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Thain  by Lindelea

Chapter 44. Thain: Not All Those Who Wander…

‘Pippin,’ Frodo said for perhaps the thousandth time. ‘Are you with me?’ To his worry, his young cousin was growing increasingly harder to rouse. Frodo looked anxiously at the lengthening shadows creeping over the valley floor. He had waited for what seemed like hours (though it couldn’t have been such a long time, considering the Sun had been halfway to kissing the horizon when they’d found Pippin, and now although She’d dipped behind the hills to the West, the hilltops and sky still shone with Her light). Rather less than two hours, he thought. He and Ferdi had walked for… how long? They’d started after second breakfast, but well before elevenses, and they’d found Pip about teatime, or so Frodo’s stomach had told him. Perhaps six hours of slow walking, following a faint trail, just one of many parties of searchers. 

Frodo might have been astounded that none of the other search parties had crossed their path, but for the fact he knew, from various tramps with Bilbo and on his own after Bilbo’s departure, how wide and wild the Green Hill country spread. Still, he kept listening for the ring of ponies’ hoofs against a stony hillside, for the sound of voices shouting Pippin’s name… But the two cousins might have been alone in a desolate country far from civilised parts, with only the sounds of birds and the occasional rustle of a breeze. There was not even the trickling of water, a nearby spring or stream, though Frodo only realised he was listening for such when he tried to swallow on a dry mouth. If he were feeling so parched, how must it be for Pippin, who had been lying here, much of the time under the Sun’s rays on this warm autumnal day, most likely since early morning! 

‘Pip?’ he said again, squeezing the unresponsive shoulder. At least the lad was breathing. While there’s breath, there’s life, Bilbo whispered in his memory. ‘That’s right, cousin,’ he said, though he rather doubted his cousin heard him, or if Pippin heard, if he had the slightest inkling of what Frodo was talking about. His repeated questions, the times Frodo had been able to rouse him enough for a response, had showed that he was catching and holding on to nothing Frodo told him: the time, where they were, how they’d got here… 

 ‘Nearly half past five, I should think,’ he muttered to himself, taking another anxious look at the sky. The warmth of the day was fading as the shadows grew, and he shivered at a sudden breeze and then reproached himself yet again for coming away on this search completely unprepared – no water, no food, not even a jacket to roll up and put under Pippin’s head, or cloak to keep him warm! 

 ‘Ah, Bilbo, you’d be so disappointed in me,’ he said aloud, standing up to look for perhaps the hundredth time, for any sign of approaching rescuers.

‘Bilbo?’ Pippin murmured, turning his head to the side. And then, ‘Finally! I thought…’ his voice trailed off.

But Frodo stayed on his feet, straining, for he thought he’d heard the sound of a pony. ‘Halloo!’ he shouted, waving his arms. ‘Halloo!’

He was overjoyed to hear an answering shout in the distance, and yes, that was the sound of a pony, approaching, for the beat changed from a steady clip clop of trotting feet to the rapid three-quarter time of a gallop. He stared in the direction of the sound, craning for a view, and was rewarded with the sight of a pony bearing two riders coming around the side of the hill to his east, swiftly approaching. ‘We’re here! Here we are!’ He continued to wave his arms in wild invitation, though it was obvious they were headed straight towards him, with only slight deviations from their path to avoid large rocks or brambles or uneven ground.

It was not long before the pony pulled up before him, dancing, and he lunged forward to grab at the bridle. Pippin’s brother in love Isumbold sat in the saddle, and Ferdi sat behind him, clinging to his waist.

‘Hoi!’ Isum said in response, his keen glance sweeping from Frodo to the prostrate figure beyond. Ferdi slid from the pony’s back and immediately turned to the saddlebags as Isum eased himself from the saddle. The pony planted its feet and stood, rocklike, as Isum gained his balance, hanging on to the saddle to support himself. ‘Water, lad,’ he said now, gesturing to the three water bottles hanging from the saddle. ‘You must be parched. Ferdi said you’d set out without water of your own.’ As Frodo moved to take one of the bottles, Isum said, ‘Take them all.’

The headmaster drew a deep breath, let go his grip on the saddle, and staggered over to Pippin, sinking down beside the tween. Ferdi was close behind, a wad of rolled-up cloaks under one arm and bearing the saddlebags over his other shoulder, all of which he laid beside Isum before turning back to the pony.

