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The Ranger and the Hobbit  by Cairistiona

Thanks and author's note:

Undying thanks to Inzilbeth for her assistance throughout this tale, to Estelcontar for her willingness to be a guinea-pig reader, and to Shirebound, who assisted with the first chapter and assured me that my hobbit was hobbity enough.

This story takes place a few years after the events in my story "At Hope's Edge".  Events from that story are mentioned in this, but it's not entirely necessary you read that one first.   

The "AU-ishness" of this story comes from several things: first, it is very unlikely that any hobbit except Bilbo knew that the Dúnedain were descendants of Númenor prior to Gandalf explaining it to Frodo. So that’s one tally in the AU column. Another is the unlikelihood of a hobbit (again, except Bilbo) ever traveling as far about as I have Ferdinand Took going. So that’s another tally in the AU column. Thirdly, it’s unlikely Aragorn had much in the way of this sort of close encounter with a hobbit, although he surely had passing acquaintance with the ones in Bree. Finally, not being an expert in Hobbit genealogy, a note regarding Ferdinand Took’s name: he is a cousin of Bilbo Baggins, and a complete creation of my own.  I probably shouldn’t even attempt to shoehorn Ferdinand into the family tree, but looking it over, if I were to place him, he would likely be one of the "many descendents" of Isembold.

Those aside, I have attempted to work those deviations from canon into the story in such a way that it falls under the "It might have been possible..." rather than a pure flight of fancy. The Took line had some extraordinary people in it–they were the descendants of the great Bullroarer, after all–and I like the idea of there being another valiant and brave Took in Middle-earth.

The world could use a bit more Tookishness in it, I think.

Now, on to the more interesting stuff...

The Ranger and the Hobbit

 

--o0o0o--

Chapter One - A Strange Encounter

June, TA 3003

The first sign of waking caressed his nose with the smell of sun-warmed loam. Then followed an awareness of something hard and rough under his cheek. It could not be a blanket, but he couldn’t seem to work out what it was, exactly. While he was puzzling this, he heard something, a rushing noise that he finally determined was the soft roar of the never-ending wind that scythed through the wild open lands east of Bree. And above that sound was...

Whistling.

He frowned. Birds?

No, it was a song. Some song he thought he knew, a song from the Shire, perhaps. Something about eating turkey or duck or suckling pig. Something roasted, at any rate. The words sluggishly came to him...

Fancy it roasted, fancy it toasted, fancy it served on a platter...

"Drink a good ale, sing a brave tale, a song of the heroes that mattered," Aragorn mumbled. He blinked and opened one eye. Saw a very close glimpse of an ant climbing a grass stem. It stopped and looked at him. Or at least seemed to.

I must be delirious.

But he supposed he wasn’t, and the thought brought no comfort. Feeling was trickling back, and with it hazy fragments of memory, and with both the realization that he could do with a bit more oblivion.

The song churned in his mind, the same feverish bit over and over. Fancy it roasted... fancy it toasted... fancy it roasted...

He groaned. He could not imagine eating anything at the moment. Or drinking ale, good or otherwise. And he realised with a growing sense of dread that no one would ever sing of this latest misfortune of his, unless it be as a cautionary tale to frighten young hobbits into having the good sense never to leave their holes. Though his brain had yet to truly sort out the details, he could not ignore the vague but persistent notion that this fix was entirely due to some failing of his own.

He turned his head slightly, straining to place himself in time and memory. He started with the only thing he knew for certain: he lay sprawled on his side, nearly face down in the scrubby weeds and grasses somewhere in the middle of the wilds between Bree and Weathertop.

Why here? Why between Bree and...

Patrolling. He had been patrolling.

He swallowed. What else? Fancy it roasted... fancy it toasted...

He growled and clenched his fists, driving away the distracting drone of those random words.

...it roasted... toasted...

He pushed himself onto his back and gasped. Pain... his side...

He was wounded...

Yes, that was it! Despite the pain, he was exultant. He was wounded, yes. Wounded by a bandit who had fancied his sword.

Aragorn breathed a laugh as sweet memory returned. Oh, yes. He had given the man his sword. In the belly. Up to the hilt. He smiled at the memory, but then he coughed and the pain in his side drove away any satisfaction he felt over vanquishing said villain. Far better had he dispatched the man before the man had stabbed him in the side with a dagger. Stabbed him... a day ago? Two? He could remember shredding his tunic into a makeshift bandage, and then after that nothing but an endless struggle of walking and falling and losing himself only to waken once more and struggle to his feet, keeping on until somehow he might find safety. Keeping on until strength finally left him, and he fell one last time to the ground here in this place, awakening to an eye-to-eye encounter with an ant and...

