Chapter 6 - The Muster

Dusk was dropping over the White Mountains, faster than we went before it, by the time we reached Harrowdale and the muster of the Mark late on the third day.

The King's company could not travel swiftly over the narrow mountain paths, but they had ridden long and far with few halts. My brother had been given leave to ride with me rather than among his own éored, and he patiently bore me company near the end of the line.

Before the evening of the first day, we passed above Fossdale. I strained my eyes trying to glimpse any detail of the steading, but there was no more smoke, and from this height all was silent below. Halred and two scouts rode down to see what they could; but they returned to the main body of Riders barely an hour later, their faces grim and set. Halred said only that the stables, burned to the ground, had made a fine pyre. They had found no sign of any other survivors.

By the end of the second day I was numb with weariness, and on the last morning Halred had had to boost me into the saddle. It was humiliating – I hadn't needed help to mount since I was five years old – but I was so spent I could only accept it with resignation. Now I rode swaying in a dull trance of exhaustion through which I saw nothing but the tips of Moth's ears, drooping with her own tiredness as we descended the long road down the slopes of Harrowdale.

A sudden blast of horns proclaiming the King's arrival startled me fully awake – I realized that we had reached the fords of the Snowbourn at last. Dùnhere, Elfhelm, Osric, and other captains I knew by sight came to meet the King, bearing news of the muster's progress.

Halred left me here to join his éored in the main camp; I was going up to the high Hold with Théoden King, who had bade me stay with Éowyn this night. I clung grimly to Moth's mane as we climbed up, and up, and up. The switchback road was a pale blur in the twilight, and the grey stone Pukel-men wavered, seeming to move out of the corner of my sight.

At the very top we halted as Éowyn came forth from the tents and hailed her uncle and brother. After they had finished speaking, she came to where I stood – one arm over Moth's neck keeping me upright – and greeted me kindly, if a little absently. She asked if I wished to sup at the King's table that evening, but I declined; I wanted nothing but a bed, on the bare ground if necessary. Besides, I was not fittingly dressed for a King's board, even in an armed camp. One of Halred's spare tunics hid the upper portion of my stained and torn gown, but nothing of my appearance had been improved by days of hard riding.

So Éowyn led me to her own tent, and asked her waiting-woman to prepare another pallet for me. Freja bustled about, finding bedding, bringing me bread and soft cheese and ale, and clucking over my half-healed scratches. Éowyn spoke a few words of sympathy about my father's death, and asked about the battle at the Deeping, but when she found that I had little energy left for speech gradually fell silent.

Since that evening, I have often asked myself how I could have been blind to her fey and reckless mood. My only defense is that, though she was only a few years younger than I, Éowyn and I had never been the closest of friends. I liked and trusted her, but we were not heart-sisters. Over the last months the mood of all in Meduseld had been dark; Éowyn's despair seemed only a little deeper than most of ours, and that we believed came from caring for her uncle in his illness. But in the end, even if I had noticed, what could I have said? Her mind was set, and she would not have listened to any other counsel.

True night had fallen by the time I finished my hasty meal. Torches had been lit by the King's tent, and captains were going to and fro reporting to Théoden and Éomer. A Rider's voice hailed us from outside. "Lady Éowyn? Are you within?"

Freja went to the open flap of the pavilion and returned with Elfhelm following her. I rose to leave, yet before I could slip into the partitioned-off inner chamber he said quickly, "Stay a while, Mistress Elfled, if you would."

He stood for a moment, awkwardly shifting his weight from foot to foot – a strange sight, for Elfhelm was a Rider whom I had never seen make an ungraceful movement, ahorse or afoot. "Your father was one of the finest men of the Mark, and not only on the field of battle. I never knew him to do a mean or unworthy thing. He bore great honour, and his loss is grievous indeed."

I did not want to think of my father now, lest I begin to weep again, yet in a way it comforted me that others who had known him well mourned him too. I managed to smile stiffly at the captain. "Thank you for your words, Elfhelm."

