Chapter 2

“How could you let them go, Samwise?”  Gandalf leaned down to glare at the unhappy hobbit, his beard bristling stiffly.  “You should have stopped them!”

“I tried ‘ta, sir!  I did!”

“Gandalf,” said Frodo, surreptitiously easing himself between the two, “you know Merry.  When he decides to do something, all the good reasons and good sense in the world won’t stop him.”

With a final glare at Sam, Gandalf straightened.  “Well, Pippin should have -”

“Stopped him?” interrupted Frodo with a wry grin.  “You know better than that, Gandalf.”

The wizard grumbled into his beard, his lined face angry still.  Then he sighed and gave up. “Yes … yes, I do.  Very well, then.  Aragorn, would you be kind enough to fetch them back?”

The Ranger looked up from where he had stayed prudently out of the line of fire.  “Of course, Gandalf.  Frodo, would you like to come?”

Frodo smiled, pleased to be included.  “I would, thank you.”

“Hobbits,” Gandalf muttered darkly, adding something else into his beard, then looked sharply at Gimli when the Dwarf tried to turn a laugh into a cough.  Legolas stared into the middle distance, his fair face carefully expressionless but twinkles lurked in his clear eyes.  “Return as quickly as you may,” the wizard growled, “it is already dusk and we have a long march ahead of us this night.”

* * * * *

“Please, Merry, let’s go back,” begged Pippin.  “It’s almost dark.”

Meriadoc upended himself from the fallen column he had been feeling behind and slid down the stone to his feet regretfully.  “Nothing,” he said in disgust, dusting his hands together.  “Not a thing.  You would think something would be left.”

“What, after thousands of years?”  Pippin glanced around him.  The deepening shadows seemed menacing and the tweenager’s active imagination was busily populating them with barrow-wights and other terrifying residents.  “Merry, please, let’s go.”

The older hobbit awarded the surrounding ruins a disgusted glare.  As he did so, a faint glinting caught Merry’s eye.  “Look, Pip!  What’s that?”

Pippin hooked his fingers into his cousin’s waistcoat and tugged.  “Please, Merry!”

Ignoring the plea, Merry towed his unwilling cousin over to where the setting sun was reflecting off … something.  Digging in the loose soil, Merry unearthed two pieces of what looked most like curved glass, each smaller than his palm.  The shards were very sharp and Merry yelped as his hand closed over one, drawing a thin line of blood across two fingers.  His apprehension forgotten in his interest, Pippin crowded close.  The shards looked almost black, run through with faint lines of moonlight white and purple. 

“What are they, Merry?”

Merry turned the shards over, careful now of their jagged edges.  “A bottle, maybe?  It’s sort of translucent – I can see the sunset through it, barely.”  Merry lowered the shard he was holding up and squinted at the sun.  “Maybe Gandalf will know what they are.  We’d best get back, Pip.”  With a sigh of relief, Pippin followed as Merry pocketed the pieces and started back to the Company.

* * * * *  

It was not far to the nearest of the tumbled ruins, but Frodo could tell that the Ranger had something on his mind.  He kept glancing at the hobbit, an odd smile quirking one side of his stern mouth.  Frodo’s curiosity, ever a light sleeper, was awakened.  “All right, Strider.  What is it?”

 Aragorn did not cry innocence.  “Frodo, would you like to get back at your cousins for that little stunt they pulled on you in Rivendell?”

“Which of the many little stunts are you referring to?”

“The Wager, of course.”

The Ring-bearer was silent for a moment.  “Merry and Pippin asked my pardon and I gave it, Aragorn.  It doesn’t seem right…”

“And was it right what they did to you?”

Another moment of silence.  Then, “What did you have in mind?”

“You have more clothes in your pack, don’t you?”

“Of course.  What has that to do with it?”

“Ah, Frodo,” drawled the Ranger softly.  “Everything…”

* * * * *

“Did you hear something, Pip?”

Pippin nearly ran into his cousin’s back as Merry stopped abruptly.  “Merry, don’t do that,” he pleaded.  They were nearly to the end of the ruins and Pippin wanted nothing more than to leave this desolate place and return to the warmth and welcome of the Company.

Merry’s curly head was swiveling from side to side as his pointed ears tilted and twitched.  “I’m not trying to scare you, Cousin.  I truly did hear something.”

Whatever Pippin was about to reply was lost in the low groaning moan that rose from behind a great piece of shattered stone.  Their appalled eyes were drawn towards the horrifying sound.  Something moved there, in the deep shadows … something impossibly thin and pale.  It is rising straight up; taller than a Man, taller than an Elf and much too skeletal to be either.  Whitish it was, luminescent in the dusk, faintly human in its outline but the head was bulbous, a great lump, tapering down to an utterly straight, shoulderless body.

Merry took a step back, his face bloodless, knocking a rooted Pippin to the ground.  Pippin made a most unhobbit-like squeak, his small hands clutching at his cousin’s cloak.  Never taking his eyes from the apparition, Merry knelt and dragged the younger hobbit to his feet, pushing the tweenager behind him.  Merry’s sword was in his hand without him being aware of drawing it.

The dim figure moaned again, a deep rumbling wail, and before the eyes of the frozen hobbits, sank slowly back down out of sight.  Neither Merry or Pippin moved.  All was silence and stillness  and the first early stars twinkled in the coming night.

“What -” Pippin choked and tried again, forcing his voice down to a somewhat more normal pitch.  His heart was hammering so hard it hurt.  “What was that?”

