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A Long and Weary Way  by Canafinwe

Note: Recommended while reading this chapter: a heating blanket and a nice cup of tea.

Chapter XXXIX: Stark Survival

There was no cause for laughter: truly there was not. He might be safe from drowning, but the slow frozen death would find him on land anyhow. He might have escaped the clutches of the river, but its waters still choked his hair and his garments and in the whipping wind the wet would kill him faster than it ever would have done in Gladden's depths. He managed to yank the blanket free and he got onto his knees. Awkwardly he crawled, his right hand once more dragging Gollum by the shoulder. He did not dare to stand. He doubted that his unsteady legs would hold him, and even if he had not seemed likely to go crashing down he would have been wary of placing such concentrated weight on ice already proved most unstable.

The remaining hundred yards to the bank seemed a greater distance than all the rest of the river. Aragorn was quaking with the cold that he could now scarcely feel, and his dripping hair began to stiffen with frost. When at last he reached the shore he had hardly the strength to haul his prisoner after him. He stumbled over a root and fell prostrate in the snow, frigid water pouring from the tops of his boots to puddle around his knees. Befuddled he lay there, uncertain at first why he had fallen and then unsure whether he truly wished to do anything about it. Exhaustion tight as a winding-sheet seemed to curl around his limbs, trapping them against the sodden clothing that was already beginning to freeze in hard ridges along its wrinkles and tears.

The dull thought that he had to get his boots off before his feet were done any permanent harm managed to grind its way through his weary confusion. With arms that shook with chill and fatigue Aragorn managed to get his head and shoulders out of the snow. His right knee slid stiffly up under his belly and then somehow found himself sitting back on his heels. There was a twisted greyish shape in the drift beside him, beads of ice forming along the sharp contours of ill-insulated ribs. Gollum.

The wind was wailing down from the crest of the riverbank, and a particularly spirited gust stung in Aragorn's eyes. The first thing to do was to find some sort of shelter for them both. Gollum was still unconscious; no doubt the cold would prolong the effect of the blow to the head. He had to be carried. Aragorn reached out only to discover that he was still holding his hunting knife in a hand fading from raw redness to a pale, sickly purple. He was gripping it with the pommel against his thumb and so did not have to turn it, he thought. It seemed to take a great effort to make his arm swing back towards the sheath at his belt, and when he tried to slip the blade into it his aim went wildly awry. The knife grazed against the side of his hose and landed with a soft thump in the snow beside his knee.

Irritated, Aragorn picked it up and tried again. This time he did not even get close enough to snag his garments. Wrathful now he grabbed the knife and rammed it bare into his belt.

Getting hold of Gollum was somewhat simpler, but when he tried to hoist him Aragorn found that his arms were not equal to the task. His cold desperate swim had robbed him of his strength and his wrists quivered and his fingers failed. For a brief moment he considered simply leaving the creature behind, but it seemed that there was some compelling reason that he could not do so – though for the moment it eluded him. So he staggered to his feet, bent low and swaying unsteadily, and he put a hand beneath each of the sinewy arms. Shuffling backward he dragged the unmoving body up the bare first slope towards the underbrush that teemed along the side of the river.

Some small fortune smiled upon him, for he found a hollow not far away where the angle of the bank offered some respite from the cruel winds and the underbrush was thick. Stumbling he sat hard upon a fallen log, his hold upon his captive failing. Only then did he realize that he had left his water-laden blanket where he had fallen. The brass brooch Aithron had given him glinted brightly in the growing light of day; the cloth itself was dark against the snow. Aragorn let out a shallow sigh of defeat. Let it lie there, then. He could fetch it later.

His hands were all but numb. With their last tremulous dexterity he took the end of Gollum's rope and tied it to a high branch of a nearby hawthorn. Then his thoughts turned again to his boots, still flooded to well about his ankles. Kicking at the thin layer of snow that had managed to filter through the tangle of branches above he found a stone half-buried in the earth of the bank. It took him four passes to strike his left heel in a cleft that would hold it, and by the time he managed to wrench his foot free he had half forgotten why he was doing it.

