Note: Chapter title from "The Great River"; The Fellowship of the Ring; J.R.R. Tolkien.

It occurred to me after posting the last chapter that my warning probably wasn't necessary. Considering what happens in these two chapters and the next, who would want to try this at home?

Chapter XXXVIII: Too Clever a Waterman

First there was a brief and blessed sense of being engulfed, cocooned, in something hot and thick and heavy. This lasted no more than the span of a single sharp staccato of his wildly thundering heart, however, and then the shock struck him with all the might of a stone-giant's fist. Every muscle in his long body tensed. The blood pounded in his throat and his temples. There was a feeling of falling with impossible slowness. Sinking, he thought indolently; but he was powerless to do anything about it. Three precious bubbles of air burst from between his lips before he could even clamp closed his jaw.

Then the dreadful fire of cold unspeakable caught him in its web of anguish. His skin shrivelled and burned over bones that seemed so impossibly heavy. He could feel the water creeping with the speed of a scurrying insect into every tear and gap of his garments: up his sleeves and down his collar, under his belt and into his hose and downward, finally, past the snugness of his ankles to fill his boots. His hair blossomed out around his head like a black water-weed, and his arms – that only moments before had been scrabbling to haul him past the spreading cracks in the ice – flew up and outward as if they were wings thrust out to arrest his descent.

All of this seemed to take an eternity, though the small beleaguered voice of his rational mind told him it had surely been only a handful of seconds. There was something on his back, heavy and unwieldy and dragging him downward. Before slothful reason could remember what it might be, the thing began to move. There was thrashing in the water behind him and tugging against his collarbone. Then a long, bony foot planted itself upon his right shoulder, sharp nails and grasping toes digging into the cloth of his cote. Aragorn tried to reach for the thing, but his limbs would not obey him. A moment later something firm and narrow blasted against the side of his nose and there was a swoop of motion over his head.

His left arm flailed, bending at the elbow as if to stop the thing from slipping over it, but he was waterlogged now and sinking more swiftly, and his mind's frenetic efforts to induce his legs to move left no quarter for other thought. Flipper-like the feet flapped past his head, one toenail grazing his cheek. Then something was scrabbling at his wrist. There was a strange tugging sensation upon the bones at the base of his thumb, and he knew indistinctly that he ought to be alarmed.

The first great cloud of bubbles broke through the barrier of his teeth; his lungs were crying out for air and his ribs jerked and twitched with the urge to take quick gasping breaths. It was only through an extraordinary exertion of will that he was able to keep his mouth closed against the all-but-intolerable yearning to pant, and his right hand snatched hastily for his nostrils before they could betray him. Dimly Aragorn reflected that if he did not start trying to find the hole in the ice again he would surely drown. But his eyes were pasted shut against the searing cold of the water and he still could not make his legs do as they were told.

The pressure on his arm was worsening now. It dragged up into his elbow, and so to his shoulder, but the worst of it was still in his thumb. Then the wild groping fingers went still and he could feel the pressure of two palms and… something. Something else, something coarse and rounded; a stiff bracelet of… what? About his wrist…

He felt it roll under the force of the other hands, and there was a bright pain that ran up into his radius, and then swift sweet release as whatever-it-was slid over the widest point of his hand and drifted away.

Aragorn scarcely felt the current as the wiry legs kicked swift and sure and bore their owner away, for at that moment his own foot struck bottom, slipping in the silt in the bed of the River Gladden.

Clarity bright as the summer sun pierced the fog of terror and bewilderment, and he remembered. He had fallen. He had fallen through the ice, and he had to find his way back lest he should drown here and wash away as his long grandsire had into Anduin's turbulent flood and southward to the Sea never to return to his people. The frantic reflexive heaving of his chest stilled a little and he let himself sink farther, bending his knees and flexing both feet in the engorged leather of his boots. Like a great cat he sprang, pushing off the riverbed and taking long, strong kicks.

Forcing his eyelids to part was a more difficult task, but he managed it. His eyes burned, stung mercilessly by the cold, and for a moment he could see only darkness. He turned his face upward, and as he kicked again the gloom before him brightened into a pale featureless dome of ice. Panic gripped him for an instant and another shower of bubbles broke free from his throat. His lungs were labouring now; it seemed an Age since he had fallen through the ice, but he did not suppose it had been even a full minute yet. Nevertheless if he did not find the place where he had fallen through he was lost, for he had walked a mile or more along an unbroken river.

