Chapter 6

“Let us move out of this place of death,” suggested Aragorn with an eye to the devastated hobbits.  After a final stare at the pitiful, shriveled thing, Frodo linked his arm firmly through Merry’s and practically dragged his cousin from the alley.  Merry still seemed in shock and could not command his feet.  Sam pushed Pippin before him.  Legolas came out with his bow at the ready, but nothing rose from the ruins to threaten them.  Gandalf fetched a large sack from the pony’s panniers and prodded the gently glowing ball into it with his staff, careful never to lay hands upon it.

It was scarcely better out of that narrow place.  The corpses of Men lay like broken dolls on the ground and the hobbits stopped dead.  Boromir and Aragorn caught them up and carried them past the battle ground, setting them down in the scanty grass and open air beyond the ruined buildings.  Boromir knelt in front of Merry, noting with pain that white-faced stare.

“Merry,” the warrior said softly.  When the hobbit did not respond, he tried again.  “Merry?  Merry, look at me.”

Slowly the young hobbit’s bright blue eyes focused on him.  Merry looked at him silently and the man nodded to himself.  “There will be death in times of war, Merry,” Boromir said gently.  “You must remember, always, that we fight to prevent yet more death.  There is an evil in the land that will accept no reason, no compromise.  The Dark Lord will tolerate no other way other than his own.”  The hobbit’s face paled further and Boromir stroked the blond curls gently.  “Evil is a cancer, which grows and grows and strangles all.  It must be cut out.”

Merry nodded, his face no longer quite so very white.  Gimli took up guard position, his dark eyes roving over the landscape.  Sam and Pippin rounded up wood and Frodo knelt to strike a fire but Gandalf forbade it, pointing silently at the open skies and lack of cover.  Instead, the hobbits settled close together and pulled their cloaks over themselves, talking softly.  Aragorn noted that each one was touching Merry in some way; Frodo braced against his back, Pippin lying across his knees, Sam resting his weight against Merry’s shoulder.  The Ranger moved over to where Boromir was cleaning his sword, behind Merry so the hobbits could not see as he wiped blood and flesh from the long blade.  “That was well done, Boromir.”

Boromir nodded without looking up.  “I have been a warrior all my life.  Yet I do not know why there must be evil, Aragorn.”

Aragorn crouched opposite Boromir and laid a hand on his shoulder.  “Nor can I.  Perhaps evil is a seed, that only waits for watering and food to grow.”  Both men shuddered and their eyes turned to the rough sack Gandalf held at arm’s length before him, where evil had indeed sprouted and now lay dormant and waiting.

Seeing their gaze, the wizard came over to the men and laid the sack carefully before them on the ground.  “Legolas, would you join us, please?” Gandalf called.  The Elf came, unstringing his bow, his fair features set as he looked at the sack.

“Legolas, is there any knowledge among the Elves instructing how to destroy such a thing so that it cannot remake itself?” Gandalf asked.

Legolas dropped gracefully into a cross-legged seat upon the cold ground.  “You ask the wrong Elf, Mithrandir.  I am no lore master such as Elrond Half-Elven, who has studied our history since the Bright Beginning.  I know the story of the fashioning of the Palantíri, of course, and the wars fought over the Seven Stones, but of these lesser stones, made of malice in mockery of the greater … I can offer no wisdom.”

“Push a wall over on it,” suggested Gimli.

The small council’s eyes traveled to the still-standing ruins, massive blocks of hewn stone, damaged and weatherworn but still beyond the strength of men to topple.  “We could build a gantry,” the Dwarf continued, “construct a lever at the top…”

“I think that would require more time than we could spare, Gimli,” interrupted Aragorn, but diplomatically.  “And there is no guarantee that the force would be sufficient to shatter it.”

       “Throw it down a well.”  None had heard the hobbits’ approach.  Samwise flushed when the eyes of the Big Folk turned to him, but he defended his reasoning.  “If you break it, it might get re-made again, an’ by less honest folks than us.  Folks don’t come up here but rarely, and no one with any sense would drink out o’ a well here.  If you threw it in, and then … and then … then put in the … bodies … after that, no one would bother it.”

