Note: The lifeguard in me wants to remind everyone that you should never test ice by yourself. Always, always call the park ranger. Aragorn gets a pass on this because there is no park and he is the Ranger. Do not. Try this. At Home.

Chapter XXXVII: Who Crosses the Ice

When the afternoon was growing long Aragorn rousted Gollum and set out again. He had not had much rest himself, for the cold was deepening and sitting still upon the frozen ground only worsened his discomfort. He had stood for a while with his back to a tree. He had paced the two strides that the rope allowed him while Gollum skulked amid bare brambles until he lost count of the passes. He had sorted through the contents of his pack and he had tightened the threads that stretched the rabbit-pelt over its simple frame. He had run over the road ahead in his mind again and again despite the weary ache it put in his bones. He had even wrenched off each boot in turn so that he might stuff the toes with a thin layer of partridge-down to guard against frostbite. And always, inexorably, he had found his thoughts overtaken by the haunting chords of Ohtar's Lament, the roll of the dead who had fallen in the slaughter of the Gladden Fields.

It was a relief to walk again, though out of the shelter of the trees the wind was bitter and the tips of his ears grew numb despite the fold of the blanket drawn up to shield them. He cut a little westward, and that was better. In any case he would find the crossing easier upriver from the broadening of Gladden as it rolled into Anduin. The small joints of his hands were aching, and he found himself constantly flexing his fingers.

Gollum was quieter now, though the haunted look in his eyes did not fade. Nor was he especially cooperative as they walked. He kept halting unexpectedly so that the rope grew tight and the loop about Aragorn's wrist pulled painfully. Each time the orc-cord squeaked and the bones of his arm protested, but still he pressed on.

The clouds were thin this night, and the pale glow of the moon made it possible for him to move with some surety. It was wearisome work, trudging through the snow with the constant threat of slipping over patches of hidden ice where standing water had frozen. Once Aragorn heard the far-off call of an owl. He listened in vain for any reply, and then spent the better part of an hour trying to decide whether its mate was merely beyond his hearing or whether there were watchers about. In the end, of course, it made very little difference. If watchers there were they would find him, for he could not keep his pace and obscure his very obvious tracks at once, and if he moved more slowly he would only be easier to overtake. Sternly commanding himself to cease his fretting, he focused instead upon trying to induce Gollum to move more quickly.

This was a fruitless exercise. If he quickened his own strides, he only felt the yank of the rope more often and more painfully. He had learned before now that Gollum would not respond to any command of his voice. He might have cut a switch from a hedge and used it to drive him, but in addition to being cruel and unnecessary such an action would have forced him to keep a hand in the biting air. As it was, even tucked up against his ribs with the Lórien-blanket wrapped snug about him his fingers smarted with the cold. He thought again of mittens, wistful and cross at once.

The dark of the night had passed, but dawn was only a pale greyness over his right shoulder when the land dipped again and the Ranger found himself picking his way amid canted yew trees and huddles of blackberry bushes (bare and unhospitable, worse luck) that cluttered the riverbank. Gollum managed to get himself on the opposite side of one of the leaning trunks, and while Aragorn stood impatiently waiting for him to come back and around the creature tried to move forward again. He stopped, scowled, and then seized the knot of his halter with both hands and tugged at rope as if by doing so he could yank his jailor around to his side of the tree. Aragorn watched him for a moment, not quite crediting the creature's stupidity. When he dug his bare bony heels against a root and thrust his whole weight upon the tether it finally shifted, and Aragorn's arm was yanked painfully away from his body. His wrist protested and he lost his patience.

'Enough of that!' he snapped, seizing a fistful of rope with his right hand and yanked with all of the strength in his sword-arm.

Gollum overbalanced and flew forward into the snow, squealing and clapping a hand to the back of his neck. Aragorn twitched the line again and he scurried around the tree, making senseless noises of angry indignation in the back of his throat as he crouched by the Ranger's boot. Irritation and incredulity rose hot in Aragorn's breast, and he felt a sudden senseless urge to laugh. Malice and subversion and hatred he had come to expect, but this was nothing but foolish belligerence. It was the sort of behaviour one might expect from an ill-behaved hound or a small and petulant child; an inarticulate expression of frustration that accomplished nothing and presented no more than the slightest inconvenience to the one in authority.

