Chapter 63. Growing Clarity

Sorry...

Little more than an exhalation, but Pippin stiffened. ‘Denny?’ he said, leaning forward.

 ‘Sir,’ Denny whispered, and again he said, ‘Sorry. I... tried.’

 ‘Don’t speak,’ Pippin said, and Diamond rolled her eyes. It was too much like the pot calling the kettle black. ‘Save your strength.’

 ‘Tried,’ Denny whispered. ‘But...’

 ‘What are you talking about?’ Pippin said in exasperation. ‘Here you boldly sacrifice your life to save the Mayor’s, and you’re begging our pardon?’

 ‘Farry,’ Denny said, and winced in pain. ‘Pip-lad.’

 ‘Safe and well,’ Pippin said urgently, squeezing Denny’s hand.

Denny’s head moved back and forth in bitter negation. ‘I saw them taken,’ he said.

 ‘They’re safe,’ Pippin repeated. ‘Because you cut down the archer, we were able to pursue his companion and recover the lads. Had you not, likely the Mayor would be lying dead now, as well as Hilly and myself and anyone else who interfered with their plan.’ Instead of yourself, he thought bleakly. Shot through! Aloud he added, ‘Save your strength! The King is coming.’

Denny’s gauntleted hand closed about Pippin’s, and next they knew the guardsman was trying to sit up.

 ‘Here now!’ Faenon said, startled. ‘None of that!’

 ‘Not dying,’ Denny grunted.

 ‘You certainly had us convinced otherwise...’ Faenon said, managing to push Denethor down again without disturbing the arrow that skewered him.

Denny cocked an eye at him. ‘You still owe me half-a-sovereign,’ he said. ‘Had you forgotten that?’

Faenon made a disgusted sound and sat back on his heels. ‘Trust you to speak of such a thing at a time like this!’ he said. ‘I suppose if you were the one owing money you would have died by now.’

 ‘Undoubtedly,’ Denethor said, his speech halting and punctuated by short, painful breaths. ‘I have always had a meticulous sense of timing.’

 ‘Well then, employ some of your meticulous sense of timing now and keep yourself still,’ Faenon said in frustration. ‘If you move the wrong way that arrow might shift and cause you to bleed to death.’

 ‘He’s not dead!’ the archer said in wonder and hope. ‘Lie still, you!’ he said to Denethor.

 ‘Here now,’ Denethor said. ‘Are you going to sit there and allow this ruffian to abuse me?’

 ‘At the moment he has the right of it,’ Pippin said.

 ‘Don’t you let him die!’ the archer said, hugging his bandaged stump to himself.

 ‘You’ve got enough worries,’ Faenon said darkly. If he could have his way—which he couldn’t, being of the rank and file and not in command of anything save Denethor’s care, at the moment—they’d string up the ruffian from the nearest tree having a sturdy branch high enough to suit the purpose. But no, he supposed the proper thing was for the archer to have a formal hearing, to be able to present his side of things, to hear sentence pronounced and to be hanged at dawn before the gates of the City, as custom demanded. He doubted any evidence this ragged man might provide would be enough to save him from the King’s justice.

 ‘Hold fast, Denny,’ Hilly said from behind Pippin. Posey was helping Rose gather the scattered picnic into the baskets again, and make ready the little Gamgees, preparatory to taking them back to the City, and Hilly was once more Pippin’s shadow.

To the Thain he said, ‘Whether or not...’ He glanced at Denethor and seemed to discard the rest of his words, starting again. ‘He’s done enough to warrant the Ban, has he not?’

Pippin understood. Under Shire justice, the highest penalty, imposed only in a case where a hobbit showed deliberate intention of doing harm to another, was banishment. Pippin knew something of Men’s justice, however, and his face was grim as he answered, ‘He has, Hilly. He won’t escape the Ban.’

Most likely they’d try the Man and hang him after the hobbits departed at summer’s end, for very few hobbits knew of hanging, and the Counsellors intended to keep things that way. Until then he’d languish in the fine new dungeon under the new City.

Hilly nodded, satisfied.

***

Denethor’s spurt of energy had faded and he was lying quietly, though he continued to exchange verbal spars with Faenon, “just to pass the time” as he said whenever someone told him to keep still.

 ‘I am keeping still,’ he’d answer. ‘It is not my tongue that is shot through, after all.’

 ‘If you hadn’t relieved the ruffian of one wing I believe I might ask him to oblige,’ Faenon returned.

Thus the party were greatly relieved to hear the horn-call heralding the coming of the King.

Merry rode a fiery pony of Rohan, racing into the clearing and sliding from his saddle before the pony had quite halted. ‘Are you hurt?’ he cried.

 ‘We’re all well,’ Pippin replied, rising from Denethor’s side to embrace his cousin. ‘Thanks to Denny, here.’

Merry looked past Pippin to Denethor and his face changed. Pippin knew that he thought of Boromir, seeing the feathered shaft protruding, and he said hastily, ‘All is well, cousin. See? Strider’s here to put things back together.’ The King had dismounted and was kneeling by the fallen guardsman, demanding a full report while he examined the protruding arrow. Faenon tried his best, but Denethor kept interrupting with additions or corrections.

 ‘All the King’s horses and all the King’s Men,’ Merry murmured, drawing his hand over his eyes to dispel the vision of Boromir plucking an arrow from his side. ‘What are you grinning at?’ he added in irritation.