“To foul a well…” began Gimli slowly, but Aragorn again interrupted him.

“… is distasteful and against all prudence,” the Ranger said.  “But Sam is right.  If even there is water, no one would drink it.  Or investigate it after finding it had been used as a burial pit.”  Aragorn rose to his feet. “We cannot leave the … bodies … unburied.  Besides drawing scavengers, it would point too clearly our passing through this place.  And they were Men, however corrupt.  I would not leave them to rot.”

“Aye, let’s get to it, then,” rumbled the Dwarf.  “Well done, Master Samwise.”

When the hobbits would have moved to help, Gimli shooed them away from the corpses, claiming it easier for a Dwarf to bear the burdens than they.  So he spared them contact with the bloodied forms, and spared them the stuff of nightmares to haunt their sleep.

Legolas sought a well and found one in the center of a long abandoned courtyard, wild and overgrown, choked with weeds.  The men and Gimli dragged the stiffening forms into a pile.  The hobbits turned their eyes away as Gimli heaved down the first corpse.  There was no splash, but they could not tell if that signaled the well was dry or the water level fell beyond the range of their hearing.  Then Gandalf came to stand at the smashed edge-stones and dropped the weighted sack.  It fell straight down, without bumping the stone sides of the well, until in a moment it was lost to sight in the unyielding blackness.  Then one by one, the bodies were maneuvered over the broken mouth and dropped.

Gimli knelt in the sparse grass and rubbed his hands when it was finished, Sam pouring a skin of water over the Dwarf’s hands to clean them.  Even the cold whistling wind seemed subdued.  The Company stood for a few moments in silence and then Gandalf raised his staff and motioned them onward.

* * * * *

Now the lack of rest caught up to the exhausted Fellowship.  They had gained only a few moments of sleep at dawn when the attack began, that after a full night of marching.  Their steps slowed, too weary to hold the pace.   Merry wiped perspiration from his face, and heard a soft murmuring beside him and tilted an ear to hear Pippin marching in time to his subvocalized litany, “I hate this place … I hate this place … I hate this place…”

“Pippin.”

“What?”

“Stop that.  Or choose another marching song, please.”

A deep, martyred sigh.  “All right, Merry.  One of Bilbo’s walking-songs, then?  The Road goes ever on and on…”

“Not that one, either,”

“Cousin, if I don’t sing or eat something, I’m going to go to sleep on my feet.”

“Hobbits,” growled a voice above their heads.  Both jumped then turned to see Gandalf scowling at them, but a twinkle lurked in the wizard’s sharp eyes.  “Better?” he asked gently.

Merry nodded slowly and some of Pippin’s weariness lifted at the sight.  “We will stop soon,” Gandalf assured them.  “Exhaustion breeds carelessness and we cannot afford that.  We will make a fire, I think, and Sam can stew some of that delicious snow-deer meat.  Add some onions and carrots.  How does that sound, lads?”

Food being a source of great comfort to hobbits, Sam found three sets of willing hands to help him in luncheon-preparation.  The Fellowship took what precautions they could in these folded hills; choosing a sheltered campsite, digging a fire-pit and fanning the thin column of smoke with their cloaks to disperse it and make it harder for spying eyes to spot.

“A most resilient folk, hobbits,” commented Legolas, his eyes on where Merry was trying to one-handedly peel a carrot, and had resorted to holding the vegetable down with a furry foot.  Pippin sat next to him, chopping onions and wiping his eyes.  Frodo had taken over cloak-flapping duty while Sam prepared the meat.

Aragorn glanced up, a smile in his eyes.  “That they are.  They bounce back from horrors that would flatten a seasoned warrior.  Tough, I would call them.”

“Argumentative,” contributed Gimli, oblivious of the looks exchanged among the other members of the Fellowship.

“Interfering,” growled Gandalf, but with affection.