'You might have expected that such behaviour would avail you nothing,' Aragorn said levelly, studying the craven form beside him. Gollum had given up rubbing at his neck and was once again mewling over his thumbs, the other long fingers writhing almost of their own accord. He supposed his captive's hands were every bit as chilled and painful as his own – quite likely more so, for he had been dipping them in and out of the snow all night. Then he reminded himself of the cast-away cloak and decided that he did not care.

'You will go as I go, or I shall bind you again,' he declared. 'We shall soon be crossing over Gladden and I expect no resistance from you. Certainly you shall never annoy me into setting you free, and so it is best not to try.'

He expected some incoherent rant about hateful manses, but Gollum merely stared up at him with blank glittering eyes until he cast his gaze back on the path he had chosen and began to walk again.

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At first Aragorn thought that he had mistaken his position, for though the undergrowth ended the snow went on, stretching out in a broad open plain in the half-light of dawn. Then he understood his mistake. Never before had he walked these lands at this time of year, and so he had not realized that Gladden might freeze over.

Having anticipated a bitterly cold fording at best and a difficult swim at worst, he was scarcely able to contain his joy at this revelation. As the Sun climbed and the lands grew brighter he looked downriver; far away he could see the dark places where the ice had broken, but where he stood it was still a level mass beneath the cover of all-but-unbroken snow. A little good fortune at last, he thought, restraining the desire to say it aloud. Gollum had halted some distance away, and the lead between them was tight. Aragorn looked back at his captive.

'Not here,' he said, nodding to the west. 'We will give ourselves another mile at least; we are too near the breaking-place.'

If Gollum understood what he intended he gave no sign. With his back to the dawn and his face to the distant mountains now hidden by the haze, Aragorn set out along the river.

Ice over flowing water was an uncertain thing, and he did not wish to cross too near to where the river widened enough that even its surface was not frozen. Even a mile upstream he would have to take precautions, and to that end he watched the trees as he walked. He had not gone far when he found what he wanted: a broken branch longer than he was high and thick as three fingers, still dangling from its knot on the tree. He snapped the last tenuous ties with a neat jerk, and stripped off the largest of the auxiliary boughs before continuing on his way. As he walked he used his knife to strip the smaller twigs and burs from a one-ranga section at the centre of the branch. Gollum, who had cringe and cowered when he had first taken the stick, now watched him in uncomprehending wariness.

In the end he went somewhat farther than a mile, hoping to see tracks in the snow over the river that might have indicated where deer had crossed safely. No such signs were forthcoming, unfortunately, but in the end he found a likely-looking place and stopped to make his final preparations.

From his pack he took the ragged remains of his old shirt, and he tore strips with which to wrap his wrists and palms. The cover of snow was worrisome, not only because it would make what he had to do exceedingly unpleasant but because snow had insulating properties that might weaken ice. Yet he could walk to Gladden's very source before he might find a place that was not snowed-over, and he preferred to take his chances on the ice than to go back to where the river had broken through and try to swim in the frigid waters.

He took off the blanket pinned about his shoulders and rolled it. However he tried he could not manage to affix it firmly to his pack, and so in the end he shook it out again, folded it twice along its length, and slipped it over one shoulder-strap. He considered whether he ought to remove his boots as a precautionary measure, but then decided against it. If all went well he would be in better straights on the far bank if he had not tried to propel himself barefoot over two hundred yards of fearsomely cold terrain. If all did not go well, the one thing he could not risk to lose of all his scant possessions was his boots.

At last Aragorn sat back on his heels and considered the question of what to do with Gollum. A cooperative companion of comparable size could have been simply told what to do. Indeed, had he been travelling with someone like Bilbo he might even have sent the smaller traveller across the ice first – not to test it, but because it was far more likely to break under his weight than that of a hobbit and if it did then at least one of them would be safe and dry on the opposite bank. Failing that, even a child would have understood the instruction to lie still upon his back while he bore him or her. But he did not trust Gollum to be so accommodating, and he was certainly not fool enough to let loose the halter and send him on ahead to wait. He reached into his pack again and drew out one of his lengths of wool, taking care to draw the cord and fasten the ornate silver buckles with care. He beckoned to Gollum.

'You will ride on my back as you did over Limlight,' he said. 'You will lie there unmoving and you will not place so much as a toe on the ice. You will not speak; you will not struggle. If you do not obey me then there is every chance that the two of us shall have a bitter ducking indeed.'

