Note: Since Our Hero is trying to learn Roherric, it is not written in Old English. Instead, what words he understands are noted in italics. The others are replaced by dashes, much as the mind tends to glaze over unfamiliar combinations of sounds before one breaks through the immersion barrier. (This is also necessary because none of the Old English lexicons I have at my disposal contain the word for the main plot-driving element in the story. Gee, I wonder why.)

The Devilry of Edoras

Part One: A Coarse New Life

Thorongil – for it was best to start thinking of himself by that name as soon as possible – hugged his hoodless wool cloak about his shoulders and picked up his sodden boots. They were short and hard-soled, and they fitted him poorly; so unlike the supple leather sheaths of Elven make that guarded him up to the knee and sat like a second skin over feet and calves. These he had stowed away in the bottom of the narrow chest he had been assigned, with the rest of his scant personal possessions. They were too unlike anything commonly worn in this land, and he was conspicuous enough as it was. 

He reached over the edge of the wooden walkway that ran under the long eave that covered the porch of the barracks-lodge, and shook the stubby boots one last time. A fresh shower of water rained down from them, and the smell of cheap wet leather was strong. They would never dry by morning, but he supposed that did not matter: he would be going right back into the water anyhow. He glanced at the graduated clothes-rails over which the soldiers’ garments had been slung to dry in the cold late-winter wind. They were all identical: tunics of coarse worsted in an inexpensive mossy green, trousers in sheep’s-colour twill. Like the boots, they fit few men well but most at least serviceably. From the tallest rail were hung the strips of cloth that they wore wrapped around their lower legs for warmth and protection. Winingas, these were called: it was one of the pitiful handful of words that were all Thorongil had managed to learn of the language of Rohan. 

He was shivering ferociously, and his bare toes curled against the cold boards. He glanced about the barracks-yard once more. The éored’s skinny pageboy was bailing out the big wooden trough that served as a tub, sloshing the dark and dirty water of four and a half dozen bathers into the gutter that ran beneath the wall. He had his eyes on his work, and Thorongil was thankful. It was a wearisome thing to be stared at wherever one went. Wearisome and unsettling for one who had grown used to passing largely unnoticed in his own lands. He hitched his cloak closer and went around to the door that led into the lodge.

The long room was smoky and aglow with the torches set in brackets on each of the tall supporting shafts that held up the ridgepole. Their light did not reach that high: it faded away halfway up the underside of the thatching. But it did keep most of the floor illuminated, and down the centre where the trestle tables were set end-to-end it was cheeringly bright. There were two sunken hearths, one near each end of the room, and both were blazing hotly. Some of the men were gathered around these. Most were at the tables, sturdy legs slung over the crude benches as they talked and laughed and ate. One, who had been the new recruit until Thorongil’s arrival four and twenty days before, was already abed although he had had less than five minutes’ lead over the stranger at the bathtub.

These were the least men of the Lord Mayor’s éored, the most junior Riders in a company maintained as much for the service of the city as for the field of war. They were the unwed men, those who through inexperience or indolence or ineptitude had not obtained any rank or renown. Most were little more than stripling boys, still wearing their first beards and a look of bald-faced hope that with time would crystalize into the ruddy, hearty joy in life and in glory that graced the Men of the Mark. Some were older, a mixed lot of the jaded, the indifferent, and those who for all their bravery and good intentions did not possess the cleverness to lead. Among them Thorongil, for all his youth and admitted unfamiliarity with mounted warfare, stood out like a gangly goose in a henhouse.

They were a sorry sight tonight, sitting around barelegged and straggle-haired in their long, coarse shirts. These at least were not so unlike what Thorongil was used to, though the linen was far poorer than any he had worn before, and his very nearly reached his knees – no small thing, given that it had been made with the much shorter Men of the Mark in mind. It was his second shirt and it was damp from his wet skin, but it was clean. The garments he had peeled off before his swift and unpleasant bath had been anything but.

The entire barracks had come trudging home wet to the waist and caked with mud. They had been labouring since sunup to dig a drainage culvert through the great dike that ringed the city. The winter was nearing its end, and the runoff from the mountain snows was heavier than it had been in many a year. The water had overrun the usual channels and backed up the slope towards the great wall that formed the city’s second ring of defence. Close by the wall there were the huts and sheds of the poor who could not obtain a place within the city proper and yet sought the protection of her fortifications from the emptiness of the wide plains beyond. There were rumours of dark things in the East; rumours that Gondor was arming; rumours that there would be war. Any who could sought shelter and the safety of an inhabited place.

Those who had come to this loose shantytown had fared well enough in the clement months. They had weathered the cold with the good will of the King and the provisions of fuel donated at his behest by the wealthy citizenry who dwelt beyond the third barrier, the thorny fence that seemed to crown the foot of the mountain. But now, as the frosty months waned and spring drew near, they had come upon a threat unlooked-for: rising waters that might sweep away their simple homes and their meagre belongings and perhaps even imperil their lives.

So the Lord Mayor had sent forth his own men to rectify the problem. One of His Majesty’s trusted architects had consulted on the problem, and had chosen the spot best calculated to drain the ring inside the dike. Someone had to dig the culvert, and it had fallen to these men, these least of the Lord Mayor’s household strength, to do it.

It had been unpleasant work. They had been issued picks and short-handled shovels with which to bite into the hard-packed earth, and great wooden buckets with which to bail away soil and mud and the omnipresent runoff. They had shored up the sides of their tunnel as they went, and the royal architect had deemed the work well-done indeed. Yet that had made the digging no less miserable, the labour no less exhausting, and the men no less chilled and sodden at the end of it. Those in the culvert itself had had the worst of it, standing in the deepest water and stooping to work on into the low tunnel. In that last party, not a man had been dry below the breast, however tall. And in fine martial tradition this worst of tasks had been thrust upon the lowliest in the company.

Thorongil upended his boots over their set of simple lasts, hoping they would at least retain some ghost of their shape as they dried. He wiped his hand on a corner of the short cloak, keeping it snugly about him, and rubbed his thumb against the back of his neck to quell an itch of discomfiture. The other men seemed unaffected by their casual state of undress, but he was unused to it; in the Wild it was rare to shuck off anything but the outermost layers. Nor did he like the exposed and vulnerable feeling of being draped in one coarse piece of linen and nothing else. At home, at least, he wore nether clothes as well. 

The man on mess duty was already packing up the trappings of his office, and Thorongil hurried over to claim his night’s meal. He was met with surprised eyebrows and a playful grin, and the man said something he could not understand. He tried a thin, hopeful smile, and received a rueful chuckle for his pains.