Whistling.

He thought a moment, wondering if he should stay hidden or try to summon the mysterious whistler. Surely no one who would whistle so merry a tune could be a villain. Aragorn blinked a few more times and then struggled to sit up. The scrubby vegetation still rose too high for him to see anything, so painfully, slowly, he struggled to his knees. The world broke out in black spots. After a long moment kneeling with head hanging, the spots faded. He drew one knee and then the other under him and pushed to his feet. He staggered in a circle, his head swimming as he looked all around and finally spied the music maker, whose crown of curly light brown hair bobbed along barely visible above the grasses. It was a...

Surely not...

He squinted and tried to focus eyes that did not seem inclined to work the way they should. Yes, it was a hobbit. In the wilds, not only well beyond the safety of the Shire but well off the Great East Road and heading straight toward him.

"Surely this cannot be," he muttered and rubbed his eyes, but it did indeed appear that a Shireling was walking briskly toward him, stumping along the faint game path, his walking stick beating time to the song he whistled.

"Hail..." Aragorn tried to call but his voice was so weak the wind snatched the word away. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Hail, Master Hobbit!"

The hobbit, who looked neither young nor old, stopped abruptly and stared. "Mercy upon me, what has sprung out from a hole in the ground but a man, and a very raggedy and patchedy man at that!"

Aragorn supposed he did look a sight, bloodied in his makeshift bandage, shirtless under his tattered leather coat, his pack askew on his back and untidily festooned with his dark green cloak. In far too much pain to be bothered with rolling the cloak up properly, he had merely stuffed it through the straps with a prayer that it stayed put. "My apologies for my appearance," he said with what he hoped was a disarming smile but feared was more likely a death’s head rictus of pain. "It... it has not been the best of days for me."

The hobbit suddenly started. "You’re injured!"

"So it... would seem," Aragorn gasped and felt his knees buckle.

The hobbit dropped his stick and hurried to his side. "My dear man, let me help you." He caught Aragorn around the waist, easing him gently down, managing somehow despite his small size to keep Aragorn from helplessly thudding to the ground to do Valar only knew what additional damage to himself. No easy task, that, Aragorn thought wryly, since even kneeling, he overtopped the hobbit by a head if not a bit more. As the hobbit helped pull the pack from Aragorn’s shoulders, Aragorn wanted to thank him, but his thoughts were getting increasingly fuzzy, and he could not quite get his tongue around the words. So he merely gave the hobbit’s arm a clumsy pat. Based on the smile he received in return, the message got through.

The hobbit carefully pulled open Aragorn’s coat and gentled his arms from the sleeves. Aragorn looked down and noted with a strange detachment that the crimson stain marring the bandages had grown alarmingly. A coppery taste filled his mouth and a faint buzzing in his ears was growing loud enough to drown out the wind. "I-I think... I am going to faint...."

And he did.

--o0o0o--

He woke up to stars over his head and the cheerful crackle of a fire beside him and a strange constricting tightness around his chest. His questing hand encountered cloth. He looked down and saw what looked like strips of his spare shirt wrapped around and around his ribs far more neatly than his own bandage had been. How the small hobbit had managed to contrive such a thing so skillfully on a man so much bigger than he astonished him a bit, but then he had heard many times from Gandalf that there was quite more to hobbits than met the eye. Maybe hobbits were uncommonly strong for their size.

He pressed down lightly on the site of the wound. He might have struck himself with a blazing poker, so fierce did the pain bite. He grimaced and abandoned his explorations, turning his face instead toward the fire’s warmth. The hobbit sat near it, poking at something sizzling in an iron spider. He spied Aragorn’s small movements and smiled. "Ah, awake at last, I see!" He gave the food he was cooking one last poke and then brushed his hands on his pants and stood. He gave Aragorn a small bow. "Ferdinand Took, at your service."

"Call me Strider, and I am at yours," Aragorn replied, bowing as best as he could, considering he was flat on his back and in no way possessing the strength to rise. Just raising his head made the world tilt and spin like a child’s top. He swallowed hard, digging his fingers into the soil as if he could force Arda to be still. "I... I am... in your debt."