His legs whipped again, moving almost of their own accord to fight the current and keep him in place. Fool, Aragorn thought; twice and thrice a fool. In his sinking he had surely been swept downriver. Bending into the current with his long arms pulling at last, he began to swim. All the while he kept his face upturned though it hampered his progress.

At last he saw it; a dark ragged maw in the mottled brightness of the ice. The last sour trickles of air leaked from his lungs and he fought the primal urge to breathe in. His legs, numb now and weighted down with the water in his boots, put forth one last valiant effort and he broke the surface with an enormous, tortured gasp.

The frozen air seized in his chest and his head went under again amid a torrent of coughing. His body knew what to do even if his mind was floundering, and his legs abandoned their stiff straight kicking to bend and whip round like opposing cogs. The crown of his head broke the surface again, swiftly followed by the rest of it in time for the heaving intake at the end of a cough. Water streamed in icy rivulets from his hair and his shoulders as he blinked many times and swiftly to restore his sight.

The hole in the ice was larger than he had expected: better than three body lengths across in any direction. Broken floes bobbed all around him, creaking and crackling in the air that was so painful to breathe, and the surface was choked with shards and slushing snow. He tried to orient himself. If he was going to get out, he would at least win through to the proper bank. Startled, he realized he did not quite remember which bank he wanted. He had tumbled into Gladden, he knew, so it was a choice of north or south, but which did he want and why?

Then a horror far worse than the shock of his sudden ducking closed about his heart, and his left hand broke the surface of the water. He stared at his wrist, his bare wrist, and at the red rasped place that stood out fiercely against skin gone white with cold. He could feel the foot on his shoulder, the whacking of an arm against his nose, the rolling sensation as the rope – worried loose by constant tugging in recent days – had slipped over his hand.

He whipped around, sending up a spray of river-foam that began to freeze into sharp little shards of ice even before it struck the water again. There was nothing; no sign of the creature, no indication that he had surfaced. Aragorn forced his eyes to focus at the expanse of river as he made another quick, desperate circle in the water. He could not see the wretch on the ice or on the land.

Dread clawed at his heart and he very nearly sank. Gollum could not be drowned. After all that had been done to find him, to capture him and to bring him so far, he could not be drowned! If only he had managed a proper interrogation of the wretch. If only he had wrung out of Gollum whatever it was that he knew about Bilbo's ring; whatever he had told the servants of Sauron; whatever else he could say that might have been of value. If his captive was dead and his secrets with him…

There was a crash of breaking water and a high, hoarse gasp of air. Aragorn's shoulders jerked to the right and his body followed. There, bobbing in the water near the eastern edge of the ice, was a great emaciated head. One thin arm broke the surface in a paddling but effective stroke. A sharp, involuntary cry that was equal parts anger and relief broke from the Ranger's taut throat.

Gollum stiffened, looking back towards his captor. Something like a smile appeared on his hideous face; a rictus of dismay, but also of triumph. Aragorn could see the halter floating under his chin. Then with a trilling shriek the creature upended himself and dove.

There was no time for thought; no time for common sense. Aragorn gave one last mighty kick, raising his body up out of the water as far as his sixth ribs. Then he straightened his legs and let himself plummet downward, bending at the waist as he did so and letting his legs grow level with the rest of his body. His eyes smarted fiercely but he did not let them blink. He knew where to look, and he saw what he wanted almost at once: the gaunt, misshapen body of his erstwhile prisoner propelling itself with gangly limbs made suddenly graceful by speed and by skill. Gollum was swimming away from him at a great pace, bearing downstream – beneath the vast unbroken ice.

Aragorn stretched both hands before him, palms downward and thumbs neatly tucked. In unison he brought them outward, forming a shape in the water that was like a great bulb of garlic, like the elegant finialed domes of the ruined palaces of Khand. His palms turned outward as they moved around the edges of this invisible form, and when his elbows where bent they whipped under and pushed out again, arms straightening as his legs bowed in a long, froglike kick. He glided for the two heartbeats it took his momentum to reach its crest, and then began again.