‘Eat,’ said the man. ‘You –  – – – much –.’ That was all he could catch: about one word in six. They all spoke so swiftly, and the language bore little resemblance even to its closest cousin Westron. But the golden-haired soldier scraped the bottom of his big stew-pot and slopped a ladleful of thin juices and sliced turnip and shreds of boiled meat into a wooden bowl. He put a hunk of good brown bread atop it, and plucked an apple from the crate which stood on a nearby stool. These he thrust into Thorongil’s hands, and when the newcomer tried to retreat he tugged at the shoulder of his cloak to bring him back, so that he could drive a wooden spoon down into the contents of the bowl. 

‘Thank,’ said Thorongil. Even to his ears it did not sound right, and the man grinned in amusement. He did not correct him, though, and Thorongil felt a hot flare of frustration. How was he ever to learn if they merely accepted his clumsy efforts with cheerful politeness? Nonetheless he smiled and ducked his head respectfully before moving off to let the man finish with his duties. In the corner stood the ale-barrel, attended by another soldier. Here Thorongil was given a coarse earthenware jar with his half-pint measure of the warm, sweetish drink that was, so far as he could tell, an important part of the men’s pay. 

He carried his meal past the first two tables, which were crowded with laughing men. Thorongil knew they were not laughing at him, but somehow it always seemed that way when you had no inkling what others were saying. It did not help that he had been the butt of more than a few jokes in these last days. His looks were peculiar enough, with his dark hair and his pale face. His ineptitude with the language did not help matters, nor did the fact that when he could not understand an order he was by necessity slow to follow it. He could tell from the looks in the other men’s eyes, and from their flamboyant mimicking gestures when they thought his back was turned, that he was getting a reputation for being a tall, lumbering lummox. And if he could but translate that phrase into Roherric, he might actually win himself a friend or two. 

The third table, in the central and therefore coldest part of the room, was almost empty. Thorongil set down his dish and his apple, wrapped his cloak snugly about his body again, and sat. The rough wool tickled his ears and rasped at his wrists, but he was glad of its warmth. It was dry, too, for they had all done off with their outermost wrappings before setting to work. A crisp, cold day it had been, but not a wet one: all the wet was running down the mountain to pool at the dike. 

The juices of the meat – too thin to properly be called gravy, much less stew – were soaking into his bread with enthusiasm, and Thorongil bit off the soggy piece first. It was pleasant bread with a faint taste of nuts to it, and it stayed longer in the stomach than the delicate white loaves of home. It had to, for with their lodging and their annually allotted suit of clothes the men of the Lord Mayor’s éored were given but two meals a day: one at mid-morning and one when the day’s duties were over. It had not seemed particularly draconian at first, when they had all been keeping busy with routine chores and mounted field maneuvers, but it was not enough to sustain hard manual labour. Thorongil cast one last wary look around him, gauging his surroundings, and then bowed his head over his dish in a posture that would have horrified his mother and tucked in ravenously. 

Last one signed, last one washed. Last one washed, last one in. Last one in, last one fed. His scraped-up portion had a scorched taste to it. He did not especially mind, for the truth was that without it the boiled beef would have had little flavour at all. It had been liberally salted and there was a faint memory of thyme in the broth, but it had neither the gamey vigour of wild meat nor the imaginatively spiced richness of Elven cooking. Still he ate every scrap of it, and drank what was left of the briny liquid it had cooked in. He chewed his bread slowly, hooking one foot up onto the other’s heel when they began to grow chilled on the bare floor. He drank his ale, which was a weak young brew so unlike the hearty beers of the North. It quenched his thirst, but did little to warm his chest or satisfy his half-filled stomach. Thorongil looked hungrily at the apple for a minute before tucking it away into the crook of his arm. They were going back to the culvert in the morning, and he would be glad of something to gnaw on come early afternoon.

He was about to rise and go to rinse his dishes when a strong hand clapped down on his shoulder. Thorongil looked up to find one of the older men standing over him, grinning.

‘Dark One!’ he said cheerfully. It had not taken very long for the stranger to work out what that meant. Next he said something that meant either come or go: some instructive word about moving in one direction or another. This was followed by a rapid barrage of words that were beyond his understanding but certainly seemed to be meant pleasantly. They were all trying so hard to be kind and to include him in their camaraderie, but he spoke so little of their tongue and they spoke none of his. A couple of the sergeants and several of the married men knew the Common Tongue, and one of the lieutenants (whose wife was a maid of the body to the Queen) actually spoke Sindarin in the dialect of Gondor, so in the field Thorongil could usually manage to beg a translation. When evening came and the men went to their simple recreation, however, he was utterly lost. 

He spared a sour thought for Gandalf, who had lured him down here with promises of much to learn and much to give and then left him, friendless, hapless and functionally mute, after only three days. It was nothing, certainly, to the turns the wizard had tried on others, but it was nonetheless a source of some irritation and much inconvenience.

The man – Thorongil thought his name was Deorwine – slung a leg over the bench and straddled it, hand still firm on the lean shoulder. Awkwardly Thorongil smiled, not understanding what was wanted of him. From somewhere above there came the skitter of small claws, and flakes of dust and thatching reed rained down. He could not help cringing. There were rats living in the lodge, and on his first night he had awakened to one running across his shoulder. It was not an experience he cared to repeat. Animals in the wild were one thing, but the vile rodents with their wormlike tails and their noisome teeth were carriers of filth and disease. They had no place in the dwellings of Men.

Deorwine withdrew his hand and frowned. His next words were clearly a question, and Thorongil had the gnawing feeling that he was trying to find out how he had caused offence. Hurriedly he shook his head and pointed upward before brushing the debris exaggeratedly from his shoulder.

The other man followed his finger and then threw back his head in a mighty laugh. Someone shouted a question from the far end of the string of tables, and Deorwine roared back an answer, wobbling his free hand dramatically. A chorus of chuckles and unintelligible phrases that were somehow both encouraging and jeering filled the room. Flushing crimson, Thorongil slouched again over his empty bowl, curling his forearms around it and staring down at the roughly turned rim. He was the butt of the joke again: the Dark One was afraid of rats.

He wished that he could slink away in secrecy and find a little quiet, but there was no hope of that. Clapping him on the back, Deorwine lifted his other leg over the bench and leaned forward to look Thorongil in the eyes. He grinned affably, and said something in the negative. Thorongil tried to smile to show there were no hard feelings on his part, but he feared it was nothing more than a tight-lipped grimace.

On the other side of the room, someone started up a song. It was a lively, rollicking ballad with a repetitive chorus that seemed known to all the listeners: after the first line of it they all joined in. The first singer belted out the verses with an impassioned vigour that stirred the imagination with images of bold glory beneath a bright sun, though for all Thorongil knew it was a song about defeat in a rainstorm. Beside him Deorwine joined in the second chorus, thumping the table in time. Others were doing the same, and soon the whole room was filled with the thunder of slapping hands and resonant voices. 

Thorongil’s own pulse beat to the rhythm, and almost was he borne away into the song himself. But he was weary from the day’s labours and his constant struggle to scrape by in this alien place. He wanted little more than sleep and a few hours of forgetfulness. He reached to scratch the back of his neck and tried to keep his smile from wavering. Never before coming to Rohan had he realized what an effort it took to maintain a smile that did not come from the heart.

