Chapter 27. A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed

Pippin's pony thundered across the Bridge of Stone Bows, between the guiding lines of lamps that were smears of light looming to either side, seeming to hang in the dark fog without foundation or support. So thick was the fog that the River itself could not be seen, ice-laced, dark and brooding as it slipped beneath the arches. Pippin shuddered at the sudden memory of standing stones and fog on the Barrow Downs, not long enough ago, and he bent to the neck of his pony to urge the tiring beast to a final effort.

There was a shout at the Buckland side of the Bridge, and bodies tall and half-tall moving to meet him. Guardsmen from the King’s encampment, hands on their swords, and a Shiriff from the gatehouse with his bow strung and ready, had been called to action by the sound of the galloping pony. Anyone riding so recklessly in the dark and fog must be either mad or desperate, and it was the sort of night where one could easily imagine dark things afoot. There were still wolves and such in Middle-earth, even these days in the peace that followed the ascension of the returned King.

But when Pippin pulled down his muffler to speak, the Shirriff gave a shout of welcome and lowered his bow. ‘Thain Peregrin!’ He turned towards the near pavilions and raised his voice, heedless of those who might not yet be stirring in the early-morning winter darkness. After all, the cooks were building up the watchfires into proper cooking fires, and a breakfast fit for the King and Queen, and the hobbits here to greet them, was in the making. Five o’ the clock it was, and the farmers would have long been at their milking already, and the smell of morning bread baking was on the air.

(He suspected the King himself, and some of the hobbits, had not been to bed at all, from the light and laughter that had glowed all night from the King's own pavilion in the middle of the camp, bright through the encroaching fog. And indeed, following on the heels of his shout, he heard, ‘Pippin!’ from that pavilion, as light shone out through the looped-up entrance, and bodies spilled forth.)

‘Pippin!’ Merry shouted again, hurrying to join the guardsmen and Shirriff surrounding the blowing pony and its rider. ‘You got my message, then, and rode straight through! How like yourself!’

‘But really,’ said the long-legged man striding at the Master’s side to add his greeting. ‘There was no need to put yourself out so; we would not have left the North-lands without saying goodbye.’

Merry added, ‘Sam’s family is not yet here, though he borrowed a pony to respond to my summons and arrived in time for late supper. I was surprised to see him here before you!’

‘The messenger did not find me at home,’ Pippin said, Merry’s bright face and cheery manner making him feel as one walking in dream, ‘though doubtless Diamond welcomed him in my stead. We’ve been awaiting your message for some time and I’d imagine my family are on their way to the Bridge as we speak.’

But then he was recalled to himself, and reached out to grasp the man’s hand extended to him, gasping, ‘Strider!’ He slid from his saddle, glad of the support, for his knees were suddenly weak beneath him. ‘There’s need...!’

‘Steady on, Pip,’ Merry said in sudden alarm, and he moved close to support his swaying cousin.

The next thing he knew, Pippin was no longer standing in the icy fog, blinking in the light of torches, but he lay on a couch, supported with pillows at his back and a coverlet drawn over him, and someone was holding a steaming mug to his lips. He sipped, to be polite, and then pushed the mug away as he strove to sit up. Hands pressed him down again, and he protested.

‘You’re not well, cousin,’ came Merry’s protest in turn. ‘From the look of you, you’ve been burning the candle at both ends, robbing yourself of sleep. Indeed, have you been eating properly? The emergency is over, is it not; the mustered hobbits sent back to their farms and crofts...?’

‘Half the muster is down with fever,’ Pippin muttered, having immediately after to fend off a seeking hand. ‘No, I’m not fevered,’ he added irritably, ‘but you are correct, there’s been precious little time for rest at the Smials, this past week, what with anxiety over Ferdibrand, and others...’

‘Ferdi’s fevered?’ Merry said in dismay. ‘But, with his injury...’

‘No,’ Pippin said, trying to marshal his thoughts. ‘He’s been kept clear of the fever, thus far, though his healing is still in doubt...’ He looked from Merry, to Sam’s expression of concern, his own face lightening to see the Man who knelt behind them. ‘Strider!’

‘You mentioned need,’ Elessar said, leaning forward. ‘Not your own need, I take it.’

‘Not myself, but Tolibold,’ Pippin said, ‘as brave a Took as you might ever come to know, and one I owe my life.’

The King nodded and arose. ‘He’s being brought here?’ he said, ‘...to the Bridge, and you rode before him to seek me on my way to the Bridge, had I not yet arrived, to hurry my steps?’

‘Yes,’ Pippin said, and then shook his muddled head, ‘I mean: no, not exactly.’

‘An answer worthy of Bilbo and the Trolls,’ Merry said. ‘What is it you mean, exactly?’

Pippin hesitated, for now his plan seemed to him more folly than feat. ‘I...’ he said, took a deep breath, and plunged in. ‘I was bringing him to the Bridge, to seek hope and help of your healing hands,’ he said.

‘You were,’ Elessar said gravely, bending close again with an inquiring look.

‘He’s sinking fast,’ Pippin said, all in a rush, and he threw back the covers and reached for the King’s hand, pressing it between his two hands in urgent entreaty. ‘They say he will not likely see the dawning... I came to bring you to him!’

The King’s face went very still at this, and his hand between Pippins’ fisted tight.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said after a long breath. ‘He is in the Shire, I take it, on the other side of the Brandywine.’

‘You must come!’ Pippin insisted, but Elessar bowed his head. ‘Strider!’

‘I cannot transgress my own Edict,’ the Man said, raising his eyes once more to meet Pippin’s. ‘You know this, Pippin; you know why I will not set foot in the Shire, why I have decreed that no man shall knowingly transgress that boundary, and live.’

