ the hobbit asked, puzzled.

‘The Ring came to you by chance. Not quite by thievery, as Gollum persists in claiming, but certainly by a turn of very strange luck,’ said Aragorn. ‘Moreover though you knew it not when you found the Ring, you were aware before you escaped from the tunnels that the thing had belonged to your withered opponent. You are not precisely guilty of any sin in its finding, but neither were you quite innocent. Would you not agree?’

‘I’m afraid I have to,’ said Bilbo. ‘I did realize it was his, and I tried to convince myself that I had won the riddle game and so it was mine by right. I don’t know what I ought to have done about that, exactly, but I do know that I didn’t come out of it smelling like a rose, as we say in the Shire.’

Aragorn smiled. ‘That’s an apt way to put it, particularly as I don’t think you are truly responsible for the way things turned out. Still, you were sullied in your finding of the Ring. Gollum himself got it by murder, and his friend Déagol in effect robbed a grave. Isildur seized it by might of arms and bloodlust. Only Frodo has come by it perfectly honestly, by right of gift from its previous owner. That sort of blamelessness has protected simple folk ere this. Now the One Ring, which seems to twist to evil any questionable act, can take no strength from the way in which Frodo came to hold it. He did not take it, did not coerce it from you; did not even know that it was coming to him until you had already made the gift. He alone of all those who have borne it is wholly untarnished in that respect.’

‘That’s a comfort,’ Bilbo said, giving the Man’s hand another squeeze before taking his own back. He smoothed the front of his silk waistcoat. ‘You do have a way of taking the terror right out of one’s heart, Aragorn. Do you know that?’

Aragorn smiled. ‘I strive to whenever I may,’ he said fondly. ‘The world is troubled enough without dwelling ever in fear.’

They were quiet for a time, both drawing on their pipes. The tightness in Aragorn’s chest did not ease, but the act of drawing in and letting out slow, controlled breaths was no doubt good for him. He was not sure he would have been able to lay aside that delightful implement even if it had been harmful, for the taste was so exquisite after his long abstention and the pensive comfort of the habit eased his heart.

‘Dúnadan?’ Bilbo said at length, quite quietly. He was looking down at his woolly feet with their stout soles turned to the fire. ‘Was it very bad for you, the journey with Gollum? Gandalf wouldn’t say much, but he made it plain that it was not easy. And… you’ll have to forgive me for saying it, for I’m an old chap now and sometimes clumsy with my words, but you do look dreadful: so thin and… and haggard. Not like your usual self at all.’

His worry was touching, but also distressing. Aragorn lowered his hand with its pleasant burden to his knee. ‘It was not easy,’ he confessed. ‘It was wearisome and bitter, and Gollum thwarted me at every step in great ways and in small. But it is over now, and I have achieved what I set out to do. That is all that truly matters.’

Bilbo nodded, swallowing laboriously again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so terribly, awfully sorry. If I had never angered him, or taken his awful Ring, or told him my name you never would have had to go after him or suffer through any of that. He’s horrid and hateful: I don’t know how you could have borne his company for fifty days.’

‘In truth,’ said Aragorn with the smallest of smiles; ‘you helped me tremendously.’

‘What?’ Bilbo lifted his gaze abruptly, mystified. ‘What ever do you mean by that?’

‘Thinking of you, and of your songs, and of your own great adventure sustained me,’ said Aragorn. ‘One day while I walked in grey exhaustion, unable to sleep for the need to watch my prisoner, I tried to soothe myself with a song. I was too weary to recall any lay of the Eldar or any ballad of Men, but your playful tune about the Man in the Moon came to me, and it helped me on. Gollum and I roosted one night in a windblown fir, and remembering how you once had done the same kept me hopeful, knowing my predicament was nothing to that.’

‘Oh, I don’t really…’ Bilbo mumbled, looking abashedly pleased but still doubtful.

‘I passed through Imlad Morgul,’ Aragorn whispered. He could not give the words any greater voice. ‘This was before I found Gollum, and that terrible night was one that weighed heavily in my decision to abandon the hunt. I was somewhat battered from my climb down out of the mountain passes, and I was very weary. Despair and desolation crept over my heart, and slowly I realized that it was more than just the spell of that dread place. Unclothed in the night, a Ringwraith was walking.’

Bilbo drew in a sharp breath. Aragorn wondered whether he had said too much; whether the burden of this tale outweighed its value. He decided it did not, provided he delved not too deep. Bilbo deserved to know what he had done, unwittingly and from so great a distance, to aid his friend in his travails.

‘Its mind touched mine, and I had to mask myself from its knowledge,’ said Aragorn, fixing his gaze upon the hobbit and swallowing the most wretched of the memories. ‘I gathered all that I am and I buried it deep within. Instead I filled my mind with a riddle: a little song filled with images of strength and secrecy. Do you know what that song was?’

The hobbit shook his head. He seemed unable to speak. Worry and dismay were on his face, but also a tenuous hope as he waited to hear the rest.

‘All that is gold does not glitter,’ recited Aragorn. ‘Not all those who wander are lost…’

Bilbo swallowed hard. ‘Truly?’ he chirped.

‘Truly,’ Aragorn declared. ‘It shielded my mind and it kept secure my knowledge of myself. The Ringwraith walked on, and I was left alone. It thought me beneath its notice: a lone man, injured and gabbling senselessly about winter woods and tarnished treasure.’

A small, sharp little laugh broke from Bilbo’s throat. ‘Why, who ever would have thought it?’ he said. ‘My little song, doing all that!’

‘All that and more,’ Aragorn told him earnestly. ‘You do not know how it uplifts my spirit to know of your hope for me, and your faith in my strength – falter though at times it may. I shall always be thankful for your friendship.’

Bilbo reached out, and the Man extended his hand again. The hobbit squeezed his fingers almost bruisingly. ‘You walk such dangerous roads, Dúnadan,’ he said. ‘And that one all because of me and my little ring!’

‘You cannot claim credit for that!’ said Aragorn, almost scoffing as he tried to sound as utterly dismissive of the idea as he was. Bilbo need not carry any guilt for this. His strange mischance had indeed proved more fortuitous than any of them could have imagined. The advantage of time and knowledge was nothing to be scorned. ‘I have walked Morgul Vale before this: many years ago, when I had never heard the name of Gollum nor given any thought to your Ring. I am in the habit, so Gandalf tells me, of laying deadly tests before myself. Thus far I have always managed to pass them, and that particular one I might never have passed without the aid of your verses. I thank you, Bilbo: I blame you for nothing.’

The time had come to lighten the atmosphere of the conversation, which had grown thick and oppressive with fear and regret. Aragorn took from his lap the article he had retrieved from his rooms.

‘I have brought you a gift,’ he said, trying to sound cheerful and nonchalant. He extended his hand, fist closed over the item and feeling its coolness and serpentine contours. ‘It comes from Lothlórien, and it was wrought by the goldsmiths of Caras Galadhon. I wore it for a time, and I would have you keep it and think of me.’

Bilbo put out his hand, and into it Aragorn placed the dainty bronze brooch that Aithron had given him to hold fast his ragged cloak and the woolen blanket that had served to replace it. It was all but untarnished, as such Elven work most often was, and the dainty vines and leaves twined about the ring glinted handsomely in the firelight. Bilbo looked at it in wonder, adjusting his hold on the pipe so that his forefinger could trace the meticulous work.

‘Why, it’s wonderful!’ he breathed. ‘All the way from Lórien, you say? And for me? Such a beautiful present, Dúnadan: thank you! Fancy thinking of something like that with all the rest you had to manage.’

Aragorn knew that he was grinning broadly, relishing Bilbo’s delight and the sudden change in his mood. It was as he had hoped: the gift had altered the hobbit’s perception of his journey. He had gleaned from Gandalf’s grimness that the Ranger had suffered much, though likely he could not imagine the particulars. But now it did not seem all that bad: no privation could have been too serious, after all, if the Man had been able to bring back a remembrance of his travels to gift to a friend!

‘I know it is a trifle larger than any adornment you are wont to wear,’ Aragorn said with the fervently humble voice common to so many givers of earnest gifts. ‘Still I think it would look well clasping a warm winter cloak, don’t you?’

‘A winter cloak? Nonsense! I shall wear it right now!’ Bilbo declared. He took a pinch of his shirt right at the place where the two front pieces of his waistcoat lapped for the top button, and drove the tine of the brooch through it. He positioned it carefully and smiled. ‘Don’t I look fine! My, but the smiths of Lothlórien do pretty work. How do they make it form such fine little details? It’s copper, is it?’

‘Bronze,’ said Aragorn. He grinned good-humouredly. ‘I am sorry it could not be some finer metal, but my selection was somewhat limited.’

Bilbo was preening just a little, clearly delighted with his new treasure. A scholar of Elven ways, he was doubtless thrilled to possess an artifact of such a distant and ancient realm. ‘It’s quite perfect!’ he said. ‘Just the thing for a hobbit! Silver and gold are all very well for great lords and beautiful ladies, but for plain old Master Baggins of Bag End, bronze is just the thing.’ He looked up at Aragorn with soulful eyes. ‘Thank you, Dúnadan: I mean it. To know you were thinking of me on your long journey makes me feel, well, quite special indeed.’

‘So you are,’ Aragorn assured him. ‘I am privileged to know you.’

The contents of his borrowed pipe had burned down to ash. He pushed back his right sleeves: the long, hanging silk pendant of the bilaut, and the simple tube of the linen shirt beneath. With the dangling cloth drawn safely away from the flames, he was able to rap the upturned pipe against the inner side of the fireplace. Pipeweed ash rained down into the embers, sending up one last fragrant little whiff of Longbottom leaf.

‘I am sure one of the smiths could tell you how the work differs from that wrought by the Noldor,’ he said, crossing his arms over his high-bent knees and smiling. ‘I have not made a study of such crafts myself, at least not to such a degree as that. I can shoe a horse, but my skill with fine wire is—’

He found his words tapering to nothing, for the smile was gone from Bilbo’s face. He was staring fixedly, but not at the Ranger’s face. He was staring at his knees. No, Aragorn realized: at his folded arms. At the right arm, in truth, still bared almost to the elbow. The webs and ridges and hard knots of luridly red scar tissue stood out angrily against the Ranger’s pale skin.

‘What happened? Oh, what happened?’ Bilbo breathed in horror, leaning forward and letting his feet slap down upon the hearthrug. ‘Oh, Dúnadan…’

‘It is nothing,’ Aragorn said hurriedly, too flummoxed to think of covering the marks. ‘It is an old hurt; months old now, and it…’

‘He bit you! He bit you, didn’t he? Oh, that hateful, spiteful, foul little wretch!’ Bilbo cried. ‘Those are teeth marks: don’t try to deny it. How could he, the filthy, wicked beast!’

Then before Aragorn could demur or speak any words of consolation, Bilbo took hold of his hand with both his own, drawing out his arm. He bowed his curly head, and did something Aragorn would never have expected. He kissed the hideous marks, swiftly and earnestly. There was a hot splatter upon the marred flesh as a tear fell from Bilbo’s eyes.

‘What you must have gone through, all for the sake of me and mine!’ exclaimed the hobbit, looking up at the Man’s careworn face and petting his mangled forearm with a tender palm. ‘Dear Aragorn! I’m so very sorry. And so very grateful, though I never would have wished it on you. You do know that, don’t you? I never would have wished any of this on you.’

‘Of course not,’ Aragorn said, finding to his amazement that his voice was calm and soothing. He felt like weeping himself, beholding his dear friend’s distress, but his eyes were dry. He reached with his left hand to cup the side of Bilbo’s face, fingers curling along plump cheek and jaw. ‘You did not wish it, and you did not ask it. I did it freely, and now it is done: let us both forget and move forward. I shall strive to do it if you will try the same.’

Bilbo’s lower lip quivered for a moment, and he ducked his head one more time to kiss the scars a little nearer to the Ranger’s wrist. There was a strange ghosting sensation in the ugly, tangled skin, but Aragorn could also feel his friend’s warmth and kindly pity and vehement affection. Then Bilbo looked up and nodded his head, unsteadily at first and then firmly.

‘Very well,’ he said, as steadfast and determined as ever a hobbit could be. ‘I’ll move forward. But I shan’t forget it, Aragorn, and I shan’t forget to be thankful, either. You’ve fought on through terrible things just to put right a mess I left behind, and I don’t know what I can do to repay you for it.’

‘I have been repaid already,’ said Aragorn, and he truly felt it. ‘But you must remember that it was not your mess alone. My forefather played his part in it, as have many through the years. Yet first and foremost it is Sauron who is to blame, and it is he who shall have to atone for it in the fullness of time.’

‘Do you truly believe that’s so?’ asked Bilbo. ‘That he can be made to atone, I mean.’

‘I do not know,’ said Aragorn truthfully. ‘But if I am able, I shall help to bring about his downfall. Let atonement then come if it will: mine is not the judgment of the Valar, to be meted out at will.’

‘No,’ said Bilbo. ‘But crownless or not, a king is still a judge of sorts. If you judge me pardoned, perhaps you’ll join me for my elevenses? It’s nearly time, and I’m fairly famished. Someone should be by with the tray in a little while, and you can tell me of your stay with Grimbeorn and his family! I passed that way on my visit to Dale, you know. Gandalf says the house is fairly overflowing with children now. Is that so?’

The shadow of mourning was gone, and Aragorn’s own heart rested more easily in his chest. He could tell of each member of Grimbeorn’s lively household, and he need not say anything of frozen hands or muddled wits or leaking boots. He would not say much of Freya, either, for she would not want her struggles to be made into a tale to be told in distant lands. But he could certainly tell of Sigbeorn and his sauciness, and proud, fearless Una, and the little ones and their love of stories. This was an account well suited to a hobbit, lovers of genealogy that they were, and it could so easily be made free from any mention of darkness or suffering. Settling more comfortably upon his stool, Aragorn began.

lar

When he departed at last from Bilbo’s chamber, Aragorn was left in the unusual position of having nothing much to do. He was expected nowhere in particular, and had little to trouble his mind. He was sated from joining Bilbo in his forenoon repast, and so had no desire to join the household for the midday meal, over which Arwen would be presiding. The time of day made it improper to seek out the artisans he had to visit to arrange for boots and travel raiment. The latter was best left for the present, anyhow, until he had filled out some of the hollows in his bones. And although he felt better today than he had in weeks untold, he was certainly not ready to go down to the armoury and sparring yard for any vigorous exercise. What he craved most of all at the moment, he realized, was serenity, sunshine and solitude. He went out into the gardens.

The sweetness of spring was all about him, and everywhere he looked young flowers were in bloom. He moved lazily through the cultivated paths and away to the swaths of free-growing grasses where wildflowers danced newly-opened in the gentle breeze. He passed into the apple orchard, and there left the path. There was a certain place, out of sight of the house near a bend in the Bruinen, where Aragorn had often come in his youth. A large, gently sloping stone overlooked the water. It made a fine bench on a wet day, and an excellent brace for one’s back on a dry one. He used it as the latter now, easing himself down into the sweet-smelling grass and allowing himself a little grimace at the aches still plaguing his joints and his flesh. At least he knew the cause of the misery in his hips now, and that was a comfort despite the uncomfortable way in which the bruising had come to light. He stretched his right leg and drew up his left, crossing his arms loosely upon his knee and leaning his head back so that his face was bathed in sunlight. Eyes closed, he sat thus and listened to the music of the rushing water below.

Aragorn let his sense of time slip away and lost himself in the peace and pleasant purity of the spring day. He did not let himself think of labours to come, nor of toils behind, nor of his healing body, nor his looming duties, nor the hard choices that awaited him in the far too immediate future. He did not let his heart trouble over Bilbo’s dismay at his hurts, nor over the undeserved cares he had brought on all those he loved. He did not try to work out how he would explain himself to Halbarad when they met and the new scars and his thinness could not be concealed. He did not even trouble himself over the question of what he ought to wear tomorrow. He simply was.

The faintest rustle of soft shoes in the grass announced the intruder, and Aragorn was familiar enough with each to know the sound was deliberate and very much for his benefit. His careworn mouth lifted into a small smile, though his eyes remained closed. ‘Atarinya,’ he murmured.

‘I thought I might find you here,’ said Elrond, drawing near. There was a rustle of sumptuous silks as he too sat down in the grass, left shoulder just brushing Aragorn’s right. ‘A place of quiet contemplation never loses its allure, however the years may pass.’

‘I did not come to contemplate today, but to forget,’ Aragorn admitted, lowering his chin and turning his head so that the first thing he saw upon opening his eyes was his foster-father’s patient countenance. ‘I had need of that, at least for a little while.’

Elrond nodded gently. ‘That is natural. After all you have suffered, you have earned some measure of forgetfulness. I understand that you have been to see Bilbo.’

‘He had questions,’ said Aragorn. ‘I do not doubt there will be more as this business proceeds, but there was little enough I could tell him. For my lungs?’ He nodded down at a phial of ruby glass curled in Elrond’s far hand. He had a small glass cuvette curled in his last two fingers.

‘You know me well,’ said Elrond. He plucked the stopper from the phial and took the small cup in his left hand so that he might pour. The dark amber fluid ascended precisely to the level of the second-last etching upon the side of the vessel before the steady hand upon the bottle stayed its viscous stream. Elrond presented it with a cupbearer’s courtly flourish.

‘My thanks,’ said Aragorn, taking the dose with finger and thumb and holding it up to the light. ‘Are you going to question me as to its constituents?’

That had been a game between them once: the earliest of his lessons in herb-lore. When as a child he was given any such tincture, elixir or medicinal brew, Aragorn had been called upon to identify its ingredients by taste. It had proved a valuable skill, and not merely for a healer. Several times it had saved him from an unwitted drugging, not always unkindly meant, and on two very memorable occasions he had escaped poisoning by detecting the hazardous compounds upon their first contact with his tongue.

‘Not this time,’ said Elrond. He stoppered the phial and set it carefully in the grass, balanced so that it would not tip. He reached within his outer robe and produced a prettily-carved wooden jar with a snugly fitted lid. ‘Take it, and let me see to your arm.’

Aragorn knocked back the medicine swiftly. It had been sweetened with honey from the bees that hived in the high clover-field, and flavoured with bergamot. Still it was bitter and seemed to shrivel his gums upon contact. He rolled his tongue about his mouth, inviting a flow of spittle to wash the taste away. Then he set the measuring glass aside and bared his forearm. Elrond held it from below with his left palm, while with his right hand he took up a small quantity of thick ointment to spread over the scars.

‘Gandalf spoke to me of your halt in the house of Grimbeorn,’ Elrond said as he began to work. First he spread the unguent liberally, and then he began digging deep into the marred flesh with firm, skillful fingers. Aragorn felt the uncomfortable rolling of a long tendon as it was pushed out of the way to allow access to deeper adhesions.

‘Our halt together?’ Aragorn clarified, not without a note of wariness. He did not wish to recount how he had first come to that glad place.

‘Of course. That is, after all, a part of his tale as well as your own. He told me that you were able to do a kindness for the family, and that you may have found yourself a young apprentice.’

Aragorn smiled at this. ‘She is not my apprentice: Una daughter of Balbeorn has a skilled craftsmistress in her grandmother. I merely offered what aid I could in a difficult time.’

‘Hmm.’ Elrond’s gaze was fixed upon the arm, where his thumbs were leaving pale marks that filled swiftly back to angry reddish-purple as the pressure was relieved. ‘It is a teacher’s pleasure to hear of his student’s triumphs,’ he said. ‘Perhaps one day word will come to you of a life this girl has saved by virtue of your instruction, and you will know of what I speak.’

Aragorn looked at the Peredhel in mild surprise. He had not considered that facet of the tale: that Elrond, as the one who had trained him in the arts physic, might relish to hear how they had been plied in the sparing of Freya’s life. ‘I did not mean to be evasive,’ he said softly. ‘The lady in question… it is not a custom of the Beornings for men to have any part in the birthing. It was a matter of great delicacy, and required much trust on the part of my patient for me to treat her. I do not think it is a tale to be borne far abroad.’

A proud smile touched Elrond’s lips. ‘Dear Estel, always so prudent with the confidences placed in him,’ he said softly. ‘Do not tense, if you are able to refrain. I fear this will pain you.’

Given only time enough to brace himself with none left over to lavish in dreaded anticipation, Aragorn neither stiffened nor made any sound as Elrond’s dexterous thumbs sank in between the bones of his forearm with a sensation of deep crackling. The pain was brief and brilliant, but it was the eerie feeling of tissues breaking and giving way that was the more unpleasant sensation. Aragorn exhaled from his nostrils in a searing puff of distaste. Elrond’s lips were parting in words of gentle encouragement when the Man’s lungs seized high in his chest and he was taken all at once by a series of rattling, agonized coughs.

Lost in a vain attempt to cling to his dignity and draw air at the same time, Aragorn curled forward over his lap. His left foot slid down beside his right, and his arms curled instinctively against his lower ribs, bracing the muscles tormented from within. The hands that had been upon his forearm now moved to shoulder and back, steadying him and offering what comfort they could. Between the crackling spasms Aragorn could hear Elrond’s quiet reassurances.

‘It will pass. Do not resist. Cough, and clear it.’ His left hand moved from supporting Aragorn’s far arm to spreading broadly across the back of his ribs. ‘Cough. It will pass. It will pass.’

Aragorn obeyed. He could not have disobeyed. He rode each wave of tormented hacking like a mariner upon a violent sea, sawing in small swallows of air when he could. The blinding pain from deep within his lungs threatened to swallow him, but he leaned into the anchoring hold of his father and focused his mind upon the bubbling wetness beneath his breastbone. He could no longer make sense of the murmured words of comfort, but all at once he felt a radiating warmth spreading from beneath Elrond’s hand. It did not ease his wind, but at once the pain began to withdraw from tortured to tolerable. By the time the paroxysms died to shallow little outbursts followed by deep, desperate breaths, clenching anguish was reduced to an effete ache.

‘Thank you,’ Aragorn gasped, his voice sawing heavily across a strained windpipe. He let his head rest briefly against the strong, slender shoulder, utterly exhausted, and then forced himself to sit up under his own power. He was still curled forward, shoulders slumped, but each breath came more easily and he could feel the fluid settling down into the nether reaches of his lungs. He forced a stinging swallow. ‘Thank you,’ he huffed again.

Elrond had a handkerchief in hand, and offered it. Aragorn gripped it like a half-drowned man who seizes at last the lifeline cast from a friendly ship, and wiped the froth of spittle from his mouth. Reflexively he looked down at the blotch of wetness in the fine cambric, noting with clinical detachment that it was blessedly colourless. His hammering heart slowed its acrobatics still further.

‘It seems I am not yet healed,’ he said dryly. No one had intimated that he was; not even the most hopeful or arrogant parts of his own mind.

A soft chuckle sounded in the Elf-lord’s throat. ‘Not yet,’ he agreed. ‘But soon enough. I confess I cannot be too sorry that you are in need of care, for I fear once you are hale again you will be quick to leave us.’

‘I must,’ Aragorn said swiftly. Unable to find the strength to raise his head, he turned it instead so that he might find Elrond’s eyes. ‘There is much to be done.’

This received a tight nod of acknowledgement. ‘Aye, there is much to be done,’ sighed Elrond. He tried to ease his expression into lightness and did not quite succeed. ‘Gandalf does not believe there is cause for too much haste.’