The song ended and another voice took up, this one high and clear and young. It warbled plaintively in a tender melody that was either a lament or a lullaby. Thorongil heard the word for rest, likely because it was all he yearned for himself, but that did not narrow it down. No one joined in this song, but neither did they return to their talk. All eyes focused on the singer, who was standing near one of the columns with his round mug of ale in his hand. His beard, though short with youth, was twined into two braids at the sides of his mouth, and his golden hair flowed free. He was beautiful in his rugged and barefooted simplicity, and in his earnest feeling for the words he sang. He was the wholesome honesty of the Mark personified, and watching him Thorongil could not regret his decision to dwell among these people. 

Yet that he did not regret did not mean he was content. A mighty cheer went up when the last clarion note of the young Rider’s song died away, and then almost by unspoken assent the men launched into a raucous call and response. From the gestures some were employing and the laughter in every pair of eyes, it was plainly quite ribald. It seemed they would run through the full range of manly feeling tonight. Likely there would be little sleep for anyone: even Thorongil’s nearest equal was sitting up in his bed now, joining in the refrain.

The dirtied bowl and cup offered him the excuse he needed to get up from the table. When Deorwine caught his arm and tried to pull him back down, Thorongil gestured apologetically at them and went to the coopered tub where the men washed their simple dishes. It was near the frontmost fire, and the warmth of the floor was welcome beneath his chilled toes. The lodge would grow warmer through the evening, heated like a stable by the many vital bodies within, but at present the middle of the long room was still uncomfortably cold.

The dishwater was cloudy, with a scum of grease on the top. Most of the others had washed their bowls already, even if they were still savouring the ale. Yet it was cleaner than the water Thorongil had bathed in, and he made quick work of laving and wiping the vessels. He added his bowl to a stack on the shelf above, and laid his mug among the others. There was a shallow box for the spoons.

The door to the lodge opened as he turned back to the room, and the lodge sergeant came in. He was still fully dressed, having been spared the actual labour of the day, and he thumped with a cudgel on the doorframe. The song aborted suddenly and all eyes turned to him.

‘Fall quiet!’ he bellowed. It was one of the standard commands that Thorongil had learned very early on, and the one that had caused him the least embarrassment in the learning: he was always quiet here. The sergeant went on, but he was off the staple script now. Work, morning and bed were all clear enough, however, and the stranger was not at all surprised when his fellows began to hurry through the night’s last chores. 

He stepped away from the wash-table just in time, for it was quickly mobbed by men bolting down their last swallows of ale. Others crowded out the door, off to relieve themselves before bed. No conveniences were provided for this need in the lodge itself, and whatever the weather the men had to go out to the foul-smelling privy in the yard. Thorongil had nothing more to keep him from his bed, and he padded up the room to the centre, where his place stood.

He removed his cloak at last, hanging it on the peg on his side. The scratchy woolen blanket was tucked squarely over the mattress, turned back neatly in imitation of all the others. He lifted the upper corner and slipped beneath the sheet sewn of the same coarse linen as his shirt. The ropes creaked as he settled, and the delicious relief of stretching his back after a long day overtook him briefly. Only briefly, because the next instinct was to extend that relief into his legs, and the bed was too short by ten inches to allow him to do so. With his crown touching the headboard and his toes against the foot, he still had to curl his lower back and bend his knees to fit. He would have been more comfortable lying in the straw in the stables.

The short bed also meant he had to lie on his side, but in these circumstances that was less of an annoyance than it might otherwise have been. No sooner had he settled into his cramped pose than his back was exposed to a blast of cold air. The ropes bucked and the tick crackled as his bedmate sat down. Thorongil was not as spoilt as his privileged upbringing had led some of his Rangers to suspect, and he was not averse to the idea of sharing his bed: the warmth of having another body at one’s back was welcome on these cold winter nights when it took hours for the air to reach a clement temperature. But of all the awkward positions in which his want of the language had put him this was the worst. It was no comfortable thing to be tucked into a narrow bunk with a man with whom you had exchanged less than twenty words. 

Thorongil tried to lie still as Herward shifted around and finally settled on his side, but his body had other ideas. An unwanted and uncontrollable crawling sensation crept up behind his ear, and he had to scratch at it. His hand protested the move into the cold, and the narrow channel opened at the top of his blanket chilled him down his front. His finger found the trouble spot and relieved it with a couple of swift passes. Before he could withdraw his hand it was moving around to the back of his neck instead, scratching. He supposed the hasty, tepid dip had made his scalp long for a proper scrubbing.

Herward said something as he lay down, shifting to settle his spine against Thorongil’s. The bed was not broad enough to allow any space between them, not when one had to crook his legs to fit. The son of the Mark was a comfortable height for the bed, and Thorongil felt guilty turning the soles of his cold feet in towards the other man’s calves. A brief brush was all it took for his bedmate to draw his legs away. He spoke again, deliberately cheerful. Then he remembered that he could not be understood and sighed. He reached back and gripped Thorongi’s forearm where it rested on the crest of his hip. The hand was reassuring.

‘Regret have I,’ Thorongil said, trying to shape an apology. 

Herward made a distasteful noise in the back of his throat, and he knew he had erred again. ‘I am sorry,’ the Rider said, very slowly. 

‘I am sorry,’ repeated Thorongil carefully. Herward’s back bobbed as he nodded, and he patted the taller man’s arm before withdrawing his hand. I am sorry, Thorongil thought, trying to fix the sounds in his memory. He mouthed it noiselessly. ‘I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.’ 

The occupant of the near side of the next bed had just sat down, and he looked quizzically at the man who was apparently talking to himself. Thorongil closed his mouth hastily, and then shut his eyes against the puzzled and unimpressed expression on the other man’s face. How long, he wondered, before his aptitude for languages would catch up to the need of the moment? How long before he could leave this lonely place filled with good people and return home to the empty wilds of the North where camaraderie was never more than a three-day walk away?

He was homesick; bitterly homesick. As the nightly noises of the barracks swelled and then faded one by one, he felt it more keenly than he had at any time since coming to this place. He missed the craggy hills and thick forests of Eriador, beautiful though these open plains might be. He missed the tempestuous Northern skies, though here the dome of the heavens was more vast than he could have imagined and the sunsets seemed to linger for hours in scarlet splendour. He missed his familiar peoples: the rough woodsmen of what had once been Cardolan, the stolid and often parochial Bree-folk, the merry hobbits of the Shire, and most of all his faithful Dúnedain. And he missed the serene beauty and contemplative peace of the Last Homely House.

