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A Long and Weary Way  by Canafinwe

Chapter XXXVI: Birthday, Precious

Despite its long, steady fall, when the snow ceased at last it reached but halfway up Aragorn's plodding boots. That was something to be thankful for, at least; storms out of the mountains could often be far worse. He trudged onward into midmorning, the sun nothing more than a pallid area of the brooding clouds above. He would have kept on through the day save that as he passed amid a bluff of bare trees, their skeletal branches laden heavy with snow, he saw at last what he had sought since first light. The smooth whiteness of the earth was pitted with tracks: two long hind paws nearly parallel, and two small round forepaws dotted in a row behind. These markings of landing and springing followed the course of a faint depression in the snow, where the run had been tramped down before and only recently covered.

Careful not to disturb the path, Aragorn withdrew to where a fallen log jutted up over an old stump. He brushed it off with the toe of his boot and sat, tugging his pack into his lap and feeling inside until his cold fingers closed on the coil of wire that Celeborn's folk had given him.

He broke it swiftly into half-ell lengths and began to fashion each into a simple snare. First he shaped small a loop of wire through which he fed the tail to form a larger one, testing it for size by trying to push his off-hand through. He wanted a snare that would tug tight against the knuckles of his clenched fist without slipping over onto his wrist. Then he twisted the wire to close the first loop, leaving only enough space for the other side to slide through if tugged. The remaining length would be attached to bracken or fallen branches when he laid his traps. All this Gollum watched with sharp and thoughtful eyes. Aragorn wondered whether it had ever occurred to his captive to try this sort of hunting.

When he had half a dozen snares ready he got up to follow the tracks, reeling Gollum in right next to his boot so that he had no latitude to disrupt the trail. Only a few yards along he found a place where the run passed between two stems of a gorse-bush. In the narrow place he set his trap.

He continued onward in the same fashion until all of the snares were laid, taking care each time to note landmarks that would make easy his return even if the snow started up again. When he was finished he retreated back amid the trees. Now there was nothing more to do but wait, and since he must wait it seemed only sensible to rest.

Aragorn took some water and ate a handful of hazelnuts and two pieces of dried fruit. He offered the cup to Gollum, who shunned it, and then held out the last shell-like mushroom caps, which were snatched resentfully away. Then he found a place at the foot of a twisted oak where the snow was not too deep. He cleared away what he could in an area large enough to accommodate him, and took the second blanket from his pack. He shook it out and folded it into a pad to keep his backside dry and sat upon it with his back to the tree and his makeshift cloak drawn around him. Binding Gollum was a simpler task than he had hoped, for his prisoner did not struggle even when he fastened the bony wrists behind his back instead of before.

With his cargo secure and the wood silent about him, Aragorn decided that the relative safety of midday made this as good a time as any to take a little wary rest. He tucked his hands against his body and inhaled deeply of the cold air, then shifted his spine against the trunk of the oak until he was as comfortable as he was likely to get. At last, cautiously, he let his chin droop to his chest as he fell into a shallow slumber.

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He slept for three hours, longer than he had dared since departing Lothlórien. When he awoke evening was creeping down over the land and in the orange light of sunset Gollum was crouched beside him, bound feet beneath him and bound hands behind, muttering senselessly under his breath. Aragorn looked about, scenting the air and listening for any signs of change in the forest about him. There was nothing.

Despite his best efforts the damp had seeped up through the blanket beneath him, and the backs of his thighs were wet and cold. He gathered up his belongings and loosed his knife in its sheath before unbinding Gollum's limbs so that they could move on.

He found the run again with ease, and though the first two snares were empty the third held a large white hare, the wire tight about its neck and its long feet curled to one side. Little enough of the snow had been disturbed: evidently the animal had perished swiftly and with little struggle. Glad of that, Aragorn bent to gather the carcass and moved to collect his other traps. One had twisted and another had broken; the last was empty. On the whole it was a successful hunt; he had what he wanted, anyhow, and there was no surer measure of success.