‘For haste, no,’ Aragorn agreed. He drew his first truly deep, steady breath and eased his spine back against the support of the rock. ‘For speed, I fear there may be. At the least we must decide our course before the Enemy closes the gap and decides it for us.’

‘Now you wait upon the indecision of a scholar instead of the obduracy of a spy,’ said Elrond, amusement and self-deprecation in equal parts. ‘Your patience must be as enduring as your strength.’

‘Pray it is not,’ muttered Aragorn, his shifting mood now wobbling sourly. ‘For I have learned the limits of that.’

Elrond took his hand and held it, fingers twined. ‘That is no disadvantage: not to a man, nor to a warrior, nor to a great lord,’ he said. ‘You know now where the border lies, for you have walked within its sight. Now you have the measure of what you may endure, and you will not trespass it in a moment of peril. From your ordeal you have taken this: that you know now not only the limits of your strength, but the vast scope of your determination that has kept you on a path to which no other would have held. The limits of your will you have not yet found, but you know now how sorely it can be tested and yet withstand. I forebode a time is coming when you shall be called upon to try it further, and upon that day you can look back to this road and find courage in the knowledge that your strength of purpose – and indeed your stubbornness – proved more than equal to the challenges laid before it.’

Aragorn looked it him, quiet in word and in heart. This he had not considered: that the barest scraping achievement in the trial of the body had been a clear triumph in the trial of resolve. He thought of those bitter days high in the mountains, when his shattered endurance had been scarce enough to sustain him even with Gandalf to aid him and Moroch to bear him. Even then, his determination had not faltered. Even then, he had pressed on with resolve of adamant, fixed upon his aim. He had found the border of his might, only to discover that it fell far short of the border of his will. In the trials to come, would that not prove more crucial even than might of arms? One man alone could not counter the strength of Mordor, but one man’s will could hold many more fast upon a course both deadly and necessary.

He looked into Elrond’s eyes and saw all this reflected there, but filtered of any question or doubt. Aragorn’s faith in himself might shudder at times, but the faith held in him had not. From that he could take heart, take strength, and take the courage to press onward.

Note: Chapter title from “The Mewlips”, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, J.R.R. Tolkien.

‘Aragorn sat with his head bowed to his knees; only Elrond knew fully what this hour meant to him.’ – from “The Ring Goes South”, The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter LXXVIII: Where the Trees are Grey

By the time Aragorn returned to the house, the high meadow was deep in the afternoon shadow of the mountains. The rest of the valley would sit in sunlight for some time yet, and the lofty windows admitted a golden warmth to the downstairs rooms. He came in through the main library, inhaling the half-forgotten scents of ink and carefully preserved parchment and ancient knowledge. He had half-hoped to meet Erestor, but his one-time teacher was not in his accustomed place among the pristinely tended shelves and welcoming nooks. There were a few bowed heads in the scriptorium, making use of the daylight to paint elaborate illuminations into the borders of beautifully penned pages. Aragorn lingered briefly on the threshold of the workroom, curious as to what project they were undertaking, but he did not interrupt their intent labours and moved on quietly.

He ascended the stairs so that he might leave the phial of medicine and the pot of ointment in his anteroom, and there he hesitated. He wondered briefly whether he ought to change his robe for something with less revealing sleeves, remembering Bilbo’s pained dismay at the revelation of his scars. In the end he decided against it. The effort required was substantial, and it seemed a shame to shuck a garment still so blissfully clean. He would just have to take care to keep his cuffs at his wrists, that was all.

With little to occupy his time until the evening meal, Aragorn decided that it was time to look in on Gandalf. He did not truly expect to find him in his chamber at this hour, but that was where he was, sitting in a cushioned armchair with his feet upon a tapestried tuffet. Having bade the Ranger enter, he lifted his head from its resting place upon a wing of the chair.

‘Well, now. I was just thinking of you,’ he said as the door swung quietly closed. ‘I passed by your rooms earlier. Where were you?’

‘Down by the water,’ Aragorn answered. There was another chair turned in towards the fire and he took it, folding his hands in his lap but keeping his back from touching the carven wood. ‘Before that, I spent an hour or two with Bilbo.’

‘Did you, indeed?’ said Gandalf. A fond smile touched his lips. ‘I suppose he had questions that only the Dúnadan could answer for him.’

‘It does seem as if the Dúnadan was the only one with the inclination to do so,’ Aragorn said with a gently jibing curl of his lip. ‘Have you told him all? He seemed to have quite a complete picture.’

‘All that I can be certain of, or nearly certain,’ said Gandalf. ‘I did not tell him of Isildur’s precise words, for that seemed likely to trouble him more than is necessary. Nor did I speak overlong about the way in which the Ring twisted and gnawed away at Gollum over time. He loves his nephew dearly, and I think he is quite unhappy enough that he left him with such a dangerous gift.’

‘We spoke of that,’ said Aragorn. ‘I did what I could to comfort him. I will be making arrangements for riders to be sent West on the morrow. Have you any specific instructions that should be relayed to my men?’

Gandalf shook his head wearily. ‘They must be vigilant, and they must be steadfast. The guard upon the Shire can be permitted to lapse for nothing. They will have to be on the alert not only for spies of the two-footed variety, but of the four-footed and the winged as well. But that is nothing, I think, that it has not already occurred to you to tell them. What will your kinsman make of these instructions?’

‘I do not know,’ Aragorn confessed. ‘There were few questions when first the watch was doubled, for times were growing ever darker and of the lands in our care the Shire has always been the most peaceable and the most vulnerable. Halbarad will obey my instructions; of that I have no doubt. But when we meet again there will be questions. I do not know how much it is mete for him to know.’

‘As little as possible, but enough that his compliance can be guaranteed,’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not for me to tell you how far into your confidence your second should be taken. I know his loyalty is unimpeachable, but…’ He gestured vaguely, but his eyes were not in the least unclear.

‘What Halbarad does not know cannot be drawn from him by coercion or torment,’ Aragorn murmured. A chill coursed up his spine, tingling out into the healing marks of the lynx-wounds. What danger was he bringing on his men by drawing them into this? That he had no choice but to do so would be no balm to his conscience if things went ill.

‘If it is plain he does not know, that may protect him from both,’ Gandalf said, offering what slim comfort he could. He sighed and chafed his hand over his mouth, sword-callouses rasping against his whiskers. ‘I know not what should be done, Aragorn,’ he said. ‘Neither with our knowledge nor with the Ring itself. It was for this purpose that we were sent, my fellows and I: to labour for the downfall of Sauron. Yet how to proceed from this juncture I dare not guess.’

‘Thankfully, none of us need decide that alone.’ Aragorn turned his eyes to the fire and watched its wild dance for a few beats of his heart. When he spoke again, it was with hushed concern and a measure of caution. ‘Have you found any rest since we have come here?’ he asked.

Gandalf gave a hollow laugh. ‘In body, yes. In spirit, less than I had hoped. These are early days yet, and it is a consolation to see you already less careworn. Perhaps I too should seek out the pleasant company of the Lady of the valley.’

Aragorn felt a boyish flush of heat creep up towards his ears, though he doubted it showed in his face. ‘It is not she alone who has eased my mind,’ he said. ‘Elrond has said much, and Master Baggins possesses a spirit to soothe the sorest heart.’

‘He does, rather, doesn’t he?’ Gandalf said fondly. ‘The healing powers of hobbits have been much underappreciated and left too long uncatalogued. Perhaps you should see to that during your stay, if you begin to want for occupation.’

‘Perhaps I should,’ said Aragorn, mostly in jest. He doubted he would have either the peace of mind or the inclination to write of hobbits or anything else. There was too much to think on, too much to forget, and too many little moments of priceless peace to savour.

‘Elrond made mention, and I promised to speak to you, of a desire within the household.’ Now it was Gandalf who sounded mildly wary, uncertain how his words would be received. ‘There are those who desire a night of feasting and revelry in honour of our return. I told Elrond that such exertions may be beyond your inclination at this time, and he naturally understands that perfectly. I do not think this is any notion of his, but he does appear to be under some pressure from others.’

‘Glorfindel, no doubt,’ said Aragorn with mingled amusement and chagrin. ‘The joy of Valinor is too bright in his heart: he forgets at times that the rest of us may lack the fortitude for high days and merriment.’

‘The return of a beloved son of the house is as just a cause for joy as any I can think of,’ said Gandalf. ‘Nor would it do either of us any harm to be rewarded in some measure for our labours. You have had the greater part of the toil, it is true, but I nonetheless would like to feel as if these deeds had not gone wholly unsung.’

‘Of that Bilbo made mention,’ Aragorn muttered. He scrubbed at his brow with the side of his forefinger. ‘You know my feelings on the matter.’

‘I do,’ the wizard agreed. ‘But I also know that you are as fond of fine food and fair music as the rest of us, and that you were not able to fully partake of those pleasures in the Elven-king’s hall. You are weary yet, and the hurts of your heart have only begun to heal. The preparations for such a feast will take at least three days. By then you may feel differently. Such diversions always seem more onerous beforehand than they prove to be in the end. Would it do you so much harm to sit at the high table for an evening, dining in honour as befits your birth? If at the last you did not feel able to enjoy the music and the fellowship afterwards, no one would fault you.’

Aragorn sighed softly, wary of disturbing his lungs. Such a homecoming had been given to him often enough in the past, where in all the world he was best known and beloved. And the triumph, if triumph it could be called, was not his alone. Gandalf had his own share in the long, hard hunt and the bitter interrogation.

‘Let your father have the delight of placing you before his household victorious,’ said Gandalf softly. ‘It may be long ere he has that chance again, with your toils bearing you so often far afield and leaving so seldom the time for mirth.’

Moving only his eyes, Aragorn held his friend’s gaze. What could be said to that?

lar

That night again he dined in quietude in his rooms. Aragorn knew now that his presence from the common board was sorely missed, but neither his strength nor his spirit were equal to such diverse company. He eased his reproach for this selfishness with the knowledge that those who cared for him would understand, and Elrond most of all. The healing of a heart required rigours no less exhausting and painful than the healing of a twisted limb, and this day’s efforts had left him spent. He retired with tired bliss to the haven of his bed, and fell swiftly into slumber.

There it seemed he walked in a wild wood, overgrown with lichen and heavy hanging moss that weighed down gnarled and ancient branches. The air was heavy with the musk of long years’ undisturbed decay, and his boots squelched with each laden step. They were his old boots, cracked and leaking after their cruel soaking in Gladden’s depths, and the cold bog-water seeped in to chill his toes. Somewhere a gore-crow cawed, a bleak and croaking sound that seemed only to deepen the gloom. Aragorn walked on, heart hammering in his chest. He could sense danger about him like icy fingers caressing the back of his neck in a travesty of tenderness. He could feel eyes upon him, keen and cold and glittering with hatred. Yet he could not turn, could not run, could not reach for his sword. He could only walk on, picking his way among the claws of risen roots and the pools of vile-smelling slime that lay between the veins of oozing peat.

Upon the wind he heard a cry, piercing and fell and not nearly far enough away for comfort. But close at hand there was another sound, like the warbling moan of a fat toad on a wet autumn night. Yet it was unlike, also, for it froze the Ranger in his steps with inarticulate dread. He could not move, but his eyes searched their full range, up and down and broadly to either side. It was in his right periphery that he saw them: two great glowing orbs of malice fixed resolutely upon him. Aragorn tried again to turn his head, but the sinews of his neck were locked and though his heart beat a manic staccato he was utterly unable to make them obey him.

There was a rustling noise as the eyes bobbed, and again he heard the wet, resounding gulp as the crow cried still more desolately. Only then did Aragorn recognize the phlegmy swallowing burble for what it was. The woods were filled with watchers, and foremost among them was Gollum. Aragorn could smell him, could veritably taste the rotten reek upon his tongue. And the sly wretch had not come alone.

At first Aragorn thought it was the spider – not the one he had slain with his slender knife in Mirkwood, but the other. The mass of blackness and rot that had towered over his huddled body, that had shed its vast skin deep in the noxious darkness, would surge forth from the gloom of the woods and strike upon Gollum’s shrill command. But when he heard the brush behind him part, mossy tentacles whispering, it was not the clatter of eight legs upon smooth-worn stone that he heard. It was the dusty thud of hard-soled boots upon barren soil, and the low crack of a tent-flap flung wide.

Gollum screamed, a wordless ululation of terror and rage, and all at once he was before Aragorn, squatting in the muck. He looked up with that reptilian cant to his emaciated neck, and he held out his hands. They were red with blood from many fine, exquisitely painful cuts, and the black burns stood out fresh from ashen skin. The fingers were bent into hideous claws, but this time not to strangle. Instead Gollum raised them, palms heavenward, in a gesture of supplication and accusation as though Aragorn himself were the cause of these hateful hurts.

‘No,’ he whispered, shocked to find that he could speak when he could not move. ‘No, not I. Not I.’

But Gollum only leered at him, pale eyes vast and shining with horror and denigration. The charge within those eyes did not abate, and Aragorn felt his stomach turn in slow, dreadful nausea. A dim voice inside of him insisted with calm authority that he had not been the cause of those hurts, but the rest of his mind was in a turmoil of uncertainty. His disdain for his charge loomed large above him, casting its own damnation down upon him.

And then, cool and deft and smooth as that of a scholar or a highborn lady, a hand touched the back of his neck, slithering slowly around. The thumb lay straight and tall behind his right ear, and the four long fingers curled about his throat. They did not clutch, nor did they claw. They did not even exert more than the slightest pressure. Yet Aragorn felt his breath arrest high in his throat and the pounding of his heart climbed towards a fierce crescendo.

Breath, hot and coiling like the flames of a grass-fire licking at a dooryard fence, touched Aragorn’s skin. Another smell came to him: not putrescence this time, but the dusky green scent of bruised parsley. Then in his other ear, while the tip of the thumb brushed behind the shell of his right, a voice of smooth and treacherous ice whispered; ‘They are coming.’

The high cry sounded again, sending a sharp shock through the grim wood and shattering Aragorn’s fragile self-control. ‘No!’ he shouted, and his own voice was drowned in that screeching discord that harmonized with the first and most ancient song of darkness: the dissenting melody sung by Morgoth in the dawn of time.

‘They are coming!’ the voice in his ear proclaimed, triumphant. And they came.

Beyond sight or touch, they swarmed: distinct swirls of malice in the stagnant air. He could feel them burrowing within him: oozing, penetrating, tearing wide the secrets of his heart and baring them to the sky, to Gollum and to the sinuous slave who held him fast, throat and elbow. Aragorn’s lips parted with a rattling gasp, but this time no cry came forth. They had come on him at last, all Nine united, in this empty place far from any help. They had found him. They had found him, and with a hissing menace their Captain called his name.

‘Estel!’ it shrieked in a mockery of the word: its meaning and its owner both. ‘Estel! Estel!’

Firm hands seized his shoulders, warm and bracing, and at once the cold ones were gone. The bars of chill where those feeling fingers had fettered him lingered, but the hand itself – and its mate, searing icily through the sleeve of his night garment – was gone. ‘Estel!’ the voice said again, and this time it was not the vile North wind out of Angmar but a breathless, plaintive command that rang with the music of the Elder Days. ‘Estel, awake!’

Again Aragorn gasped and, as if the flood of air had forced them, his eyes flew open. His hands shot up, seizing the wrists of those that held him as much to anchor himself as out of a half-hatched soldierly instinct. Wildly he searched the room with its familiar starlit shadows, eyes lolling in their sockets. As they moved to the left, his head followed them. That was when he truly knew that he was awake.

He bowed forward over his lap, where one knee was raised where his bad foot had driven deep in the mattress to propel him away from the threat. There was a shoulder there, warm beneath fine linen, and one arm curled around to skim his scapula in its journey to lie parallel up his neck. The hand cupped the crown of his head beneath its covering of sweat-slicked hair.

‘It was a dream,’ Elrond murmured, holding him close as Aragorn tried to master himself. His first effort to draw a deep breath was met with a spasming cough, and so he let the frenetic panting continue and focused upon his crashing heart instead. Aragorn’s brow leaned heavily upon the solid, exquisitely present, shoulder as his chest heaved. ‘There, my son. My son. It was naught but a devilry of the mind. It was a dream.’

Aragorn could not speak. The horror still clenched his heart: not horror of the dream alone, but of the fell memories that lay behind. Gollum, with his writhing hands and cruel, burning eyes. A low, trilling voice fraught with gleeful malevolence. And worst by far, the awful violation of the incursions of the Nazgûl as they clawed at sanity and devoured all hope. He screwed his eyes closed and fixed every tendril of his mind upon the pace of his heart and the gentle hands that held him.

‘I am here. You are awake. It is over now,’ whispered Elrond, soothing and in perfect control. It was this last that was the greatest comfort: the serene capability in the well-beloved voice, promising that Aragorn did not need to wage this battle alone; that there was another here to stand at his shoulder, another who could bear the burden of command awhile.

Slowly his desperate panting slowed to laboured breaths that wheezed a little on the intake, and his heart’s panicked rhythm died away to a steady drumbeat. The hand upon his head was still and constant. The other, wrapping him into a crooked embrace, moved in a slow, consoling spiral on his back.

When he felt able to hold the weight of his own head, Aragorn sat back. The hand that had held it slid down to caress his forearm, while the other moved to his shoulder so that the backs of slender fingers could rest against his cheek. Soft grey eyes, eternally patient and forever loving, met his shamed and desperate ones.

‘I woke you,’ he huffed, his face a burning brand. ‘Did I rouse the entire household?’

‘No,’ Elrond said, lulling honesty in his voice. ‘You gave a small cry, but I doubt it could have been heard at any greater distance, or by ears not alert to such sounds. Do you wish to speak of the terrors your mind has wrought? Sometimes it is best to share such a yoke.’

Aragorn shook his head unsteadily. Elrond was sitting on the edge of the bed, dark hair like a cloud about a face that seemed paler than either heritage or starlight might readily explain. Perhaps the cry and certainly the reluctance of the dreamer to awaken when called had shaken him badly. Even now he did not relinquish his hold upon the Man, as if he feared he might slip back into dark dreams.

‘Gollum,’ said Aragorn, his voice hoarse and husky. ‘Gollum, and the Nine…’

He stiffened at that word, as though it had been spoken by another. Elrond responded to this sudden tension by inching nearer and moving his hand further up Aragorn’s arm.

‘Dark things indeed,’ he sighed. ‘Would that I could soothe you as I did in your childhood, with promises that such things were false or long-past. I can say naught in comfort now save that neither can touch you here. As for Gollum, he is secured in the fastness of Thranduil’s halls. It may be that he shall never walk free again, much less come to plague you.’

‘He will always plague me, I think,’ Aragorn murmured. ‘Though I live a hundred years more, I shall never forget his eyes.’

‘No,’ said Elrond, very softly. ‘No, there are those things we cannot forget, however we wish to and no matter how much time may pass.’

Aragorn met his pained gaze, and wondered what unhappy recollection was rising now in his father’s mind. But his back was slick with sweat and his garment clung to him: he shivered convulsively, bony body far too sensitive to the slightest chill.

‘Here.’ Elrond rose and drew back the bedclothes, offering both hands to help the Ranger rise. ‘Exchange that robe for a fresh one, and I will put right the bed.’

Aragorn nodded numbly and took the few short steps to the clothespress. His ankle pained him with each one, dull ache lancing to agony through his heel. It was only the lingering rawness in his jangled nerves, for he could not have reinjured the joint against a feather mattress, however frantic his movements. Yet his legs were quaking and as soon as he had the clean night shift in his hand he stumbled for the seat under which he kept his bootjack. Elrond’s back was turned, but his hands paused in their practiced smoothing of the bedclothes as the joints of the chair creaked with the suddenness of Aragorn’s descent upon them.

It was a full minute, perhaps longer, before Aragorn felt capable of lifting himself onto one braced elbow so that he could draw the perspiration-soaked garment up over his haunches. He waited several seconds more before rolling it up and over his head. Hastily he let it fall and donned the other, taken by a savage memory of crouching naked over a pitiful campfire while his hair froze to his shoulders. When his foster-father turned from the bed, Aragorn had the clean shift down around his hips and his head in his hands.

It had felt so real, so appallingly real. He might have known that these days of reliving his journey would awaken every dark thing that he had carried buried within him on his desperate road. Although he could only dispel such shadows with the light of love and acceptance, he was nonetheless laying bare raw wounds that had been left long to fester beneath makeshift bandages. They had to be scoured and debrided, and at last neatly closed. It was not a process to be executed without pain.

When Elrond’s hand came to rest upon his bowed back, Aragorn was still shaking. Meek as a child he let himself be guided to rise, the hem of his garment falling down about his ankles as he did so. His head was bowed already, so it was with ease that Elrond kissed his brow.

‘Do you wish to go back to bed?’ he asked. ‘If you prefer we can retire to the anteroom and light the fire. Your skin is cold to the touch.’

Aragorn parted his lips to voice his wish, for he wanted nothing less than to hazard a return to the bleak slumberland he had so lately escaped, but no sound issued forth. In his dream he had been articulate but motionless. Now he was mute, and yet could move. He tilted his head towards the open door and haltingly led the way. Elrond fell behind just before the threshold, and then drew up upon Aragorn and draped something heavy and comforting over his shoulders. Reflexively Aragorn crossed his arms to grasp it, fingers sinking deep into the rich velvet pile of his evening robe. He wore it but rarely, for it was not his habit to take visitors while in dishabille, nor was it common for his weather-seasoned body to find any cold in the well-appointed house. Terror and the ravages of famine had left him enfeebled and susceptible to such discomforts.

He slipped his arms into the splendidly cut sleeves while Elrond bent to light the fire. The tinder flared and crackled, and the first stem of wood caught ablaze with comforting swiftness. Another thing that was easy to forget in the Wild was how cleanly and easily cured firewood burned. Aragorn moved slowly to his chair by the hearth, less unsteady upon his feet now but wary of further weakness.

Elrond watched him sit, wordless and carefully expressionless. Then he drew up another chair and settled himself near enough that he could reach across the gap between armrests and put his hand over Aragorn’s. This unspoken pledge of constancy did more to quiet the stirrings of the Ranger’s heart than a hundred calming words could have done. It was a reminder, firm and tangible, that he was no longer alone.

They sat there for some minutes, and gradually Aragorn realized that the door opening on the corridor was ajar. Elrond must have come with the greatest of haste when he heard the cry. Now the ruddy pool of firelight sent out a broad strip of illumination into the corridor. Anyone passing would surely see it and wonder what cause the Lord of the Dúnedain had to be sitting up with his fire lit and his door open at such an hour. The first would raise no questions, but the second was contrary to his nature. With so much of his life spent in uncertainty, beneath the open sky or in insecure shelter, it was a consolation of home to be able to shut himself in with a stout door and a knock between him and any chance meetings.

He tried to muster the effort required to rise and close it, but somehow he could not. It was not a weakness of the body, or at least not one that he could quantify. Nevertheless his limbs felt weighted with weariness and the thought of breaking his simple contact with Elrond wrung at his courage. So instead he remained where he was, watching that column of light warily and hoping that no one happened near.

He would have been glad to stay in the seat by the fire, his hand beneath his father’s, until dawn came to banish the mind’s dark musings, but of course the time came when he could no longer justify keeping Elrond from his rest. The fire was by then only a bed of bright embers, and Aragorn did not speak. He merely clenching his fingers and rose to his feet, still using a stout grip upon the armrests to help him up onto his mending ankle. That small consideration and others like it would speed the healing without weakening the limb.