Thorongil tried to close his mind to such thoughts, focusing instead on the new phrase that he sorely needed and would no doubt wear to death as he blundered onward in this coarse new life. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. It was no use. Now instead of pining for peoples, he was pining for people: his stoic and patient grandfather Dírhael, charged with the command of the Rangers in his absence; his grandmother with her sharp eyes and her deep wisdom; the friends he had made among his men in the six short years he had led them. Worse still was the loneliness for his childhood companions: Glorfindel, who had been as much a playmate as a teacher; Erestor with his critical but never spiteful tongue; quiet and sorrowful Ancalimon; all the others he had left behind in Rivendell when he rejoined the Dúnedain. He longed for a soft word of encouragement from Master Elrond, who in his heart would always hold the place of father. And at this moment he would have traded all his lofty lineage and his heavy destiny and his secret hopes for his mother’s tender touch. 

His throat was stinging now, and he swallowed against it. His lower hand crept up, worrying at the back of his neck from the other side. He was trying to wear his hair as much in the style of the Rohirrim as he could, considering its insurmountably strange colour. Clearly he was not yet used to it.

Herward dug an annoyed elbow into his ribs, and Thorongil forced himself to be still. The torches had been doused and the lodge was dark now, the fire on the side he faced glowing orange in a limited orb near the beds of the more senior men. Though the room was very quiet when compared to its earlier din, it was far from silent. Men snuffled and snored in their sleep. Straw crackled and bed-ropes squeaked. Someone belched. And along the walls, in the corners and up under the thatch the rats were busy. It was a wonder that every unwed man in the éored did not suffer from the spirillary fever. 

Elves shunned cats, even as cats mistrusted Elves, but rats were not a problem in Imladris. Among the Dúnedain it was the custom for each house or farmholding to keep at least one cat to control these pestilential rodents. Not for the first time, Thorongil wondered why a similar measures were not used here.

But he did not dwell long on the subject. He was exhausted from the long day’s toil, and his heavy eyelids soon drifted closed. As he slipped blessedly into the amorphous forgetfulness of sleep, he realized dimly that his hand had crept up again, scratching with a drowsy reflex at the back of his head. The thought of wet hair in this chill weather was not heartening, but he supposed he would have to wash it after all.

Part Two: Loathsome Passengers

The clatter of the sergeant’s cudgel came all too soon, followed by the loud command to rise. Thorongil was not even fully awake when the bedclothes were flung off of him and Herward sprang out of the bed. The ropes bounced vigorously as they were suddenly relieved of half their burden, and almost without prompting from his muscles Thorongil rolled onto his back in the sagging centre of the pallet. He squinted his eyes against the grey gloom and bit his lip against a weary groan. It felt as though he had scarcely found sleep, and his upper arms ached with a fire they had not known since his earliest lessons in swordplay. It took him a muddled moment to remember the accursed short-handled shovel and the strain of the unfamiliar motion of using it. He lifted his right hand to his eyes, and used his left to knead the underside of his arm. It helped a little, but not nearly enough.

His bedmate said something brisk and bracing, the full round syllables rolling so easily from his tongue. He reached over the foot of the bed to pat Thorongil’s leg, now raised at the knee beneath the tent of the retreated blanket. Blearily the newcomer got his elbows under him and raised his head from the thin pillow. He swallowed against an uncomfortably dry throat and looked around with the disoriented eyes of one still unaccustomed to his surroundings.

The men seemed to fall into three clear categories. There were those like Herward, who were already abroad and hastening to be about their day. Most of them, like Herward, had been with the éored for more than a year and so had a full change of clothing instead of just a spare shirt: they were pulling on faded tunics and trousers with patched knees. Worn clothes were preferable to wet clothes, especially on a cold morning. Thorongil could not help but envy them a little.

The second group were like himself: half-risen and trying to get up the courage to face the day. Some were sitting up in bed, covers still pulled to their chins. Others had their feet on the floor and their arms braced on their knees, tired heads hanging. A few were trying to dress in the relative shelter of their bedclothes. The third group were the slug-a-beds, still sleeping or trying to despite the futility of the enterprise.

The lodge sergeant was walking up the room, whacking the foot of any bed with a man still lingering in it. At one or two he stopped to deliver sharp words. Thorongil had no need to be thus singled out, and he scrambled to his feet and into the cocoon of his cloak with a flurry of long limbs that drew a few amused eyes. He looked at the tousled bed, wondering whether he ought to make it up at once. But the morning ritual was to dress first, then make the beds and tidy the barracks, then perform one’s simple ablutions before heading out to the stables. It was the duty of their lodge to clean the stalls each morning after the herd of horses was led out to roam. The married men came in the evenings to give them their grain.

Ordinarily Thorongil’s clothes would have been folded on his small chest at the foot of the bed, just as Herward’s had been. Today he joined a ragged line of green recruits shuffling out into the yard to fetch their garments from the drying rails. The sun had not yet broken the horizon, and the indifferent indigo light was just enough to move by. A hard frost had set in in the night, and the mud of yesterday’s mass bathing and general sodden tramping had frozen into hard ridges and gullies. The sparse dead grass was coated with rime, and it stabbed at bare feet as the men moved with all the haste they could gather. Their teeth chattered and their shoulders shook after only a minute or two in the biting air, but most were laughing and joking with each other as they waited their turn at the bars. Only Thorongil was entirely dumb.

Someone had thrust two tall torches into the earth by the clothes-rails to prevent confusion as each man tried to remember where he had put his things the night before. There was some fumbling and swapping of garments, but Thorongil had foreseen this and made careful note of the random spaces that had been left to the last man when he filled them. He snagged his tunic and trousers easily, found his winingas and then had to go through a mutually testy mimed conversation with the man who had taken his woolen stockings by mistake. None too soon for his liking (or that of his naked feet and legs), he was back inside the barracks, huddling as near to the fire as he could while he pulled on his clothes.

His stockings and leg-wraps were dry and his trousers nearly so, but the heavier cloth of his tunic was stiff with ice. He set his teeth and tugged it over his head, and as it settled frigidly across his back the ice began to melt at once. He would be would be wet to the skin again long before he reached the dike. He tried to tell himself that it did not matter, but it did. If he had to spend the day soaked and freezing, was it really too much to ask to start it warm and dry at least?

Thorongil hurried back to his bed, not wanting Herward to think he was malingering. Together they plumped up the straw mattress and the wool-stuffed pillows as much as they could, then smoothed the sheet and blanket over them. These had to be squared and neatly tucked, or the sergeant would fling the whole mass onto the floor, matting the straw in the pallet hoplessly, and force the unlucky transgressors to make it up properly under the scrutiny of the whole company. Thorongil had not been here long, but fortunately this skill had proved much easier to master than the language. His mother had taught him how to make a bed properly, and some things apparently transcended cultural divides. There were a couple of tricks to working with a straw tick instead of a feather mattress, but there was no other difference. There was no silk coverlet to tug smooth, either.

As the men finished with their own areas, the general cleaning of the lodge began. Some took willow brooms from one corner and began to sweep. Others went to fetch wood to replenish the piles on each short wall. As in all things, the most unpleasant task fell to the newest soldiers: Thorongil and two others, including the one who had been so early to bed, went to haul the water.

