Author's Note: What do you mean? You thought I'd abandoned this fic? Never!

Disclaimer: I still don't own a thing! And even if the copyright was for sale, I wouldn't be able to afford it anyway, so stop asking me!

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Chapter Ten: The Choices of Bill the Pony.

Setting: Middle of Nowhere; October 12, 1418 (five days from Weathertop)

Sam stood in the middle of the clearing, wondering how much he could take before he lost his temper at this young hobbit who was actually wasn’t much younger than himself.  He approached young Merry until he could feel the lad’s nervous breath against his skin.  “You did what?”

Merry gulped and glanced over at Strider, who was conveniently keeping his distance and pretending to study the scenery.  Stupid Ranger, I thought he was here to protect us.  Looking back at Sam, he tried to appear confident, but to no avail. Sam could smell the fear on his breath. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.  We couldn’t just sit there and wait for them to come! Besides, I ---“

“Oh never mind,” Sam broke off impatiently.  “It won’t do no good, no how, Mr. Merry.   Arguin’ an’ all. We gotta find, Mr. Frodo, straight away!”

Sighing in relief, Merry picked up his extinguish torch and followed the two leaders and joined them in their soft calls for Frodo and Pippin.  Merry was about to call out again when he bumped into something – Strider.  He was stopped down on the ground, gazing intently… at the dirt? Whatever for? “Come on, Strider, you won’t find anything here.  The rain would have washed it all away.”  Hobbit footprints were rather light and left very little imprint.  There was little hope, if any, that there remained any trace of his cousins.  What Merry didn’t know was that Strider had been tracking them all along with eye-sight and tracking skills far superior to anything the Hobbits had ever encountered.

“It is not footprints I am now tracking,” Strider explained patiently, stepping aside.  There in plain view, virtually unobstructed by the elements was a hobbit-sized imprint in the mud.  The shape was distorted, almost as though he had curled up onto one side.  What had his cousin been doing on the ground?

“If Frodo was hurt once more, then they cannot be too far ahead.  Come!”

Merry followed obediently, and found it hard to miss the barely suppressed anger behind Sam’s grim expression.  If that impeccable tween had brought harm to his master…again…

No time to think about that, Sam, he decided as he trotted after Strider and Merry.

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Pippin slowly opened his eyes, and, not being an early riser, he noted the dark sky outside his window and closed his eyes once more.  Then he felt it: water dripping onto his nose.  There wasn’t a leaking roof in Great Smials, his father had certainly cracked his ceiling many years prior, but it had never leaked before. So why now?  And why was Frodo curled up next to him….underneath, what was this anyway, a tree root?  Then it hit him, again.  Frodo’s wound.

For a moment, Pippin almost imagined that his dream had come true, that they were back in The Shire, with his cousin curled up next to him.  But it was not so.  They were not in The Shire, they weren’t even in a proper bed.  Pippin turned to face Frodo and tried to get the other Hobbit’s head off of his shoulder when he noticed it: that twisted look of agony on his cousin’s face and his heart went out to him once again.  His face was pale and his eyes were squeezed shut as though they had frozen in a grimace of pain. Pippin gave him a gentle nudge, careful of the wounded shoulder.  “Come on, Frodo.  We have to move, now.  It’s almost daylight.”  He could hardly believe his own words.  When did he get used to this routine anyway?

Frodo moaned as he opened his eyes. “It’s still dark out,” he mumbled, allowing his head to limply fall back onto the youngster’s shoulder.

“Oh, no, you don’t, silly! Time to get a move-on.” He attempted to force Frodo onto his feet by pulling on the good right shoulder, but it was no use. He just would not budge. “Stubborn Baggins,” he mumbled as he appraised the situation again. It wasn’t easy being forceful with his wounded cousin, but it was all he could do. Sam would no doubt be sick with worry and the sooner he returned Frodo to his care-taker unharmed, so much the better.  That’s it! Pippin realized with sudden clarity.  He sat down back in the mud and put a comforting hand upon Frodo’s left shoulder. Best he not appear too forceful in the matter. “Come on, lad. Can’t keep Sam waiting now, can we?”

Frodo’s heavy eyelids blinked a couple of times before turning around and looking straight into the tween’s beseeching eyes. Pippin tried to release his pity at the sight of the black circles beneath those once clear-blue eyes, but he couldn’t do it. Even though he knew he was doing the right thing he could not bring himself to fully justify his waking Frodo so early. No one had ever had to do this before. Strider would always put him on the pony while he slept on, but today he would need his own feet. There was no way around it.

“Five more minutes,” Frodo grumbled desperately. The chill lingered in the air, penetrating the wound and making it all the more excruciating. How could his little cousin expect him to walk when the pain begged him to return to the blissful, pain-less land of dreams? Besides, wasn’t it best for lost travelers to stay put?

