Chapter 51. Difficult Choices

Grabbing a gulp of air whenever the opportunity presented, drawing on the experience of long years of watching rivers and grim lessons learned in helping Shirriffs recover bodies from receding floodwaters, Hilly let the rushing waters carry him, for the most part. He tried to get a glimpse whenever he surfaced, to take his bearings, calling to mind every detail of this stretch of the river, memorised during picnics and hikes as he shadowed Pippin over the course of the early summer months. In this way he was able to avoid some of the more treacherous features where he might be trapped and drowned. Always he scanned the water for some sign of the princess, though his hope of rescuing her had changed into desperate effort to “rescue” himself from his own stupidity. As he fought to the surface yet again, he remembered all the well-meaning hobbits, drowned trying to save others from drowning, whose bodies he’d helped pull from streams. He was tiring; the river was stronger, running never-exhausted, while Hilly’s muscles screamed for rest and his limbs turned to lead, ever heavier, ever more difficult to move.

***

’Sam!’ Merry said again, putting Pippin aside as gently as he could in light of the haste needed. He leapt to the Mayor’s side, pushed aside Sam’s clutching hand, pulled away the coat and gave a groan to see the blood and balm and bits of glass decorating Sam’s shirt. The balm had fallen from Sam’s inside coat pocket as he landed, the jar smashed between the Mayor’s body and the boulder.

Sam in turn pushed Merry’s hand away and began to scrape at the glistening balm on his shirt. ‘Quick,’ he gasped, ‘before the heat of my body melts the stuff!’

Merry nodded, bloodying his fingers in his haste. He picked out glass shards from the small mass of balm in his hand as he turned to Pippin, pulling up his cousin’s shirt with his free hand. He saw Pippin’s eyelids flutter at the touch of the cold balm on his chest and throat. ‘Hold fast, Pippin,’ he urged. ‘It’ll start to work soon.’

Merry turned back to Sam, accepting the handful of balm the injured Mayor had been able to collect, and proceeded to smear the stuff on Pippin’s back. He felt the sting in his fingers, in the palm of his hands, and he said (as he had heard healers say on previous occasions), ‘Feel the tingle, cousin! That means it’s working!’ Anointing done, Merry sat down once more, holding his cousin in an upright position, entreating him to steady his breaths.

Pippin’s mouth opened as if he would speak but no words came. His clouding eyes sought Merry’s in unspoken apology, and then they closed as he settled in Merry’s arms, unmoving, unbreathing.

 ‘No!’ Merry cried in an agony of denial, tightening his hold. ‘Breathe, Pippin!’

***

Though one could not hear above the roar of the waterfalls, some instinct caused Elessar to turn as Elladan rode up behind him.

Brother! he cried, his voice lost in the waters’ song, but the son of Elrond read the words upon his lips. Anything?

Elladan reached a hand down and pulled Elessar to the horse’s back as the King grasped his hand. Turning the horse’s head around, he leaned forward into a gallop, hurtling obstacles and dodging trees.

***

Resting lightly on Pippin’s throat, Merry’s bloodied fingers felt a faint flutter. ‘His heart still beats!’ he gasped to Sam, who was leaning forward as if to pour some of his own strength into Pippin though he had not yet regained the breath knocked out of him in his fall.

 ‘The dwarf breathing,’ Sam managed, though he found it difficult to draw breath of his own. ‘Remember... Gimli!’

A scrap of memory returned, of Gimli telling how he’d heaved the carcase of the troll from Pippin’s body, lifting the limp and apparently lifeless body of the young hobbit, cradling him in his arms, mourning. He’d told of finding the faintest of life-pulses under his fingers, how he’d breathed life and air into Pippin...