‘Go, then, lad,’ Isum said. ‘Meet the rescue party and guide them here.’

Frodo hastily unhooked the straps of the water bottles from the saddle, and Ferdi lightly vaulted onto the pony’s back and took up the reins. As Frodo stepped back, the young hunter reined the pony around and leaned into a ground-eating trot in the direction of Tuckborough and the Great Smials.

Isum was bent over Pippin, running his hands lightly over the tween’s limbs, murmuring to himself, his careful, formal-sounding ‘Smials’ diction forgotten for the moment as he reverted to the speech of the wild hill country, revealing the depth of his perturbation. ‘Ach noo, lad, wha’ hast tha done to thasel’?’

‘Broken arm,’ Frodo said, crouching down on Pippin’s other side. He put the bottles down, retaining one of them in his hand, shaking it to ascertain its contents. About half full, he judged. He uncapped it and moved to hold it to Pippin’s lips, but Isum forestalled him.

‘Nae,’ the headmaster said. ‘He’s no’ awake enough to drink withou’ choking.’

Frodo nodded and took a sip for himself. He might have guzzled the whole, he was that thirsty, but prudence held him to small sips so he wouldn’t make himself sick and immediately lose it all again.

‘Ferdi found us by the copse of old oaks in the Winterfrost valley,’ Isum said, as if Frodo might be familiar with the territory he was talking about. ‘I took the others’ water bottles and cloaks and sent them back to the Smials for help.’ He nodded at the small pile of cloaks. ‘Wrap yourself up, lad. You’re shivering.’ He took up a cloak and spread it over Pippin as he spoke the next words. ‘Now, tell me what’s what with the lad.’

Frodo repeated his earlier words. ‘Broken arm,’ Isum nodded – he’d seen the makeshift splint, ‘and broken crown,’ Frodo said as he pulled the folds of another cloak around himself, good Tookish wool, soft and finely spun, implying that Isum’s companions had been Smials Tooks, and not of the servant class, either.

‘Crown!’ Isum said under his breath, and he eased a hand behind Pippin’s head. At least his fingers did not come back stained with fresh blood, which meant the wound was drying, or so Frodo hoped. Frodo saw the headmaster nod to himself at what he found, and then Isum sat back and gave Pippin’s shoulder a pat as he looked again to Frodo.

‘We’re well out of the searchers’ paths,’ he said as if answering an unspoken question. ‘Closer to Waymoot than Tuckborough, actually.’ He’d resumed the cultured tones of the Great Smials.

‘Waymeet!’ Frodo said, startled, though on second thought, he shouldn’t have been. He and Ferdi had walked half the day, slow though their pace might have been.

‘Aye,’ Isum said with a wry look as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Much farther than any “nice” hobbits might venture into trackless territory,’ he said. ‘Why, only hunters and shepherds… and messengers, and p’rhaps Mad Bagginses are to be found out here in the Wild, this far from civilisation.’ As a former messenger and hobbit of Thain Ferumbras’s escort, he knew these hills like the fur on his feet, having been required to memorise maps that covered the entire Shire, for the sake of being able to take the Thain’s messages to any point in the Tookland, and beyond, at a moment’s notice.

‘And a Baggins only at great need,’ Frodo agreed.

Isum shook his head. ‘Can’t imagine any “great need” that would be great enough to bring a gentlehobbit into the Wilds,’ he said, uncapping one of the remaining water bottles and wetting the handkerchief. 

‘Nor can I,’ Frodo admitted.

‘In any event,’ Isum said, laying the wet cloth gently on Pippin’s forehead, ‘there’ll be a healer coming, if I don’t miss my guess, and stretcher bearers, in case t’lad is not fit to sit a saddle…’ he looked down at Pippin’s pale, still face and muttered, ‘…as he is not.’

Frodo swallowed hard and nodded.

Isum sighed and looked up to meet Frodo’s watching eye. ‘Probably best to bear him to Waymoot, rather than the Smials,’ he said. ‘Shorter. Sooner out of the night air. Quicker to get him into a bed.’

Frodo shivered again and shrugged deeper into his borrowed cloak. The valley floor and the lower slope where they sat were fully in shadow now, and the autumnal air was cooling quickly. ‘I’m all for that,’ was all he said.

 





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