Gollum had seen him coming, and he banked left, quickening his speed. He was swift as a trout, but the Ranger had the advantage of length of limb. Each of his own strokes covered thrice the distance of one of Gollum's, and he began to close the span between them rapidly. Still he had little hope of catching the creature quickly enough to find his way back against the current before he spent his air, and he might have been faced with the choice between abandoning his captive and abandoning his life but for one thing.

The orc-rope, still bound about Gollum's neck, was trailing behind in his slipstream.

His first attempt to snatch it failed. His eyes were unreliable in the gloom and the murky obscurity of the freezing water, and his right arm went wildly astray. His stroke faltered too, and Gollum gained another precious ell, but two swift kicks closed the gap and he tried again. This time his fingers closed over the rope, but they were chilled and clumsy and he did not trust them to hold. Somehow he got the loop around all four of them and snapped his fist around the cord like an oyster guarding its pearl. He spared no further thought as he turned a sweeping somersault to begin his swim upstream. He had no time to waste, for the air was burning in his lungs and he had strayed much farther from the hole in the ice than he had hoped.

There was flailing on the end of the rope as it drew taut between them. Gollum thrashed and tried to pull away, but he succeeded only in dragging Aragorn's hand towards his hip. His fist held fast, and his other arm and both legs were working well (if a little wildly) against the current. He kept his eyes fixed upward and ahead, looking for the dark place. Stale breath gurgled up and out of his nose. His lungs were ablaze with the effort of this second long plunge. Numbness crept with tingling fingers up from his feet and over his arms and down the length of his spine, and with it came a profound weariness. He knew that he was spending heat and strength more swiftly than he could afford to in this dire and foolish swim, but it was the air he had spent that worried him most.

His lungs were empty now. There was a burning in his viscera and his throat was palpitating. In his long years of wandering he had known the want of food; of water; of peace. He had known the want of shelter on a bitter night; and the want of friendship in a hostile land. He had known the want of shade beneath the burning southern Sun, and the want of sunlight in the caverns of the earth. He had known the want of sleep, which consumes all thought and feeling and sense of self. Yet not one of these yearnings could compare to the urgency or the torment of his need for air. It blotted out everything but the desperate desire to part his lips and take a deep, gasping breath. Even the fact that he was still immersed in the freezing water seemed a secondary consideration.

His failing eyes at last caught sight of the darkness he sought, and somehow he induced his feet to kick again. The rope dragged against his right hand; on the far end of it Gollum was still thrashing like a sea-serpent caught in a fisherman's net. Aragorn forced his chilled fist to tighten as he made his final push towards the surface. He felt the water give way around him and closed his eyes against the bitter blast of the air that his body so craved. It did not come.

Instead, something wet and heavy and suffocating slapped down across his face.

For a terrible instant he feared that the ice had somehow risen up to trap him, or that some devilry of the Enemy had snared him. Then with a lightning jolt of revelation he knew what had happened, and he swept his left arm up in a broad arc to claw the blanket away from his face. At last he could breathe, choking in the sharp and pitiless air that seemed to set his chest afire and yet was welcome despite the agony it brought. He flailed his arm again, and the mass of sodden cloth curled around it. His legs were whirling again, almost unbidden. He felt one last tug upon the rope in his hand, and then the line went slack.

For a brief and awful time he feared that Gollum had managed to get free of his own noose, but then the creature's head broke the surface, choking and wheezing and sputtering curses. At the sight of the Ranger his eyes – rimmed now with red but bright and malicious as ever – narrowed to slits.

Aragorn's wet face was burning in the wind, and a rime was forming already on his eyebrows and his hair and in the rough beginnings of his beard. He was no stranger to winter dangers and he knew that with each minute that passed he grew weaker; soon he would be too weak to pull himself out of the river. This was not the time to indulge in a pitched water-battle with one whose escape attempt he had only just managed to thwart. He worked his hand free of the bobbing blanket and slipped it down to grope for his belt. There was little feeling left in his fingers, but what lingered was enough. He found the hilt of his knife and drew it. He had to turn it, but he was terrified lest it should slip. He could not be without it and in his present state he did not have much hope of diving for it.