Merry nodded, took a deep breath, fastened his mouth on his cousin’s and blew. Air whistled from Pippin’s nostrils, and Merry instinctively pinched his cousin’s nose as he renewed his effort. It was curiously difficult, not at all like inflating a pig’s bladder on butchering day, to amuse little ones, but as if the air met resistance as he tried to blow it down his cousin’s windpipe. Still, Pippin’s chest rose and fell slightly, and heartened, Merry took another breath and blew.

***

The current carried Hilly over a boulder the size of the King's war-horse, plunging down into a whirling maelstrom. He felt rather like laundry in a tub stirred by an overenthusiastic hobbit-lad in a hurry to help his sisters finish the washing so that he could be off fishing or somewhat. Despite the need to hold onto the air he’d managed to take in, he lost some in his surprise as one hand encountered something soft and clinging, more laundry in the tub... reaching now with deliberate effort, he pulled the fabric toward him until a solid little body was in his hands. The princess!

Instinct shouted at him to kick his way to the surface, but cold knowledge sent him instead down, down away from air and light, into the depths, the darkness, the cool rush of water. He found what he was looking for near the bottom of the stream—the current leading out of the whirling tumble. Once free he was able to make the surface once more, gulping air, and now he kicked his legs as strongly as he could, trying to move across the current as the river pushed him ever on, trying to reach the calmer waters near the bank that he remembered, not far past this bend in the river.

***

Elrohir found Diamond clinging to a small tree at the top of the steep bank. ‘Down there!’ she said, unnecessarily, pulling one hand free to point.

The son of Elrond nodded and launched himself over the side, running lightly down as easily as a child skipping over a grassy meadow.

Sam was sitting up, his face grey with pain, but he waved Elrohir away. ‘I’m well,’ he lied. ‘See to Pippin.’

Merry looked up. ‘He’s breathing,’ he said, ‘only just. We’ve got to get him to the House of Healing.’

Elrohir nodded, gently taking up the limp hobbit. He hesitated, and Merry said, ‘I can climb up again, but Sam cannot. I think he’s broken his leg.’

 ‘I’m well,’ Sam said again, and Merry shook his head with a wry smile, despite his worry for Pippin.

 ‘No need to climb this Mount Doom,’ he said. ‘We’ll find an eagle to lift you off.’

 ‘I’ll return,’ Elrohir said.

 ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Merry responded, and moved to take Sam’s hand. ‘Hilly went into the water, here, and Bergil ran after, downstream, along the bank. I can only think they were after the princess.’

Elrohir’s eyes quickly scanned the water and he suppressed a shudder, thinking of his little niece, and his sister’s grief. ‘I’ll return,’ was all he said, and nimble and fleet as a young deer he climbed the slippery and steep bank to where Diamond waited.

As he reached the top Elladan rode up, Elessar behind him. Seeing his burden, the King slipped from the horse.

 ‘Pippin,’ he whispered, his hand going to the pale forehead. Raising his eyes to meet Elrohir’s, he said, ‘Any word?’

 ‘The river,’ Elrohir said softly.

Elessar gave an inarticulate cry. Elladan steadied him as he stared down into the rampaging waters.

 ‘Bergil and Hildibold went after her,’ Elrohir said, his tone cutting through the King’s grief and demanding Elessar’s attention. ‘But Pippin cannot wait. Have you athelas with you?’

Elessar’s hand went to his neck, but of course the pouch was not there. He carried it when travelling, taking with him a small store of the precious leaves. He had no need to carry athelas on a picnic.

Elladan dismounted. ‘You must take him to the House of Healing,’ he said.

 ‘Liriel,’ Elessar countered.

 ‘Pippin is near death,’ Elrohir insisted. ‘He cannot wait, Estel. It is his life...’ or your daughter’s. And Liriel might already be gone, beyond reach.

Elessar swallowed hard, caught in the sort of indecision that had not bothered him since Parth Galen, but he nodded sharply and grated, ‘Send word.’

He leapt lightly onto the horse’s back and Elrohir passed Pippin to him. Yanking the horse’s head around, Elessar dig his heels into the beast’s sides and was gone.