Returning to the log where he had sat to make the snares, Aragorn set about dressing his prize. He got the pelt off in one smooth motion and then slit open the belly to dig out the organs. Gollum watched greedily as he sorted the edible parts from the offal. As with the partridge he had caught near Fangorn, Aragorn ate the liver raw out of the body without so much as a pause. He was not so desperate as he had been then, but neither was he at the very height of hardihood. The heart, lungs, kidneys and tongue he offered to Gollum, who slurped them down in great haste and then eyed the rest of the carcass with a covetous gleam. Finally Aragorn lopped off the head and paws and cleaned his knife with a handful of snow before wiping it carefully dry on the edge of his tunic.

Wistfully he thought about building a fire and roasting a hot dinner, but of course he could not do that. He was still within rage for watchers in Dimrill Dale, and Anduin could not be more than two score miles to the east. The risk of a fire was enormous, and neither his hunger nor the cold were great enough to justify it. Besides, he yet had a little of the food he had borne from Lórien and the purpose of this hunt had been to provide something he could feed to Gollum. So he cut off one of the forelegs and tossed it to his captive, then with the wire from the broken snare affixed the carcass to the strap of his pack so that he could carry it with ease.

After that he cut four straight sticks from a nearby sapling and made of them a frame. With needle and thread he stretched the rabbit skin with care and scraped its underside as cleanly as he could manage. He had not the means to tan it, but the raw hide would stiffen in a few days and as the cold deepened with every northward mile he did not doubt that he would be glad of it soon enough. Already the water he carried was frozen almost half through; he tucked one bottle inside of his cote where the heat of his body might keep it fluid and took care that the other was not full enough to risk splitting.

By the time he had finished all this the twilight was thick around him. Above the clouds were dispersing a little, and he walked under sickly, filtered moonlight. The terrain was falling away again; it seemed he was drawing near the river Gladden.

All that night Aragorn pressed on, though Gollum grew ever more restive. He would halt suddenly so that the tether between them was jerked taut, and he would look around with eyes that glittered eerily in the gloom, lips moving soundlessly as though over words he did not dare utter. Now and again he would cringe forward as if to burrow down into the snow, long fingers scrabbling at the crown of his head as he made a horrible keening noise deep within his throat. Aragorn watched this behaviour with mounting apprehension, and he kept ears and eyes alert for any sign that foes were near. He had walked in fear of pursuit over all the long leagues since Dagorlad, and he had grown accustomed to his own wariness. Gollum's inexplicable distress redoubled it now.

At last, in the dead of night while the west wind howled, Aragorn could bear no more. He halted beside a towering boulder, doubtless cast down from the heights long ages ago before the world was changed. In its lee the ground was less densely covered with snow, and he scraped down to the earth with his boot. Then he knelt, ignoring the wet that seeped through his hose, and tugged the blanket he wore around his left flank so that he could lie down with an ear to the frozen ground. He kept a firm grip on Gollum's lead with his left hand, and his right palm he pressed to the dirt beside his head. Scarcely breathing lest the sound should deceive him, he listened.

There was nothing but the creak of the frosted groundwater far beneath him and far away the distant rumble that was the mighty roar of Anduin. He could hear no echo of hobnailed boots upon the patient soil; no thunder of horse-hooves; no noise of creeping scouts. He closed his eyes, listening with his heart as well as his ears, and although he heard no sound of pursuit it seemed to him that the earth wept, remembering ancient sorrows and mud mixed with blood – the slaughter of an army on a bitter night when the Age was new.

Swiftly he rose; so swiftly, indeed, that Gollum leaped in startled fright and began to gabble senselessly.

'Takes us and hurts us, precious. Hurts our pretty handses, gollum. Hurts us and pinches us! Drives us away! Hateful, precious. Hateful folkses. Hateful, hateful, gollum.'