He brought it to his mouth and clamped his teeth down upon the blade. The cold was nigh to unbearable: it was all that he could do to shift his grip before quivering lips smacked down over his bared mouth. Then with his right arm he dared to release the rope, carefully out of sight beneath the water, that he might grab a higher handful. This he clamped behind his knee as he reached again, and in this way Gollum was towed swiftly towards him, spitting and seething and struggling furiously. The moment he was within arm's reach Aragorn let go of the rope and seized his captive by the jaw, fingers on the right and thumb on the left. He could not be sure of the grip of his stiffening hand, and so he dug in until he could see pale crescents where his nails pinched into the grey flesh. Ere conscience or self-doubt could assail him he raised his left arm high, sending a shower of freezing water from his sleeve, and brought down the butt of the hilt against Gollum's right temple.

The wretch went limp so swiftly that Aragorn lost his hold and the withered body slipped beneath the surface. Instinct thrust up the Ranger's knee and Gollum's midsection sank sluggishly against it, giving him the leverage to hoist the lolling head up out of the water again.

He took hold of Gollum's jaw again, this time with his palm cupped under his chin to tilt his head back. There was too little fat on the creature's body for him to float well, but float he did after a fashion, and at last Aragorn was able to consider how to extricate them both from these most undesirable straits.

By his best reckoning he had fallen through the ice not more than six minutes before, but he was not certain that number was to be trusted. In any case, if any man had ever managed to escape unaided after ten minutes in such waters Aragorn had never met him. In the tales of the crossing of the Helcaraxë it was told that when the Lady Elenwë fell her husband Turgon endured nearly twice that long in his fruitless effort to save her, but in addition to being of Elder race in the vigorous dawn of Arda he had also had to be hauled out all but swooning by his kindred. Aragorn was not so arrogant as to think he could last as long as the Lord of Gondolin, and there were no doughty Noldorin warriors at hand to help him. He would have to help himself, and swiftly, or Gollum's madness would kill them both.

It was not the first time in many decades of wandering that he had fallen afoul of unsafe ice, but never before had he been forced to mount a frantic river-swim – half of it upstream – afterwards, or to haul out an unconscious body with him. Already his limbs were weak and the flooded boots weighed down his beating legs so that far from forming neat opposing circles they were wandering in straggled ellipses that his knees could not uphold for long. He was shivering violently and his teeth were chattering in his head. Below the ring of water that bound his chest his bodily discomfort was mercifully muted, but in the stark winter air and the driving north wind his head and shoulders were a mass of stinging torment.

With the wrist of his knife-bearing hand he snagged the blanket again and gathered it to him, and then set out forcing his legs to drive him towards the northmost edge of the waterhole. It was wiser for a man in such a position to get out from the side on which he had gone in, but if he did that the whole miserable affair would be for nothing. The swim was slow and clumsy – far slower than his frenetic underwater chase – but in the end he reached the border where the snow-choked water lapped against its riven cover. With a tremendous effort, for it was sodden with thrice its weight in water, he hauled up the blanket and pushed it onto the ice. Then he let his arm fall so that the knife-tip drove through the snow and caught firm; a pick of sorts. Next he slid Gollum's head and shoulders up over the edge. Despite the cold the side of his head was already beginning to purple and swell where Aragorn had struck him. His eyes were closed and his breathing shallow. The noose was still firm about his neck.

Finally able to release his hold without risk of the creature slipping, Aragorn planted his right palm near the knife. Carefully he began to tilt his body forward, leaden legs kicking almost drowsily towards the surface behind him. When he was almost level he tried to push forward as if swimming. The edge of the ice shuddered and crumbled beneath his weight, sending him crashing into a wave of frigid water that slapped against his face and robbed him briefly of breath.

Gollum was sinking, and Aragorn hastened to haul him to the surface again. Happily his left hand had not lost its hold on the knife, but his makeshift cloak was scuttled again and he struggled to hoist it once more. He could see no sign of his pack.

The second time he tried to lift himself the ice gave way again; and the third. On the fourth attempt his arms were quaking with weariness and he did not think he would have the strength to try again. This time he managed to get his shoulders onto the ice, and then his ribs and the very crest of his left hipbone. But when he reached to drag Gollum after him there was a blasting crack and again he was thrown down upon his belly in the water. A harsh howl of rage and frustration tore from his throat, seeming to echo off the floes about him.

