Chapter 6. Led to the Slaughter

Jack stared straight ahead as he was marched through the streets, the houses with their gleaming walls passing in a meaningless blur beyond the jumble of tall guardsmen surrounding them, dressed in the grey-and-silver of the Northern-kingdom. The pace was faster than his habitual amble, and it was not long before he was breathing hard. He couldn't have talked to Will if he'd wanted to, though a sideways glance showed him that the younger man was easily keeping the pace the guardsmen set.

At last the old man could manage no longer; stumbling, he fell to his knees. An alert guardsman kept him from measuring his length on the cobblestones, shouting to the sergeant, who called a halt.

'Father!' Will cried. He'd tried to go to Jack, but two guardsmen had grabbed his arms from either side, nearly hauling him off his feet.

'No talking,' one of two growled, raising a gauntleted fist in patent threat. Will fell silent, for he knew that the rule would be enforced with more punitive measures if he failed to heed. Pippin, however, had seen the gesture and moved up beside them with a warning look for the guardsman. Order was order, but there was no call for bullying, said the look, and the guardsman nodded and released Will's arm, standing stiffly beside him.

Jack, on the other hand, rested in his saviour's grasp, gasping for breath. Astoundingly, he began to chuckle, breathless as he was. Huor, for he was the guardsman who'd caught Jack as he fell, exchanged glances with the sergeant. 'On your feet,' he said, lifting the old man, but when he let go his grasp Jack sagged again, and it was catch him or let him fall face-first onto the stones, in front of the curious onlookers who had stopped to gape when the guardsmen and their prisoners, and their escort of hobbits, had stopped.

'Why hurry to a hanging?' Jack gasped. 'The rope will still be there, even if we come belated.'

Will held his breath, but these were decent men, only doing their duty, and it was not in them to strike an old man, even if he were a law-breaker.

'I'm not sure he can walk any farther, sergeant,' Huor spoke over Jack.

'Carry him, then,' Haleth ordered.

Huor nodded, and joining hands with Gumlin beside him to make a lady-chair, lifted the old man.

Jack's head lolled against him, and with sudden alarm, Huor said, 'Is it well with you, old father?'

The dry chuckle came again. 'Am I to answer?' Jack whispered, and followed with, 'How do you think, lad? I am on my way to my hanging!'

'No talking!' the sergeant snapped, and Huor shared an irritated look with Gumlin.

'We ought to fetch a healer,' Gumlin put in.

'But I'll save you so much trouble if I expire on the spot,' Jack said, fainter now, and then his eyes closed.

'Is he...?' Pippin said anxiously.

'He's breathing,' Huor said, and the hobbit nodded and relaxed somewhat.

'He won't be, much longer, the way things stand,' Merry muttered, voicing the thoughts of all the hobbits, and Samwise shook his head. Would Hilly and Bergil find the King in time to stop this before it was too late?

'For'ard!' Haleth snapped. They'd wasted too much time already, and there was distinct sympathy for the prisoners on the faces of the passers-by. And so they moved forward once more, the booted feet moving in a steady cadence.

They marched from the finer part of the city into plainer parts, where the houses were smaller than those near the Citadel, fences of elegantly wrought and painted iron giving way to whitewashed fences and these to plain wooden fences, and past the latter to the spreading kitchen gardens within the City walls, thickly planted to provide some food in good times or times of trouble or siege. At last they were passing the pens where cattle bawled and sheep bleated, and pigs awaiting slaughter grunted and moved restlessly in their pens. Butchers moved among the animals, marking their chosen beasts with a daub of paint from the buckets hanging from their belts. Marked for death, Will thought to himself, sick. Led to the slaughter. He felt a sympathy for the beasts that he'd not known since he was a small child.

And out the small, unimportant gate just beyond these pens they marched, a gate wide enough to drive cattle or sheep or pigs or geese in, or to drive a wain filled with waste out to be buried in the pit some way outside the walls, where stone for the City had been quarried and now the City's refuse found a final resting place. Here stood the gallows, destination for refuse of a different sort.

'Quite convenient,' Will heard Jack say, and he looked over to see Jack awake and aware, staring out at the pit. He swallowed hard, taking Jack's meaning. Bodies of law-breakers that went unclaimed found their resting place beyond, in unmarked graves, with the rest of the refuse. When a part of the pit grew full, dirt would be smoothed over and a garden planted, trees and grass, to cover the blighted spot, perhaps nourished by the refuse beneath.

Two guards stood by the platform, coming to attention as the prisoners' detail approached. The sergeant marched up to them, saluting. 'Condemned prisoners for the gallows,' he said.

'Your warrant?' one of the gallows guards asked. Haleth pulled a roll of paper from his belt and presented it with a flourish. It was soberly accepted and perused. The gallows guard stopped in the middle of his reading and looked up. 'Three names on the warrant,' he said.

'An error,' Haleth said. 'One was only a boy at the time of the offence, and so he was released.'

Pippin entertained for a moment the wild notion that the warrant would be dismissed as a result, but no. The guard finished reading, re-rolled the warrant and placed the document in a carved box that stood to one side of the platform.

Will had taken one horrified look and turned his head away, for a raggedly clad figure was already there before them, face darkened and distorted.

'First one today,' the gallows guard said, following the sergeant's glance. 'Caught in the act of stabbing a drunkard, robbery.'

The sergeant nodded.

'The Steward wasn't best pleased, to have this stinking ruffian hauled before him directly after his breakfast,' the second gallows guard said. 'Took him no time at all to question the witnesses and sign the death warrant. It seems he's been doing a brisk business in warrants this morning.' He eyed the prisoners. 'But I hadn't heard that there was another hearing already...'

'No hearing necessary,' the sergeant said. 'Broke an edict of the King's and were positively identified by reliable witnesses.'

'If only the witnesses were not so reliable,' Pippin whispered to Merry, and Will looked at him in surprise. He'd rather gathered the impression that the hobbits, somehow, had accompanied them to witness the arrest and subsequent events. It was custom for an accuser to stand witness to the penalty, whether pillory or post or gallows.

Pippin saw the surprise, and spoke directly to Will. 'It was not my doing,' he said. 'Believe me, this is not the meeting I was anticipating when Diamond told me she had seen you.'

Will glanced at his guards and decided not to risk an answer.

Jack's head rested once more on Huor's shoulder, and his eyes were closed.

Pippin nodded at the question in the young man's eyes. 'Unfortunately, Farry overheard us,' he said. 'Not that it was a bad thing in itself...' He sighed. 'It was when the escort heard him telling Pip-lad Gamgee...'