He had said folkses, not manses, but Aragorn did not think much of that. His own pulse was beating more swiftly than it ought, and his head was filled with the old tale of massacre and a captain's folly. That he was not yet down upon the broad flat land where the triumphant army of Arnor had been taken unawares and slain almost to a man made little difference. He was near enough, and he had scarcely thought about it until this moment when the earth had offered her mournful reminder.

He took off at speed, his strides so long and swift that Gollum very nearly had to gallop to keep from being dragged along by the halter around his neck. Aragorn had walked these lands before, but tonight – still haunted by the fear of pursuit and bearing danger with him all the way – he could not bear their passage. He did not wish to tarry even one breath longer than he had to. He would press on with all the haste he could muster, across the lowlands where the hopes of the North had first been laid low and down to the river that had run red with the blood of his kindred. He would make a crossing as best he could and he would leave behind this empty place where the bones of his folk had lain bleached to rot beneath the open sky and Isildur himself had been felled in his attempt to swim the Great River, his corpse borne away to the Sea.

All his life the account of the slaying on the Gladden Fields had haunted him; even as a child it had been presented to him not only as a memorial to a tragedy long-past, but as a stern fable. Isildur, overconfident after his victory in Mordor, had taken the homeward road at last and had taken it without due care. He had moved his army in merry haste, all his folk bent only upon the end of their journey and the triumphant homecoming that awaited them in fair Annúminas. In their joy and their arrogance they had thought little of the hazards of their road. They had set a poor watch and they had slept the sleep of victors, and for many hundreds of miles they had travelled unharried. Yet at last came a night when their unwarranted good fortune had abandoned them at last, and orcs had come unlooked-for, and of the host of thousands only three Men had escaped to bear the tale and the Shards of Narsil to Imladris. Isildur, occupied with private matters, had failed in a general's duty to safeguard his army, in a captain's duty to care for his men, and in a king's duty to protect his people.

As a child Aragorn had not been told what private matters so consumed the eldest son of Elendil. As a young man made newly aware of his heritage he had often wondered. Now, knowing what he did of what had passed between his foster-father and his puissant ancestor on the slopes of Orodruin, he had little doubt. Bearing the Ring that he had cut from the hand of Sauron as he threw him down, Isildur had come north with a mighty host that trusted him to lead them. How dearly that trust had cost them, and those who waited in the North for sons and sires and husbands and brothers who came never more to the shores of Evendim.

The fear of Isildur's folly had followed him since first he had ventured out into the Wild to lead his own men. It had chased him to Rohan and the éored of Thengel King. It had haunted him in Gondor when he rode at the head of Ecthelion's army in his black mail and bright helm. It had gnashed at his heels whenever he held the life of another in his hands; whenever the price for his misjudgement or his indecision or his wandering thoughts might be exacted from someone who looked to him for leadership. Even the thought of the stolen Ring itself had paled in his mind against the sin of distraction.

But now, he wondered; now, when it was possible that the One was not lost at all? Now when he was dragging behind him the one being in all of Arda who might be able to confirm or refute Gandalf's suspicions? Now which of Isildur's transgressions was the greater?

It mattered little, if at all, he decided as he came down from the last of the snow-dusted hills into the frozen marshland that stretched in the crook of the two rivers. Mayhap the two sins were one; he could not say. All that he could do was pass as swiftly as his legs would bear him through this blighted vale of memory.

Gollum was whimpering again, scrabbling and struggling to keep pace. Drawing in a swift breath that burned deep into his lungs Aragorn forced himself to let up his strides a little. Gollum was as much beneath his command this night as any who had followed him for love or loyalty, and despite the hatred that lay between them he had a responsibility – neither to lie down unwary that the creature might be slain, nor to run him to death escaping a pursuit that, if it was coming, was not near enough to trouble the earth they trod. The line slackened a little, but still the captive's progress was halting and whenever Aragorn turned to glance at him he saw the heavy head swaying from side to side like a dancing serpent, and the bony hands wringing at one another as if each hoped to strangle his mate.