“Sorry, Frodo,” Pippin cut in before Frodo could make his plea. “But we can’t stay here. If the Wraiths track our steps here, we’re done. We have to throw them off the trail. If we stay here much longer we’re asking for trouble.”

Frodo shook his head slightly, attempting to rouse his hibernating brain. “We have plenty of that!”

“My point exactly,” Pippin agreed with a triumphant grin: at last he was getting somewhere.  “There is certainly no need to add to it.  So come on, let’s go.”

Sighing in frustration, Frodo grabbed hold of Pippin’s left hand with his right and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.  The effort was more than Frood had anticipated and Pippin noted with concern that his companion’s face seemed to have lost a shade of color. The effort left him weak at the knees, cradling his useless left arm with a look of contempt.  “Too early,” Frodo insisted, as if that was all the explanation needed for his sudden weakness.

Pippin smiled at that, remembering the times as a child when he had jumped on Frodo’s bed to arouse him for an early meal or an anticipated surprise. Frodo was a notoriously early riser but even he had his limits, ones which Pippin had pushed on more than one occasion. “Here, Frodo, lean on me. Like when I was little.” It was true. Frodo also found himself smiling at the plenty of memories he had of leaning on a very young Pippin as he was cajoled into the kitchen to fill the child’s bottomless pit, which he had mistaken for an actual stomach.  “Just like old times,” Pippin encouraged, wrapping an arm around the too-thin body of his wounded cousin. “What would you do without me to wake you up?”

“Sleep,” was Frodo’s drowsy, yet definite answer.

“That’s right, you’d sleep your life away. Now that wouldn’t be any fun would it?” Pippin teased gently as they neared the tree where they had left Bill.

Frodo just shook his head ruefully. Where would he be indeed?  They took their sweet time, getting through the fauna and foliage of the woods to the place where they had tied the pony.  Pippin may not have been a prodigy navigator, but his sense of direction was decent to say the least and he was sure he had not taken a wrong turn. So where then was the pony?

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This is hopeless, Sam thought miserably. The rain had washed away all sign of Hobbit footprints. The only sign now visible were the pony’s hoof prints. But those provided them with a strange riddle, for in following them they soon found themselves traveling in endless circles.  “Mr. Strider, you don’t have to pretend you know where yer goin’, sir. We all know yer lost.” They had trudged on through the night and now the sun was just waking up – with no sign of the lost hobbits. The only comfort Sam found in that was that he hadn’t heard a piercing scream: the wraiths hadn’t returned as near as he could tell.

The Ranger didn’t answer because he had no desire to further frighten the Hobbits. It was true that they had not heard anything untoward coming from the thickets, but that did not necessarily mean anything positive. Their lost companions could have been silently killed before they even had a chance to call for help. No, it would not serve his purpose to present that possibility just yet.

Merry was walking silently behind Sam and Strider impatiently. If he had had his way he would have gone running off in the other direction searching for his kin, but Strider had strictly forbidden such a thing. 

“Oi! What’s this!” Sam’s voice shouted from the back of his mind.

Merry looked up hesitantly, slightly comforted by the fact that his friend didn’t sound alarmed. When he looked up, he found himself staring at their former beast of burden, Bill the Pony, eating the local shrubbery, oblivious to all else around him. This would have been his dream come true were it not for the fact that the other Hobbits were nowhere in sight.

“Hey, Bill,” he cheerfully greeted the pony while Sam fetched a carrot from his pack.  “What have you done with my cousins? Is that Pip-lad foraging for mushrooms again?”

Bill looked up for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on the delicious plants, then looked away.  Some help you are! Merry thought with a roll of his eyes.  He picked up his pack from the cargo on the pony’s back. “But thanks for returning this.”

“You know where they are, don’t you, lad!” Sam spoke softly, stroking the pony’s mane. “You can take me back to my master.” He broke off the section of carrot that was in the pony’s mouth.  Bill was none to happy about his caretaker stealing a long deserved meal and made his opinion known quite loudly.  “Now, now, none of that! You’re as bad as me little sister, Mari, ya know that?  Makin’ a fuss an’ all. When I got my master back you’ll get your food.  Now, come on. Straight away, back to Mr. Frodo and Mr. Pippin with you. And shame on you for leavin’ them”

The pony made a snorting sound in reply.

“Well, we was all wet an’ miserable an’ hungry last night. That ain’t no excuse. Now go on with you!”

At last the pony seemed to take a hint and trotted along his not-so-merry way.  “Hoy, Strider, Mr. Merry. Hurry it up now, I ain’t waitin!”

Merry and Strider stood together, dumfounded, wondering how it was that the timid gardener had taken control of the situation.

~*~To Be Continued ~*~