Elrond’s hand withdrew as Aragorn rose, but he followed the Ranger into the bedchamber. Aragorn’s steps were heavy, with weariness and with trepidation. Sometimes he awoke from dark dreams to the sure knowledge they had flown from him. Sometimes he was left with the dread feeling that they waited for him in the depths of his mind like great black beasts crouched to pounce. Most often when that feeling took him, his prediction proved correct. Tonight would surely be such a night.

Elrond skirted around him and turned back the bedclothes. The bed looked fresh and so very alluring, and it was not only consideration for the needs of the Elf-lord that drew Aragorn to it. The pillows had been plumped invitingly, and the sheets were smoothed out of their tangle. The Ranger let the sumptuous robe slip from his shoulders and laid it atop the clothes press before going to the bed. As he lay down he felt that same release of strain that always greeted him when he stretched his back and his long legs along the soft support of a good feather tick. His dread still sat like a peach-pit in his throat, but his body was already reaching greedily towards sleep.

Elrond drew up the blankets and tucked them as he had done on so many nights long ago, taking his turn in seeing his small ward to bed. The memory was most clearly associated with times like this: when, ill or hurting or frightened, Aragorn had needed a solace more profound than any his mother could offer him. It made him feel very young again and, despite the horrors lurking as much in memory as in imagination, profoundly safe. So seldom was he able to sleep in safety. It seemed unjust for terror and hatred to hunt him even here.

There was a soft scrape as Elrond picked up the chair from the corner. He bore it back across the room and set it down, parallel to the bed and facing the headboard. As he sat, Aragorn turned to him and shook his head.

‘You should return to your rest,’ he said. ‘I know there are weighty matters upon your heart, and you do not need to sit a vigil by the bedside of one who can scarcely be considered even a convalescent anymore.’

‘I was deprived by distance of the right to sit such a vigil when you were brought low in body,’ Elrond said quietly, settling his hand upon Aragorn’s forearm where it broke the line of the coverlet. ‘Let me at least do so now, when you are brought low in spirit. Who can say?’ he added with a tiny, tender smile. ‘Perhaps I can keep the dreams at bay.’

‘You always could,’ murmured Aragorn. He closed his eyes, concentrating upon the gentle weight of Elrond’s touch and feeling his body slip deeper and deeper into the paralysis of exhaustion. His mind, however, refused to let him give in to sleep.

‘Speak, child,’ Elrond said presently. ‘What more troubles you?’

Aragorn opened his eyes. In the dimness of the starlight coming through the curtains, Elrond’s face looked still more smooth and fair than it did beneath the Sun. His eyes were darker, too, and shadowed now with worry as well as with compassion.

‘Failure,’ Aragorn confessed, the word coming out on the whisper of a breath before he could even search his heart for an answer to the question. It knew better than he, it seemed, what burdens it needed most to share.

‘You did not fail,’ said Elrond. ‘Scarcely even did you falter, save at Dagorlad. And then you sprang at once into action again at the smallest sign of hope.’

‘It is not the failures of the roads behind that trouble me,’ sighed Aragorn, no longer safe in the illusion of boyhood. He felt every long year of his life now, dragging upon him like warp-weights on a crossbar. ‘It is the failures that lie ahead. Elendil saved his people from the cataclysm of Ulmo, built a realm out of wilderness, and waged a long and victorious war against the fastness of Mordor. Yet in the end he failed to overthrow the Enemy and was himself cast down. Isildur carved out a great city and helped to lay the foundations of a realm that has endured throughout the Age. He led his men to battle and to glory. Yet when the true test came, he fell. His people paid dearly for his folly, and the seeds of it bring bitter harvests yet. Even the great ones stumble. How can I not?’

‘Aye, even the great ones may stumble,’ said Elrond. ‘And until the end of your road that shall ever be a risk. Yet you have been facing great risk and improbable odds from babyhood, my son. Never has that deterred you from trying.’

‘Nor will it now,’ said Aragorn, the conviction in his heart wavering only a little. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, but the mass of dread remained in his throat. ‘Yet the fear of the fall shall haunt me on every step of the road.’ Aragorn fell silent, but Elrond did not speak. He knew that there was more to come, and so he waited.

‘I spoke to Gandalf of sending word to Halbarad, and of what he might be told when he comes to me for an accounting of my orders,’ Aragorn said at last. He could not look at his foster-father. His eyes were fixed instead on the shadowy brocade of the tester above. Only long familiarity enabled him to pick out the pattern of vines and blossoms. ‘Always before I have dispatched my Rangers against the unknown dangers of the Wild: now orcs, now wolves, now hill-brigands and cutpurses. This time there can be no doubt what will come. Perhaps not for many months or even years, but they are coming.’

‘Yes.’ Elrond’s breath carried the affirmation Aragorn had so dreaded, and it seemed as if the room grew cold. ‘Sooner or later, they will come.’

He had tried not to flinch, but still his heart quailed and he could not conceal it. Aragorn forced himself to go on. ‘And when they do, who will stand to meet them save the Dúnedain? In setting my men to guard the Shire, I am setting them in the end against the Nine. I am knowingly laying them in the path of butchery. It is a Captain’s burden, but that it is necessary makes the choice no easier to bear.’

‘No. It is not easy,’ Elrond said quietly. ‘Yet neither does it mean you will fail them. A life lost in defence of the innocent is not wasted. You ask of them nothing you have not done yourself, and without aid.’

This was true, but still more chilling. Having faced the Nazgûl singly and in greater numbers – though blessedly never at their full complement – Aragorn knew precisely what he was pitting his loyal Rangers against. The chill in his chest spread again, more unnerving than before.

‘Always those who dwell in times of darkness and great deeds wish the cup had passed them by,’ Aragorn said, trying to drive the bleak dread of the many grim tomorrows to come. ‘Yet some must take their turn and stand. If the Ring has indeed been found – and I see not how it can be otherwise, even without the final proof – then my hour draws nigh. I fear not the test itself, but my own fallibility. I am imperfect. If in the end I cannot hold fast, what is left for me and for all those I love?’

Elrond did not speak, but his grip upon Aragorn’s arm tightened and he refused to look away from the Man’s careworn face. This was not how Aragorn would have chosen to voice these misgivings, but there was a cleansing relief in speaking them aloud at last.

‘All my life, so now it seems, I have waited and prepared for this,’ he said, lips scarcely moving with the words. ‘When it comes I will put forth all I have to offer. Surely it is better to be felled before the mighty storm than to cower and be spared while it lays waste all the world. Yet that knowledge cannot ease the burden, nor can it banish the fear that in the deciding moment one may turn and blow with the wind instead of resisting.’

‘There is naught that I can say to ease that fear, for it is the dread that comes with greatness,’ Elrond sighed. ‘None may bear it for you, much though they might wish it. Yet in my heart I am certain you will always resist, in triumph or in failure, in glory or in humiliation, with hope or without it.’

‘Resist, perhaps,’ said Aragorn. ‘Press on? I do not know. I have tasted the temptation to lay aside my labours ere this, but never with the clarity that I have upon this road. That will be my failing, if it comes.’

‘That too I know,’ Elrond said with a sad and tender smile. ‘Ever have I endeavored to aid you in your guard against it, however I may.’

‘Verily,’ Aragorn whispered. ‘For that I have not the words to express my thanks.’

Elrond’s palm moved to rest against the Ranger’s too-hollow cheek. His thumb brushed the side of Aragorn’s nose. ‘No thanks is owed, my son. Now let me help you find slumber beyond the reach of evil dreams.’

Aragorn’s hand slipped from under the bedclothes to lay hold upon the slender wrist that rested on his clavicle. He shook his head very slightly, knowing that it would be felt with no difficulty whatsoever. ‘I beg you, Atarinya: do not sit out the night here. See me off into my rest if you will, but then seek your own. I am not the only one who faces the darkness, nor the evil that bides within. Nor is my trial to be the greatest.’

‘Yet it shall be greater than mine, I think,’ murmured Elrond. He bowed low and kissed Aragorn’s brow again, very lightly. Then he drew his hand up to shield the eyes of his fosterling, and put forth thoughts of peace and sleep untroubled. After a time he sat back, palm lying again upon Aragorn’s arm. Softly he hummed an ancient melody of Valinor unsullied while the starlight glittered in his eyes. The room about them grew dim as a weary body found its rest and an overburdened mind drank deep of the well of forgetfulness.

Chapter LXXVIX: Children of Lúthien

Morning came, and despite his broken night Aragorn did not oversleep the Sun. He rose with dawn's first light to find that Elrond had respected his wishes and honoured his request. At some point he had withdrawn, and the chair was back in its accustomed corner. Aragorn moved through his waking tasks with mute precision and clothed himself in fresh linen and yesterday's raiment, sparing himself the effort of a choice. Briefly he left his rooms in search of an attendant, from whom he requested that a simple breakfast be brought. He ventured no further afield.

He had procured a flagon of crisp red wine, the better to fulfill Elrond's instructions in that respect. He used his first cupful of the day to rinse away the bitter taste of the lung tincture. Then he went to the window-seat to massage the unguent into his scarred forearm as he stared out across the gardens all but unseeing. The morning mists began to melt as the Sun climbed above the mountainous ramparts from whence he had come short days before.

Aragorn had finished the unhurried ministrations upon his sword arm by the time the soft knock sounded on his anteroom door.

'Please enter,' he said, not troubling to turn from the window. He had his knee up on the bench and the crest of his temple rested against the cool glass. That last gave him the illusion of clarity of thought. His heart felt little, still depleted from the night's strains like a festering wound scraped clean. He heard but did not truly listen to the soft sounds of the bearer's movements as the tray was set upon the table and dishes laid out.

'You are walking far from the valley this morning,' Arwen said quietly, drawing just near enough that her hand might rest upon his shoulder. 'What may I say to bring you back to us?'

He lifted his head that he might look upon her. The sight of her cherished face with its pearl-perfect skin and fathomless eyes awoke in him a humble and wondering joy despite his weariness. She wore a gracious little half-smile upon her rose-kissed lips, and her gaze was gentle.

'I walk nowhere at all,' Aragorn confessed. The words came out in a single sigh. His lungs were looser than they had been: even the previous morning such control over his breath would have been beyond him. 'Sometimes it is best to forego thought a while.'

'You may forego thought if you will,' Arwen allowed, eyes twinkling with ready play instead of worry; 'but not breakfast. Come and be sated. The cooks have sent all manner of dainties to tempt your appetite. Word has gone 'round that Thranduil's steward fed you on bare bread and skimmed milk.'

Aragorn did not deign to ask where this tale had come from. Such talk travelled swiftly, and his near-emaciation could not have passed unremarked. Arwen guessed the truth in the rumour, if indeed she did not know it from Gandalf or her father. Aragorn went instead to the table and drew out one of its slender chairs that Arwen might sit. She settled himself with the seamless grace of an alighting butterfly. He had recovered much of the clean command of the body that was possessed by all swordsmen of skill. Still Aragorn felt gangly and maladroit in contrast, moving with his residual limp to take the other chair gingerly, out of deference to his bruises.

'Gladden a wanderer's heart, Lady, and say that you have not yet eaten,' he said with a courtly lilt that coaxed open her smile. 'We have yet to break bread together since my return.'

'You have my assurance that I have not, my Lord,' Arwen said, sweet and stately at once. 'Your request for victuals came to the kitchens as I was surveying the fruit of the morning's baking. Though today I did not shape the loaves myself, I chose yours with care.'

She picked up a long silver knife from the plate and cut several slender wedges of bread. She took the first and held it out to him.

'Take and be nourished,' she said. 'The bounty of my home I give unto you.'

Aragorn accepted the bread and inclined his head. 'For your gift, my earnest thanks. Proffer it also to they who by the work of their hands have provided for my need.'

Arwen's eyes were warm with love and joy as he tasted of the bread. It was all that he yearned for when walking the Wild: clean and light, both soft and crisp, and still warm from the ovens. Aragorn savoured each sensation of tasting that wondrous bread, forgetting for a few glorious moments his duties, his dread, and the shadow of the night before. Arwen took of her own piece, and then began to uncover the other dishes.

'Why did you not join your maidens in the baking today?' asked Aragorn, finding with pleasure and relief that he did not have to grope for speech. It was true that Arwen did not always undertake that work reserved by ancient custom for the ladies of the Noldor, but she took both pride and pleasure in it and endeavoured to participate whenever she might.

Now she shrugged one slim shoulder. She wore today a gown of purple, dark and flowing, and its sleeve rippled with the motion.

'I was late to descend this morning,' Arwen said, a little too smoothly. She picked up a little porcelain dish and passed it with a smile. 'The very first of the season, procured by the order of the Lady of the valley herself.'

Aragorn took the bowl and smiled. Within sat a little heap of hothouse strawberries, each no larger than a fingernail and enticingly scarlet against the snowy glaze. Their sweet scent tickled his nostrils with the memory of summer in lands unsullied. He plucked one up and let it linger deliciously upon his tongue. The richness of its flavour was disproportionate to its size, and filled his mouth and nostrils. Arwen's eyes shone at his obvious pleasure.

'The days of bounty are upon us,' she said. 'They come early to Imladris, but swiftly shall they spread across the land. Many say that the hard winter portends a loving summer.'

'I have seen too much of the vagaries of nature to make such predictions,' said Aragorn with mild good humour. 'It surpasses my skill to tell you what the skies will do three days from now, much less three months.'

'Yet still will I hope for fair weather,' Arwen said, smiling. She tilted her head to one side and her voice changed almost immeasurably. 'It is said the snows in Rhovanion were deep.'

'They were,' said Aragorn softly. He took a piece of thinly-sliced cheese and used the pretext of chewing it to gather his thoughts. At last he spoke only loudly enough to be heard, wanting to keep as close a rein upon his voice as he was able. 'You have asked so few questions of my road, beloved. What would you know?'

'I know much already,' said Arwen. 'I know that you and Gandalf parted ways in the autumn of the year: he to go where you could not tread, and you to go where he dared not.'

Aragorn's brows furrowed, defence of the wizard rising to his lips as it had ere this, but there was no censure in Arwen's voice or in her eyes. She was merely speaking of the situation as she saw it, and there was some measure of truth in her words. It had been Gandalf's hope, rather than his courage, that had failed him and made the eastward road impassible, but to say he had not dared it was not false.

'I know that you journeyed deep into the marches of the Black Land,' Arwen went on. Her voice was low but steady. 'I know that in the end you found your quarry, and that the northward road was harsh. Most important of all, I know that you have returned to us whole, though not unmarked, and with the knowledge you have so long sought.'

'All that is so,' said Aragorn; 'and it is all that truly matters. Yet you have the right to more, if you wish it. I would willingly keep nothing from you, if you ask it.'

'I would not willingly ask what it will pain you to give,' said Arwen.

'What pain there was lies not in the telling,' Aragorn pledged. 'I cannot but remember it, silently or in my words. To speak of it is no burden beyond that of thinking on it.'

'Then I will ask,' said Arwen. 'But let it not intrude upon our first meal together after so long apart. When we have finished I shall see what may be done with your hair: that will be a more fit time to talk of your travels.'

Somehow she still managed to make this journey sound no different from a score of less onerous absences from Rivendell that he had taken through the years. She would listen to his tidings, as if he brought news of the villages of the Dúnedain, or a tale of a chance encounter on the Road. Arwen was practiced in seeing those she loved ride off into peril and bitter labours, and in welcoming them home again with acceptance and affection. At her door Elladan and Elrohir had always found the same enduring patience and the same sweet strength.

'Far more fit,' Aragorn agreed, though in truth he did not see why it might be any less unsuitable. It was clear, however, that such tales had no place at board. He took another strawberry and offered her the dish and a small smile. 'You have told me nothing of the festivities at the year's changing.'

Arwen's own smile grew radiant once again, and she regaled him gladly with tales of the revels: who had presented a new song or tale, who had given the best (and the worst) rendering of an ancient one, who had fallen rather too deeply into his cups, and who had graced the assembly with the loveliest dances. She had pretty words to say of Bilbo's most recent compositions, and an arch remark or two about the antics of his chiefest critic. Her words wove for Aragorn a gloriously vivid tapestry of the merriment and joy that had flourished here even as he had been groping his way through the vile blackness within the Ephel Dûath. He let himself enter fully into the telling, until it seemed as if he could taste the frost of a moonlit winter night upon his lips and smell the rich spiced wine.

When they were through with their meal, Arwen rose. She went to the door and clapped her hands twice, crisply. Two attendants appeared in short order, and began to clear the table. Even as they departed with their burdens, a trio of Elven maidens came in. This had clearly been arranged, for they bore with them towels, a broom, two large kettles of water, soap, and the carven walnut box holding combs and brush and shears. Swiftly they had everything laid out as their mistress wished, and they retired from the room with pleasant words and deep curtseys.

'Let us sit you near the fire,' said Arwen. 'It would be best if you put your garment from your shoulders: water will mark the cloth.'

The bilaut had a deep opening that ran from the throat to the bottom of the breastbone, and Aragorn unhooked the fine wire clasps. It was an easy thing, then, to remove his arms from the sleeves and bunch the rich fabric down about his waist. Water would do his linen shirt no harm, and it remained where it was. One kettle had been hung on the fire-hook where it could be kept hot. From the other Arwen poured a generous measure of water into the washbasin from the bedroom. She cut it liberally with cool, until the feel of it pleased her hand. Then she draped one of the long towels about Aragorn's shoulders and spread another across his front. Then using a shallow dipper wrought in the shape of a clamshell, she began to wet his hair. She did this with care and with practice, using only as much as she needed and working it through the dark tresses with her fingers. Aragorn had washed them himself only two days before, and so she did not trouble with the soap.

She picked up the larger of her two combs, and set to work smoothing the hair out of its few snarls and tangles. 'I have pretty work ahead of me, putting this to rights,' she said. 'Did a fox take after it with his teeth?'

'At times it was necessary to cut away intractable mats or debris,' Aragorn said. The feel of her hands upon his head and shoulders was at once delightful and so very soothing. Her expert fingers plied the comb, finding each little knot and unravelling it without even the smallest tug upon his scalp.

'Debris?' Arwen echoed.

'Dead leaves, spider silk. And worse,' he said. 'You would have thought me most unlovely had you seen the state of my head when I came to Thranduil's halls.'

He did not hear her bend, but when she spoke her voice was a low breeze of warmth beside his left ear. 'You could never be unlovely in my eyes, Estel, however befouled your hair.'

Aragorn felt a tightness in his throat, hearing words that all who walk hard and often loathsome roads must long to hear. He closed his eyes and tried to fix again upon the consoling sensuous pleasure of a gentle touch after months bereft of such things. 'What would you ask of me?' he said. 'I have promised an accounting.'

'No doubt you have already said much,' Arwen murmured. She had straightened again to focus on her work, and her voice was a degree removed in space though not at all in tone. 'To my father, to Gandalf – even to Bilbo, though I think you have taken great pains not to distress him. If there is aught in those accounts that you wish me to know, you may speak it. Yet I must wonder for myself about those things you did not feel able to tell. Is there anything of which it would give you comfort to speak that they did not think to ask of you?'

He swallowed painfully, but gave earnest thought to her query. He owed her his truthfulness above anything else, and she had a betrothed's right to know what was in his heart. Yet he knew not where to begin, nor what he could bear to tell her.

'I remember little of my earliest days with my prisoner,' he confessed after a few moments. She had been working up from the ends of his hair, and her hands were now at the nape of his neck where night's tangles were thickest. Her fingertips slipped through the curtain of damp strands to brush over his skin in wordless solidarity. 'In capturing Gollum, I took a wound in my arm. There was little hope of keeping it clean in that vile place, for I had scarcely water enough for drinking. It grew infected, and I walked in fever. I cannot recall everything that passed between me and my captive in that time.'

As he spoke Arwen's hands had not faltered. She moved the comb with the same deft rhythm, her other hand smoothing the hair behind it or moving to roll a snarl between finger and thumb before brushing it out. When she spoke, her voice was grave but serene.

'This troubles you,' she said. 'Yet you must know that for those who burn with fever and cannot rest will have difficulty remembering all that came to pass. It is a great mercy that you were not felled by such a hurt, and a testament to your skill that you drove out the infection.'

He had not done that in full until the final lancing in Mirkwood, but Aragorn was not of a mind to be pedantic. He swallowed, though his mouth was dry. 'Those first days were of the greatest import, and I cannot say if I used them well. I cannot hope that I did. Had I succeeded in building some measure of trust between my prisoner and myself, or even in convincing him that I had no intention to harm or torment him, the deeds that followed might have gone otherwise.'

'Bilbo told me there was a struggle in his taking,' said Arwen. 'Yet I cannot think that even so craven a creature could believe you meant to put him to torment.'

Aragorn had to stop himself from shaking his head, remembering just in time that to do so would be to interrupt Arwen's careful efforts. The comb now skimmed along his scalp, light and welcome like a fingernail over an itch too long endured. 'The possibility would have been foremost on his mind,' he said. 'When I found him, he had but lately slipped from the clutches of the servants of the Enemy. They had wrought such torture upon his hands that they healed little more quickly than the wounds to my arm.'

Arwen's breath caught in her throat, and Aragorn was comforted to know that it was a noise of pity for Gollum instead of agony in his own lot. 'Yet surely when you cared for his hurts…'

'He did not allow it,' Aragorn said. 'That much I do recall. Even weeks later, speaking to Gandalf, the wretch complained of my brutal leechcraft. He watched me attempting to cleanse my own hurts, and determined such ministrations were not for him.'

The capable hands did falter this time, but Arwen's voice remained steady. 'It is no fault of your own that he feared you, coming as he did from such a place of horror. Do not allow that thought to sit so heavy in your mind.'

'No.' Aragorn's voice roughened almost into a croak, and he forced another hard swallow before resuming less harshly. 'No, it was at least in some measure a fault of mine. Great force was needed to subdue him by the pool, and I resorted to tactics from which men of honour shirk until the last.'

'And were you at the last?' Arwen asked quietly.

The question surprised him, and he turned to look at her with no thought for his hair. She freed the comb of it in time to keep from pulling, but her eyes were fixed steadily upon him. They were mournful, but bright with the clarity of a practiced logician.

'Were you at the last?' she repeated. 'Did you fear to lose him, or to be lost yourself?'

'Both.' His lips seemed to move of their own accord, for he had not known the answer until that moment. Or perhaps, he had not remembered the answer. It seemed to him now that, grappling in the vile mud of Dagorlad, he had indeed had such a thought, however fleeting.

'Then if there was no other way, you did right,' she said. 'If men of honour shirk from it, but do not shun it, you did right.'

Aragorn could not speak. He stared at her for a long moment, knowing that she could read all that was laid raw in his heart but neither able nor willing to mask it from her. He might wish that she did not have to look upon such miserable things, but he could never have brought himself to deceive her. When at last he found the means, he merely turned his face away and tilted back his head for the comb. She had not asked what he had done to subdue Gollum: she accepted unquestioningly his assessment of its measure of morality.

'Nonetheless, I was not gentle,' he said when at last he trusted his voice. 'Perhaps that first seed of enmity between us might never have been rooted out, but still I wish that I could say I tried. Patience and consideration in those first days might have…' He sighed wearily. 'But I do not remember what was said. I know I kept him gagged, for he had proven his teeth to be a deadly weapon. I withheld food and drink, hoping to tame him with privation. I drove him on without surcease, save when I could go no further myself.'