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They were still plodding on when dawn broke behind the ragged ribbons of the storm-clouds now retreating to the east. Uncharitably Aragorn hoped the snows would fall heavy on southern Mirkwood, choking the roads and entrapping the Nazgûl in their fortress of Dol Guldur. In a fit of gallows humour he wished them chilblains as well.

His heart was still uneasy with the night's grim musings, but he could not help but smile a little to greet the day. He was wont to forget, amid the worries and toil of his daily life, that each new morning was its own little gift – and that he lived each day to see another morning despite the hard paths he walked was its own little miracle. Justly he ought to have been delighted and astonished to have survived what he had these past months. His right hand drifted down to rub against his leg where the new scar coiled beneath his hose. His encounter with the great spider alone was proof enough of good fortune. And where he had begun the year believing himself haunted by a hopeless hunt, he now strode northward with his quarry beside him and the better part of the journey behind. He was cold and he was weary and he was heartsick, but he had achieved what he had then thought impossible and found the creature. Even if he had long and labouring leagues still ahead, he had cause to feel a moment's quiet pride.

His strides had slowed with the advent of this unlooked-for line of thinking, and Gollum was skittering to and fro at the end of the rope, licking his thumbs and grousing indistinctly to himself. Aragorn supposed that he would have to find shade for them soon, or suffer through a fit of tormented shrieking as the Sun continued in her march across the sky. He did not want to halt, but he would be wise to eat a little and it would be a welcome boon to mark the day if he did not have to cope with a madly obdurate Gollum.

'Wants it, Precious. Wants it, gollum,' his companion was whining. 'Give us that, we wants it!'

'Not now,' said Aragorn wearily, thinking of the rabbit that was swinging from his pack. 'We shall halt soon enough and then you may eat.'

But of course Gollum said nothing in reply: that would be to admit he had been speaking to the Ranger, which both would understand to be a sign of a weakening will. They were entrapped, captor and captive alike, in the bitter war of attrition that would not truly end until the moment they were severed and the door of Thranduil's dungeon slammed closed. However remarkable the feat of finding Gollum might be, Aragorn would not be satisfied now until he was rid of him. That was all he had to wish for today.

Then Gollum spoke again, hissing hoarsely. 'Birthday, precious. Birthday, my love… birthday…'

Aragorn stopped dead in the snow, whipping around so quickly that the blanket slid off of one shoulder and the bronze pin pressed uncomfortably against his collarbone. He knew his eyes were wide with alarm, and bewilderment and fear both clambered up his throat. The strange thought struck him that this must be akin to what Gollum had felt when he had spoken a riddle aloud and so revealed he had unimagined knowledge of the creature's past. A startled question swam to his lips and he clamped them close before he could speak. He had learned long ago never to speak before he thought.

How had the creature known? How could he have known? Celeborn had spoken his right name at their parting, and it was possible – however improbable – that Gollum had recognized it, but the matter of his birth had been the most jealously guarded secret in Eriador for long decades, and even if it was not, it was not as if the date itself would have had much significance. It's only significance, really, was to him and those few who loved him. What matter to the rest of the world that he had been eighty-five yesterday and was eighty-six today? It was only another day on another wearisome journey – the most wearisome journey that he could remember in those eighty-six years, certainly, but a journey nowhere altered by the passing of the anniversary of his birth. What did it matter to anyone but him? Why should Gollum care? And how had Gollum known? Who had told him, and why?

Yet Gollum did not even seem to see him, or to notice that they had stopped. He was clawing at his temple with brittle fingers, and he was weeping as he shrieked, 'It's my birthday, my love, and I wants it!'

Aragorn let free the breath that had been burning unawares in his lungs. A coincidence, he thought. A strange and troubling coincidence, but a coincidence nonetheless. He closed his eyes and drew his right hand across his jaw, his cold palm grounding him. He pressed his thumb into the corner of each eye and felt the distraught tension ebbing. If what the creature said was true, it was surely the strangest convergence of circumstances he had come across in all his travels, but at least it was not some sign that Gollum knew truths he had no place knowing.

