Disclaimer - I do not own any part of LotR, so don't try and sue me. Parts of this text are AU to the original text, and parts of the dialogue are also quoted directly from Tolkien.

Chapter 6 - Darkness

At dawn's first dim light the battle began. The battle for Middle-earth. The orcs, both small and large and carrying what even Pippin recognised as poison darts swarmed across the damp, empty plains and attempted to infiltrate the soldiers camp. There were not many of the orcs, never as many as even half of the troops, but there were enough to do serious damage if they were allowed to get too close.

As usual, it was Legolas who saw the dim outlines of the approaching invaders. He alerted the leaders of the divisions as quickly as his elven legs would take him there and Aragorn and Gandalf prepared the soldiers to fight this deadly distraction. A small band were selected to avert the orcs away from the rest of the soldiers; a small band of the fastest and strongest fighters. It was perhaps, Aragorn had mused afterwards, a desperate tactic, but entirely necessary for preservation.

Pippin watched the battle through half closed eyes from his position with the remainder of the troops. Sleeping... waking, both were of a muchness now and, in all honesty, Pippin was not entirely sure which of the states he was experiencing at any given point. Everything had seemed slightly surreal to the hobbit since the day he had been wounded - a day that seemed an eternity ago now - and he felt almost sure that he was experiencing shock. These things, these deaths and woundings, just weren't supposed to happen to him; but then again, the experience of the Quest was something wholly strange, by anyone's standards. Not something a future thain should be partaking in.

To Pippin's honest surprise, the battle was over quickly, and with minimum casualties on the soldier's side. Inevitably, some had fallen, but in falling they had taken many more of the enemy with them. They died with honour. Perhaps it had been a bid by Sauron to simply weaken the troops. If so, it had failed.

"It is but a feint," said Aragorn, "And its chief purpose, I deem, was rather to draw on us a false guess of our enemy's weakness than to do us much hurt, yet."

"The Dark Lord has many subtleties." Beregond later muttered to Pippin.

Pippin wept silently for those who had been lost, and those who would soon be lost to this madness.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was Miran who approached the weeping young soldier, feeling that the time had come to tell Pippin something of his own past. His father had once been a soldier, that much Pippin knew, but he had been told of nothing else.

"Did I tell you what happened to my father, Pippin?" said Miran, praying that he himself would not start crying as he related the tale to his new friend. Honourable as it was, the truth still hurt.

Pippin shook his head, wiping the tears from his own eyes, ashamed that he had been seen crying. He was a soldier now. Yet he felt that someone needed to cry for those who had been lost, else they would not be remembered.

"My father was killed almost a year ago in the onslaught on Osgiliath, which he had been sent to defend."

"Oh." Pippin did not know what to say. Miran continued.

"Pippin, my father once told me that battle is never an acceptable thing to happen. Killing is never a good thing. However, he also told me that sometimes we have to make choices: will it you who dies or the being stood in front of you?"

Pippin looked up, the admiration showing as a steady glow in his dulled eyes. How could this, although he hated to say it, child, have this wisdom and courage, especially after he had suffered a great sadness? He should still be playing at soldiers, much as himself and Merry had done when Pippin was that age. Perhaps he knew less about the minds and hearts of men than he thought.

"So you're saying that killing is right when not killing will end in your own death?"

"Yes." said Miran. "If in your act of wrongness you can preserve your own life and the lives of others whom the being might have killed otherwise then how can you question it?" Miran paused, sensing the question at the forefront of Pippin's mind. He had not been there, but word had got by him through Beregond. "Pippin, what you did on the day you were wounded was not wrong. You saved Beregond's life."

"But he was a man. A man as much like any I have seen before and who have done me a great kindness."

"He was a man who made the wrong choices," said Miran, "And one of those was to dare attack the friend of a most noble halfling."

"Hobbit," Pippin corrected, nodding and laughing at Miran's sudden lightheartedness.

-------------------------------------------------------------

A Black shape loomed in the distance as the soldiers drew closer to Mordor. Even in the thickness of the night, they could sense what it was: the Black Gates of Morannon.

A stench hung in the air, difficult to place as it was as no soldier in the company had smelt before, yet it reeked unmistakably of death. The air was foul and thick with dust and had a bitter taste. Even if the soldiers had become lost on their route to the Black Lands there would have been no doubt in their hearts that they were now reaching their final, terrible destination. To their left, the jagged rock formations of Emyn Muil stood silently and threateningly, guarding what was left of the innocent world behind them. In front of the great cliffs of rock were the Dead Marshes, which lay almost unseen but certainly not unsensed; the air passing over them and towards the soldiers was stifling, and Aragorn wondered how on earth Frodo and Samwise had ever survived taking this route. Faint shimmering lights reflected off the still waters of the marshes, tempting the soldiers to come closer, to visit the warmth and comfort they protracted. Aragorn sighed with the relief that he had warned the soldiers against this; the last thing the morale of the troops needed was to lose men to lurking, inhuman dangers not even within the bounds of the Black Land.

The heralds sounded their arrival in loud, clear voices, while trumpeters played and the banners of Rohan, Dol Amroth and the banner of the Tree and the Stars were unfurled, fluttering lightly in the limited breeze.

"Come forth!" the heralds cried, "Let the Lord of the Black Land come forth!"

And so the gates opened, scraping and screeching with the movement of the oversized devices, moving to the beat of a great drum hidden inside the walls.

A lone figure on what was once a horse emerged: the Mouth of Sauron.

Pippin quailed as he stood within the ranks. He could not see what had come, but he could sense the presence of the evil it seemed to radiate. More and more he wished he had remained in Minas Tirith with Merry. He would have been safe their for a time, with the company of his beloved cousin, and he would never have to look upon the ghastly, terrifying face of the messenger as he did at that moment when the soldier in front of him shifted to the side.

The end was near.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N - Yes, it's short, but I'll try and get the next one up over the weekend!

To my reviewers:

Thank you to anyone else I haven't mentioned for continuing to read and review! Please press the little button and make me smile some more!

Rachel xx