Arwen's hand came to rest upon his shoulder, caressing the base of his neck while she leaned away from her grasp to pick up her shears. She did not speak, but waited patiently for him to go on.

'Had I the means to mend my actions, I would,' Aragorn said at last.

'How?' asked Arwen. 'Could you have left him ungagged, without further peril to yourself?'

'No,' he admitted heavily. His left hand reached to clutch his arm where the scars lay knotted beneath the fine linen of his sleeve. His torn sinews ached with the memory of those fevered days in the Emyn Muil.

'No,' she echoed; almost a whisper. 'You would have disarmed an orc, stripped a Man of his sword. You would not have left an assassin his knife, or an archer his bow. What of the deprivation? Had you any other means to cow him?'

'I do not know. I did not try,' said Aragorn. His head ached, but he restrained the urge to rub at it. She did not need to know that he was in pain. 'My only thought was to pacify him without the need for harsher measures. I did not wish to beat him. Not then.'

The first snip of the shears sounded, followed by a gentle raking of the comb down the length of his hair. 'How long before the fever left you?' Arwen queried quietly, taking another quick clip.

'A week. Perhaps a little longer.' Looking back upon those days was like trying to count the shingles on a distant roof through thick fog. However keen one's eyes, they could never quite focus.

A cool palm touched his cheek, ostensibly to guide his head a little to the right. Yet it lingered somewhat longer than was quite necessary, and Aragorn closed his eyes. He understood now why Arwen wished to talk of these things as she worked, and silently he praised her wisdom and her mercy. Sitting thus, with his beloved behind him, Aragorn was spared the flickers of unguarded anguish upon her face.

There was silence for a time, broken only by the snip-snip of the well-honed shears.

'I deem that you did what had to be done,' Arwen said at last. 'You were under great strain, unwell and yourself suffering. And you were alone. Do not let it trouble your heart, Estel. Your intention was never to hurt the creature.'

'At times I wished to,' he confessed. 'Seldom have I felt such rage as I did when he cast away a measure of precious water, or upon his last attempt at murder. I endeavoured always to act with restraint and only according to the measure of the moment's need, but there were times when I desired only to smite him with my fists or to shake him senseless.'

He did not know why he was saying these things. Certainly this was not how he wished Arwen to think of him: as a wrathful recreant pressing his advantage upon a helpless captive. But her low, melodious voice and the love in her nimble hands as they moved over and about his scalp made it seem impossible that he should not confide in her, even regarding these darkest leanings of his heart.

'And did you?' she asked now, as peaceably as ever.

'I struck him unconscious with the butt of my knife as we floundered in Gladden,' Aragorn said, realizing too late that he had not intended to give her any suspicion of what he had there endured. 'That act was necessary: there was no other way to still him, and he had escaped once already. I could not struggle with him and win our way to the far shore at once. I think… I think that once I shook him, in the days before we reached Lothlórien.'

He sighed, again remembering just in time that he should not shake his head. He raised his hands as if the sight of them might clarify the hazy memory. 'I do not think it was more than a quick jolt as I took him by the shoulders, but I cannot – I cannot be certain.'

'I can,' Arwen murmured, and there was such tender conviction in her voice that Aragorn found it impossible to disbelieve it himself.

There was yet one deed that haunted him, clawing at the depths of his heart despite the knowledge that there had been no other way. 'I thrashed him,' Aragorn whispered. 'On the far side of Gladden, after… I thrashed him. Nine swift strokes with a willow wand, across his upper back. I took no joy in it, but he had to be punished. He walked in fear of me for many days thereafter.'

The shears stopped their cutting, and for an awful instant Aragorn was certain that he had repulsed her at last. But then he heard the soft song of water and felt it trickle along his skull and behind his ear. She had paused to wet his hair, and having done so she set to work with the comb again.

'What happened at Gladden?' she asked, her voice tender but very taut.

Aragorn swallowed against a sharp, high pain in his throat. 'He broke the ice. The river was thawing. In a week more it would have been breaking up, but I had hoped for a dry crossing. Midway Gollum flung his full weight down, and scuttled us.' He screwed his eyes closed, less against the memory than against the surety of how this knowledge would wound her. 'As I hung useless in the middle depths, all my faculties bent upon resisting the urge to gasp in a lungful of the river, he slipped his rope from my hand and sped away beneath the downstream ice. I caught him, for he had forgotten how the line would trail behind, but it was a near thing.'

Arwen gripped one of his shoulders with the last three fingers of each hand. She held still the comb in one and the scissors in the other, but it was clear that in that moment she was unable to use them. 'Through the ice,' she breathed, her hold tightening. 'In winter in Rhovanion, he put you through the ice.'

'And himself also,' Aragorn said hollowly, as if this could possibly be a comfort.

'Ai, Estel!' There was such a weight of hurt and love and pity in those simple syllables that Aragorn thought his heart would break. Then Arwen bent and kissed the crown of his head. Her right hand left his arm and the shears were tilted ungainfully outward so that she could stroke his cheek with the side of her smallest finger. 'Wet garments and bitter cold: how did you survive it?'

'It was then that clubbed him with my knife,' he said, longing only to fill the air with his own babbling so that he did not have to think of what he had said – of what he was about to say. 'Somehow I hoisted us both out of the water onto solid ice again, and won through to the bank. There I found such shelter as I could and laid a fire to thaw me and to dry my clothes. It was not a pleasant night, but we both lived through it. When dawn came I whipped him, and pressed on as best I could.'

'He earned his whipping,' said Arwen. The strain in her voice was plain, but she was exerting a great and valiant effort to master it. 'After such sedition, he had to be punished. Do not tell me this preys upon your heart, Aragorn. You are a Captain, a great leader great of Men. You have steered legions into battle. You know the necessity of discipline if one is to lead where the others must follow.'

'Aye,' he said hoarsely. 'But never before have I won discipline with a whip.'

'A willow-wand, you said before,' she corrected. 'Did you draw blood? Did you even raise a welt?'

At last he did shake his head. She had not resumed her trimming. He heard her swift, neat motions, but could not discern what they might signify. 'I had no wish to do it then,' he said. 'But there were other times, even unto the days of his questioning in Thranduil's dungeons, that I longed to do as much and more – to punish him, to silence him, to cow him.'

Silk skirts whispered as Arwen rounded him. She bent before him, gripping each arm of the chair and looking up into his face. Her own was very white and her lips made thin with care, but she was beautiful. Her eyes were great in their shadowy greyness, and as bright as he had ever seen them. The sincerity and love within them shone like the lamps of Valinor.

'What you wished matters not beside what you have done,' she swore, her voice as emphatic as her eyes. 'Did you even once strike him in anger? Did you seek to cow him for power's sake, when it was not needful to safeguard your life or prevent his escape? Did you at any time, even in your direst extremity, treat him with anything less than justice and honourable acts?'

Aragorn's lips moved, but he could not speak. He could not take his eyes from hers, either, though he wished to hang his head. He looked at her, so fair and so loving and so merciful in her wisdom, and for a single shining moment he saw himself as she did: as one who had endured what no one should have been driven to suffer, whose patience had been tried beyond the limits of reason, and who had still borne himself with nobility of purpose and of act. It was a startling revelation.

'You did not let this creature break your integrity,' Arwen said softly. She reached up to stroke the side of his jaw with the backs of delicately curled fingers. 'Do not let him break your spirit.'

Aragorn drew in a deep, shuddering breath as if he had only now emerged from Gladden's frigid currents. Plaintive eyes followed Arwen as she rose and in a single smooth motion drew him to her. His head was level with her waist, and she held it to her with one strong and tender hand so that his cheek was pressed to the soft warmth of her gown. Her other hand rested upon his back, closing the circle of the embrace. There was a moment when she held him thus, her love unanswered. Then his own arms reached about her skirt, gathering in the lavish folds of silk so that he might feel her steady stance beneath them. There was no bodily passion in their embrace: only the yearning to comfort and be comforted, to touch and be touched, to love and be loved.

When at last Aragorn drew back a little, his hands moving to rest at either side of her supple waist as he looked up at his Lady, he saw that Arwen's cheeks glistened with tears. She stroked his head and shook her own.

'Forgive yourself, beloved,' she said. 'Not one among us can even find that which might warrant the need for forgiveness.'

As one they moved to take each other's hands, the coarse and the satin-soft fingers curling in a caress that was at once both measured and profoundly intimate. Aragorn tried to smile. His lips quivered and for a moment he did not know if it could be done. But the radiance of her adoration and the depth of her faith in him so buoyed his spirit that he found he was able after all.

'I shall try, vanimelda,' he murmured, speaking from the most secret places in his heart as he spoke the vow. 'With your grace to guide me, I shall try.'

Her own smile took on a light of mirth that sparkled above her pained joy. 'Very well then!' she declared merrily, drawing back her hands with a dramatic little flourish. 'Now I must finish with your hair! My efforts have not proceeded far enough to be anything but unfavorable: you look more bedraggled now than ever before!'

He gave her the upward half of a nod as she danced lissomely around the chair again. She drizzled another measure of warm water upon his head and drew the comb through to straighten his tresses. Then she set to work with the shears again, dark coils falling upon his shoulders and the floor about the feet of the chair. It was but further proof of the bond between them that Arwen knew at once Aragorn's need for silent contemplation in the wake of all that had been said. For a long while, contented in one another's company, they did not speak.

lar

That afternoon and all the next day passed peaceably for Aragorn. He slept well, ate plentifully, and went about the valley renewing acquaintances with dear friends. He tarried in the library with Erestor, and walked the apple orchard with Glorfindel. With other childhood companions and the comrades-in-arms of his youth, he sat and talked of inconsequential matters instead of dark times and grim deeds to come. He spent a very pleasant evening in Bilbo's room, smoking together while the hobbit gave the Dúnadan all of his own news.

He also went out to the south pasture to visit Moroch. She saw him from afar and came at a gallop, dark mane and tail rippling behind her. She made a full circle 'round him as she slowed, and nuzzled him lovingly. Aragorn scratched her ears, murmuring glad words, and when she bent he relented of his determination merely to see her. He mounted her Elf-fashion, with neither saddle nor bridle, and let her canter about as she pleased for nearly half an hour. When he dismounted, Moroch nudged him with her nose, then trotted a few feet away and lay down to roll blissfully in the grass. It was plain that she was enjoying her time in Imladris.

After that, he went to the far paddock to visit his own horse. After Moroch's light-footed litheness, Roheryn looked enormous. He was tall even by the standards of the horses of the North, with thick-sinewed limbs and coarse hair well suited to hard winters. He was no pleasure-pony, and no fleet footed sprinter built to weave between the trees. Roheryn was a war-horse, bred and trained for the battle-charge and the long, tireless march. He came to his master sedately, conscious of their shared dignity however glad his greeting and the tossing of his proud head. He had been kept in top condition by the horse-master and the grooms, and he was fit and strong. Aragorn gave him an apple, and made much of him for a time. Then with a promise that the stallion would soon carry him again, he took his leave with the peace of mind that only they who have seen their dear possessions well-tended in their absence may feel.

It was ordained that the sixth night after the travellers' return should be set aside in celebration. That morning, Aragorn lingered late in his bed before rising to bathe. The large tub before his anteroom fire was perhaps not the immersing sensuous experience that the bathing-cavern in the Elvenking's hall had been, but its comfort was greater, for it had the familiarity of home. He washed his hair and stood before the glass combing it carefully so that it would not fly wild as it dried.

Arwen had done wondrous work in restoring some order to his skull, though it had necessitated a somewhat closer cut than he was accustomed to. Still it was neat, and his head was covered all over with the fresh crisp feeling of new-cut hair. Most importantly, it would no longer be an impediment to health and cleanliness when he returned to the Wild. Furthermore, Aragorn noted with some small pleasure, without the dark mass of hair long and wild about it, his face did not look quite so gaunt and famine-stricken.

He took a light luncheon in the company of Bilbo and Gandalf, for there was no use in eating anything terribly substantial before one of Rivendell's sumptuous feasts. Then in the quiet of the afternoon he did as most of the household was doing: he retreated to his rooms to dress.

Aragorn stood for a time over the chest that held his coat of Elven mail, considering. Since his return to the North after his errantries in Gondor, it had been his custom to wear it on such occasions. It was befitting of his deeds, of the duties laid upon him and the hope held within him. Yet this time he hesitated. Upon this occasion his deeds were not those of war, even covert, but those of stealth and grim endurance. He did not feel like a returning champion or a beloved prince of the household, but like a traveller who reaches a peaceful haven after many days' struggle through bitter storms. Still he might have gone through with his old practice but for one other consideration. Although the mail would fit him well about the shoulders, it would hang loose farther down his wasted frame. It was also heavy, for splendid though it was it was only silvered steel, and it would wear upon his much-taxed endurance to carry that weight with him through the night.

So he left the mail, and faced the trials of choice that waited him in the clothespress. He felt as foolish as a boy of fifteen, agonizing over what to wear that he might be taken seriously by the household. Of course, insecurities change with age, and Aragorn's desire now was to appear at ease, sedate and not in the least uncomfortable at the attention being lavished upon a journey he was striving to forget. Clearly this was not an occasion for any ordinary silks or satins.

At last, and not without a good deal more sarcastic puzzling, he settled upon a cote of dark velvet with revers worked with silver cord and spangles like tiny stars. Once that garment was selected, the rest of the ensemble was easy to assemble. He chose hose of deep green, though it took some judicious folding to make them smooth upon his too-lean legs, and found his mantle of silver tissue shot with green. This he almost never wore, for it was a garment not for a wanderer or warrior but for a king. Yet tonight he could use a little borrowed confidence, even if it skirted the bounds of pretension.

For adornments he needed little. There was a slender silver cord to wear as a filet in his hair, and he clasped the mantle with his silver star. He chose not to gird himself with Narsil, though such was his right by birth and by deed, for he wore not the mail and tonight was to be a night of peace, when he might lay by his cares a little while. All that remained then was to see himself shod. His soft leather shoes, linseed-brown and worn into comfortable creases with long use, were clearly unsuitable. He had made no move towards replacing his walking wear. And so he took up the point-toed, elaborately tooled green boots that had been made for him in Mirkwood, and he slid them onto his feet.

Thus arrayed and feeling the confidence that fine clothes must always bring, he descended to the great hall. Many were already assembled, though the bell had not yet tolled out the call to the gathering. The first Aragorn saw upon entering was none other than Glorfindel, clad in crimson and gold with his bright hair loose about his shoulders.

'Ah, Dúnadan!' he said, drawing Aragorn in for a quick embrace. 'You look well tonight. It is good to see the light of expectation in your eyes. No doubt the Lady will feel the same.'

'So I hope, my friend,' Aragorn said quietly, glancing up the length of the high table. Arwen's canopied seat stood vacant, and he could not see her among the milling ladies. 'She has not seen me at my best these last days.'

Glorfindel laughed, and not unkindly, as he clapped Aragorn's elbow. 'You do not for a moment imagine that she would look askance at your need, who have once more discharged a miserable duty with grace and fortitude. Therefore you shall not have reassurances from me! Looking upon you tonight, she will be hard-pressed to discern which of us is the Elven lord and which the mighty son of kings.'

It was flattery, but not meant to curry favour or to build false pride. Aragorn smiled and shook his head. 'If ever a son of kings had such a golden crown, it is not told of in song or story.'

This time the laugh was rich with the unbridled joy that was Glorfindel's greatest strength and gift to those around him. 'And this is why I should not tease you, Estel: you have a sharp tongue and a sharper wit. I should have learned that long ago, I suppose, but the Firstborn can be remarkably slow in study,' he said. Then he took Aragorn by the arm and guided him away from the door into the corner behind Elrond's great chair.

'I wish you to know that you will not be at your accustomed place tonight,' Glorfindel said quietly, his expression now gravely earnest. 'It is no judgment upon the matters which lie unspoken betwixt you and your father, nor is it to deprive you of the delight of your lady's company. But it is you who are the great guest of honour, and it is fitting that you sit beside the Master tonight.'

Aragorn shook his head, dismayed. 'Not above Gandalf!' he protested. Even in Mirkwood he had not been put in that awkward position.

Glorfindel shook his head. 'Gandalf shall have his accustomed place to Elrond's left,' he said. 'You are to take mine upon his right.'

Aragorn's lips thinned as he considered this. Among Men this would indeed place him above the Istar. Yet among the Noldor the right was by tradition the lesser of two honoured seats. For it was with the right hand that Morgoth had held the stolen Silmarils in the wastes of Araman, denying their light to the great beast Ungoliant in breach of his word. It was with his right hand that Morgoth had secured the downfall of Finwë's people.

'It is unfitting that I should be placed above you, also,' Aragorn said at length. 'Yet if you will, I shall accept this tribute as a gift from a gracious lord and a dear friend. In sooth it would do my heart good to be near Master Elrond tonight, even if I must forego the Lady Arwen's fair talk.'

'Only a little while,' said Glorfindel, eyes sparkling playfully. 'If you think she will stray far from your side during the singing, you are less wise that has so oft been said.'

Aragorn smiled, a rich and earnest smile. But he had seen another enter the hall, and he excused himself from Glorfindel that he might greet she of whom they had been speaking.

A hush had fallen on the near portion of the company as Lady Arwen entered the room. She was clad all over in silver and green, her gown of crisp tissue so like that of Aragorn's mantle that they might have been cut from the same bolt. The folds and ripples of her flowing skirts shimmered in the candlelight as if she were a star stepped down from the heavens to walk upon the earth. Her mantle was of velvet, and in honour of her betrothed it had been dyed the deep woodland green of the Rangers. Her hair she wore in twin plaits, long and thick and sleek as raven's wing, and they were bound with silver shafts ornamented all over with the fine filigree only achievable by the Age-long practice of Noldorin fingers. About her throat there hung a gem, white and lovely upon its silver chain. As his eyes rested briefly upon it, Aragorn felt the burdens of his heart ease by yet another small but distinct degree.

Only briefly did he look upon it, for his eyes were drawn inexorably to her face. For all her finery, it was the crowning jewel. Her flawless skin had the glow of youth, and her eyes the deep wisdom of age. Her lips were upturned in a tiny, hopeful smile as she searched the assembly. It blossomed into purest joy when she spied him coming towards her. Upon her brow she wore a slender circlet set with beryls, and it glimmered as she dipped a low and graceful curtsey.

'My Lord,' she said, her love and her hope overflowing the two simple words.

Aragorn bowed, deeply and with all the poise of one trained to manhood in a great court, who had served long in another yet more formal. His ankle hindered him not at all in this, though it twinged its little protest lest he should forget it entirely. When he straightened, he saw that Arwen had her hands outstretched for their customary embrace. He took them in his own, standing at one respectful remove, and he smiled for her.

'My Lady,' he said. 'You are a vision to soothe the most troubled of hearts, and you rival even the moonlight on the waters.'

'And you, Dúnadan,' she said more quietly as they transitioned from clasped hands to a ceremonial pose, with her arm resting upon his that he might escort her to her honoured place. 'You have brought the glory of the kings of old to my father's hall tonight.' She reached with her free hand to pluck the edge of his mantle. 'I had hoped you might wear it,' she whispered. 'I did not think you would wish to don your mail for these gentle revels.'

Aragorn's heart was great within him. How well she knew his thoughts! In that moment of wonder and tenderness it seemed to him that nothing he had ever achieved in his long years of deeds both great and unseen could have made him worthy of such love. He led her to the high table, those nearby parting to let them pass. All knew of their troth, and of the desperate hopes wound up within it. Most loved both Lady and Lord too much to cast any ill judgment upon their desired union.

Still Aragorn was glad to see Arwen seated before the ringing of the bell that heralded the coming of the lord of the valley and the beginning of the festivities. He could not deny either of them these small gestures of public affection, but neither of them wished to pain Elrond's heart more than the truth of their love must do. He did not grudge it, for they were each too dear to him for that. Yet though they never spoke of it, Aragorn knew that his foster-father mourned for the parting that lay ahead if light prevailed against Shadow. To lose one of them he was reconciled, for it was foreordained from the very start. To lose them both, and most of all she who was the best beloved of his heart, was a prospect that could not easily be borne even by the most patient of shoulders.

He bade Arwen a quiet farewell until the end of the feast, and when he began to explain he saw at once that she already knew. Aragorn wondered then whether it was by Glorfindel's grace after all that he was to have the high seat. He bowed once more to Arwen, and moved up to the end of the table just as Elrond himself came into the hall.

The lord of the valley was himself clad in green, for it was fitting for the season. His garb was of a brighter shade than Aragorn's, but not so shiningly opulent as Arwen's gown. He wore satin and fine damask, and upon his dark head sat the silver circlet that was a token of his rank. Aragorn knew its lineage, though many even in Imladris did not, and the sight of it brought to his heart a deep love – far older than that he held for Arwen.

'Atarinya,' he said softly, as he and Elrond met at the corner of the dais. They embraced without word or sign, and Elrond's slender hand cupped briefly the crown of Aragorn's head, even as he had held him in the wake of night's terrors short days before.

'My son. How fine you look!' Elrond said as they stepped back out of the embrace. He surveyed Aragorn from head to toe and back. 'I am honoured by your efforts, for I know such things do not come naturally after too long bereft of any choice in one's raiment.'

Aragorn could not but smile at this succinct summary of his feelings on the matter. 'If I am to accept your honours, I should endeavour to appear worthy of them,' he said. 'Clothes make not the man, but they do bolster his confidence at times.'

'So they do,' Elrond agreed. He gestured to the chair that stood to the right of his own. 'Have you been told of the arrangements?'

'Yes,' Aragorn said, and he moved to the seat. He waited until Elrond settled in his own and gestured that those yet standing should find their comfort. Then he settled, even as Gandalf came striding up to take his place.

'You see?' he asked, unceremoniously satisfied and foregoing the customary preambles. He took in Aragorn's countenance with a flap of one hand. 'Now that all the effort is behind you, it is not so terrible, is it?'

'It is not,' Aragorn agreed warmly. Glorfindel was at his other side now, taking the seat next in precedence to that he ordinarily held with the ease of one enjoying a cushioned chair after too long upon a hard bench. Aragorn looked at him, eyebrow arched, and the Elf-lord grinned.

Attendants came out, bearing wine and breads, and the feast began. It idled through three languid hours filled with talk and laughter and the camaraderie that came of many hundreds of years together. Despite his relative youth and far briefer time in the valley, Aragorn felt nothing but the warmth of belonging. From the age at which he could be counted upon to put more food in his mouth than he did in his hair, he had dined among these folk. This was the board of his boyhood, and he was content.

He ate far more eagerly than he had at Thranduil's table, and not only because his stomach was recovering its capacity. It was a far less ostentatious thing to dine in this hall where those at the high table were not laid out as if upon a stage. Conversation and serving dishes were passed across the laden board with the same easy grace that those at the lesser places enjoyed, and all about the hall there was the air of insouciant delight.

At length the last course was served and the last wine drunk. Although he had imbibed more liberally this night than on the prior occasion, Aragorn's head was clear as he waited for Elrond to rise. Arwen came to him, and father and daughter walked arm-in-arm to lead the assembly in their exodus. Aragorn followed just behind, with Gandalf at his side. The wizard looked better rested and more at peace than Aragorn had seen him in many, many months. Even before their parting in the South, Gandalf had been careworn by the long, fruitless hunt and its fearsome stakes. Tonight he had laid his cares aside.

'I should warn you that there will be song tonight,' he said as they removed to the corridor that led to the Hall of Fire.