"Bah, ‘twas only what any decent citizen would do. You have a grave wound." Bright blue eyes surveyed him quizzically.

"A bandit," Aragorn supplied. He wished his voice was stronger. "He will no longer trouble travelers in these parts."

"Good, good." The hobbit suddenly bent back down and poked his food again. The wind shifted slightly, and Aragorn smelled a tantalizing combination of wood smoke laced with sausage and onions and potatoes. His mouth watered and he swallowed, wondering if the hobbit intended to share the bounty and how he could repay him if he did. Ferdinand Took saw his hungry look and laughed. "Don’t worry, there’s plenty for us both. I’m glad you woke up by yourself. I wasn’t sure I would be able to wake you, you were sleeping so soundly."

Aragorn grunted and hissed as he pulled himself upright, trying to ignore the fact that the world promptly started drifting slowly back and forth like a worn-out clock pendulum. Spying a handy boulder nearby, he hitched himself around so he could lean against it. He shut his eyes and when he opened them again, the ground was steady and the stabbing echoes of the bandit’s blade had mercifully faded to a more manageable dull throb. He tried to take shallow breaths, supporting his ribs with one hand as he wiped the sweat that had popped out on his brow with the back of the other. "That was not so pleasant," he murmured.

"You have a cracked rib or two. That must have been a fairly hefty blade you got stuck with."

"It was a dagger.  Harad-make."

"Oh ho! Such blades those are! I saw one once," he explained at Aragorn’s raised eyebrows. "Owned by a man sitting at the table across from me at the Prancing Pony. Where he got it from, I’ve no idea. Likely traded for it somewhere. He was utterly drunk, a real menace, waving it about like that. Nearly stabbed his companion! I was glad when his companion finally told him to put it away before he put out someone’s eye. Wickedly sharp, it was, and with a great heavy knob on the pommel. Nasty thing. That explains your bruises and the broken rib. You’re lucky to still have your lung." He watched Aragorn for a moment, then satisfied that he wasn’t about to topple over, returned his attention to his skillet.

Aragorn did not argue nor even reply, but instead quietly conducted his own study of the little hobbit. He had not met many hobbits, for the simple fact that they preferred to stay in their holes and smials and gardens and inns, not often venturing out into the broader world beyond their borders. And his own duty kept him in the shadows. Gandalf had charged him and his Rangers with guarding the Shire, secretly, and so he kept his distance, even when he was in Bree. He knew his wary ways made him an object of suspicion and fear, but so much the better; sometimes it helped to have a nefarious reputation. You don’t want to mess with them Rangers, no sir, he had overheard one of the swampers at the Prancing Pony whisper once to one of the customers. Don’t mess with them Rangers. They’ll carve you up and eat you in the dark of night and leave your bones to rot.

Well and good, but this time, he had been the one carved up, and it galled his pride as much as it pained his body to know he had been such easy prey. His first days back to help his men guard the Shire, after traveling long leagues in a fruitless beginning to his search for Gollum, had not started out very auspiciously.

Not wanting to linger overmuch on thoughts of his own failings, he turned his attention back to the hobbit as he busied himself with his cooking. The only hobbit he remembered ever seeing up close, besides the ones he encountered in Bree, was Bilbo Baggins, in Rivendell way back when he was a ten year old peering through the shrubbery because Elrond had insisted he stay hidden while so many strangers were about. So it was both a marvel and a mystery to meet one here in the Wilds. This one was dressed much as Bilbo had been:  brown woolen jacket, white shirt, blue vest. Bare, furry feet sticking out from tweedy gray trousers. Curly hair that was not quite blonde, not quite brown. Bright blue eyes that glanced at him occasionally with an uncomplicated mix of friendliness and concern.

"Are you feeling all right, sir? I know you must not feel much like talking, but you still look a bit peaked, to my mind. You should probably lay back down."

"I am well." At the hobbit’s raised eyebrow, Aragorn amended with a faint smile, "Well enough, that is, considering the circumstances. I meant only that I do not need to lie down, not yet." Aragorn changed the subject from the tiresome topic of his own well-being. "What brings a Shireling so far from home, and so far off the road?"

"Tookishness, nothing more," Ferdinand answered merrily, as if that explained things.

"Tookishness?"