Gollum's eyes shifted, and he tugged almost pensively at the cord about his neck. Then he took three long, groping steps, still crouched low, and offered his wrists to the Ranger with his fists lightly closed.

This show of obedience was peculiar but not entirely unexpected. The creature had been quite the wanderer himself, and Aragorn did not doubt that he had at one time or another experienced something of the risks of late-winter ice. Likely while fishing, he thought. He bound Gollum's wrists quickly, though his cold fingers were not as nimble as their wont. Then, once again glad of and a little surprised by the lack of a struggle, he put his head through the loop of his prisoner's arms. Something deep in his heart protested this, and at the last moment he slipped his own left arm up as well. This way Gollum's hands were pulled across his chest from shoulder to armpit: if he changed his mind about sensible placidity at least he could not attempt to strangle his bearer.

Finally Aragorn moved down to the edge of the ice. This he did on his knees, carrying his pack in one hand and extending the staff with the other while Gollum, upright against his spine, shuffled awkwardly behind. Aragorn pressed the branch into the snow until he felt the split tip slide slickly. He adjusted the angle and applied more pressure. One of the broken splinters of wood caught in the ice and he pushed against the staff with all of his strength. There was a low creak off resistance, but it died swiftly away. Shifting the staff farther out, Aragorn tried again with the same result. The third time, he used the full length both of the branch and of his arm, and again the ice held.

'Fortune may be with me after all,' he murmured, not caring if his prisoner heard him. He pushed his pack out into the snow, using the branch to shove it some distance ahead. Then, steeling himself against the thought of the damp to come, he lay down on his belly and slithered down the last of the shore-slope and onto the ice.

With his left boot he propelled himself cautiously forward. Both hands now gripped the staff, each near one side of the space he had cleared. The remaining twigs elsewhere along its length broke the snow somewhat. Enough, at least, that he was able to exert a steady pressure along the length of his pole. Gollum shifted, his weight settling over Aragorn's spine. His arms were trapped between the Ranger's body and the ice, but that could not be helped.

'Your head,' Aragorn said. When there was no corresponding motion he pushed a little further onto the ice. 'Lay down your head and be still.'

The bony mass of the creature's skull dropped down between his shoulder blades, driving out a puff of air that billowed thickly before his eyes. Aragorn brought his right knee up, rotating his hip outward so that the inner side of his leg was flat against the frozen river. Digging his instep into the snow he began to push, sliding forward again. He let his elbows join in the labour, but kept his hands firmly on the staff and the staff firmly on the ice, spreading the weight of his body over the largest area he could. His shoulders too he kept down, though this hampered his arms somewhat.

In this way he slithered forward with care. The snow billowed up around the pole and heaped over his hands and into the sleeves of his cote. He reached the place where his pack lay and manoeuvred it to provide something of a plough before his face as he pushed it along in front of him, but it made little difference to his mounting discomfort. Already his fingers were ablaze with the cold, and where his ribs and stomach and thighs touched the surface below him the snow began to melt. Not twenty yards into his creeping journey his whole front was damp.

He kept his head as low as he could so as not to create a pressure-spot on the ice under his breastbone, but he could not help glancing up at the broad sea of white before him. It was better, he reminded himself as he gained another ell, than having to swim Gladden as he had Anduin, or even to ford it as he had Limlight. He thought of the ropes over Celebrant with jealous nostalgia, and then almost resentfully of the stone bridge at the Crossing of Poros that Gandalf had taken on his road to Minas Tirith. Still, he thought again, at least he did not have to swim.

Gollum's foot shifted, and Aragorn bit back an angry shout until he could discern whether the wretch meant anything by it. Some motion was inevitable; he could not expect a living creature to behave as if it were carven of stone. When the leg settled once more atop his own he was glad that he had not scolded. It could be no more comfortable for his prisoner than it was for him, this close contact with one so hated. He was already growing entirely too aware of the miasma that still engulfed his charge, so long muted by the cold and their mutual disinclination to get any nearer to one another than strictly necessary. He tried breathing through his mouth instead, but the chill rising off the ice made his teeth ache sharply and he closed his lips again.

A cautious sidelong glance told him that he was now perhaps fifty yards from the southern shore, but the distance before him seemed no less than before. He tightened his jaw and girded his resolve before bending his left knee for another shove. He would not look back again.