Aragorn laughed lightly. 'I had deduced that,' he said. 'Though you may not know to look upon me in my daily labours, I am no stranger to such gatherings.'

'I mean,' said Gandalf with a note of roguish annoyance; 'that there will be songs about you.'

Aragorn's step faltered, and he felt his own burst of irritation tempered liberally by sudden embarrassment. 'Gandalf! Tell me you did not.'

'Did not have Bilbo compose a piece to honour your hunt? No, I did not.' The wizard sighed regretfully, shaking his head as though a glorious opportunity had slipped through his fingers. 'But I have entrusted a certain set of tabulature to a nimble-fingered healer and herbarian whose skill upon the lute is not inconsiderable, and who possesses the appropriately contralto timbre of voice.'

It took a moment for Aragorn to puzzle through this series of complex clauses, but as they reached the door to the Hall he reached the end of his wondering. 'The Flight of the Eagle,' he said. 'The song of Thorongil which you brought from Gondor.'

Gandalf nodded. 'Your father knows nothing of it, nor does your beloved,' he said. 'I thought perhaps you would be less discomfited if you could share in the presentation instead of being this time surprised.'

Aragorn's eyes narrowed in long-learned suspicion. 'And what do you mean by that?' he asked warily.

The wizard laughed and leaned in to speak, for they were now well past the threshold and the room was designed to be most conducive to sound. 'Only that you may sit in quiet pride despite the many eyes upon you, and receive your due adulations with good grace,' he said, and he winked.

Aragorn shook his head, helpless before the determination of Gandalf the Grey. He moved towards the great fire where Bilbo (who rarely attended the common table at all in these days, much less a formal feast) was already settled in his usual seat, alert and smiling broadly in welcome as he beckoned to his friend. The Dúnadan went gladly, as in the far corner the first melodious chords sounded from Elven harps. The revels had begun.

Note: "All That is Gold" from "Strider", The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter LXXX: Revelries in Rivendell

Aragorn smiled down at Bilbo. 'I am honoured that you have come to join us,' he said earnestly.

'Oh, I couldn't very well miss this!' the hobbit said cheerfully. 'Though I do fancy my nice, quiet meals these days, I would never want to pass over the singing. Besides, Gandalf hinted there would be goings-on that might be of great interest to me. Very mysterious, he was.'

'I'm sure,' Aragorn said dryly. His eyes moved of their own accord to seek out the wizard. He had posted himself on a tall chair in the corner, the better to survey the whole hall with ease. He saw the listing of the Ranger's gaze and raised his feathery eyebrows innocently. With a knowing curl of his lip, Aragorn turned back to Bilbo.

'I hope you will favour us with a little of your own work tonight,' he said.

Bilbo flushed with pleasure. 'Well, I didn't really plan to. I mean, I'm sure the Elves all tire of indulging me so often. But if you do insist, being the guest of honour and all…'

'I do insist,' Aragorn assured him. 'But please do not forget that the deeds we mark tonight are not mine alone. It was Gandalf who led the venture, and countless others have helped along the way – yourself among them.'

He expected one of Bilbo's endearingly gratified deprecations, but instead the hobbit was looking at him thoughtfully.

'It's curious, isn't it, Dúnadan?' he said. 'All those months ago, when you couldn't find Gollum and hadn't much hope of this journey being any more successful than all the others, it was you who were 'leading the venture', wasn't it?'

Aragorn shrugged a chagrined shoulder, but said nothing. Bilbo laughed.

'Go on, then: I'll not torment you further!' he said. 'You'd best keep company with your ladylove, now. She's got her eyes on you.'

Aragorn looked up, surprised once more into action by Bilbo's frank, gleeful declaration. Arwen was in her customary seat at Elrond's side, and she did indeed have her eyes upon the Man. As his gaze found her, she smiled and tilted her head in playful apology. Aragorn took his pleasant leave of Bilbo and went to her, bowing courteously before the two stately seats. Arwen's merriment shone in her eyes, and Elrond smiled beneficently upon his fosterling.

'You ought to consider singing for the assembly tonight, Aragorn,' he said. 'I do wish to hear your voice put through its paces to be sure there is no lasting damage. There is no reason we may not take some pleasure in the test.'

Aragorn suppressed a wry grin. It seemed that everyone was conspiring to nudge him to the forefront tonight. Yet this request was encouraging also, for it meant that Elrond did not believe his voice would falter: he would never have suggested so public a trial else.

'Later in the evening I shall,' he promised. 'When the company has thinned a little, and the wine has had a chance to gentle critical dispositions and soften the sharper ears.'

Elrond laughed softly, joy dancing in his eyes. No doubt he saw this concession as a victory against the dark thoughts that still crept unbidden into the Man's mind. The Master leaned in towards Arwen. 'You should sing together, my children,' he said. 'It would be enchanting to hear you both: a delight to the ears and the heart. A song in parts, perhaps?'

Aragorn was surprised and a little taken aback at this suggestion, for the first thing that rose in his mind were the many duets woven around the legends of Beren and Lúthien. That would be thoroughly unthinkable tonight, and when he tried to call to mind another he could only remember a certain love ballad of Idril and Tuor, which was nearly as bad.

'Do you recall The Disaffection of Turgon and Aredhel?' Arwen asked sweetly, addressing herself to him.

A broad smile took Aragorn's lips and he inclined his head. 'I can refresh my memory, my Lady,' he said, moving from before the chairs to his beloved's side. She pivoted to look up at him. 'Perhaps you can aid me?'

'But of course!' she said warmly. Casting her eyes back over her shoulder she asked; 'Would that suit your tastes, Father?'

'Indeed it would,' said Elrond approvingly. 'You shall have as much time as you need to prepare it, provided it is ready before the night's revels conclude.'

'We have until the sun breaks over the mountains, then?' Arwen laughed, wafting a slender hand at the crowd. 'For it does not look as though these fair folk will soon be ready for their beds.'

Elrond laughed as well, and Aragorn found himself doing the same. It was a glorious feeling, and it warmed him to his very core. At that moment, he could not have recalled a single detail of those bitterly cold and lonely days between Gladden and the Carrock. This was all: to stand here beside his beloved and before his father, all three of them sharing a moment of untrammelled mirth.

Unexpectedly, it was Glorfindel who broke the spell as he approached and made his own courtly bow. 'Master Elrond, my Lady, Lord Aragorn,' he said, his tone deep and rich and perfectly solemn in its fondness and respect. Then he smiled at the children of the house. 'Will you pardon my interruption? I must have words with the Lord of the valley.'

'There is no cause for pardon,' said Arwen with a regal nod and a fond smile. 'We have a song to collude over, and would soon have to ask your forgiveness for our inattention in any case.'

Then she turned in her chair, and Aragorn bent to her, still smitten with her diplomacy. The song was both a judicious and creative choice: a dramatic piece with a broad range well-suited to strong voices. It was seldom sung, and so would have a measure of novelty among this discriminating audience. Being a quarrel in a fearsome minor key instead of a soft song of love or lament, it avoided any themes that might become a little too evocative. Aragorn drew nearer still, that the two of them might confer. Glorfindel was deep in conversation with Elrond now, and the first of the evening's hymns had begun.

There was an intricacy to Elven music that was unrivalled among other races. The subtleties and interwoven harmonies were at times almost beyond the distinction of the mortal ear. Yet when a gathering such as this raised their collective voice in song, even the least accomplished of Men could pick up the melody and join in. There were few outsiders in the valley tonight, and those here gathered knew one another's style and range as if they were members of a trained choir instead of a gathering of all manner of Elven folk. The music seemed almost to dance, notes and words swooping gracefully in, out and all about. Even with his attention fixed upon recalling the verses of a song he had not had occasion to think of in many years, Aragorn's heart soared at the glorious concurrence of sound.

That first hour passed in delight. Aragorn stood at Arwen's side, bowed near that they might speak without disturbing anyone else. They were as mirthful as two children, bending their joint memories upon the words. They sped swiftly through long passages between stumbles. Often they were able to correct one another at once, but it was more pleasant when they could not. Then they had to wrack their wits, trying all manner of possibilities to fit the meter and the rhyme – but not always the meaning. Some were apt and some absurd, and often they fell to quiet laughter that seemed all the more raucous for its restraint. Last would come the moment of epiphany when one or the other (or, most wonderful of all, both at once) would recall the phrase in question. Then there would be a concerted dancing of triumphant quicksilver eyes and the rapid, triumphant recitation of the pertinent stanza, and then they would move on once more.

All that had followed the estrangement of the King of Gondolin and his sister was tainted with tragedy and loss. The piece itself was wrathful and defiant despite its undertones of love and shared respect. Yet it was easy to forget both as each gloried in the other's company and the simple merriment of wordplay. Moments of mirth were rare in Aragorn's life, and for Arwen now so often dimmed by concern and loneliness for him. To share this now was a treasured thing.

Finally they came to the end of the piece, and then rehearsed its words once more in hushed voices, reciting at thrice the proper place and leaving the melody aside. They finished breathless with fleet whispers and laughter, almost nose to nose. As they fell silent and met one another's eyes with illogical surprise, Aragorn realized that they were perfectly poised for a kiss.

Arwen felt it also, for her lips parted in desire and a rosy flush dusted her cheeks. Long lived was she, and Elven-wise, but she was also a maiden possessed of longings yet unfulfilled. She too was visited in her turn by the dangerous allure of haste: of putting aside their faithful waiting and the conditions proscribed for their union in this world and beyond, and cleaving together once and for all in heart, in body, and in spirit.

Their eyes held fast for a moment, locked in entranced yearning on the very brink of turmoil. Then Aragorn reached, maintaining that contact, and found her right hand where it had been reaching across to hold the pommel of the armrest between them. He tucked his chin and kissed that hand instead, allowing them a moment of intimate touch that was both unselfish and far less perilous than the other. Arwen smiled at him, grateful and regretful at once.

Then Aragorn straightened his back, feeling a small, dull ache deep in his flank where he had been so battered in his fall before the spider in Mirkwood. It was no doubt because his nerves were rasped raw in the wake of that uncompleted moment, more than anything else, that he felt such a spark of irritation at his body's weakness. To be sore already after only an hour on his feet did not please him, vast improvement though it was. A self-pardoning reminder that not so long ago such stooping would have surely brought on a flurry of coughing mollified him a little. At least it kept the light of mirth from quenching in his eyes as his mouth tightened in annoyance.

Arwen, ever perceptive, reached to take his hand in hers as she settled straight within her chair again. They had chosen a good moment to rejoin the gathering about them, for more than one pair of eyes was turned on the high seats. Quiet was falling over a room that had a moment before been abuzz with happy voices in the wake of some merry song. Now most were turning to the hearth, some to look towards Master and Lady, but more to watch Glorfindel. It was his mighty voice that had risen to ask for attention.

Once a hush was on the room, the Elf-lord motioned graciously to Bilbo, who was sitting near him with his hands pertly in his lap.

'Thank you all for listening,' the hobbit began with a firm little nod of the head.

'You've not said anything yet!' one of the wood-elves called out. There were several good-natured chuckles.

'Thank you all for listening,' Bilbo repeated, a trifle archly. He went on with cheery pomp. 'I know it's not the way of things 'round here, but where I come from it's a custom at these sorts of gatherings to make a speech.'

Lindir, who was saucy with most folk and delighted to needle Rivendell's aging songsmith, laughed. 'These sorts of gatherings? Do you get many folk coming back out of danger and desperation in your country?'

This was met with another round of soft laughter, but it was more uneasy this time. All felt the ever-hastening incursions of the Shadow, even in this fair haven. That joy was the only means of beating back the terror that would be Sauron's first and perhaps most important victory was little comfort in moments such as this.

'Not since I did myself, no,' Bilbo allowed, grinning. Lindir lolled his eyes comically, as if to say that the hobbit could not pass up any excuse to talk of his own adventure. 'Still, when friends come home from abroad and a party's thrown in their honour, somebody ought to get up and speak. Since Master Elrond isn't inclined—' Here he gave a deep, respectful nod at his host. '—he has kindly consented to let me do the honours. I think I know both of our champions quite well; well enough, certainly, to make an honest attempt to commemorate their hard work and their success.

'Most of you know what they've been off doing, and that they've been at it now and again for sixteen years now. And if any of you haven't heard that they've gone and done it at last, then Lindir and his friends haven't been doing their duty by the gossip in the valley.'

There was general laughter at this. Few had not been on the receiving end of Lindir's stinging wit or his artistic criticism, and although he was generally liked it was in good fun to see him bested. Almost everyone rather doted upon Bilbo in any case, and would have been inclined to enjoy one of his good-natured jibes purely for its own sake. Aragorn did not join in the laughter himself, for he was still trying to recover his good humour, but he did smile his amusement without effort.

'Anyhow,' Bilbo went on; 'they've come back in triumph, and that ought to remind us just what capital fellows these two are. I've known Gandalf for more than sixty-five years now, and I can tell you that he's quite extraordinary. Once he sets his mind on something, it'll get done one way or the other no matter who he has to cajole into helping him.'

There was more chuckling, and from his seat in the corner the wizard made a mockingly sheepish gesture and an approximation of a bow.

'As for the Dúnadan,' said Bilbo, and here his warm and admiring eyes turned in their turn upon Aragorn; 'I don't need to tell any of you what a remarkable sort of person he is. He's managed to do things most folk can't even dream of, and he always manages to come back to us in the end. We've all got expectations of him, perhaps none so lofty as yours, Master Elrond—' Elrond smiled warmly at the hobbit, but the pride in his eyes was meant for his foster-son. Aragorn's throat felt briefly taut. '—and I don't doubt he'll manage to out do all of those, too. So I'd like us all to take a moment just to appreciate these two heroes of the hour, and all they've done so the rest of us can sleep in peace night after night.'

The room burst into warm applause with a smattering of voices upraised in quick words of praise. Gandalf sat graciously and Aragorn tried to stand in like benevolence, though he felt uneasy to be the centre of such attention for the deeds that lay behind. Beside him, Arwen was applauding with the rest of the room, and she was looking up at him with warm and knowing but very delighted eyes. She took pride in his accomplishment on his behalf, and that warmed Aragorn's heart more than the adulation of all of Imladris.

When the ovation died down, Bilbo nodded his approval. 'That's all I've got to say,' he announced stoutly. 'Though I doubt it's a tenth of what these two splendid chaps deserve. Still I'd like to take a moment, if you'll all indulge an old hobbit's fancy, to remind everyone just what it is we're hoping for Aragorn.'

Lindir laughed. 'Ai, I knew we wouldn't escape without one of his verses!' he announced to no one in particular. One of his close confederates prodded him in the ribs, and several on the other end of the room shushed him in throaty but very audible whispers.

Bilbo grinned at this, but offered no comment. He smoothed his waistcoat and sat up a little straighter, clearing his throat and fixing his eyes upon Aragorn. Knowing what was coming and feeling the abiding affection that always rose in his breast at such moments, the Ranger smiled a quiet and very earnest smile. Eyes sparkling, Bilbo recited:

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

There was a span of contemplative silence, not more than a few breaths long but one of the most affirming moments Aragorn had experienced among all the graces rendered him in his short days at home. All these fair folk who had known him from his babyhood held that same hallowed hope that he himself bore and tended even through the darkest toils. This silent avowal of his standing in their eyes left him almost incapable of speech.

Almost, but not quite; for clearly some word of thanks was called for. Unable to encompass the scope of his feeling, Aragorn turned affectionate eyes on Bilbo.

'Thank you, Master Baggins,' he said earnestly. 'Your kind words are a great gift, and your faith still greater. I know that in this matter I may speak also for Gandalf: you have our gratitude and our friendship always.'

'Hear, hear!' said Gandalf heartily, and everyone chuckled. Bilbo, flushed with pleasure, settled back into a more relaxed posture.

'On with your singing, now!' he said, flapping his hands generally at the assembly. 'I didn't mean to interrupt it quite so thoroughly!'

Someone thrummed upon a harp, and a trio of voices took up a song of lost Eregion. It was plaintive and beautiful, and it filled the room with the memory of things beloved and at once regretted. So many of these folk had made their home there long ago, and they listened raptly. Others began to move about the room again, respectfully quiet but not transfixed.

A maiden whom Aragorn knew only slightly approached with a tray of goblets. She curtseyed smoothly and offered one to Elrond, who took it with quiet words of thanks. Arwen did the same, and Aragorn in his turn. The deep sunshine scent of fine wine rose to his nostrils, and he took a taste as he surveyed the room.

It was a sedate gathering when measured against the spirited dancing and gleeful choruses of Thranduil's hall, but it brought a quietude to his spirit that the other could not. There was a sense of warmth and safety here, as if times of peace had always been and ever would be. It was an illusion, of course: held as firmly by the steady hand of Elrond Peredhil as the wards that safeguarded the valley walls. Yet it was meant to comfort, not deceive, and to bear up all who must face the encroaching darkness. Aragorn knew that he would carry the memory of this evening with him when he went again into his daily labours, and that it would help to uphold him when the road once again grew cruel and weary.

A wave of lightheadedness took him unawares, and his grip upon the stem of the silver cup tightened. For a moment he thought he would sway or even falter, but he closed his eyes and rode the steady swell of dizziness until it dipped again into the calm waters of inert weariness that seemed these days his natural state. From the corner of his eye he caught but did not register Arwen's subtle gesture. Not until two of her maidens appeared at his side with a cross-framed chair between them did Aragorn understand his beloved's intent.

Gratefully he sat, murmuring his thanks to the ladies, and he leaned heavily upon his right elbow as he breathed shallowly and tried to suppress a flare of shame at his infirmity. It was a hard thing for one so accustomed to great endurance, to be unable even to stand for ninety short minutes without risking a swoon. Now he was not angry, but only pitifully frustrated like a toddling babe who falls once too many times and finds himself unable to muster the heart to rise again.

Arwen's hand closed warm upon his arm, holding him tenderly and caressing him with the side of her slender thumb. He met her eyes and found them warm with love and compassionate understanding. There was also a pledge there that his weakness was not only nothing to her, but that she was absolutely and unequivocally certain that it was transient. Those eyes promised a return to vigour, certain and far swifter than he now dared hope. For this confidence even more than her faith in his larger destiny, Aragorn was thankful.

The celebrations went on, and Aragorn settled into a pleasantly indolent frame of mind. It was warm and welcoming near the fire, and his fine clothing had proved more comfortable than he had hoped. Now and then Arwen leaned in to speak, remarking upon the music or the company or some shared memory renewed by the evening's happenings. Many folk drew nigh in their turn to offer quiet words of friendship, but none overburdened Aragorn with lengthy conversation. He was glad. He was content to sip at his wine and allow himself to rest in a quietude of spirit that was so very welcome amid all the turmoil of recent weeks. The presence of his friends, the nearness of his beloved, and the occasional gentle glance from his father all helped to craft a delicious air of peace.

It was a long while before Aragorn felt moved to join in the singing, but he found he could not sit silent when voices were raised in praise of Yavanna Kementári. He remembered well the grace she had granted him in his dire need, and now he sang. The rich syllables of the High Elven tongue rose upon his lips to join the exultant harmonies. Beside him, Arwen too was singing in sweet mellifluous joy. Beyond her, Elrond sat silently with his eyes closed in reverence. A faint, sad smile played upon his lips.

When the notes of that holy melody died away, there was a halt in the music. Attendants came bearing platters of sweetmeats, and others moved around to refresh the cups. Gandalf had left his strategic post in the corner to sit near Bilbo. The elderly hobbit had been looking rather drowsy. Now he was bright-eyed and animated again, talking to the wizard with much eager gesticulation.

A familiar chord sounded upon a mellow and well-aged lute, and Aragorn looked around for the source. When he saw Faeliel, who did indeed have a very fine contralto voice, seated upon a stool with her darkly burnished instrument in her lap, he knew that he was not mistaken. A few more notes were plucked in a heroic crescendo, and the healer began to sing:

Down in dawn from Anduin,

Slender ships were sailing.

Night swept on through Tolfalas

as the day was fading…

Bilbo, forewarned of something by Gandalf's oblique hints, was the first to catch on. When his eyes, shining with proud excitement, found Aragorn, the Man had settled into a posture of pleased self-effacement. It was not easy to maintain such an appearance, especially as it took Elrond little longer to recognize the drift of the song. Sable Guard seemed to be his deciding clue. Arwen followed the motion of her father's head, and was soon looking up at Aragorn with awed delight.

A few others, Glorfindel foremost among them, understood very quickly. It was the phrase about Tall Thorongil, Captain bold, which brought a ripple of recognition through the whole of the room. Although Thorongil's rightful identity was a secret in the world beyond, in Imladris many knew the name under which the Heir of Isildur had fought for Gondor. Those among the company who had not known, or did not at once recall, were swiftly brought apace by their friends. Soon the entire room was listening with the rapt courtesy and admiration that was always displayed when the object of a song of glory sat before its singer.

It was Aragorn's role to sit and listen, justly proud of his deeds and gratified by the efforts put forward to memorialize them. He executed this as best he could, and found that it was easier to hear the song a second time. Perhaps it was only that he had not been caught off-guard. Perhaps his mood was such that now he was more favourably disposed to think of his successes instead of his failures. Perhaps it was merely that the listening crowd was filled with folk he knew and trusted and indeed loved. Whatever the case, he found himself settling comfortably into the pitch and cadence of the song and relishing the richness of Faeliel's voice.

Beside him, Arwen was fairly alight with pleasure and elation as she listened to the verses memorializing the strategic approach upon the Havens of Umbar. Her hand slipped into his when the singer came to Aragorn's chief part in the battle. And when the notes of triumph rang, her eyes glittered as if with wonder. Seeing what a pride this was to her, to sit and listen to the deeds of her betrothed thus commemorated, Aragorn found himself thinking favourably of the well-meaning minstrel who had laid out the piece. Certainly he had to concede that Gandalf had been right to arrange its presentation tonight, though he conceded nothing about the display in Mirkwood.

When the last plaintive words died away and the final chords thrummed to silence, the room broke into plentiful applause. It was meant in part for the singer, who flushed prettily and bowed over her lute, but it was just as much directed at the subject of the piece. One of the wood-elves who had been a frequent rider on patrol when Aragorn had yet been Estel, roaming out under the close supervision of the sons of Elrond, clapped him on the shoulder. Bilbo looked ready to spring up and come running to congratulate him. Elrond, pleased but also comprehending his ward's discomfort, merely sat back in his grand chair with a knowing smile.

Aragorn accepted the adulations, and voiced his gracious thanks of Faeliel's artful rendition of the song. Then, happily, someone called for a song of the victory of the hosts of Beleriand in the twilight of the First Age. This allowed Aragorn to relax out of the uncomfortable, however gratifying, position of being the centre of attention. While many joined in this familiar tune, he was able to focus instead upon Arwen and her jubilant eyes.

'Your people remember you with love, though by the measure of their lives many long years have passed,' she breathed, her hold upon his hand tightening proudly. 'They remember, and they sing of your deeds.'

'Quietly, so I am told,' Aragorn demurred. His own eyes twinkled in play as he said; 'To hear Gandalf tell it, what we just heard is a back-room ballad of the less reputable taverns in Minas Tirith.'

Arwen shook her head. 'I heard the chords, Dúnadan. It is a song fit for a hero, wherever it is sung. And all that I have learned of this fey Captain leads me to suspect that he would far more lief be recalled in the alleyways and forgotten on the heights than remembered in palaces and in humble places forgot.'