The well was in the courtyard, and it had no winch. They dragged up the heavy bucket, raining from its rim, with bare hands on the coarse rope. However they tried it was impossible to keep from sloshing over one another’s sleeves or boots as they poured into their carrying-pails. Fortunately with the four of them it took only two trips to fill the drinking cistern and the washbasins and to supply the men who were tasked with scrubbing the tables and benches. It was the first task that fell to Thorongil, for he was the tallest. Ordinarily he did not mind, but today his arms protested any motion that lifted elbows above shoulders, and nothing he had lifted in his life – unconscious comrades-in-arms included – had ever seemed so heavy as those laden buckets.

Next came the wait for his turn at one of the basins, where he scrubbed his hands and washed his face before blotting them with a towel that could easily have been wrung out after its many uses. There was no time now to see to his hair. The men assigned to emptying the basins and tidying the area waited impatiently for Thorongil and the other two junior men to finish as it was, and they all took the opportunity to study the Northerner’s strange features and pale face. Although he should have been used to it by now, their stares had Thorongil crawling with discomfort and he rubbed at the back of his neck as he retreated to stand for inspection.

No one wanted extra work this morning: every bed was properly made and every sash properly tied. Not a mote of dust stood out on the shelves, and the hearths were neatly raked and banked. The sergeant barked his approval, and the two lines moved synchronously for the door. They snaked out into the yard, and just as Thorongil was approaching the threshold in his turn both lines stopped dead.

Sometimes his height was an advantage, and he only had to crane his neck left past the doorframe to see what had caused the halt. A third line of men was coming in at the gate of the walled compound. They were not in the rigidly organized row of a host set marching together, but in the straggling and undisciplined spacing of people who are moving towards a common destination from many disparate points of origin. Thorongil recognized a few faces in the crowd: these were the low-ranking married men of the éored, who lived with their wives and children in small apartments in the neighbouring compound or in cottages nearby.

One or two called out cheerfully to the two lines coming from the lodge, and from near the front Deorwine shouted a question. It was returned with a laugh, and there was a moment of stunned silence followed by a few surprised murmurs before the men in front of Thorongil burst into boisterous applause. The married men gave elaborate bows or made amused deprecating gestures and walked on towards the stables. After a muddled moment Thorongil understood. The barracks was excused from muck-raking today, no doubt out of deference to their harder labours on the dike. It was a small kindness but apparently a popular one. He was certainly not sorry himself.

So they gathered their tools and headed out to the worksite in their two straight lines. The sun was over the horizon now, a nebulous whiteness behind the heavy clouds. The night’s chill had stilled the runoff, or at least slowed it: the little rills that had run down into the broad standing pool at the foot of the dike were gone. A thin scrim of ice clung to the edges of the water. It took courage and resolve to step down into it, but no man hesitated. Quickly and with wordless determination, they fell to the tasks they had taken the day before. Thorongil resumed his place at the head of the culvert tunnel, bent almost double in hip-high water so cold it seemed to burn. Despite the merciless ache in his arms, he began to dig.

lar

The ritual of the previous day was performed again that night: the sodden, shivering wait for a hasty dip in the befouled tub; a dry shirt donned over skin rough with gooseflesh; wet clothes thrown over the rails and wet boots on the lasts. The evening meal was much the same, save that the boiled meat was mutton instead of beef and each man was given an extra piece of bread despite winter's strict rationing. When he had eaten his share and put away his bowl, still not full, Thorongil retreated to the washbasins to rinse his hair. It was choked with mud because, despite his best efforts to refrain, he had found himself reaching to scratch at his head repeatedly through the day.

He had never before been prey to maladies of the scalp, but it was possible that the stinging, foul-smelling lard soap provided to the soldiers was aggravating his flesh. He used none now, but bent low over the basin and poured handful after handful of the cold water over his head. It was a miserable task after such a day as he had had, and he had to fight the urge to shudder each time he did it. He worked his fingers deep into the roots of his hair and scrubbed, relishing the relief of the chafing against the prickling itch. Then he took his hair into a thick hank over his shoulder and wrung it as dry as he could. He was glad to wrap his cloak around his shoulders again, and he went to his box to fetch his comb.

Sitting on the edge of the bed where the light of the nearest torch seemed to warm his face, Thorongil worked. The others were busy with their evening pursuits. There was no singing tonight. Instead, by the fire nearest the door, one of the men sat crosslegged on the floor with many gathered around him. He was telling a story, his broad strong hands tracing the air with timeless gestures that made Thorongil wish wistfully that there was no barrier of silence between him and his fellow Riders. He knew something of the storyteller’s art himself, and there was an ineluctable pleasure in drawing in one’s audience, in making the ancient tales come alive before eager eyes. This was a land that valued its storytellers, and he knew many tales the other Riders surely did not: it would have been another way to build a bridge between himself and those around him, if only he could have found the tools.

Instead he sat alone in the coldest part of the room, with no place in either the story circle or the game of dice that had started up at the far end of the room where the other fire burned. Deorwine and another man sat across from one another, locked in a contest of grappling forearms. A few others sat talking quietly, weary smiles bright beneath their golden beards. Thorongil’s eyes wandered as his hands worked, and again he felt the pang of terrible loneliness.

The wooden teeth of the comb snagged painfully on another knot. His hair was badly matted from being worried at all day, and he reached with his other hand to try to disentangle the dark locks. Scarcely had he done so when another rippling itch coursed from the nape of his neck. This time he dug the comb after it, and found that even more satisfying than using his fingertips. Forgetting the snarls further down, he began raking against his scalp with the handsomely carved tool. It was one of his few mementos of home – not the broader home that was Eriador, but Imladris itself. The teeth were finer and smoother than the hands of Men could make them, and the spine was ornately tooled with vines and acorns.

Water was beading on the teeth and trickling over his fingers. Thorongil took the tool from his head and reached to wipe it dry on the hem of his shirt. As he did so, his eyes caught a motion that made him startle. His second thought after that raw instinct was that it must have been a trick of the torchlight. Then the fat little body scurried up over his thumb and his eyes grew wide.

He did not drop the comb, but it was a near thing. Instead he gripped it fast as he shook the insect from his hand. Then he lifted his comb to the light and looked at the debris caught at the base of its teeth. There were loose hairs, of course, and a few pale flakes of scalp, but in the narrow clefts where two teeth met he could see two pale little bodies, crushed by the force of his brushing. One was still alive despite its broken shell, tiny legs wriggling.

A sickening shudder undulated up into Thorongil’s ribs, and his lips moved soundlessly. Suddenly it seemed as if every inch of his skin were crawling with small, hairy feet and nibbling pincers. His left hand flew to the back of his head as if it were not yet too late to prevent this. His other wiped the comb spastically against his leg as revulsion rose out of horrified realization. In a moment of denial he pinched a few hairs behind his ear and yanked them from his head by the roots, scarcely feeling the sharp burst of pain. He held the little bundle to the light, the follicles fanning out from his grip. In just these few hairs he saw two of them: tan-coloured globules glued to the shaft near the root, bulbous and minute and unmistakable. Nausea closed his throat.