Merry did not reply, his keen eyes scanning the cold, tumbled stones.  “Move, Pip,” he ordered.  “We’re getting back to the others.”  A small part of his mind was glad of the gathering dusk, for it hid the beads of perspiration that had blossomed across his brow.  He would not let fear sway him, knowing that if he did, Pippin would be undone. 

Pippin took a step backward and stumbled, his feet turned wooden and awkward.  He whimpered at his body’s betrayal, the shriek of terror that has risen in his throat locked there.  The groan came again, dark and tortured.  The shriek started to work its way free of its imprisonment.

Merry turned and gave his cousin a hard shove between the shoulder blades.  Pippin stumbled again but his feet made re-acquaintance with his legs and he was able to fumble his way backwards.  Merry kept himself in front of his cousin, continuing to push Pippin back.

The sound came again, this time harsher and higher.  The horrific figure rose again but not so high and then seemed to incline towards them.  Pippin stopped, frozen, and Merry also.  The ghostly thing retreated a small way then with a suddenness that broke the hobbits’ control, shot high into the air over their heads, disappearing into the dark in trailing flutters of snapping cloth.

“Aaaaahhhhh!”  Two small figures tore through the blasted landscape and towards the amazed Company.  Vaguely, Merry realized that he had lost his sword.  Legolas sprang to his feet and had an arrow nocked before the two had drawn breath for a second scream.  Boromir had his great sword ready, searching for the enemy that had inspired such terror in the little folk.  Gimli’s axes were in his hands, his dark eyes seeking a target.

The two figures passed them by in a blur.  Gandalf felt the breeze as the hobbits passed then slowed and pivoted and plastered themselves to his robes.  The wizard assessed the two small trembling figures, both too terrified to speak, then looked out into the darkness.

“Aragorn!  Frodo!”

* * * * *

The Ranger and the hobbit strolled casually back into camp, Aragorn refastening his cloak as Frodo hurriedly buttoned his white shirt.  Frodo stuck a finger ruefully through the small hole at the front where the sharp arrow had punctured the cloth, despite the padding of the Ranger’s cloak.  The Man’s sword was sheathed and his bow already unstrung, its arrow recovered. 

Frodo meandered up to Merry and handed him the dropped sword.  Pippin took in the state of Frodo’s shirt and his enormous eyes seemed to grow even larger.  Merry sheathed the sword in a daze, too shocked for coherent thought.  His chalky coloring began to be replaced by a red flush.

“I – you – you…”

Frodo awarded his cousins his sweetest smile.  “I consider us even, now,” he informed them.  Pippin gurgled and slid down Gandalf’s leg to lie in a puddle at their feet.  Merry collapsed next to him, staring up at their elder cousin.  “Yes, even,” Frodo mused.  “Which leaves only Sam to repay.”

A sharp yelp greeted this gentle announcement as Samwise dropped the frying pan he had pulled from Bill’s packs onto his foot.

* * * * *

“If there are any listening ears within five leagues, I am certain they heard tonight’s work,” Gandalf grumbled.  “I would expect you to act your age, Frodo.”

The Company was moving rather more quickly than before, quiet again as they sought to put the miles behind them.  Frodo was careful to walk at the fore with Gandalf, keeping his distance from his cousins until Merry cooled down.  The Ringbearer imagined he could feel those bright blue eyes boring into his back.  Pippin trailed after, giggling occasionally as his terror faded and he began to see the humor of the prank.

“They started it,” returned Frodo.  The wizard looked at him and he flushed.  “Well, I had to uphold the Baggins honor.”

“Hobbits,” groaned the wizard.

* * * * *

The air chilled as the night deepened and Gandalf did not need to urge the Company to keep the pace; walking kept them warm.  Merry had finally stopped devising hideous and unspeakable tortures for his elder cousin and accepted the fact that he had been well repaid for his entrepreneurial endeavor in Rivendell.  As the hobbit walked, he played absently with the two shards of glass in his pocket.  In the excitement, he had forgotten his resolve to show them to Gandalf and ask if the wizard knew what they might be. 

Had it occurred to Merry to take out the shards and examine them, he would have seen that they had begun to glow under his gently stroking fingers.  The moonlight white streaks had brightened and the purple smears had darkened, lending an odd depth to the smooth surface.  Patches of black seemed to seethe between the other colors, almost as if something living abided there, moving from place to place within the imprisoning glass. 

Merry forgot the shards as he saw the Elf swiftly pass him by and move up to speak with Gandalf.   Merry had noticed that Legolas often left them to scout ahead and to the sides, returning on swift, silent feet and departing again seemingly without weariness.  A moment later Aragorn followed the Elf, passing the hobbits without a glance.  Merry saw Frodo look up, watched as his cousin’s dark head turned from one speaker to another, following some sort of discussion.  Then Gandalf halted and turned back to the rest of them, motioning for he and Pip and Gimli and Boromir and Sam (with Bill) to form a small circle.

“What is it?” asked Boromir, his hand on his sword.

“Legolas tells me he hears pursuit,” murmured the wizard. 

“What sort of pursuit?” rumbled Gimli.

Gandalf gestured for the Elf to continue.  “It is difficult to describe,” Legolas said, an odd hesitation in his soft, clear voice. 

“Could Elrond have sent riders after us for some reason?” asked Aragorn.  Merry felt Pip perk up beside him, no doubt hoping for a recall to Rivendell and its soft beds and warm hearths and full tables. 

Legolas shook his head decisively.  “It is most definitely not horses.”

* TBC *