Aragorn inclined his head at that insight. 'To be beloved of those who cannot spare the leisure to bow to fashion is to be beloved forever,' he said, his twain meanings clear. 'And though I am the only one thus memorialized by name, my men will live on in song with me. They were valiant and true to the last, and rewarded for their constancy by little loss of life. Poetry cannot express the smallness of the hope with which our light ships sailed upon a fortified harbour.'

'Nor can it express the courage needed to hold any men, however loyal, to such a course,' Arwen murmured, leaning near so that her cheek brushed his shoulder ever so briefly. 'Small wonder they love you. Have you considered it might well have been one of your men who wrote it?'

She did not understand the limit to which a mortal Man could indulge in diverse arts. Most lived long enough to master a few: three or four, perhaps, if they applied themselves. But fewer had the leisure to do so, being obliged to hone their chief craft and to put it to use in the support of their children. To be both soldier and songwright was common among the Firstborn, but not among the ordinary men of Gondor. Still Aragorn smiled.

'I suppose I did not. It is more likely that they told the tale in plainer words, that others might make music of it.' Aragorn lifted her hand and brushed his lips across the second knuckles. 'Forgive me, beloved, but I would slip away for a time. When I return we can offer our own contribution to the evening's revelries, and see if those gathered deem my efforts worthy of your own.'

'Perhaps it is I who ought to fear for my reputation for fair song,' laughed Arwen. 'Of the might of my partner great tales have been told!'

Aragorn chuckled softly, wishing to caress her cheek but knowing it would be more difficult then to slip away even for a few minutes. He got to his feet almost smoothly and passed without difficulty or undue disturbance through the crowd to the door.

lar

He was on his way back to the Hall of Fire, his faculties much refreshed by a few breaths of quiet and the laving of his face with cool water, when he passed a elegantly carved pillar to find Glorfindel leaning in its shadow with his arms across and one foot up on the wall behind.

'A merry evening, is it not?' the Elf-lord asked, grinning brightly.

'Verily,' said Aragorn, drawing near and leaning his shoulder upon the column in imitation of the other's stance. It had the additional benefit of shifting his weight off of his right foot, which was beginning to pain him after a long day of using it almost normally. 'The assembly is light of heart despite the darkness to come.'

'Not despite: to spite,' said Glorfindel. 'While we yet ply our joy, the Shadow can never triumph absolutely. And perhaps it shall not triumph at all, if things promised in the seedling-beds of history blossom into their fullness in time. We have seen promising shoots sung of this evening.'

Aragorn felt himself flushing and feared that, with his health somewhat restored, it must show. 'It was not my wish to have that piece presented. Gandalf insisted.'

'Then you were wrong to make him insist,' said Glorfindel. 'You shall have to become accustomed to hearing your deeds praised in song and story, if you intend to keep on performing them as you have been. I know it is no comfortable thing, particularly at first!' he laughed, seeing the unease in Aragorn's eyes. 'But you will have to work at it. You do not squirm too much when justly praised by private words: merely extend that good grace to verses and arias.'

Aragorn curled his lip sardonically. 'You make it sound so simple,' he said.

'It is simple,' said Glorfindel. 'Not easy, perhaps, but simple.' He reached to grip Aragorn's shoulder companionably. 'How do you think I felt when first I had to sit through a rendition of The Fall at Cirith Thoronath after I came into myself? Even for one in the flower of youthful conceit it was an uncomfortable experience. Somehow the songs always seem much more… ennobling than the deeds themselves.'

'Yet if you had not done such deeds, this very house would not stand today,' mused Aragorn.

'And if you had not done yours?' asked Glorfindel.

'I do not know,' Aragorn said honestly. 'It was my fear then that Gondor would be overrun: caught between East and South in a hopeless siege. At the least my fleet spared her coasts much plunder and anguish.'

Glorfindel nodded, as though he had expected such a modulated answer. 'Let us say then that you know not now what houses may be erected long years hence because of your choice made in service to the moment's need.' He broke the grave foretelling note of these words with a merry smile and a wrinkle of his fine nose. 'We must go back and rejoin the celebrations!' he said. 'I have not forgotten that you and the Lady have agreed to sing for us, and I have been hoping to coax the throng into dancing by and by. The night is new, and my heart is glad.'

'Your heart is ever glad,' said Aragorn. 'Into the coldest darkness you would bring warmth and light.'

Glorfindel smiled at this, but said nothing. Instead he pushed himself lithely up from the wall and gestured sweepingly up the corridor.

They returned to the Hall of Fire shoulder to shoulder, Aragorn's heart more light within him than he could remember it being in many, many months. They came in upon a chorus from one of Bilbo's songs, this one being sung by the crowd as a final tribute to see the hobbit off to his bed for the night. Aragorn leaned against the doorpost and joined in the rollicking refrain, clapping his hands in time with the rest.

When it was over, Bilbo got up and bowed. 'Well, I thank you!' he said briskly. 'But the hour is late and old hobbits must off to bed! I'll leave you all to your pleasures, but if you wake up with sore heads and hoarse throats you'll have only yourselves to blame.' He wagged a finger comically, grinning with delight when many laughed. Then he stepped forward to bid a gracious goodnight to Elrond, and turned to leave the room. Behind him, a soft hymn rose from the flutes and lyres.

'Why, Dúnadan!' Bilbo exclaimed happily, stopping at the door to look up at his friend. 'I thought perhaps you'd gone off to bed yourself. You're looking a little peaked. But I did want to congratulate you on that capital song. Gandalf has promised to give me a copy of it. Such a rousing story – and just as you told it, too!'

'I don't know about that,' said Aragorn with a genuine smile. 'I think there is a certain minstrel of Gondor who imbued the night with rather too much poetic reverence.'

'Say what you will!' Bilbo scoffed. 'But I think that a little poetic reverence is what this life could use from time to time. We certainly spend enough of it in the dull and the dusty, don't we? I'll save the debate for another time, regardless: I've got to get along to bed before I yawn so wide my mouth sticks that way!' He looked back over his shoulder and said with a little note of regret; 'I suppose they'll keep at it until first light. It's been years and years since I've lasted so long.'

'Ah, well, they shall outlast me also,' Aragorn said in playful commiseration. 'I have but one more obligation to discharge, and then I too shall be thinking of bed.'

Bilbo's brows knit together. 'You don't mean you've been asked to sing?' he said. 'And agreed to it, too? Oh, I hate to miss that most of all! Perhaps I ought to stay after all…'

'Don't trouble yourself,' said Aragorn with reassuring dismissal. 'It's more an exercise to test the soundness of my voicebox than any real entertainment. Besides, we'll come out to the garden tomorrow and reprise it if you wish.'

'"We"?' said Bilbo shrewdly. 'Not you and Glorfindel…'

Aragorn shook his head, knowing that now his smile was rather too abashed for one of his age and dignity. 'One more guess,' he said.

Bilbo clapped his hands delightedly. 'Ooh, you must come by and sing it for me! Promise you shall! I'm not sure I've ever heard you and the Lady sing together. Is it Beren and Lúthien?'

'How impudent do you think me?' Aragorn laughed. 'Nay, not that. Off to bed now, little Master. We shall come to you tomorrow and put the mystery to rest.'

Bilbo went, feigning reluctance but obviously weary beyond any attempt to tarry. Over the course of another song and a sharp recitation of a puzzle-poem, Aragorn found his way towards the edge of the ring left in courtesy before Elrond's chair. When he reached comfortable footing he saw that the Lord of the valley sat alone. Arwen had risen and was gone.

Just then the crowd across the lazy ellipse parted, and she stepped through with her little zither in her arms. She settled it into position and raised her eyebrows in a wordless query. Aragorn nodded his assent and took one step forward, away from the general crowd and into the informally empty performance space.

Arwen plucked a series of strong and stirring notes, leading into the sounding chord. The piece was commonly accompanied by accenting notes, but no underlying melody. Aragorn drew in a steady breath, filling his lungs and feeling only the deepest crackles within them. Then the full, throaty thrum of the low minor chord filled the room, and he sang:

Why standst thou, Ar-Feiniel,
thy feet thus clad to fly?

And Arwen replied in the same key, but higher as befit both her voice and the role:

I yearn to ride the free woods now,
As once rode you and I!

The song went on, weaving through paces that captured perfectly the mounting tension of a sibling squabble. The rich, resounding melody and the dramatic passion required of the singers wrought a spellbinding spectacle that was at once exhilarating and frightening. Aragorn could feel Turgon's dread and frustration, and in Arwen's voice he heard Aredhel's pride and courage and yearning for the liberties she had possessed of old. Across the bare swath of floor they faced one another, divided in space but not in purpose as they mounted into this argument of legend as if they were themselves caught up in its furies.

Although the rehearsing had been mirthful the performance was not. All the grave stakes woven into this quarrel of love and anger, of pride and condescendence, of reluctant yielding and triumphant resolve rang clear upon the air. When at last Aredhel's farewell words echoed to the rafters and Aragorn was left to draw that rapid upsurge of glory down to his last low warning of dire things to come, the room was left in utter silence. Even among these folk whose daily songs were more intricate and beautiful than any conceived by Men, the apposition of Arwen's melodious and almost ethereal voice with Aragorn's strong and somewhat coarsened one gave cause for a moment's wordless wonderment.

Then came the first adulation, even as the two singers relaxed out of their theatrical stances and exchanged breathless smiles of mingled triumph and relief. Perhaps after one score centuries and more one ought to be beyond stage fright, but in her eyes now soft with surprised satisfaction Aragorn could see that Arwen was not – not quite. He stepped forward to go to her, and then realized that there was another hand outstretched to him with its mate outheld to his Lady.

They went to Elrond together, Aragorn taking his right hand and Arwen his left. He had risen from his chair as the sounds of admiration and appreciation began, and now he looked from one to the other in a father's pure, merry pride.

'A delight to ears and heart, as I foretold,' he said warmly to both of them. Then turning only to Aragorn he said; 'And there can be no damage to your vocal cords, if you can sustain such vibrato.'

'Your children are in fine voice, Half-Elven,' Gandalf said, drawing up smoothly to close a tight circle between the four and reaching to relieve Arwen of the instrument now balanced in the crook of one arm. 'Permit me, dear Lady. Such an interesting choice of song, too. It is not often presented, which is a shame. Clearly it makes for invigorating listening.'

He nodded with his chin at the room, throughout which a new energy was flowing. The time for quiet hymns was past, it seemed. It would come again, but the revellers had found their fresh wind. Glorfindel was calling out for dancing, and many hands hastened to draw chairs and benches out to the perimeter of the room. Elrond gave Aragorn's hand another loving squeeze, doing the same for Arwen before touching each of their shoulders as he withdrew his hold.

'Thank you for indulging my wishes, my dear ones,' he said warmly. He beckoned for wine, and an attendant brought a salver bearing four full goblets. As Elrond gave one to his daughter, he said; 'Perhaps my Undómiel will spare a dance for me?'

'The first, surely,' said Aragorn, accepting his own cup and resisting the urge to quaff greedily of it. 'I shall not be fit for dancing tonight.'

'I believe that ankle would be equal to the rigours of a stately pavane,' Elrond murmured, seeing much and saying only a little. 'I shall request one once you have had a chance to sit awhile. One exertion at a time, at least while you recover your strength.'

Aragorn ceded the sense of this with a nod. It would have been a hard thing to sit out the night while others danced, with Arwen so near and his heart so light for the first time after long and lonely toils. If he had Elrond's own leave to join in, though only once and in the least taxing of dances, neither Arwen nor Gandalf could worry themselves overmuch for his welfare. He was glad of that, too: for it was this lack of fear for his welfare that would be the surest sign he was healed at last.

Chapter LXXXI: The First Debate

They had taken their time for mirth, and now the true labours could be delayed no longer. After breakfast the following morning, Aragorn and Gandalf joined Elrond in the private library. Here tomes of ancient law and lore were kept: too sensitive or too precious or too fragile to be at the general disposal of the household. They had settled upon this place rather than the study because it was all too possible that they might need to consult the troves of resources contained therein. Already they had a map of what had once been Arthedain spread upon the table before them. Unlike the maps of Gondor, this one was detailed and painstakingly accurate. The contributions of many travellers were reflected therein, perhaps none so extensive as Gandalf’s and none so detailed as Aragorn’s. Bilbo had given his own testimony as to the towns and dells and woodlands of the Shire. It was a map the greatest strategist would envy.

‘Before we go any further,’ said Gandalf, looking from one pair of grey eyes to the other; ‘I think we ought to agree straight off that whatever we decide today shall not be final. Sooner or later we will need the guidance of the rest of what was the White Council. I would welcome Saruman’s opinion most of all, for he is learned in Ring-lore and he is wise.’

Elrond nodded. ‘Were he not so far away, I would have him present at this table. But we must do without Saruman for the time being, if for no other reason than because the details of the guarding of the Shire must be settled.’

‘Word has been sent for the patrols to be doubled, and for the Dúnedain to ensure that the watchers themselves are watched,’ said Aragorn. ‘Halbarad will see to it upon my word alone, but I would be glad to offer him at least some sense of direction upon our meeting. It is a hard thing to see taxing directives laid and to know neither the reason nor how long they are expected to endure.’

‘For the moment, the Ring is safe,’ said Gandalf. ‘That is the most important consideration. It is safe, and its location still a secret from Sauron. He may be looking, but the world is wide. However long his reach, it does not span such a distance yet. But we cannot leave the One Ring as a mathom among the curios of Bag End forever. We must decide what we intend to do with it.’

‘There are two options,’ Elrond said quietly. His forefinger was tracing the course of the Baranduin River with perfect precision, although his eyes were focused absently upon the lattice of the window beyond Gandalf’s shoulder. ‘It can be removed from the circles of the world, where it can do no further harm. Or it can be destroyed.’

‘Can it?’ asked Aragorn. ‘Surely such a thing of power would not lend itself to easy destruction. Sauron would have guarded against that from the first, knowing that Celebrimbor’s first instinct upon realizing the betrayal would be to undo what had been so wrongfully done.’

‘Easy destruction? No, you are right about that,’ said Gandalf. ‘A Ring of Power is no princeling’s bauble, to be melted in a cruet or beaten to a wire. Indeed, the only reason I am certain that they can be destroyed at all is because such was the fate of four of the Seven. In each case it was the work of a dragon: their fire or their burning gullets undid the skillful work of Elven hands.’

A sober sadness rose in Elrond’s eyes. ‘Celebrimbor too held that few fires could bring destruction upon the Rings. His own forge would have done it, he said, for it was in that white-hot flame raised by Fëanorian bellows that they were given form. It had the capacity, therefore, to take such form away. That hearth is long lost, and in any case it was not there that Sauron made the One. In the fires of Orodruin was it tempered by means known and unknown. Only there can we be assured of its destruction.’

‘It would be easier to seek out a dragon,’ Aragorn said grimly, needing words to fill a gaping chasm of dread that had opened in his breast. He had looked upon those fires with his own eyes, some distance removed and yet too near for sanity’s sake. Near enough to discern the twists and tendrils of the flows of liquid flame, the showers of sparks from fountains of incandescent destruction, and the blind, seething rage that pulsed outward from the mountain’s tainted heart.

‘Aye,’ sighed Gandalf. ‘If yet there were a dragon left in all the world whose breath yet burned with the heat of the great beasts of old. Smaug was the last, I deem. That is a twist of fortune as strange as any: that the One Ring should have been found upon a road that led to one of its likeliest agents of destruction. Yet I doubt that any dragon, scions of ancient evil that they are, could bear to destroy the work of he who is their overlord, acknowledged or no. Mayhap it was that, as much as his keen wit, that spared Bilbo from death amid the golden hoard.’

This startled Aragorn back from the edge of the chasm of dark reminiscence. Beside him, Elrond had one hand closed over the knuckles of the other, where Vilya sat concealed upon his finger. His face was serene but very pale, and the weight of millennia sat in his eyes.

‘You mean to suggest that the beast sensed the Ring’s presence, and thus forbore to make any earnest assault upon the unseen trespasser?’ Elrond said quietly.

‘Is it not possible? Perhaps even probable?’ said Gandalf. ‘It matters not either way, of course, for Smaug is lost and the Ring is found. It must be dispatched with the same expediency that the dragon received. Nay, greater: for I shall not turn my eye to other matters while this is yet undone.’

‘We are agreed that it should be destroyed?’ Aragorn asked. ‘I mislike the notion of carrying it West, and for more than one reason alone. First, it is an evil of Middle-earth, and the Valar have not in the past show great inclination to lend their aid in such matters until the very last.’

‘Yet they have lent their aid at times,’ said Gandalf. ‘It may be merely a matter of selecting the proper messenger.’

A ghost of a smile touched Elrond’s lips. ‘Perhaps I, being the son of he who last swayed their hearts, might do so again? Is that it, Mithrandir?’

Gandalf quirked his eyebrows sadly. ‘I fear not, Half-Elven. I doubt that either of us could bear to touch the One for long. I came near to it on the occasion of Bilbo’s birthday party, and it was momentum more than resolve that kept my hand upon its course. If I chance such a thing again, it will be in a time of grave need.’

There was a span of uneasy silence, during which the two Ring-bearers seemed lost deep in their own thoughts. For Aragorn’s part, he was waiting only until a judicious span of time had passed.

‘The other reason I am loath to seek to remove the Ring from the circles of the world is that to tolerate its prolonged existence seems imprudent,’ he said at last. ‘It is the survival of the One Ring that prevented the utter downfall of Sauron at the dawn of this Age. If it lives on, even beyond the boundaries of the world, will he not continue to feed upon that portion of his power locked within? That is how you described it to me, Gandalf. Am I amiss in my understanding?’

‘If you are, then so am I,’ the wizard sighed. ‘I do not know what influence the Ring might continue to exert beyond the Door of Night, but it is a desperate hope indeed to believe it will be utterly dampened. Yet at least it would be beyond Sauron’s reach until Dagor Dagorath.’

‘And then?’ asked Elrond. This time it was his voice that rang dourly on the air. ‘In the chaos that has been foretold, Morgoth’s greatest servant may recover his greatest weapon, and wreak destruction as might not otherwise have been.’

‘The unmaking of the world is not our present concern,’ Gandalf said. ‘I can look no farther than this next stumbling-block. It is for this, and not for the securing of futures yet unknown, that I have been sent.’

‘Yet it is still a consideration,’ said Aragorn. ‘Our actions will not impact our time alone, but all that is to come.’

At this Elrond nodded. ‘Once before I bent to the concerns of the present: the fall of Sauron and the breaking of the Barad-dûr, the preserving of an alliance that had endured already such great duress, and the ensuring that the deaths of two mighty kings did not utterly undo their peoples. Thus blinded by matters of imminent worry, I failed in what may indeed have been my greatest test. All that which came of it I might have foreseen, but did not. Now here we sit, because I plied my greatest gift but poorly in the hour of need. You have read the words of Isildur. You know how little I touched, much less swayed, his heart and his reason.’

Gandalf flinched and drew his hand across his mouth. ‘Perhaps I should not have told you of that,’ he murmured. ‘I deemed you had a right to know, and that is true. Yet perhaps you also had the right to be spared such things from the mouth of a friend.’

They were speaking, Aragorn realized, of the portion of Isildur’s account of the capture of the One Ring that Gandalf had reserved for Elrond’s ears alone. He fixed his eyes upon his weathered hand where it rested near the edge of the map, and listened with as much objectivity as he could. He dared not close his ears to anything said in this council, but neither did he wish to cause any unease in what was already a painful situation.

‘It is better to know,’ sighed Elrond, his voice drawn with weariness. ‘At least it is evident that what I deemed to be a great effort served scarcely to penetrate. Would my greatest have served any better? The other alternative… I could not contemplate it then, and even now I do not know if I would.’

Aragorn raised his eyes. At the movement of his head Elrond turned, and the Ranger caught his gaze and held it. ‘The alternative,’ he said fiercely; ‘would have been unthinkable. The loss of your fidelity, your nobility, and your gentleness would have been a price too high for all the world to pay. Arda would have been diminished by it, as it could not be even in Sauron’s triumph. Bitterly though I rue Isildur’s folly, and steeply though we all may pay for it in the end, I would not have had it otherwise if the only other path would have broken you, Atarinya. Take upon yourself the failing of your powers of persuasion if you must, but never that.’

Elrond’s lips parted and his eyes eased at once out of both his surprise and the earlier self-recrimination. Love and gratitude rose instead, and Aragorn read the latter clearly. Though perhaps Elrond would always wonder over and doubt his choices, and though he might never forgive his failing, it was a balm to his heart to hear such words from one he loved and trusted so deeply. His head bobbed once, in acknowledgement more than true agreement.

‘Gracious words indeed, Aragorn son of Arathorn,’ he said softly. ‘You known not the comfort they bring me, though I think you well can guess.’ Then he opened his gaze to include Gandalf, and set his face again into a countenance of grave contemplation. ‘Yet we cannot pass our time brooding on what might have been, or arguing about what was. I too dislike the idea of sending the One Ring into the West. Your reasons are sound, Aragorn, and there is another. If once Sauron knows that the Wise are aware of its location, that is the road he will expect. It is the road that will be watched most diligently, and it winds but one way.’

Gandalf nodded at this. ‘That also is true,’ he said. ‘As for the aid of the Valar, I fear that my compatriots and I are the whole of it: all the aid they intend, and all they will lend. For all we know any ship bearing the One Ring will be unable to find the Straight Road, or upon reaching the shores of Aman be turned back. Such a perilous thing is not lightly to be borne to the Blessed Realm.’

‘Then destroyed it must be,’ said Aragorn, cold determination in his voice steadying the quake of trepidation in his heart. ‘If there is no other fire sufficient to the purpose, it must be cast into the heart of Orodruin from whence it came. From Hobbiton to Gorgoroth is a strange road to travel – one I do not think anyone has ever taken willfully. I cannot think how it might best be done.’

‘The mustering of an army as in days of old is out of the question,’ said Elrond. ‘The Elven realms have not the strength to mount it, and the amity between the Firstborn and the Mortal kingdoms has waned with the long years.’

‘The lore of Gondor remembers you, at least,’ said Aragorn, indicating his foster-father. ‘By name and as Gil-galad’s herald and trusted lieutenant if nothing more. But you are right. Denethor would not lend the strength of his armies to an uncertain venture in a distant land. Matters of temperament beside, it would be folly; for us as well as him. It is the stalwartly held border of Gondor that holds back the Enemy from sweeping across the South. It cannot be weakened, least of all now when most we have need to dissemble and delay the watchers of Sauron.’

‘And Rohan?’ asked Gandalf.

‘I do not know,’ Aragorn said. ‘That too we might ask Saruman. I did not know Théoden as a man full-grown. I cannot guess what kind of a king he is. You would know better than I, having travelled there in more recent years.’

‘Aye,’ Gandalf sighed. ‘The horse-lords are valiant, and never shirk from danger. Yet they know nothing of Elves save in stories of old more often remembered by aged grandmothers and small, dreamy-eyed children than by lords of might and majesty. I do not think they would gather to such a cause, and certainly not without hard proof and clear reasons. In this enterprise we must have secrecy, for the temptation of the One Ring is great.’

‘Then let us have secrecy,’ said Aragorn. ‘At least in the removal of the Ring from the Shire, let us do as we have always done. We shall take it by quiet and humble roads, keeping to the woodlands and the shadows. The armour of the commonplace has guarded me all my life; so may it guard this artefact for a while longer. We need not look so far ahead as the slopes of Mount Doom. Let us concentrate first upon removing it and its peril from the heart of this little land of peace and innocence.’ With his finger he rapped upon the map, indicating Hobbiton as if there were any doubt at all of what he spoke.