Lice.

Another thing quite unknown among the Elves, lice, like rats, were a devilry of Men. What he knew of them Thorongil had learned in his studies of parasites under the tutelage of Master Elrond. He had examined sketches, both of the adult louse and the hideous little nits that they laid near the scalp, but never before had he seen either with his own eyes. To do so now, knowing they had come from his own head was more viscerally repulsive than anything he had experienced in his not-quite-twenty-six years. No festering wound, no maggoty burn, no vile rotting carcass or orc-mess or canker had ever filled him with this degree of disgust and dismay. Lice!

It was a risk of living in community, he knew. When many dwelt in close quarters, working and eating and sleeping together, such things bred with swift efficiency. In many cases, they bred unchecked. What was not tolerated among the Dúnedain was accepted as a matter of course by many other peoples. The discomfort was addressed with cursory action and the problem permitted to go on much as it always had. But Thorongil had never before lived in close quarters with others of his race. In his youth such things had never trespassed upon his thoughts except in academic exercise. Among the Rangers he seldom got close enough to anyone even to catch a cold, much less something like this. It had somehow never even occurred to him that such things were possible, even probable, in the place he now found himself.

It was the last outrage. He had borne up as best he could, tongue-tied and perpetually bewildered. He had learned to submit to the stern discipline of the éored. He had gladly shoveled dung and pitched straw and picked stones from hooves and burs from manes in caring for the splendid horses. He had crouched in a flooded tunnel to dig in the mud, frozen to the bone and aching but uncomplaining. He had eaten his frugal share of the bland foods and been grateful for it. He had endured the stares and the jeers and the somehow more embarrassing grinning kindness. He had bedded down with a stranger and washed in water used by fifty men before him. He had shared his humble, overcrowded new home with rats. But this he could not bear. The idea of insects swarming, crawling, feeding, breeding on his head was absolutely intolerable.

He would be gone in the morning. He would not wait for morning! He would fling open his chest and dig out his old familiar Northern raiment, and he would be gone! He could sleep this night in some secluded alley, and be on his way at dawn when the gates were opened. It was not quite five hundred miles from Edoras to Tharbad; a disheartening thought, but he and Gandalf had made the journey in less than seven weeks at an easy and meandering pace. Thorongil felt sure he could whittle that down to less than six. And once he was again in the North he would not have to make his return immediately known to the wizard. He could take some time to think up a reasonable explanation. He could quietly rejoin his people and resume his life as though this ill-starred excursion had never happened.

But first, O horror of horrors, he had to do something about the damnable lice. There were many elaborate remedies touted among mortals; that much he remembered. He remembered, too, that none of them worked. Lice were stubborn and they were strong. There was no tincture to repel them, no poison to eradicate them. The only way to rid oneself of their baleful presence was to pick away each little scurrying wretch, each hateful egg. Once a week until the infestation was gone, one had to search through the hair strand by strand and pull away the nits. Another shiver coursed up his back, having nothing to do with the chill in the centre of the lodge or his state of damp undress. Thorongil had to restrain himself from burying his head in his hands. The humiliation of his situation did not end with the nest of vermin on his head.

There was no way to mount a proper search of one’s own hair. He would have to enlist someone to do it for him. He could flee as he longed to, but then there would be no one to aid him between here and Greyflood. How grave the infestation might be by then he did not dare to imagine. There was nothing for it, then, but to linger in this dismal place and seek help among the Lord Mayor’s éored. He would have to approach one of these men, whom he hardly knew, to whom he was already something of a great gawky joke, among whom he could not even hold the simplest conversation, and make him understand what must be done. The cruel spite of it was galling.

At least he did not need to go looking for help with his hair still in tangles, Thorongil thought frantically. It was much more a ready excuse to delay the inevitable than any act of pride. By the time this humiliating ordeal was over, he would have no pride left. He fell to raking the comb through his hair, not caring how it pulled or how he tore it. Each hair yanked from his head was one less hair that would have to be checked. But his hair was damp and pliant, and it obeyed the imperatives of the wooden teeth far too easily. Soon his dark tresses lay smooth and ordered upon his violated scalp.

Thorongil looked up helplessly, from the circle where they had moved on to another tale and another teller, to the quietly talking men, to the gamblers laughing over lost coppers, to those already abed. His stomach churned. This would be far, far worse than last night’s incident with the rat. They thought him squeamish about household pests, and now he was lousy as well. They would laugh, and call out to each other in words he could not understand, and he would never know if the laughter was friendly or malicious. He thought his own Rangers would laugh, yes, but they would do so in an amiable and self-deprecating way, knowing that each of them might just as easily fall prey to the same indignity. With these merry horsemen, Thorongil could never tell.

His mouth was dry and his frustration and mortification were enormous in his breast, swelling to fill his lungs and squeeze his heart. Objectively he knew he had faced harder trials than this, and done deeds requiring far more courage. In the moment, it did not feel that way at all.

He was about to rise and approach the story circle in the hope that one of them might understand his pantomime when that strong hand came down on his shoulder again. Deorwine had come up on him unawares, and was now standing with one knee on Thorongil’s box, smiling broadly. He said something and pointed to the other man’s hand. No, Thorongil thought as he followed the finger. At the comb in his hand. Deorwine beckoned with his fingers: a gesture that was clear in any land. Unthinking and still too numb with shock and dismay to resist, Thorongil handed him the elegant tool.

Deorwine turned it in his hands admiringly, running his thumb along the carvings. Then he moved it towards his own head.

‘No!’ Thorongil exclaimed, forgetting even this simplest of Roherric words in his dismay. He had not cleaned the comb: if Deorwine used it he was likely to infest himself as well. It was a reflexive, unselfish thought, and he reached to snatch his tainted possession back. The husky man drew his hand to himself and out of Thorongil’s reach, frowning.

‘I will not – – – –, Dark One,’ he said. His tone was wounded.

Thorongil shook his head helplessly. ‘I have… there are… you can’t…’ he stammered, stumbling through phrases of the Common Tongue even though he knew the other man could not understand him. He closed his eyes and tried to dredge up something, anything, that he knew of Roherric to help him say what he needed. ‘Unacceptable,’ he managed finally. It was one of the captain’s favourite remarks in drill.

Deorwine looked at the comb in puzzlement. He was clearly struggling not to take offence, but the situation was just as clearly tremendously offensive. Thorongil did not need close knowledge of the ways of the Riddermark to see why. These were men with few belongings and few resources, who lived in close quarters and relied upon one another for their very lives in the field of battle. The sharing of a comb, of anything that one man might have when another did not, was a part of that bond of brotherhood. By refusing to let Deorwine touch it to his hair, Thorongil was in effect rejecting him as somehow unworthy. It was not at all his intention, but that did not matter: he had not the words to explain.