 ‘Naught in particular,’ Pippin said. It still gave him a thrill of delight to see his cousin perform the most mundane of tasks with his restored right arm and hand.

Elessar rose and moved to Pippin. ‘You are well?’ he said, eyeing the hobbit keenly.

Pippin thumped his chest and gave a dramatic cough. ‘Sound as your favourite war-horse,’ he said.

Elessar gave him a reproving look. ‘He’s lame,’ he said shortly.

Pippin laughed.

 ‘He’s well enough,’ Merry said, ‘but what about Sam? He’s still on the ground!’ He turned towards the Mayor.

 ‘Got the legs kicked out from under him,’ Pippin said, losing his smile. ‘He’s been off his feet ever since. Says he’s just being careful...’

 ‘We’ll see about that,’ Elessar said, striding across the little clearing. However, when he reached Sam and Rose, little Pip-lad began to shriek. Pippin ran after the King and pulled at his arm to urge him away.

 ‘He’s afraid of me?’ Elessar said, dumb-founded.

 ‘He’s not afraid of you in particular, Strider,’ Pippin said, ‘but of Men in entirety.’

 ‘I’m not at all reassured,’ the King said, knitting his brows at the hobbit. ‘I’ve heard what happened in the clearing, but not anything else. Frodo-lad said a ruffian had taken Farry and Pippin Gamgee, yet I see them here. Tell me the rest.’

Pippin rapidly filled the King in on happenings. Hilly, still shadowing the Thain, noted that he left out the stone he’d cast to plunge the escaping ruffian into the River, and also that he didn’t mention his order to Hilly to shoot Jack. Of course the King wanted a concise report, but Hilly wondered.

 ‘And so both Men were lost in the River?’ Elessar said.

 ‘Guardsmen are combing the banks, seeking them,’ Pippin said. ‘I don’t see how the ruffian could have survived the plunge over the falls, but Jack might’ve, if the waters at the bottom didn’t flatten him. He didn’t fall all that far, from what they told me.’

Hilly didn’t miss the sharp glance King gave Thain at the mention of “Jack”. Surely Elessar intended to get to the bottom of things when he had more time. For the moment, however...

Elessar gestured to Hilly. ‘I want you to take Pippin-lad,’ he said. ‘Carry him back to the City with the rest of the young Gamgees. I want to have a look at his parents, and I cannot so long as my presence terrifies the little one.’

Hilly looked to Pippin, who nodded confirmation.

  ‘Very well, my Lord,’ Hilly said, and set about to carry out his orders.

Elessar hid a smile at the unconscious show of Tookish independence. ‘Very loyal, these Tooks,’ was all he said.

Soon Hilly and Posey were shepherding the young Gamgees back to the City, with a pair of guardsmen following at a discrete distance.

Elessar bent to examine Samwise. ‘Looks as if we’ll be carrying you back on a litter as well,’ he said. ‘The leg is broken again, I fear, and if you had only kept it still...’

 ‘I did what was needed,’ Sam said with dignity, and the King nodded.

 ‘I’m sure that you did,’ he answered, ‘but it looks as if you’ll be here the rest of the summer while it heals, unless you want a permanently weak limb.’

 ‘We cannot have that!’ Merry said. ‘You’ll ride back with us at summer’s end, Sam, and I won’t hear of you doing anything else!’

The King turned to Rose. ‘And yourself, Madam,’ he said gravely. ‘I trust you are well.’

Rose exchanged glances with Sam. ‘I’m fine!’ she said stoutly. ‘All’s well that ends well, as I always say.’

 ‘Needless to say, you’ll be carried back to the City, and you’ll keep your feet up until you’re told otherwise,’ Elessar said.

 ‘What, Strider...!’ Pippin said, and then a great grin broke out on his face as he clouted Sam on the shoulder. ‘Sam! Congratulations!’

The King turned back to the fallen guardsman as Merry tendered congratulations of his own. Faenon had finished wrapping strips of linen to stabilise the arrow, that it would not shift when they eased Denethor onto the litter and carried him to the City. Elessar checked his handiwork, supervised the careful process of getting the guardsman onto the litter and gave the order to proceed. ‘I’ll catch you,’ he said, ‘as soon as I’ve had the sergeant’s report.’

 ‘Do you want to ride back?’ Merry asked Pippin, gesturing to his pony.

 ‘I’ll walk, and keep Sam company, and I’m sure Diamond will wish to keep company with Rose, walking on the other side of the litter,’ Pippin said. ‘At least the litter is decently large enough for two hobbits! Such economy!’

Even the surviving ruffian would be carried back, pale and weak as he was, though one of the guardsmen manning the litter muttered that he “didn’t deserve it.”

The ruffian had watched in some puzzlement as Pip-lad was borne away with the rest of the young Gamgees, and now he had a look of dawning realisation as Pippin hoisted young Farry to his shoulders for the walk back.

 ‘He’s yours!’ he said involuntarily as the hobbits walked past him.

Pippin stopped. ‘But of course he is,’ he said. ‘That is why you intended to take him, isn’t it?’

 ‘We never intended to take him,’ the ruffian said honestly. ‘It was the other one, Tom said, was the son of the richest rat in the Shire.’ Realising belatedly what he’d said—though he was only quoting Tom, of course—he stammered an apology.

Which, of course, Pippin did not accept; the Thain, richest hobbit in the Shire, turned away abruptly, jogging to catch up with the litter bearing the Mayor and Mistress of the Shire back to the City, his thoughts awhirl as Farry chortled with glee at the bouncing ride.