‘Thus speaks the guardian of simple hearts and quiet homes,’ Elrond said fondly. ‘My heart is with you in this, and for more reasons than that noblest one. I too can look little further than the first sharp bend in the road, and what lies beyond it I can no longer foretell. Eyes once clear are now clouded with cataracts, and I am utterly bereft of precognitive clarity. Indistinct shapes I see; hints and feelings, but no more. Most of those are dark and far from encouraging. All are uncertain. To fix upon a measurable and attainable end would give my heart some ease, and my mind the scope to ponder further at its leisure.’

‘From Hobbiton, then, and to where?’ asked Gandalf. ‘Orthanc is the greatest fortress under our influence, at least West of the mountains. It would be most unwise to strike out for Thranduil’s lands and risk bringing the One beneath Mirkwood’s shadow. It was likely only the army drawing down upon his doorstep that distracted Sauron from its presence the first time. Removed though he is, such of the Ularí as hold Dol Guldur will sense it.’

Elrond considered. ‘We might hold it long at Orthanc,’ he said. ‘Behind those obsidian walls the Eye cannot look uninvited, and Saruman will gladly harbour our cause. It is far from the Shire, but the road is straight – if not without peril.’

‘Not Orthanc!’ Aragorn exclaimed, the words coming out far more vehement than he had believed the thought to be. At the surprised looks of the others he coloured a little. ‘Not Orthanc,’ he repeated, his tone nearer the modulated one he had first intended. ‘If we shut the One Ring up in that impenetrable valley, what is that but an invitation to a long and bloody siege? I do not fancy sitting out the years in Saruman’s guest-houses, fighting a long war of attrition with the hellhound at our gates. If once Sauron bottled the Ring up in Isengard, bringing it any further would be impossible.’

‘We may hope he will not learn of it,’ said Gandalf. ‘As you have said, secrecy and a shabby cloak have guarded great treasures ere this. Orthanc would be but a waystation on the road to Mordor.’

‘A waystation, aye,’ said Aragorn. ‘But let it not be the first. Long are the leagues between the Brandywine Bridge and the Gap of Rohan, and that road grows more dangerous by the year. Refugees from the far South were already treading the Greenway when last I walked it. By now their numbers shall be greater, and the wild men and footpads of the Enedwaith will be on the lookout to prey upon the desperate. They are easy enough to hold at bay, if one is armed and alert, but they are a nuisance and would surely cause delays. In an enterprise of haste, that would be fatal.’

‘There is no need of haste,’ Gandalf argued. ‘We have adequate time to plan carefully and execute precisely the fruits of that planning. Nor need we follow the Greenway too closely: not if you will be joining the expedition.’

‘It seems scarcely possible that I should do otherwise,’ said Aragorn. ‘Yet if I have any say in the matter we will not strike out from Hobbiton for Isengard.’

Gandalf snorted and opened his mouth with sharp words upon his tongue, but Elrond raised his hand. ‘Feeling is running too high,’ he said levelly. ‘None of us are sure of our course, and that is not something to which any of us is especially accustomed. Let us not permit choler to divide us. If we three, who are so often in closest accord, cannot discuss this without entering into fearsome disputes, what hope is there for the others among the Wise to reach a verdict?’

The wizard sighed and sat back in his chair. Aragorn shook his head. ‘We are wrong to make for Orthanc. I do not know why it is such an unsuitable path, but it is. The long road, the chance of entrapment and siege, these ought to be reason enough. Nor will Saruman know to look for us.’

‘I will carry tidings to Saruman and make known our designs before anything is begun in the Shire,’ Gandalf promised. ‘He may have greater wisdom to lend than I can muster.’

‘Yes,’ said Elrond. ‘And I shall send missives to Galadriel and Celeborn, as soon as we are settled upon our own opinions. But whither should the Ring be brought, Aragorn, if not to Orthanc?’

‘Here,’ said Aragorn. ‘It should be brought to Imladris, at least at first. The way is shorter, and better known to me and to Gandalf. It is less perilous than the Greenway, and the Dúnedain will be within a few days’ summoning if aid is needed. Because the road is not so long, the journey will be swifter and the time that the One Ring will be loose in the Wild will be greatly reduced. The road to the West will be expected, you have said. So will the desire to shut up the Ring in our stoutest fortress. Let us bring it instead to this house of peace.’

‘You would sooner bring peril here than to Isengard, where Saruman has walls and soldiers to hold it?’ asked Gandalf.

‘I would never willingly bring peril on this House or any of her folk,’ Aragorn said, deathly solemnity in his voice and in his eyes. ‘Yet ever has Rivendell been a refuge for those on journeys of danger and desperation. Here alone would I trust the One Ring to be secure, save perhaps in Caras Galadhon. It is not safe in the Shire, and my heart forebodes it could not be safe even in the fastness of Orthanc. Yet here…’

He gestured broadly and sighed, weary in body and in mind. The midmorning sun was high beyond the tall windows, but it was not yet noon. Already he felt as if he had done a full day’s labour.

‘The final road leads eastward as well as south,’ said Elrond quietly. ‘This would be a reasonable waystation whatever the ultimate route over the mountains. From here one may travel by secret woodland ways to Isengard, if that is what is at length decided. It delays the choice without delaying action, and it removes the Ring from the Shire. What say you, Gandalf? From Baranduin to Bruinen?’

Gandalf made a unsettled sound in the back of his throat, but he nodded his head grudgingly nonetheless. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I allow this is the logical place to gather for a southeasterly journey, even if it will add many miles to the road. A swift extraction from the Shire has its merits as you say, Dúnadan. I hope that you, Master Elrond, do not take my reluctance amiss. I do not question the fastness of your realm or the loyalty of your people. Yet if ever there were a time to take comfort in parapets and walls of stone, surely this is it.’

‘I have never known you to seek such comfort before, Gandalf,’ Elrond said kindly. ‘Do not let fear lead you to question your long wisdom.’

‘Agility is surer than stone,’ agreed Aragorn. He smiled almost wistfully. ‘So said a grey-bearded wanderer to a young soldier, long ago.’

Gandalf grinned appreciatively at this, though the shadow that lay in all their hearts still showed dark in his eyes. ‘So he did,’ he said. ‘It seems that there are others to keep my wisdom when I myself forget – or question – it.’

Now Aragorn leaned forward to consider the map, turning it a little so that he was looking from an eastern vantage instead of a southern one. It was how he was accustomed to thinking of the Shire.

‘If it is to be taken from the Shire to Rivendell, someone must bring it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘A small force would be best. You and I, Gandalf? And perhaps Elladan and Elrohir?’

‘They would gladly do it, and they are already deep in our counsels,’ added Elrond, nodding.

‘No,’ said Gandalf, and nothing more.

‘No?’ Aragorn echoed at last.

‘No. Our hope lies not in might of arms, as has already been proven,’ the wizard said. ‘The sons of Elrond are great warriors and indeed deeply trusted by us all, but it is not they whose skills and nature are needed. Who is to carry the Ring in your scenario, Aragorn? I dare not. Would Elladan be a fit Bearer, with his politic ways and his flair for leadership? Or Elrohir with his grandmother’s temper but not her wisdom born of many Ages, his hatred of the orcs black upon his heart? Yourself, then. Are we to risk our long-held secret upon this new one?

‘Then there is the peril of compelling the Ring to change hands. That has always proved a moment of greatest danger from which only one Bearer has yet escaped more or less unscathed. Bilbo gave the Ring to his nephew, not to any of us. It is Frodo who should carry it, so long as he may.’

‘Frodo?’ Again Aragorn was parroting his friend, but he was too astounded by this suggestion to make any more astute an answer. ‘Frodo Baggins of the Shire, peaceable and prosperous master of Bag End: he you would have bear this thing into the Wild, where watchers will look for it and Ringwraiths will seek it? Gandalf, I know the esteem in which you hold hobbits as a rule, but this is madness!’

‘Is it?’ Gandalf tilted his head and regarded the Ranger. ‘Bilbo bore the Ring for many years, with little temptation and few ill effects. Even Sméagol, who got it by murder, resisted its evil for hundreds of years.’

‘I would not say resisted,’ sneered Aragorn distastefully, hating the loathing in his voice and his heart but unable to restrain it.

‘I would,’ said Gandalf. ‘Consider the great lords of Men who succumbed to the Nine in less than a lifetime. Consider even Isildur, who after two scant years’ possession was so entranced by his treasure that he forgot his broader duty to the great detriment of his men.’

Aragorn cringed as if beneath a whip at these words, haunted still by Isildur’s failure of his people more even than his greed for Sauron’s Ring. Elrond placed a hand upon his forearm, but Gandalf went on.

‘Yet Gollum did not bring about his own destruction. He is no wraith, as your own scars attest. He is wizened almost to the bone, but he is tough as a tree-root and still in his own strange way very much himself.’ He clicked his tongue once, thoughtfully. ‘And the Ring had so little sway over Bilbo’s heart that in the end he was able to give it away. That has never been done, save with the Elven Rings. Even then, one occasion was more a bequeathal than a gifting, was it not?’

‘It was,’ said Elrond, his fair voice unwontedly hoarse and his eyes bright with old pain. Aragorn reached with his free hand to lay it upon the slender one holding his arm. A tiny twitch of the Peredhel’s lips acknowledged the act of consolation.

‘What I mean by this is that there appears to be something in the nature of hobbits that guards them from the One Ring’s incursions, or at least slows them. Frodo Baggins, once of Buckland, may well be the surest Bearer we could hope to have for the Ring. He was young when last I saw him, but by now he will be drawing up on the age at which Bilbo took his own great adventure. I think that in light of that, Frodo may prove eager to undertake the journey.’ Gandalf’s eyes were distant, considering, but his voice held only certainty.

‘He may indeed prove eager, but he could not possibly understand the danger,’ said Aragorn. ‘How can you ask such a thing of one who knows not the peril into which he walks?’

‘Did you know the peril into which you would walk, when first you undertook the hunt for Gollum?’ Gandalf challenged. ‘What of the day you first went forth into the Wild as Aragorn son of Arathorn instead of Estel son of Elrond? Did you understand then what you had undertaken: its dangers and its hardships, its toils and its pains, its scant but beauteous joys and its demands upon your spirit? Would you have found the courage at twenty to go forth, if you knew then all you now do of the road? Sometimes it is better not to know.’

To this Aragorn had no answer. With the faintest pressure of support from his fingertips, Elrond withdrew his hand. ‘I must agree that it is a great risk to have the Ring change hands again, particularly under some compulsion or coercion. How could Gandalf persuade the hobbit to give it up, save with a telling of the need and the danger?’

‘Then you also believe that the gifting of the Ring will protect Bilbo’s nephew,’ Aragorn said in faint wonderment. The substance of these talks was so vast that it seemed to smother his mind like a pile of too many quilts upon a feverish body. ‘That because he received it freely, without desire much less artifice, the Ring will have less to manipulate within him.’

‘It is my hope, and Gandalf’s,’ said Elrond. The wizard nodded. ‘I had not thought you would consider that aspect yourself.’

‘Of Ring-lore I know little,’ said Aragorn; ‘but in logic I had the best of teachers.’

Elrond smiled, a little wanly. Clearly the debate was wearying to him as well. ‘Now I am glad indeed that it has been decided that the Ring should be brought here,’ he said. ‘The road between the Shire and Imladris has proved passable to hobbits ere this. If Frodo hath but a measure of his uncle’s mettle, the journey should be well within his scope.’

‘Precisely,’ said Gandalf. ‘In any case I shall be with him; and Aragorn, too, if he consents. Such an escort would be equal to most dangers that might assail that road, even to a Ringwraith or five. We can spare the debate of whether further guard is needed until the departure is at hand. It will take time to be sure of the situation in the North, to divine the Enemy’s movements, to scope out the watchers. Saruman must be consulted, and Galadriel informed. Most important of all, Frodo must be told the truth of his Ring, and the matter must be explained to him so that – yes, my friend: I heed your hesitancy to send him blind into the fray – he can comprehend in part the risks and how far he is already entangled. All this will take time.’

‘How much time?’ asked Aragorn uneasily. The longer they delayed, the better Sauron’s odds of locating the Shire.

‘I would prefer not to plan to speak to Frodo until Yuletide,’ said Gandalf. ‘I have much to resolve in my own mind first, and much yet to learn of the theory of the matter. You have Celebrimbor’s private chronicles, do you not, Elrond?’

‘Those that survived the fall of Eregion, aye,’ said Elrond. ‘Others still were taken by Sauron under the guise of Annatar. His pretext was to enrich his own stores of knowledge with the fruits of their joint labours, but I suspect he was more interested in thwarting the dissemination of that knowledge after his betrayal.’

‘Then my first act shall be to explore those,’ Gandalf decided. ‘If our courageous Chieftain is to enjoy a few weeks more in the Last Homely House, surely I cannot be begrudged the same.’

He smiled teasingly at Aragorn, who returned it with an effort. His heart was heavy and his thin limbs ached. It seemed such an uncertain thing: to bring the Great Ring, the One Ring that ruled all the others, through leagues of open country beneath the watch of the Enemy. That they were to ask a hobbit to carry it seemed folly. Yet Gandalf had great faith in that little race, and at least in Bilbo that faith had always borne rich fruit. Aragorn would simply have to trust to the wizard’s wisdom and to quiet his own qualms with frequent reminders of the courage and resilience of the elder Master Baggins.

‘That is the great luxury you have won for us by sweat and blood and suffering, my son,’ said Elrond quietly, nodding to the map as if he could see the green downs and peaceful farms of the Shire laid out before him instead of crosshatched lines and neat notations. ‘You have bought us time; time to plan, to consider, to act with deliberation. In the end, that time may prove more important than all our more ostentatious efforts.’

‘Time,’ Gandalf agreed. ‘The one thing Sauron cannot smelt in his furnaces or churn forth from his mills. I shall put it to its best use: have no fear of that.’

For all these confident words Aragorn knew they were no more easy in their hearts than he. What lay ahead was a cataclysm that would equal the exploits of the Last Alliance, if not the unmaking of Beleriand itself. They seemed such tiny players upon a vast board of stratagem, and yet on the side of light they were the prime movers, the great captains, the Wise.

Yet Aragorn had faith in the wisdom and perception of Elrond, in the knowledge and surety of Gandalf, and (though he often forgot it) in the steadfastness of his own will. Until lately he had trusted the strength of his arm, too, and that he could regain. While Gandalf read and Elrond pondered, he would regain it. When the time was ripe, he would be ready. All his life he had fought in this great war. For good or ill, its last campaign had begun.

Chapter LXXXII: Toils to Come

It was apple-blossom time in the valley. The orchards were frosted with a delicate lace of white and palest pink. The warm June air was redolent with the fertile fragrance that promised bounty yet unrealized. In Rivendell’s kitchen beds the early plants were rich with their fruits, and every day the tables were laden with fresh young vegetables, berries and greens. There were flowers in abundance, from the carefully cultivated roses in the pleasure-gardens to the wild heartsease in the pastures. Birds sang joyously, flitting from nest to branch or hopping through the emerald grasses or tending their nestlings. The spring lambs were large enough now to wander a little way from their mothers, and they could be seen frolicking together on the upper slopes. Green and supple, the new shoots of Elven wheat swayed in the gentle winds. Everywhere there was beauty and the grace of new life and plenty.

On a level place where the grass was worn to scraggly tufts amid swaths of bare, dark earth, two pairs of high boots danced deftly through the dust. Now one advanced while the other sprang back. Now both circled slowly, heels never touching the soil. Now they would freeze in strained poses, locked and firmly grounded as their owners leaned into one another’s strength. Such a halt would swiftly be followed by the wail of steel on steel as two blades scraped one another in their parting. Beneath the Sun’s proud caress, Glorfindel the Bright and Aragorn son of Arathorn were sparring.

The overweighted drill swords swung through the air with the ease of a pair of cane wands, wielded with a skill that only the long-practiced and truly gifted could exert. Glorfindel had the advantage of speed and a nimbleness that even this scion of the Line of Lúthien could not match, but Aragorn’s reach was the longer. They knew one another well, and it was difficult for one to outwit the other. This was well, for swift victory was not the objective. The longer the bout lasted, the greater the exertion: muscles worked with prolonged vigour, hearts hammered more fiercely, and keen eyes were forced to maintain full alertness without surcease. Agility and endurance were the goals, and in these the dark-haired combatant was deporting himself brilliantly.

Scant weeks before, the briefest of skirmishes had left Aragorn exhausted and utterly wrung out, head and extremities all ready for the kindly release of lying back in the grass beyond the low fence of the practice-yard. Even ten days ago he had found it difficult to sustain more than twenty minutes’ uninterrupted exercise. Today he had been in perpetual motion for nearly two hours by the angle of the Sun, though not all in active duelling. Glorfindel had devised a regimen not dissimilar to the one they had used in Aragorn’s adolescence, when his skills were green and his limbs untempered. The skills, at least, had been undiminished by disuse and starvation. The limbs, though stripped of every shred of his ever-sparse expendable flesh, still had most of their hard, lean muscle. It was the fortitude of his body that had to be regained.

Plentiful, wholesome food and restful nights had contributed as much to that as the training, but it was on the field that Aragorn’s progress had been measured. His lungs had cleared well, thanks to Master Elrond’s ministrations and regular dosing with his ill-tasting tincture. Now Aragorn never coughed and was seldom caught short of breath even after the most rigorous sessions with his heavy blade. His ankle still pained him at the end of a long day, but it was sound and strong again; more than equal to the supple steps of swordplay. As for his other hurts, most were only fading memories. The thickest scars upon his back tugged sometimes in extremes of motion, but they did so without pain. The sinews of his ravaged forearm were not yet supple enough for his liking, and it was the dull deep agony in these that kept Aragorn awake on the nights after especially grueling bouts. Yet neither his grip nor his might were affected, and for that he was thankful.

‘Mind upon your blade!’ Glorfindel called out, feinting to the left before lunging right. Aragorn just managed to turn his wrist in time to parry the blow before it could clip him on the hip. The Elf-lord’s tone was lightly ribbing: the teasing of a peer designed as much to distract as to instruct. ‘Do you grow bored of our match?’

‘I grow bored of your inability to best me,’ retorted Aragorn. ‘I had expected one of your reputation and experience to be able to dispatch a single bony man.’

‘You are less bony by the day!’ laughed Glorfindel. ‘Your hose fit once more: soon you shall be as plump as Master Baggins, and shall have to be provided with an entirely new wardrobe.’

Now it was Aragorn who lunged smoothly, and Glorfindel who was forced into a quick parry and riposte. Their blades sang together, and they each leapt back to circle afresh. Beneath the soft soles of his new boots, high-shafted and supple as doeskin, Aragorn felt the ridges and divots of earth driven about by deft feet. The Noldorin cordwainder had done well. The boots were sturdy, watertight, and after only a week’s breaking-in already as familiar and trusted as his old pair had been. They ought to last him through two or three years of hard wear, provided he did not have the misfortune to soak and then freeze them as he had their predecessors.

From the corner of his eye, Aragorn caught a long, smooth movement beyond the rails. Knowing better than to turn his head from the battle, he bent his efforts on forcing Glorfindel into a leftward rotation. For a moment he was surprised when the Elf-lord obliged with only the smallest of promptings, but then Aragorn saw why and grinned. Glorfindel hoped to distract him: Arwen had come up along the edge of the yard and stood watching.

She was clad in summer blue, and there was a basket upon her hip. That was all that Aragorn permitted himself to notice, for his attention was required for more immediate matters. He deflected Glorfindel’s blade and ducked under his sword-arm, weaving to the left and necessitating a readjustment of the Elf-lord’s position. With a back-footed pivot Glorfindel swung, and the swords met again. Using the momentum of the blow, Aragorn flung off the hostile blade and took fresh footing. His heart hammered with the thrill of combat, and his eyes were bright. In his hand the heavy sword was limber and obedient, equal even to Glorfindel’s agility if his feet were not. Now he took a series of swift thrusts as if fighting with a far lighter weapon. This surprised his opponent, and Glorfindel adjusted his style rapidly to compensate. Too rapidly, indeed, as Aragorn had hoped. He drove the Elf-lord back two paces, three, four.

The loss of ground was of no real import here, where the earth was all but level and there were no true stakes. It was the effect any retreat had upon a warrior’s mind that Aragorn sought to prompt, however unconsciously, and as Glorfindel’s perfect stance faltered fractionally he saw that he had done it. Now he swung mightily, left then right then left again. There was a sharp twinge in his right ankle, but it held. Under this onslaught Glorfindel parried skillfully, but he was still marginally off-balance.

That tiny margin was all that Aragorn required. He took a half-step back, sword-arm upraised and ready but not yet moving to strike. The stance left his off side enticingly bare, and in the last heartbeat of his discomposure the Elf-lord forgot suspicion and swung for it. There was a soft clong as the flat of Aragorn’s blade struck the inside of Glorfindel’s wrist. His iron grip mitigated most of the body’s reflex to release the tendons, but not all: in the tiny fraction of time that his hold upon the hilts wobbled, the tip of the Ranger’s sword caught the pommel of his and the blade was flung away. It arced through the air and clattered to earth in a cloud of dust. Glorfindel was left derobed, far removed from his weapon, and just a little bewildered by the suddenness of it all.

Aragorn levelled his blade so that its blunt tip sat just below the Elf’s sternal notch. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you yield?’ he asked graciously.

‘I yield,’ Glorfindel conceded. As the sword was lowered he grinned. ‘You could not have done that with a real sword, Dúnadan.’

‘No,’ Aragorn agreed. His chest was heaving deeply with the exertions of the hour, but his words were unstinted. He had indeed regained his old stamina, it seemed. ‘The tip would have sunk into your hand instead, which would have been as effective for me but far the worse for you. How fortunate, then, that we were not using real swords.’

Glorfindel reached up to rake the leather thong from his hair. As the golden tresses came loose he tossed his head so that they flew, and he laughed deep and merrily. ‘Bested by a saucy mortal!’ he said, coming to clap his opponent on the shoulder. ‘I should never have taught you all that I know, had I expected you to use it against me.’

‘I had to end the match,’ Aragorn said, striding to the bucket of clean water that sat upon the stile. He bent to the dipper and drank: now that he was no longer in motion his thirst was fearsome. ‘A few minutes more, and I would have been prostrate with exhaustion.’

‘I doubt that.’ Glorfindel stooped to recover his blade and came near. Aragorn offered him the dipper, and he took it. Quaffing eagerly of the cool fluid, the Elf-lord looked back over his shoulder and swept an artful gesture of salutation with the empty vessel. ‘What did you think of the match, my Lady?’

Arwen tilted her chin, her smile radiant and playful. ‘I think you were showing off, my Lord, and that our bold Chieftain was overeager to make a quick end of it. Had he not caught you preening, you might have taken him.’

She rounded the perimeter of the yard, her gait swaying a little to keep the basket firm upon her hip that her right hand might stay free. Aragorn leaned his drill sword against the fence and caught up one of the cloths draped over the top rail. He blotted the sweat from brow and neck, and felt a small burst of pride when Glorfindel moved to do the same. It was no small achievement for a mortal to make one of the Firstborn perspire. His attention turned almost at once upon Arwen as she drew near with her gentle smile and her shining eyes.