He bowed his head in acknowledgement. "I must attend the King now. Farewell."

"I will walk with you," Éowyn said swiftly, and rose to follow him. "Do not wait up for me, Freja," she added, "and let Elfled seek her bed whenever she wishes."

Two minutes later I crawled onto the pallet that Freja showed me, and sank into black oblivion.

* * *

No dawn came the next day, for the sun could not pierce through the murk of clouds overspreading the whole sky from East to West. The very air seemed to press down upon us, heavy and grey.

In the early morning – if one could call it so, with no sign of the sun – I walked with my brother beside the Snowbourn. The sky was dark and sombre, but Halred's mood was not; he was young enough to be certain that he was riding to glory and to avenge our father's death.

"Pay attention to Moth," I told him, "for she is a wise beast, and has fought in more battles than you."

"Don't talk as if I were a stripling, sister! Elfhelm would not have taken me in his éored, even for Father's sake, if I weren't a proven warrior."

"I know, Halred. And I know that you will fight bravely. Do not be reckless, that is all that I ask."

We embraced before parting, and I held him for just an instant after he would have slipped out of my arms. It was hard to let go and watch him hasten away.

When the muster left, I stood with the other women to see the long lines of Riders pace slowly by. Éowyn was not there; Freja said that after bidding farewell to her brother and uncle she had retreated into her tent and asked to be left alone. As Halred and Moth passed, he grinned at me and beat spear on shield in salute, and I raised a hand in farewell.

After the Riders had departed, all of those exiled from Edoras returned to the camp above in the high Hold. But I desired solitude, and so I turned aside to walk in the pinewoods.

With no sun overhead, the passage of time was not easy to mark. I do not know whether I had been wandering for only a few minutes, or for hours, when I heard Freja calling my name. As I stepped out from the dark shelter of the woods I saw her in the meadow, opening her mouth to call again.

"Here I am. Has Éowyn asked for me?"

She glanced over her shoulder at the camp. "No, mistress, at least – well, I don't rightly know where Lady Éowyn is. That's why I came looking for you. You haven't seen her by chance?"

"I haven't seen a soul, I've been walking on the mountain. Didn't she ask to be left alone? What's amiss?" For Freja was clearly nervous – her gaze kept flickering back and forth across the Firienfeld.

"It's like this. I went to look in on her, see if she'd eat something now, for she'd not broken her fast this morning. But she's not in the tent. Her pallet's as neat as a pin, and all her things are there, but she's not."

Freja and I stared at each other a moment, and when she glanced at the cliff edge again I could not stop myself from looking in the same direction. "Surely she's just gone to check the tents, or some such thing," I said briskly. "She'll be back in a moment or two."

"But this was more than an hour ago, Mistress Elfled, and I've been all round the camp, and—"

"Have you checked the picket lines?" I interrupted.

"No."

"Then for pity's sake let us do so! Perhaps she's merely gone riding."

When we saw that Windfola was absent from his assigned place, the band around my chest loosened and I was able to take a deep breath. Whatever Éowyn might think of doing to herself, she would never harm her horse. Then the horseboy for that section of the lines told us that Windfola had not been there all day, and fear constricted my throat once more.

Freja's near-panic had infected me, making useful thought nearly impossible. "Was there anything out of place in her tent?" I asked for the fifth time, but before Freja could open her mouth to reply, I turned on my heel. "Never mind. I'll see for myself."

She'd left a note under her small wooden jewel casket. It was addressed to me, and as I saw the hastily scribbled letters of my name it took me back to the hours she and Éomer and I had spent reluctantly learning the Elvish runes under the tutelage of her grandmother.

Elfled—

I go to battle with the Riders. All is in readiness here. Take my place, if you will, and do what you can until darkness falls.

I am sorry to leave you with no hope. May we meet again in death's dominion.

Éowyn