Onward he pushed, creeping like some strange lizard on his belly. It required a tremendous effort to move his body, growing colder and stiffer by the minute, in such an unnatural way. His breath came heavily and his heart hammered against his ribs. His hips were aching and his neck was tight. Despite the cloth he had wrapped about his palms his hands were aflame with raw nerves and the tips of his fingers felt bloated and strange. The tops of his boots were filling with snow that began to melt against his calves and soak into the wool of his hose. His back, at least where Gollum's stinking body did not shield it, was a mass of gooseflesh in the sharp winter air. Likewise his ears and his thighs and the crown of his head. Only his face, downturned and heated by his heavy exhalations, was not suffering in the cold.

Yet he was drawing near to midriver now, and beneath him the ice was still firm. He quickened his pace a little, still driving his pack ahead of him and still pressing with all his strength against the staff. The snow amassing before his pack broke over the top of it at last, showering down onto his hair and his shoulders. He snorted as some of it tumbled onto his brow. He pushed onward again.

Then it happened. There was a noise like the groan of the very earth itself, and a sharp report rang out in the frozen air. Aragorn's heart seemed to stop altogether, and his whole body tensed against its long bed of ice. His grip upon the staff tightened so that his fingernails dug into the heels of his hands. Gollum shifted as the broad muscles beneath him grew taut and the Ranger ceased all motion. He dared not even breathe, lest he should quicken his downfall. Frantic he lay there, waiting with grim dread for the ice to give way beneath him.

It did not.

When at last the tidal air began to rattle deep within his chest and he was forced to haul in a desperate mass of cold air, he began to realize that he was not about to be scuttled. It took another minute for his pulse to level off again, and several more before he dared to move his right foot. Yet move it he did, pushing warily forward. Next he shifted his left, pressing firmly on the staff. Then he was moving again.

He went more slowly now, easing his weight forward a little at a time. The front of his cote was by this time heavy with the damp and his teeth were chattering, but he was loath to move any faster. His knife in its sheath had begun to slide forward on his belt and the hilt was now pressing uncomfortably into his flank, but he dared not reach down to adjust it. Both hands were needed on his pole, to spread the strain he was putting on the ice. He fancied he could feel the waters of Gladden beneath his belly, rushing in their deep bed under the frozen cap to join Anduin in the place where Isildur had fallen. In his mind he could see those black waters, cold as the Void and swift as the winds, wearing away at the underside of the ice; weakening it little by little with the same slow inexorable force that could grind away mountains.

On his back, Gollum was blessedly still.

Aragorn's head was aching now, and the muscles of his arms and shoulders were beginning to cramp and twitch. He was yet more than a hundred yards from the far shore, his long legs far less efficient against the ice than they would have been over it. He forced himself to make another awkward shoving stroke, and then another. After all, he could not simply lie here waiting for spring.

When the ice moaned again he scarcely paused. The back of his neck was prickling anxiously now and he felt certain that he had to be about his business swiftly. Then he felt a tremor against his chilled pelvis. His breath caught in his throat and he went as still as a corpse.

There was another noise, like the far-off roar of a cracking kiln, and now there could be no mistaking the feeling of the ice shifting beneath his legs. His heart hammered in his throat and he writhed forward, dragging his feet after him as a fissure opened up beneath them. He could hear the rush of water below in the moment between one sharp crack and the next. There was an eerie slipping sensation along his left leg, travelling up towards his abdomen. It was the ice beneath him giving way.

A sudden burning wave struck against his knees. Water. Aragorn loosed his hold on the staff and dug his fingers into the snow, hauling with his arms while his legs kicked fruitlessly. His boots dragged across the fractured surface, but his ribs were now on solid ice again. In another moment he would be over the place where it had broken beneath his weight, and then perhaps he might win through to firmer ground.

In the critical moment, something shifted. A heavy mass came down over his left ribs, and his right shoulder was suddenly suspended in the air. Something was pressing against the side of his neck, and there was a fluttering against his breast that did not come from within. Before he truly understood what was happening, Gollum had brought his entire withered body down with sundering force on the ice between Aragorn's left arm and his flank.

There was no time to brace himself. There was scarcely time to draw in a sharp breath. Like a cloth pulled out from beneath a crystal goblet the surface between Aragorn and the water was present in one moment and gone in the next. Only one last desperate flailing of his arm against the sharp, shattered edge allowed him a moment of injured dismay before he plunged into the dark depths of the freezing River Gladden.