‘I know very well the whys of it,’ Pippin said between his teeth, swinging his feet over the side of the bed and pushing himself upright. ‘Have I not lived the nightmare, this very month? And yet,’ he said, pressing the hand he held, ‘and yet, I am the Thain, the Lord of the muster as Eomer so quaintly called my father, when we explained to him the workings of the Shire all those years ago, and as Thain may I not invite whomever I please, set aside the grim penalty?’ With another look at the King’s face, he added hastily, ‘You know that I would not do any such thing on a whim!’

‘I know this,’ Elessar said slowly.

‘For the sake of the friendship between us...’ Pippin whispered, but there was little of hope in him now, at the King's tone... sorrow, regret...

Merry had been watching Pippin’s face as he spoke, and now he put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. ‘It appears to me that you are in some kind of trouble,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t know what it has to do with Tolly, but...’

Sam broke in, then, in his sudden understanding. ‘It has everything to do with Tolibold,’ he said, and then added, ‘begging your pardon, Master Merry, but...’

He blushed as all eyes turned to him, and stammered a little, but forged determinedly ahead. ‘It—it was a ghastly business,’ he said, ‘a terrible business, indeed, to witness the deaths of the remaining ruffians.’ He took a shuddering breath and wiped at his brow. ‘Tolly was not suited to such a task, stalwart though he might be, and the fault was partly mine.’

Pippin blinked at this and protested. ‘I was the one to put such dark thoughts into his head,’ he said. ‘It was I, in the midst of my grief for my son, whom I thought had been cut to pieces by those villains. My words, my unguarded tongue...’

But Sam shook his head. ‘I was the one to speak to the ruffians, in Tolly’s hearing, of the Easterlings and their dealings with child-stealers,’ he said. ‘I was the one who put it into his head, that you were wanting the same punishment for these wretches, and so he told the Rangers...’

‘Enough of blaming,’ Merry said, breaking into the argument. ‘It’s the doing that needs deciding at the moment.’ He looked to the King. ‘What if, Strider...’ he began, feeling his way as he spoke. He straightened his shoulders with sudden resolve. ‘What if no one ever knew that you’d entered the Shire?’

‘I don’t take your meaning,’ Elessar said, though his eyes narrowed as he regarded Merry.

‘It’s dark,’ Pippin said, catching at the idea, ‘and the fog is thick enough to choke a dragon. No one need see you, if you enter the Shire and speed to Tolly’s bedside...’

‘And if I were to help, to make it seem as if you never left the camp...’ Sam added, and Elessar looked at him in astonishment before breaking into a dry chuckle.

‘Another conspiracy, I think, is your meaning,’ he said to the three hobbits, but his expression turned stern once more.

It took a great deal more argument than that, perhaps a quarter of an hour, before the King agreed to the hastily construed plan, and it was not the hobbits’ words that convinced him so much as the look of strain on Pippin’s face, the guilt that obviously gnawed at the hobbit, the conviction on the Thain’s part that he was in great part responsible for the imminent peril to his kinsman.

Elessar was never quite sure how it came about, that he agreed to wrap himself in his Elven cloak and mount a dark horse, with Pippin behind him on the saddle. It might have had something to do with Arwen coming in, in the midst of the debate, and taking the hobbits’ side. It might have had something to do with Sam’s plan, to play that Pippin had arrived and immediately plunged into a long discussion with the King and the two other Counsellors to the North-Kingdom, not to be disturbed. Sam would emerge at intervals from the small pavilion to fetch trays, himself, that servants should not interrupt the conversation; and he and Merry would extend themselves to clear the plates meant for three hobbits and a man in order to fend off any suspicion. The King’s guards would stand far enough away not to hear any of the ongoing discussion, and to intercept visitors, save Arwen, of course, who would bring word of happenings to Elessar, and come away to convey “his” orders.

They’d muffle the hoofs of the horse with cloths. Arwen would create a diversion, away from the Bridge. They’d lead the horse over the Bridge, stopping long enough to take away the muffling cloths, and then ride as if the Nine were pursuing them, through the dark and the thick fog, hoping to arrive before the late winter’s dawning.

Someone was sure to notice something or other, as Pippin said, but if things went as they were intended, any overly curious Shire-folk would see the Elven-cloaked figure in the company of and under the protection of the Thain of the Shire, an unusual messenger, to be sure, on the business of the King. If he could manage it, Pippin hoped to pass Elessar as one of the Fair Folk in the face of questioning. ‘It’s not entirely a falsehood, after all,’ he said, as they laid their hasty plans.

‘Not entirely,’ Arwen agreed, her eyes alight though her mouth remained sober. She laid the Elven cloak on Elessar’s shoulders, kissed her husband and pulled the concealing hood in place. ‘Stand tall,’ she whispered, ‘and imagine you are back in the “old days” when you used to follow my brothers all over Imladris, believing you would grow to be exactly like them if you only copied every little thing they did...’

She was rewarded with her husband’s chuckle. ‘Annoyed them no end,’ he whispered back, and sought her lips once more, for strength, perhaps, or even reassurance that he was not becoming something less with this difficult compromise.

A life is at stake, he told himself. Surely in future there would be other lives at stake, and what was he to do then?

Arwen, as so often happened, seemed to know his thoughts. She put her cheek against his and whispered, While we may have to ride that horse, let us wait at least until it’s wearing a saddle.

‘My Lady Undomiel,’ he murmured, and pulled himself away, that they might begin to put this mad plan into action, to arrive before Tolly was beyond help, if indeed the King could help him...