‘It was a splendid bout, from all I saw,’ she assured them both. Then to Aragorn she said; ‘There was no need to end it on my account.’

‘On your account?’ Now it was he who laughed: a low but earnest chuckle that pleased her more than she let her lips show. ‘Nay, Lady! I have been trying to best him for the last forty minutes without success.’ He cleared the stile with ease and stood before her, holding out his hands for her burden. ‘May I carry it for you?’

‘Gracious, no!’ Arwen laughed, pivoting to move the basket further from his reach. ‘They have only just dried, and the pair of you are dripping.’

Glorfindel laughed softly at this, still blotting at his brow. Aragorn’s eyes were drawn to the basket. It had been spread with a linen napkin to prevent the contents from snagging on the woven willow boughs, for it was piled high with hanks of silk dyed that deep and fathomless black that only the Elven masters of the craft could achieve. There was in that black a perfect absence of colour: no trace of darkest brown, or blue, or purple. It was the black so sought-after and coveted by the clothiers of Men, but unlike theirs it did not fade with the years and the sunlight. The coils of sable silk shimmered with the sheen of moonlight upon polished ebony. What Arwen might need with such a quantity of black thread Aragorn could not imagine, but it was beautiful.

‘I have no wish to undo the Sun’s good work,’ he said, not quite glibly. Delight flashed in her eyes to see him lighthearted instead of sombre, for although his heart healed a little each day he was still weighted with cares and foul memories. When not labouring to regain his strength he sat most often in solemn contemplation. ‘I would ask leave to walk with you to the house, if Glorfindel will consent to tend my blade today.’

‘Go on!’ laughed the Elf-lord. ‘Let me not stand betwixt the champion and his beloved. But tomorrow, Dúnadan, have a care! I shall not be so easily drawn out again.’

‘I would not expect it,’ Aragorn agreed. He reached across the fence to clasp hands with his one-time instructor, meeting his eyes with great earnest. ‘I thank you. It was a heartening match, and not for the victory alone.’

Glorfindel nodded, but said no more. In his eyes Aragorn could see that he too was gladdened. Neither of them had looked for such improvement so quickly, and his returning might was a relief to them both.

Aragorn swept a little bow to Arwen, who fell into step beside him. He did not offer his arm, for his arming cote was damp with perspiration and he had resumed blotting at the back of his neck. His hair had grown out of its close-clipped neatness, back into the shaggy grey-streaked mane that was its accustomed appearance in the Wild. When he returned to his labours he would once again be the same old Strider, and if his visage was yet a little more careworn, yet a little grimmer than in years past, he doubted any of the denizens of Bree-land or the farms upon the borders of the Shire would see it.

‘Each day you grow stronger, my love,’ Arwen said, pride in his accomplishments softened by a wistful note. ‘Far too soon you shall wish to take your leave.’

‘Sooner than that, vanimelda,’ said Aragorn softly. They had reached the ivy trellis that admitted walkers to the gardens, and he stopped beneath it that he might gaze down into her eyes. ‘I have told no one else, but this morning I spoke long with our father. He made an examination and we are agreed: I am well enough now that there is no need for me to tarry longer. I depart in two days’ time.’

‘Two days!’ Though in volume it was scarcely a low exhalation, in tone it was a cry of dismay. Arwen’s brows knit together and she shook her head. ‘You have scarcely regained your health. Your strength is returning, but you are still not wholly restored. Though you are better fed now than you were, your ribs still stand out too sharply and your—’

‘Peace,’ Aragorn said, laying a hand upon her shoulder. She quieted at once, but her misgivings still showed starkly in her eyes. ‘All that is so, and we have discussed it. I will go mounted instead of afoot, and I will keep to patrols near the habitations of Men where I can readily resupply. I will have no true hardships to endure: it will be a gentle summer. I promise you that.’

‘How can you promise?’ she asked. Her tone was neither plaintive nor bitter, but only steady and knowing. ‘When the first danger arises or your men have need upon some hard front, you will go without thought for your safety, much less your health. If one of your Rangers is hungry, you will give him of your own portion even if you have scarce enough for yourself. You will be the good Captain you have always been, whatever your present intentions for the summer.’

He could deny none of this, but Aragorn still wished to comfort her. She would read any attempt to dissemble, were he callous enough to wish it, and she would worry all the more for it. Throughout his recovery she had been the paragon of patience and good faith. It was her right to feel some trepidation at last, after laying it by so long for his sake.

‘I can promise that Halbarad will not permit me to go without,’ he said. ‘He shall be just as dismayed as anyone else by my deterioration, and he is better at nagging even than Erestor. Besides, do you think Gandalf will let me long out of his sight once he learns I am abroad at last?’

The wizard had departed five days before, having learned all he could from Celebrimbor’s annals. He intended to make a journey into the empty lands south of the Road, where first the watchers of Sauron would appear in their fanning search. Aragorn was unsure of the prudence of waiting until Yuletide to confront Bilbo’s nephew with the truth, but he would never presume to question Gandalf’s wisdom even in his own heart. He had his reasons for waiting, though he had not seen fit to share them. Aragorn intended to respect that.

Arwen laughed a little, shallowly and not without a note of anxiety. With her free hand she reached to touch the side of his face, where the worst of the hollows were now filled in with a slim layer of healthy flesh. The looking-glass had told him that the shadows were all but gone from beneath his eyes, and the worst of his hardships erased from his countenance. Still he knew she could see them, in his heart and in her memory as well as in the minute traces that remained. Small wonder she was loath to see him once again into the Wild.

‘I suppose he will not,’ she allowed softly. ‘Have you fixed upon a time for your next journey home?’

‘Before the harvest furloughs,’ Aragorn said. ‘That too was discussed this morning. I shall owe Glorfindel a rematch: I doubt he will be happy about today’s outcome once the first flush of pride in my endurance fades from his eyes.’

‘It was a naughty trick, using his own distraction against him,’ said Arwen in tender amusement. ‘He does not like to be bested by his students, even though it is a testament to the strength of his teachings. The first time Elladan defeated him in an equal match, Glorfindel saw to it that he did not manage it again for twenty months.’

‘So I have been told,’ said Aragorn, rueful on Elladan’s behalf. His twin still trotted out the tale at whiles, when a severe ribbing was called for. He turned in towards the house and held out a questioning hand. ‘Shall we retire within, my Lady?’

Arwen inclined her head, smiling softly. He could see the trepidation in her eyes; the desire to plead with him to stay. She would refuse to gratify it, as he refused to gratify his own like longing. Never had the Lady Undómiel made any attempt by word or deed to draw him from his duty. Always she stood behind him, fair and valiant, taking pride in his dedication to his labours and the quiet strength with which he bore them. For that, Aragorn was most deeply grateful.

They rounded a low rock wall, headed for the herb-gardens that drew up to the kitchen stoop. But from further along the house there came a cry of greeting, and they saw a small figure perched on a bench beneath the honeysuckle arbour. Aragorn and Arwen exchanged a fond smile, and changed their course to approach Bilbo Baggins where he sat in the sunshine.

‘Good afternoon, my dear friend,’ Aragorn said as they drew near.

‘Good afternoon to you!’ Bilbo replied with an emphatic little nod of the head. In a more courtly way, he turned to Arwen. ‘And to you, dear Lady. I hope you’ll forgive an old hobbit for neglecting to stand in greeting, but these days it costs me such an effort to climb up here that I’m reluctant to get down before I mean it.’

There were benches of hobbit size in the garden, as well as chairs and a little table, but Aragorn knew he favoured the arbour, beneath which there was room only for the one long seat.

‘You need never stand on my account,’ said Arwen with the sweetest of smiles. ‘How are you enjoying the afternoon?’

‘It’s marvellous!’ Bilbo sighed happily. ‘I do love Rivendell in June: it’s the merriest time of the year.’

‘So I have always thought,’ Aragorn agreed.

‘Have you been at your swordplay again?’ asked Bilbo. ‘You look as though you have. I suppose that means I can’t expect another serenade today.’

At this their smiles broadened, and Aragorn and Arwen traded a look that was both gratified and somewhat abashed. They had reprised their performance of The Disaffection of Turgon and Aredhel for Bilbo on the evening after the festivities, and he had declared it a tremendous success. They had even gone so far as to sing it in the Hall of Fire, where the acoustics were most favourable. Since then Aragorn had spent more than a few quiet hours in Bilbo’s cheery company, and he was much the better for it.

‘Not tonight, nor for some time to come, I fear,’ the Ranger said with a regretful little shrug. Elrond knew, and Arwen had been told: now he could disseminate news of his decision as he saw fit, and Bilbo was a worthy third recipient. ‘I shall be departing the day after tomorrow.’

‘What? No!’ Bilbo exclaimed. ‘No, that’s absurd. You’re not well yet, and anyhow you must stay for the Midsummer celebrations. Why, it will be… let me see now… thirty-seven? Yes, thirty-seven years of betrothal for the two of you, and you ought to spend the time together!’

Aragorn looked at Arwen, and she gave him a tiny, wistful pursing of the lips before resuming her serene smile beneath saddened eyes. The length of their betrothal was no matter for celebration, though the words of that night lived on in treasured memory.  Nor had they passed a Midsummer together since that most glorious season in Lothlórien. It was not meant to be this year, either: a delay of a fortnight would be no more than self-indulgent now.

‘I am quite well, I promise,’ Aragorn said. ‘And I must rejoin my people. I have been too long away, and I miss their company as much as I missed yours all my many months abroad.’

‘Well, yes, of course,’ said Bilbo, looking from the Man to the Lady and back again. ‘But I mean to say…’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘I suppose you do look much the better for your rest, and whatever exercises Glorfindel has been putting you through. Still, I did hope!’

‘So did I, Master Baggins;’ said Arwen, truth and solemnity behind the gentle words. ‘But it is not to be; not this year. Though I shall be sad to see him go, I will rest easier at night knowing that he defends the peaceful places and all those who dwell within them. I would not keep him from such guardianship even if I thought I could.’

‘No…’ Bilbo considered her expression and sighed again, more heavily this time. ‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it? In order to make sure the people you love are kept safe, you’ve got to let someone else you love go off into danger.’

‘I hope there shall be little danger where I am going,’ said Aragorn, almost believing it himself. He was going so that he might set the watch and light the lamps, not because the enemy was at the gates. ‘And I hope I shall have the opportunity to return soon. I have promised Master Elrond to return at summer’s end so that he can bear witness to my full recovery. I shall surely see you then.’

‘That’s good,’ Bilbo allowed. ‘By then I should have my new song ready for your helpful ear.’ At this Aragorn arched an eyebrow, and Bilbo laughed as he had hoped he might. ‘Oh, not that song! No, Gandalf got no promises out of me there, though I expect he may try again. I don’t intend to write anything about the hunt for Gollum – I couldn’t make a very interesting song of it anyhow, as neither of you have been very free with the tale. My latest project is entirely unrelated to your journeys beyond the mountains, I promise you; though I shan’t promise more than that.’

He gave a sly smile that was entirely irresistible. Aragorn grinned and Arwen laughed lightly. ‘Most intriguing,’ said the Ranger. ‘It will give me something to ponder as I watch the stars on a cool summer night.’

This picture too had the desired effect. Bilbo’s eyes grew soft with nostalgia. ‘I do sometimes miss it, you know. The open Road, the wild lands, miles and miles of quiet – well, apart from the dwarves, in my case, though you’ll not have to worry about that!’

‘No,’ said Aragorn. ‘And I too have grown to miss it, as fair as the valley may be and whoever awaits me here. It will feel good to be back to my usual business.’

Bilbo regarded him quizzically. ‘Just how would you describe your “usual business”, Dúnadan? I think I should run out of words if I tried.’

Again Arwen laughed, and Aragorn obliged Bilbo with a sheepish smile. While it was true that in Imladris he missed his folk and the rugged beauty of Eriador, he knew that he would miss this far more.

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On the morning that had been ordained for his departure, Aragorn awoke before the sun. He had bathed the night before, and by candlelight he washed his face, cleaned his teeth, rinsed his mouth, and combed his hair. He took a last look in the mirror, satisfied that the Dúnadan appeared little different now than he had on his last leave-taking from this hospitable place. There was still a thinness to his features: a prominence of bone beyond that of his Númenorean heritage. Halbarad would see it, though most others might not.

He dressed in clean linen, far finer than his outer garments. Cote and hose had been made to the usual specifications, sewn of deliberately cheap-looking but very durable wool coloured blotchily in imitation of a poor dye job. They were a little heavier than his usual summer garments, for Aragorn was still prone to chills at night. He had a new cloak, just as coarse-looking as the other clothing, and a surcote with a leather lining to help repel the rain. He had a new belt also, but this he coiled up and slipped into his nearly-empty new pack that would soon be filled with provisions. His old belt had some life in it yet, and it would make him more comfortable to have something on his person that was genuinely worn to shabbiness. His raiment would look far less crisp and new after a few days of sleeping rough, but at present he looked more like a play-actor than a true Ranger.

From the chest he took a battered leather sheath from which swung a thick sword-belt. He girded himself with it, and took a last look around his bedchamber. If all went well, he would be back in four month’s time. Still this last look was a habit, a final reminder that he had somewhere in the world that he belonged and to which he could always return. It was his anchor: the thing that kept him from feeling like a ship lost at sea or a leaf buffeted hither and yon by the winds. When he had fixed the image of his little corner of Arda in his mind, Aragorn went out into the anteroom.

He put on his boots first, wrestling with the new leather. Snugness was the price one paid for a perfect fit, and the boots were challenging to get on and at times nearly impossible to get off. This resistance would lessen as the leather stretched, but it was more a reassurance than a nuisance. He had not forgotten the awful feeling of wearing broken boots as they disintegrated by degrees around his feet.

Clothed and shod, with his star clasping his cloak, Aragorn went to the mantel. Here too he paused, taking in the sight by the light of the lone candle. Narsil lay upon its velvet bed, the shards separated by a finger span. The breaks were so clean that he could fit them together, giving the sword (at least while inert) the look of a blade unbroken. He had done so once, when he was very young, and he had never tried it again. It seemed somehow impious, a presumption of things not yet achieved and prophesies still unfulfilled. In its brokenness there was beauty. In its brokenness there was hope.

Carefully he lifted the long shard, the lower span of the blade. It lay across both palms, its weight a burden more unwieldy than any millstone – and yet a privilege also. Then Aragorn shifted so that he held it carefully, with fingers and thumb holding the flat. Narsil’s edges were blunted by time, for it had not been whetted since the dark before dawn on the day a band of five had ascended the slopes of Orodruin in answer to a deadly summons. Yet there was keenness in it yet, sufficient to cut a hand that grasped too tightly. This hold gave him better control also, as he set the point in the mouth of the scabbard and lowered the blade. When he had reached its broken edge, he let go. With a soft whoosh of steel on leather, the shard slid to the bottom of the sheath. When he wanted to retrieve the piece, he would have to upend the leather casing and shake it.

The hilt-shard was next. This Aragorn lifted as if the sword were whole, his fingers closing upon the grip where once Tar-Minyatur himself had held it. He tilted his well-placed fist so that the dozen inches of broken blade now pointed upright as if in parade salute. Thus Elendil had held it before the Morannon, when he mustered his army with stirring words ere he led them to a hard-won victory. Last of all he tipped it back again: not to the horizontal plane in which he had raised it, but to an angle fit for striking. Too late he realized that he had overshot his mark, misjudging because of the shortness of the truncated weapon. He had turned it past the point where one would position a sword. He held it like a knife.

He held it, Aragorn realized with a chill that coursed up his spine and out into shoulders suddenly made rigid, as Isildur must have held it in the moment before lunging at Sauron. Thus Narsil had canted just ere it cut the One Ring from its master’s hand and set the course of events that had led to this moment. To it and through it, into whatever lay ahead.

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He had said most of his farewells the night before. Erestor he had visited in the library. Bilbo had sat long beside him in the Hall of Fire. Other comrades he had spoken with at their work or in the doorways of their chambers or upstairs in the long gallery. Glorfindel had come to his room bearing spiced wine and encouraging words to send him off to sleep. Only two figures stood upon the steps with Aragorn as he took his leave in the mists of predawn. A third, the groom who had ridden Moroch back to her beloved master a month before, was upon the path with Roheryn’s reins in his patient hand.

‘My son.’ Elrond laid his hands upon Aragorn’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. One lamp was lit, not to see him off but to welcome any who sought the house by night. Its glow cast half of the fair face in shadow, but the love and pride and well-masked worry showed clear in the grey orbs. ‘I have treasured our time together, though I would never have wished it to come about as it did. Remember as you ride forth that you have done your duty and far more besides. You fulfilled the promise you made long years ago, and paid in its fulfillment such a toll as none would ever have asked. You have cause for pride in this, and in all your deeds. In what is to come, I know you will deport yourself with courage and nobility.’

‘I shall strive to do so,’ Aragorn pledged, his voice low and grave in the gloom.

Elrond nodded. He had expected so humble an answer, and in this too he took a parent’s quiet pride. ‘My love and my blessing go with you always: Estel, Aragorn son of Arathorn who has journeyed under many names, Thorongil among them. The time is near at hand for you to rise to claim still other names and glories – sung or unsung – yet to be imagined. Go with a peaceful heart, my child, and know that the works of your hands are good.’

Aragorn bowed his head, eyes closed as his father’s blessing anointed his spirit. He had been sent forth with words of benediction before, but never so lofty as these. It seemed ill-suited to the prosaic labours before him now, but he knew he would hold Elrond’s praise long in his heart.

‘I thank you, Atarinya. It shall be my foremost task to make myself worthy always of your gracious words, and the faith you have placed in me.’ He raised his eyes and met Elrond’s. ‘My feet may wander far, but my heart dwells ever here.’

They embraced then, holding one another near as if in this nearness they could eschew any separation. When Elrond drew back at last, hands moving to Aragorn’s arms, he kissed the Man’s brow. His palm rose to rest briefly upon the pale cheek.

‘Fare you well, Estel, until we meet again,’ Elrond murmured. Then turning he was gone, the great door shut fast behind him.

Now in the first grey glow there stood only Arwen, a warm mantle about her shoulders to ward off the dew. The groom had gone some paces away, leading Roheryn with him, and with the mists upon the land he could no longer be seen. Aragorn held out his hands to his betrothed and she took them, standing a courteous distance removed as they always did.

‘What parting can there be between us, beloved?’ he said. ‘Where ere I go I bear you with me.’

‘And you bide always with me,’ said Arwen. Her voice was rich with love and melancholy, and beneath it the warm determination of hope undimmed. ‘Two conjoined in heart can never truly be severed, though all the leagues of Eriador lie between.’

‘Then it is not farewell,’ Aragorn decreed, as if by words he could make it so. He reached to stroke her velvet-soft cheek with the backs of curled fingers. The roughness of healed chilblains was all but gone, and he did not rasp her as he had upon their reunion. Only the callouses on his palm were hard: made so by long practice with the blade. It was once again the hand of a warrior, not a beggar.

‘Never farewell,’ Arwen sighed, and she stepped nearer.

His left hand clasped her right, now both upraised between them. They were near enough that they could feel the caress of one another’s breath. The hand that had touched her face now found the small of her back, and Aragorn drew her nearer still. She was warm and solid beneath his hand: no dream and no memory but his own dear Lady in his arms. He upheld this moment in his mind, where later it might be fixed as in amber, but his eyes and his heart dwelt only in the present. They were here, together. For a little longer, they were together.

Then her left hand slipped up to cup the nape of his neck, tilting his head towards her. He bent his shoulders a little, instinctively. And Arwen kissed him.

Their lips met with the effortless grace that only time can bring. Their long years of waiting, yet far from their end, had given them that gift at least. They pressed to one another, holding fast while all the world seemed to turn slowly around them, as ephemeral as the mist. Aragorn searched the contours of Arwen’s lips with his own, eyes closed that he might uphold her visage in his mind rather than watch it at so close a range. Seldom did they allow themselves this passion, and it was ever to be savoured.

He drank in the actuality of her presence, the heat of her mouth upon his, and the love that flowed from her like the boundless waters of the Sundering Seas. She tasted of cinnamon and moonlight, and she loved him. She loved him, and she longed for him, and she would wait for him: wait for his return, and wait for the day when he might at last fulfill all that had been foretold and all that was only a slender, desperate hope. She was his, and he hers. Whatever befell them in the months to come, in the years stretching ever onward before them, they would always have that truth to cherish. Until the breaking of the world and beyond it, there would always be their love.

They parted at last, after what seemed an eternity but had been in truth little more than half a minute. As their eyes met, Arwen’s lips parted slightly. They were flushed darker than before, and in the lamplight they looked like rose petals. Yet it was the twin pools of silver loveliness that held Aragorn’s gaze. Wordlessly they stood thus, reading one another’s hearts and seeing each the same. Then Arwen took his hands and gripped them with a fervour that told him she, too, was clinging to his realness while she could.

‘Ride in safety,’ she whispered; ‘and return to us again.’

‘I will,’ murmured Aragorn, and in that moment he knew it to be true.

She had spoken the words of parting, and there was no more to be said. He bowed in courtesy as he moved to the steps. He descended without turning, loth to let her from his sight. The groom, hearing his boots upon the earth, came near again. Roheryn nickered a soft greeting to his master, and Aragorn went to his side. He mounted smoothly, his eyes all the while upon his beloved. Gathering the unadorned reins into his hand, he spoke the words with which he had left her upon Cerin Amroth long ago.

‘Arwen vanimelda, namárië,’ he said. Then he turned his horse and rode off into the mists. The last glimpse he caught of Arwen was of her small, resolved smile and the white hands that hugged her mantle to her as if against a bitter chill.

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The fog melted swiftly about him as Aragorn rode up from the valley. He crossed the narrow bridge, Roheryn walking with solid confidence despite the roaring waters below. He passed the quiet pastures where milch-cows slept or lowed soft greetings to the one another. He reached the rocky heights and soon found himself at the crest where he would soon be hemmed in on both sides by the cliffs that shot upward into the mountains. The dawn was breaking behind him, and the golden light broke forth as Aragorn turned and looked back.

Below him Rivendell lay verdant and peaceful, still drowsy with the early hour. The rooftops of the Last Homely House seemed to glow with warm welcome, but not for him. For him their rich colour was a promise of a haven to which he might one day return as his duties allowed him. There dwelt all he held most dear in the world. He tasted the bitter draught of loneliness: the first sip of many to come.

Aragorn allowed himself one last long look before touching his heel lightly to Roheryn’s side. The mighty warhorse turned in obedience, and Aragorn turned with him. He fixed his eyes now upon the last fading violet of the night and the light of Ëarendil’s star. It was the Evenstar and Gil-Estel, that Star of High Hope for which both he and his beloved had been named. It promised strength to face the Shadow, no matter the toil and no matter the cost.

As Aragorn rode the rocky trail that led to the Ford of Bruinen, he watched that constant star until it faded into the day. Then he fixed his gaze upon the earth once more, and the road beneath his horse’s hooves. It was in these next simple steps to which his purpose must now be bent, and neither to lofty hopes nor bleakest dreads for what was to come. There were many miles to travel and many toils, great and small, to which he must turn his hands. Yet in his heart Aragorn son of Arathorn felt a thrill of exhilaration well tempered with terror.

It had begun.

metta

Note: Soon to be posted as a separate story are the Appendices to ‘A Long and Weary Way’. Be watchful!