"Yes, yes, Tookishness. The Tooks have always had a sense of adventure and I daresay the yen to wander did not pass me by. You may have heard of my cousin, Bilbo Baggins. His Tookishness took him on all kinds of adventures."

"Yes, I have heard of him," Aragorn said.

"Well then." He handed Aragorn a plate heaped high with golden brown sausages and translucent white onions and steaming potatoes with crispy browned edges. Had the hobbit hauled potatoes all the way out into the wilds, Aragorn wondered, then decided he likely had. A hobbit daring to venture out near the Weather Hills was apt to do just about anything. And last Aragorn looked, potato farmers were in short supply out this way.

Ferdinand produced a fork from some hidden pocket inside his jacket, then, seeing that lifting his left arm to hold the plate pained Aragorn, helped him situate the plate on his lap. "There. Now you need only lift the fork, and it would be dire indeed if you had not the strength to lift a fork! Eat up, lad, for you lost a lot of blood and the only cure for that is good food and drink and rest, and lots of all three."

Aragorn smiled his thanks and with a heartfelt glance to the West and a thankful prayer to the Valar for sending him such a sturdy and caring little rescuer, he carefully blew on a bit of potato and then placed it in his mouth. "Good," he said, meaning it with all his heart. He had had to force down his share of foul-tasting, ill-cooked food, mostly prepared by his own hands, but this was a treat.

"Of course it’s good, young man," Ferdinand fussed at him. "I cooked it, didn’t I?"

Amused at being called young by a hobbit who appeared half his age, Aragorn smiled. "How old are you, Master Took?"

"I turned fifty-three this past spring. And you?"

Aragorn forked a large bite of sausage into his mouth. "Older than you," he said as he chewed. He had turned seventy-one the past March, and he did not have any desire to explain the reason why his looks contrasted so oddly with his long years. The hobbit may or may not know of the long life of Númenóreans, but if not, Aragorn was too tired to dredge up a history lesson.

"You have the looks of one half whatever age you must be." There was a question behind the statement.

"I get plenty of sleep."

"Sleep! Bah! That has nothing to do with it," Ferdinand Took snorted. "You are Númenórean, one of the Dúnedain–and do not look so surprised I know that word. I know quite a bit of Elvish, you know–or I will eat my hat."

Ah, so this Took was educated. Somehow that did not surprise Aragorn. "Save your hat for your head, Master Took, for you are correct."

"And you and your Rangers have been guarding our lands."

Aragorn went still. "How do you know that?"

"Tookishness."

Aragorn waited, and Ferdinand finally let out a laugh. "Don’t glower so. Most hobbits go about completely ignorant of the presence of you and your companions. But most hobbits don’t go about wandering all over like I do. I watch and listen and make my own conclusions. Much like you do, I would imagine."

"And your conclusion is that the Rangers are guarding the Shire."

"Right you are. And right I am, if your reaction is any indication. A reaction that I would also imagine you would not have let be seen if you were feeling a bit more yourself."

Aragorn nodded a bit ruefully. "I confess I am not at my best."

"Why do you watch over our land so closely? It seems of late that I can’t take a step off the road without tripping over a Dúnadan."

Because if we do not, Sauron or his minions will come blasting through here to get his ring and then go on to destroy the entire world. But Aragorn could hardly say that, having been sworn to secrecy by Gandalf, so he merely gave Ferdinand an apologetic smile. "I fear I cannot say, only that we are following the wishes of someone who has good reason to be concerned."

"Now who might that be? Not many of the Big Folk take much notice of the goings on in the Shire."

"A friend," Aragorn said. Not liking the direction of the conversation, and lacking the energy to continue acting the enigmatic – Gandalf was far more skilled at that than he – Aragorn put his half-eaten meal aside and let his eyelids droop. It hardly took much playacting, for he did feel desperately weary. "I must apologize, Master Ferdinand, but a longing for sleep is about to gain the upper hand."

Ferdinand was instantly all concern and solicitude, and Aragorn felt slightly guilty at letting the hobbit think he was feeling worse than he really was. Still, as Ferdinand helped lower him to the ground and spread Aragorn’s cloak across him, he had to admit that it felt very good to lay down.

"There, there, my boy," Ferdinand said as he tucked the cloak up under his chin. "You sleep now, and how’s this for turnabout – the hobbit will guard the Dúnadan!" He laughed merrily, and Aragorn drifted to sleep on the joyful sound.

 





        

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