“Noisy,” added Boromir.  “But I agree … a most astonishing people.”

The hobbits were sorry to see the small fire put out immediately when the stew was finished … the heat combated the plucking fingers of the cold wind, which reached under all garments and chilled flesh.  Merry rolled himself in his cloak and blankets and laid himself as close to the embers as he could.  Silently his cousins and friends arrayed themselves about him and the Fellowship, except for Legolas on guard, slept.

They woke to darkness, cold, and the ever-present wind.  And something worse.  When Frodo sought to rouse Merry, he found his cousin did not respond to his gentle shaking, nor voice his usual sleepy complaint.  Merry lay on his side, eyes open but unseeing, sweat beading his face, his injured hand curled against his chest.

“Merry?” asked Pippin, also missing the familiar morning complaint.

“Pip,” said Frodo softly.  “Go get Aragorn.  Tell him Merry needs him.”

Pippin shot straight up in his blankets and on the other side of Frodo, Sam woke to instant alertness, his grey eyes widening.  Then Pippin was on his feet and dashing across the extinguished fire, blackening his feet in the now-cold cinders. 

“Merry,” whispered Frodo, stroking his cousin’s face, “Merry-lad, can you hear me?”

Merry’s bright eyes, now brilliant with fever, struggled to focus on him.  “Frodo,” he gasped, “my hand…”

Sam was on his knees at Merry’s side, reaching out to gently capture the trembling arm.  When he tried to uncurl Merry’s fingers, the hobbit cried out and jerked his hand back.  Frodo wrapped his arms around his cousin and rocked him, murmuring, “Hush, my dear, it’s all right.  It’s all right.  Strider will fix it and you’ll feel better in just a moment…”

Aragorn dropped next to them; in their absorption, the hobbits had not heard him approach.  “What is it?” he asked, worry evident on his stern face.

Sam tried again to straighten Merry’s hand, but Merry fought him, almost sobbing with pain.  Pippin was dancing at his back, too distressed to stand still.  “Pippin,” ordered the Ranger.  “Tell Gandalf we must relight the fire, to boil water.  Then do it, please.  I need hot water to clean this wound.”

“But Strider -"

“Please, Pippin.  You give Merry the most help by preparing the water.”

Pippin made a gulping, gasping sound and darted off.  Frodo grinned at the Ranger weakly, but his fear showed in those morning glory eyes.  “Keep him occupied.  What is it, Aragorn?”

Merry could not resist the Man’s strength and the bandage was unwrapped and his hand was gently opened.  A soft light blossomed about them and Frodo looked up to see Gandalf leaning over the Ranger’s shoulder, his staff angled down to illuminate the small white hand, now angry red and swollen, the three thin cuts from the palantír weeping a foul-smelling, yellow liquid.  Merry groaned and hid his face against Frodo’s shoulder.

“Infected,” Aragorn breathed.  “And badly, too.  I cleaned the cuts before bandaging his hand, but there must have been some poison in those evil shards.  I did not think to treat him for poison…”

“And why would you?”  Gandalf touched the injury gently and Merry stared at him fearfully but did not jerk away.  Sam had surrendered his place to the wizard, rising to help Pippin, who had almost upset the kettle in his anguish.  Sam was talking to the tweenager now, soft words that the others could not hear, and the anxiousness was slowly easing from the young one’s face.

“This is very bad, Gandalf,” muttered Aragorn.  “We might have to take him back to Elrond.”

“No!  Aragorn, we cannot spare the time.  We would lose at least a week.  And we do not know if Rivendell is still being watched.  We might not be able to leave, this time.”  The wizard put a hand on Merry’s shoulder and squeezed gently as the hobbit groaned again.

Aragorn released the small hand and watched as Merry curled it against himself again, quivering in Frodo’s hold, his eyes losing focus as the brief surge of energy faded.  “Nevertheless,” he said gently, mindful of the watching hobbits, “if this were to spread into the bloodstream, he could well die of it.”

* TBC *