He wondered distantly why the creature was referring to himself all at once as 'I', when all through these weary weeks his mumblings had always been plural. He decided he did not care. He had long since given up hope of getting anything of use out of that foul mouth; the scars were quite enough. He twitched the rope and clicked his tongue impatiently.

'Come,' he said sternly. 'Have done with your complaints: we will both eat when I have found somewhere suitable to rest.'

He began to walk and Gollum followed like a sleepwalker, still scraping ragged nails against the side of his head, where he had now begun to draw thin rivulets of blood. 'Birthday,' he sobs. 'Wants it, wants it, it's our birthday, Precious. Gone, gone, gone, gollum. All gone…'

'Well, it's my birthday too,' Aragorn muttered to himself in the Bree-land accent that Strider so often affected; 'and I wants a spot of peace and quiet.'

Gollum was too lost in his own imagined woes to hear, and their passage was punctuated by his incoherent ramblings and the occasional tormented shriek.

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As he walked Aragorn searched his heart, trying to convince himself that his fear had been nothing more than the laughable paranoia of a man who had been hunted too long and now saw persecutors in every shadow. He did not succeed. It had never sat well with him that Gollum had apparently escaped the tortures of the Enemy alive. He had wondered in the early days whether the servants of Sauron might not have set him loose on some evil errand. For a moment he had wondered, however irrationally, whether seeking him might have been that errand. He did not think it was: if the Dark Lord truly suspected that he lived – and it would have had to be more than a suspicion if he had known the day of his birth – he would have sent forth more dreadful servants by far. Yet why, then, had Gollum been freed, and what mischief might he have been ordered to do?

Whatever it was, he could not do it while he was bound to Aragorn's wrist, and he would be unable to accomplish it from inside one of Thranduil's cells in the impenetrable prison beneath his halls.

At least Thranduil had assured them, many years ago when he and Gandalf had travelled to Mirkwood to make arrangements against the day they found their quarry, that his cells were impenetrable. Aragorn had had his doubts, chiefly springing from the jailbreak that Bilbo and his companions had effected on their way to Erebor. Gandalf's argument that the circumstances had been quite extraordinary had not entirely convinced him, nor had Thranduil's assurance that the keeping of the keys had long since been passed to a more responsible seneschal. In the end he had insisted on testing the surety of the dungeons himself, and only then was he satisfied that they had chosen a safe place to bear their prisoner if ever they found him. How Bilbo had laughed at his account of his unsuccessful attempts to extricate himself!

The Sun was high now, but Gollum seemed oblivious to its passage. His tears were frozen on his cheeks and his nose was running copiously, yet still he ranted softly about a birthday and my love and wants it.

Aragorn had not thought the word love would have even appeared in Gollum's vocabulary, and he wondered to whom it might refer. Certainly it was spoken without any tenderness, in a seductive singsong way that reminded him more than anything of a dishonest horse-trader trying to play upon a buyer's sympathy. He was growing more and more convinced that Gollum was walking in some dark delusion; perhaps a shadow of his torments in Mordor, perhaps some relic of his unknown past. His heart was uneasy and he longed to stop his ears.

At last he spied a copse that looked a likely place to stop, and he made for it with great haste. He sawed off another leg from the rabbit, which was frozen now, and held it out to Gollum in the hope that the sight of food might tear him from his reverie. Gollum only stared down at the meat, shaking his head and mumbling incoherently. At last with his long fingers he tore off a brittle piece and sucked at it noisily. The scratches at his temple stood out starkly red against his wizened grey skin. Aragorn, whose own head was aching with the cold and the morning's unrelenting cacophony, took a long draught of water still floating with shards of ice and forced himself to swallow the last of the Lórien-fruit against the grumbling of an uneasy stomach. Misery, it seemed, would pile upon misery.

He buried his chilled hands beneath his arms again, and wriggled his toes in his boots. The day was growing colder and the wind was in the north now. The crossing of Gladden lay ahead, and he did not know how he would manage it. His eyes were smarting in the sunlight and he closed them, but he did not sleep.    





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