‘No,’ he said, trying regardless. Then, clumsily; ‘Not you. Not Deorwine. This.’ He thrust an accusatory finger at the comb. ‘This unacceptable.’

‘Unacceptable?’ echoed Deorwine. Then he said another word that, really, just about had to mean the comb.

Thorongil nodded vigorously. ‘Unacceptable,’ he repeated. Then, despairing of ever making his meaning clear, he took hold of a hank of his own hair and waggled it. ‘This unacceptable.’

Deorwine laughed and reached to ruffle Thorongil’s hair. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘We all – – – – now.’

‘No, not the colour…’ Thorongil moaned, lapsing into Westron. He was almost choking on his frustration now. All his life he had taken it for granted: the power to speak and to be understood, to hear and to understand. Now he was thwarted at every turn by a handicap he had never even imagined. Discouraged, he made his fingers crawl through the air. ‘Lice,’ he said. ‘I have lice in my hair. You will catch them too if you… oh…’

It was useless. Now Deorwine was watching him with bemused amusement. ‘You – – – strange man, Dark One,’ he said. ‘Strange – –.’ He saw that Thorongil did not understand and he shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Acceptable,’ he said. It was another of the captain’s favourite phrases, if much less often used. ‘You – –. Acceptable.’

Thorongil smiled thinly and reached again for the comb. This time Deorwine let him take it. He plucked the loose hairs from the teeth and wiped it on his shirt. ‘Dirty,’ he said, but he did not know the Roherric word. ‘Wash.’

Deorwine still looked mystified. The hopelessness of his situation struck Thorongil like a blow to the diaphragm. He could not even make this man, earnest and well-intentioned though he was, understand that the comb was unclean and unfit to be shared. How would he communicate to any of them what the difficulty was? He would have to go to find one of the officers who spoke Westron, and explain it to him. And because no officer would stoop to picking lice out of the hair of the lowliest of recruits, the officer would have to explain it to one of the men anyhow. Just the thought brought the hot flames of humiliation licking up his cheeks and to the tips of his ears. It made his head itch, too, right around the back of the neck and up towards the crown. Desperately, almost furiously, he scratched.

Deorwine spoke. It was a question, and Thorongil knew the word for allow – another soldierly concept that he had grasped early on from the Sindarin-speaking lieutenant who had enjoyed the chance to use his spare language. Was this the way to say may I?

He did not know, and he could not muster any answer even if his guess was right. It didn’t matter. Deorwine was reaching for his head. Thorongil tracked his hand with wary eyes until it vanished from his field of vision at the wrist. Then there was a sharp tug and a quick, stinging pain, and Deorwine withdrew with a small bundle of hairs pinched between thumb and forefinger. To Thorongil’s utter horror, though in truth it should have been a relief, he held them up to the light just as the Northern man had done. Deorwine squinted: his eyes were not so keen as those of the Dúnadan. Then he made a triumphant sound deep in his throat and with his other hand plucked a single hair from the bunch, letting the others fall. He held it out for Thorongil to see, and pointed right at one of those hideous pale globules.

‘Easy,’ he said, or perhaps it was easier; ‘to see – – – dark –.’ Thorongil wanted to ask him to repeat it because he was almost certain he knew what he had said this time: easier to see when you have dark hair. He did not quite have the courage.

He nodded ruefully, waiting for the laughter and the general announcement. Instead Deorwine gave him a sympathetic little grimace and raised his hand to the back of his own neck. He spoke, and then emphasized his point by curling his fingers into claws and raking them to and fro behind his head as if scratching. Again Thorongil nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. Yes, it itched wretchedly.

Deorwine gave a long-suffering sigh, and motioned at Thorongil. He tried again when he did not get the response he wanted. Then, perhaps unable to think of any clearer way to signal his intent, he took hold of the taller man’s arm just above the elbow and hauled him bodily to his feet. Thorongil only just had the presence of mind to snatch at his cloak before it fell from his shoulders. He was marched away from the bed and up the length of the room to where the men had gathered for their tales. ‘No, wait—’ he protested. Then; ‘No, please!’

But Deorwine was determined. The other men looked up as they approached, bare feet flying. The Rider gave two sharp orders and pointed off towards the table, and a pair of men clambered up from the circle and ran to obey. Thorongil tensed against the imperious hand, but he was too conscious of the last shreds of his dignity to struggle. If he had to endure this, he would endure it like a man. Like a son of Elrond. Like the Heir of Isildur.

He squared his shoulders and tilted his chin, and fell smoothly into step beside Deorwine, whose grip eased a little as the resistance melted away. They were at the fire now, and several of the other men were on their feet, clearing a space before it. One of the ones who had jumped to Deorwine’s command came back carrying the nearest of the benches. He set it a pace from the edge of the sunken hearth. The other came close upon his heels, and he had the blanket from one of the beds. Between them they folded it into a pad and looked at Deorwine expectantly. He nodded and pointed to the floor before the bench, explaining what he wanted. They did as he asked, and he said something else. A murmur rippled through the group, and one or two hissed dolefully.

One of the younger men said something in an uncertain tone, and smiled effortfully at Thorongil. Deorwine had told them, then. It took him another moment to realize that not one of them had laughed.

‘Sit,’ said Deorwine. When Thorongil moved to sink down on the bench he shook his head. ‘—there,’ he said, and pointed at the blanket. One of the men still on the floor patted it to make the point clearer.

Uneasily Thorongil obeyed, rounding the bench and trying to keep his shirt from riding too high on his long legs as he sat. He was glad he had kept hold of his cloak, for he used it to cover his lap as he crossed his legs. It provided a consoling weight and a modicum of modesty in his too-short shirt. He sat in towards the fire, not because he had been told to but because it was only natural. Not until Deorwine stepped over the bench and sat down squarely behind him did Thorongil realize what the other man intended.

A foot was planted beside each of his hips, and Deorwine’s knees brushed just below Thorongil’s shoulders. The Man of the Mark adjusted the position of the dark head before him, and then reached down over the slender shoulder. Again he spoke, and again it took Thorongil a moment to puzzle through the tone and the gesture. But he knew what was wanted, and he gave the man his comb. It scraped smoothly along his skull as Deorwine parted off a section above his right ear. Then he began to run the strands through his fingers one at a time.

He said something that sounded almost jolly – it was affected jollity, anyhow. Those who had been standing lowered themselves to the floor again, crossing their legs and holding their feet or stretching out sidelong to lean back on locked arms. One of the men cleared his throat and glanced in Thorongil’s direction before beginning to speak. The tone and the cadence were unmistakable, as was the anticipatory gleam that came to the eyes of the other men. He was beginning a new story.

lar

Long did Thorongil sit there, comfortable in the warmth of the fire with the blanket to cushion his backside and his cloak cosily in his lap. Deorwine worked diligently, even expertly, parting the hair again and again and searching each section. When he found a nit, he would pinch that single hair and scrape it away with his fingernail. Sometimes he brought his hand around front so that Thorongil could see the mashed egg or a freshly crushed louse. He knew the word for louse now, too, and if all other memory of the language of Rohan were lost to him in later years he knew that word would remain emblazoned as if in stone.