It was all that he could do to lift his arms and his garment and his prisoner onto the edge of the ice again, and he bobbed there, shivering violently and trying to keep his feet from sinking. He bowed his head forward so that his now-insensate cheek rested on the snow. He could not go on: it was too much. The cold was in his very heart now, and his weary limbs would not obey him. Soon even this small labour would prove too much and his arms would lose their hold and he would slip back into the water and drown. Either that or his sleeves would freeze to the ice, trapping him in the torment of the winter air until at last he perished for cold. That was a wretched death, and slow; it could take better than two hours for a man to freeze in water.

Over the crest of his arm he could see Gollum's profile. He had never before noticed, but his captive had a rather fine nose; straight and well-proportioned, neither too broad nor too narrow despite the otherwise grotesque features of his wizened face. His own nose was running copiously, and he felt something warm trickle against the side of his philtrum. The thought of moving his hand to daub it away was absolutely exhausting. The frost was thick upon his eyelashes now, and he let his stinging eyes droop closed.

He might have perished there, undone by the river that had ever been the bane of his people, had the weakened ice not once more decided to give way. It did so almost silently this time, the crack spreading under fingers too numb to feel it and opening in a web of small fissures as the loosened chunk disintegrated. Before he even realized that he was sinking Aragorn's head was under water again. His whole body snapped like a horsewhip, legs scissoring so fiercely that the joints of his hips crackled. His face, suddenly upturned, broke the surface in a series of shallow gasps, and he looked wildly about like a sleeper suddenly roused to find battle joined all around him. He came to himself even before Gollum could slip beneath the surface, and hooked the web of his thumb under the angular chin. His left hand had slipped off the knife but it was floating still, its point driven into a rough-keeled block of ice about the size of a quarto book. Aragorn retrieved his weapon and took a stilted stroke that brought him to the ever-retreating frontier that lay between death and grim, tortured survival.

In a blinding instant he was assailed by a memory. He had been climbing. No, learning to climb. He must have been very young indeed, for the recollection of the details was indistinct, but he remembered well enough the hard, sharp stones that bit into his knees and scraped his palms as he fell yet again. Discouraged and angry but determined not to weep he had picked himself up and stomped his small foot and declared, very loudly, that he could not do it; that it was impossible and unnecessary and he did not understand how a reasoning person could expect him to do it.

And he remembered eyes like glinting true-silver in the autumn sun, loving but unshakable, and a firm and gentle voice. 'It may well be impossible, Estel, but you must try again regardless.'

Up went the blanket, sloshing with water. Down went the knife, squealing as it bit into the ice. Forward now with Gollum, still blessedly beyond struggling. The right arm planted firmly. Weary legs kicking. You must try again regardless, he thought.

Tired little fingers had gripped niches in the rock-face. Plump baby toes in thin Elven leather had scrambled. Again the ominous crack; again the knowledge that he was about to fall. Then slender firm fingers closed about his right wrist and pulled him forward – no, upward… forward?

His knees were on the ice now; everything above had been dragged over the snow. His right arm, suddenly free of the warm, imagined hand of his father, groped back and seized the bone just beneath a sharp shoulder. He dragged and Gollum came after him, his legs catching a little on the edge of the ice but following as they necessarily must. He drew the creature up as far as he could, and then reached down to seize him by the leg instead. When he was near enough Aragorn hefted his loathsome prisoner to his breast, his elbow in Gollum's armpit and his hand awkwardly shielding the back of his head. Then, captive in one hand and blade and blanket in the other, he thrust his legs to the left and began to roll on his side; away from the water, away from the hole, away from the perilously thin ice around it. Water streamed from his garments and his boots. Snow choked his nostrils and matted in his hair. His long frame shook with concussive tremors in the ravaging wind.

Still he rolled. He rolled until a sudden jerking of his left arm forced him to stop with his back in the snow and Gollum's limp form sprawled over his chest. Bemused and bewildered, he looked down to see what had happened. The Lórien-blanket was spread upon the ice, stiff and motionless, frozen in place. Unaccountably, against all reason and in defiance of the desperate struggle that lay in his immediate future, Aragorn threw back his head and laughed at the cloudless sky above.