There was a second story, and a third. Then someone took up the rousing ballad they had sung the night before. They reached the first chorus when Deorwine’s questing hand left Thorongil’s crown and everyone stopped.

‘Slowly,’ he said to his countrymen. That was one of the few phrases Gandalf had bothered to teach Thorongil, and he had made constant use of it for the first few days until he had realized that slowing them down did not help when he had the vocabulary of a moderately clever lapdog. ‘Again, but slowly.’

Grinning to hear themselves, the men tried to drag out the melody. A couple of them laughed, and soon everyone chuckled. One of the storytellers shook his head and raised his hand to conduct them. Very clearly and slowly he led them in a straight recitation of the words. Deorwine’s legs shifted as he nodded his approval. ‘Again,’ he said.

Thorongil did not know the meaning of the words, though he knew that would come in time. But he could ape the sounds, and he could ape them well: not for naught had his father praised him for his quick ear. When they began the song again, he was able to join in when they sang:

Fleet flow the five rivers; fast foaming white waters.

West wind the weather-winds, down the high mountains!

Several of the others grinned to hear his voice, and Deorwine thumped him appreciatively on the shoulder before returning to his tedious work. The men on the other side of the hall had begun to migrate in to the circle. One or two whispered a question as they sat, but most took one look at the dark-haired stranger with his hair in disarray and understood what was happening. Many simply settled as if nothing were amiss. By others Thorongil was offered a couple of sympathetic grimaces and one expansive helpless shrug that seemed to say that’s just life in the company. No one mocked or looked askance or shunned him like a plague victim. They had sat him among them in the choicest place, right before the fire. They were tending to his embarrassing need as if he were one of their own. Thorongil's heart was full within him. 

The sergeant looked in, and he too saw with knowing eyes what was taking place. There was no banging of the cudgel on the pole tonight; no order for silence. He withdrew quietly instead and shut the door fast. 

One by one the men began to drift off to their bunks. The torches on the far side of the lodge were quenched. Thorongil’s back was beginning to ache with the longing for bed, but Deorwine was surely just as stiff and sore from the day’s labours as he, and still he worked. One of the Riders fetched water for the pair of them, and another produced a hoarded apple which he cut into halves – a dear gift, when they all were hungry. Thorongil had neither the words to demur politely nor the ill manners to refuse outright, and he savoured every mouthful of his share of the tart fruit. He licked the juice from his fingers, too; yet another thing that would have appalled his mother.

At last there were only five men left around the fire, the lousy and the picker included. Thorongil was surprised when instead of feeling the narrow edge of the comb its whole breadth was dragged through his hair. It happened again, and a third time and a fourth, until the shadowy locks lay orderly again. Then Deorwine clapped him on the shoulder as he handed back the comb.

‘All finished,’ he said. Then among his next words Thorongil caught bed and work and morning. He nodded and turned, twisting at the waist to look up at the other man.

‘Thank,’ he said, his grammar clumsy but his tone filled with earnest gratitude.

Deorwine chuckled. ‘I thank you,’ he corrected.

‘I thank you,’ repeated Thorongil, and he was rewarded with a sunny grin. Then Deorwine slung his leg back over the bench and got to his feet.

Thorongil stood, his legs unsteady and half asleep after so long on the floor. He picked up the blanket and handed it to the man who had brought it, who with his bedmate could not retire for the night until he had it back. ‘I thank you,’ Thorongil said, every bit as earnestly as he had to Deorwine.

The man grinned and said something that was much too long to be a simple acceptance of gratitude. Then his companion said something much more brief. Thorongil’s eyes narrowed calculatingly, and the Rider saw it. He repeated himself, then held his hands out, palms up. He bounced the left hand and said; ‘I thank you.’ Then he bounced the right and said; ‘It is nothing.’ Finally he indicated Thorongil with a nod of the head. ‘It is nothing.’

I thank you. It is nothing. Thorongil stored up this simple and ubiquitous exchange for future use. He rounded the hearth to clasp each man’s hand in turn. They reciprocated with friendly eyes, and then went off towards their bed.

Now Thorongil was alone with the last of the soldiers. It was Herward.

The evening had been going so well, and now he was about to be confronted by the one person in the éored whose displeasure would be the most miserable. No doubt Herward was going to upbraid him for bringing vermin into the bed they shared. It would not matter that there was only one person in all of Rohan with whom Thorongil had had close enough contact in his short weeks here to have contracted such passengers. He resolved himself to bear his scolding stoically, unjust though it would be. He set his face in serene contours.

Herward got to his feet and came around the other side of the hearth. Thorongil turned as he did so that they stood with the bench between them. A look of incredible discomfiture twisted across Herward’s face, and he bared his teeth briefly in a hangdog manner. Embarrassedly he raised his hand to the back of his own head. When he spoke, Thorongil realized with the dumb amazement of the novice pupil that he recognized the phrase immediately.

‘I am sorry,’ Herward said, very meekly. Then he added another word that Thorongil had learned that night; ‘My hair.’

Hoping he had correctly heard and interpreted the negative in the expression he had just been taught, Thorongil shrugged appreciatively and said; ‘It was nothing.’

Relief and gratitude flooded the other man’s face, and he offered a thin smile. He motioned to the comb in Thorongil’s hand in a gesture that said far more eloquently than the words he used; ‘Would you? Please?’

Of course he would, for reasons of self-interest as well as altruism. If he did not, Herward would only re-infect the pair of them. As it was they were going to have to make do without pillows for a few nights. Thorongil smiled wholeheartedly and nodded. Then he went to the bench and swung his leg over it, sitting to straddle. The difference in their heights was such that he could easily work with his subject seated at the same level. He would have to lift his arms a little further than was quite comfortable, given his new set of aches, but the discomfort it would spare his bedmate – his friend – would be worth it. He patted the bench before him, and Herward understood. He moved hastily to sit.

Carefully, with the nimble gentle hands that could soothe the deepest pains or stitch the most ragged of wounds, Thorongil began to separate the strands of coarse golden hair. He found his first nit almost before opening the part: Herward’s head was crawling with lice. Tomorrow he would have to convince the others that they all must be checked. Otherwise they would keep passing it on to one another indefinitely. Yesterday the thought of communicating such a proposal would have filled Thorongil with cold dread. Now it seemed not only achievable but something to look forward to. Perhaps next he might even suggest the enlistment of a cat for the barracks.

As he fell into the rhythm of the work, Thorongil’s young face broke into a warm and determined smile. He would not be abandoning Edoras just yet; that much was certain.

metta