His body was still shivering, but he was far beyond feeling the cold anywhere but in his foot, lately removed from the water in his boot and suddenly chilled in its wet woollen wrapping by the bitter air. Soaked as he was Aragorn knew that he was losing heat far too quickly. At this rate he would be little more than a block of ice before he managed to get out of his other boot, never mind finding the means to thaw out. Stiff unfeeling fingers fumbled at the buckle of his belt. It was like watching a bear with its great clumsy paws trying to untangle a child's ring-puzzle: amusing and discouraging at once. A drunken laugh found its way to Aragorn's lips, followed by a slow but earnest oath. He bowed low over his lap, momentarily struck by the ridiculous notion that perhaps his teeth would be better suited to the job if only he could force them to reach. Then at last the tongue of the buckle gave way and the leather strap fell down about his hips.

He clawed at his cote, somehow loosing the lacing at his neck and then struggling with the sodden fabric without success until he realized that he was sitting on the tail of the garment. A rocking shift that almost sent him rolling onto his side managed to free it, and he struggled to hoist the dripping weight over his head. The bottle that he had been keeping between his tunic and his skin landed heavily upon the log and rolled off into the snow as he dragged the garment up against his shoulders. There was a creak and a groan and a series of sharp snaps as threads gave way and old tears reopened, but at the moment he cared for nothing but getting the infernal thing off.

His shirt was next, slipping away with some greater ease, and then he had to wrestle with the points of his hose where they met his braies. He stripped his left leg and huddled shivering over his lap, jerking arms hugged tightly against chest, his bare back rough with gooseflesh in the open air. His hair was still wet and it clung to his head and his neck and his shoulders, and his loins and right leg were still coated with soaked cloth. Somehow he found the will and the command over his limbs to move his remaining boot against the rock, and he pulled until his scarred thigh was afire to the bone before at last the leather gave way and he was able to finish stripping off his garments.

Almost at once the bite of the air was lessened as he gathered his long limbs in close to his body, crouching on the log and shaking wretchedly. His right boot, lately cast aside, was leaking its water into the snow and making a broad patch of slush that began to creep away downhill. It was curiously transfixing, and Aragorn might have sat staring at it until the shaking stopped and death crept upon him, but something deep within his mind would not let him alone. It was Gandalf's voice, jesting but underwrit with concern for his friend.

'Remember that if you get into such a state again,' he said; 'I shan't be here to scare up food and fire for you. You'll have to look out for yourself.'

Food was the least of his worries at present, but there was something to be said for fire. Bleary eyes blinked through the fine crystals of ice that were forming again on his eyelashes as Aragorn raised his head to look around. He was in an area of plentiful deadfall. Finding fuel would be easy; gathering it surely within the bounds of his failing strength. His flint was in his pouch, lying now in the snow behind the log on which he perched. If somehow he could get his fingers to obey him he might have a hope of warming himself.

He got unsteadily to his feet, which were numb beyond feeling the snow beneath them, and shuffled awkwardly towards the nearest tangle of fallen branches. They were not as dry as he might have hoped, but he dragged them back to his log regardless and then struggled to pick up his knife. He broke off bark and small twigs, meandering to and fro until he had a modest heap of fuel, and then went back to scrape away a clear space on the ground by the fallen tree.

The labour must have warmed him a little, for his mind was clearer as he reached for his belt and attacked the knot of his pouch with his teeth. Unable to feel what he was touching he upended the contents into the snow at his feet. There were half a dozen hazelnuts that he supposed he had stowed unthinkingly during one of his frugal meals over the last few days. A black, sodden mess proved to be the remains of the dried nailwort he had gathered in Harondor. His tinder was wet and swiftly freezing, but he must have known that was the case for he had gathered the bark. He picked up his flint and steel after only a few abortive attempts and squatted in the snow to attempt to light a fire.

He was still trembling violently and he could not make his hands obey him as they ought. Again and again he tried to strike a spark, succeeding only in scraping either the stone or the curl of blackened metal against the opposite finger. He braced one thumb against the piece of bark he was trying to catch, and tried again. His teeth were clattering too fiercely to allow him to cry out, but a discouraged whimper sounded deep within his throat.

Beside him Gollum stirred, but he did not waken. Trying to shake the frozen mats of hair from his eyes, Aragorn rounded his shoulders and bowed his head before making another ungainly attempt at striking a light. This time he did manage to produce a shower of sparks, but the bark beneath his hands did not catch them. He huddled lower, wondering wretchedly how his body could be shaking so violently when he could no longer even feel the cold. Around him his clothing was slowly freezing solid in the snow, and his fingers and toes were now quite blue. He supposed his quivering lips were, too. Gollum's grey pallor seemed remarkably unchanged, and save for the ugly mark upon his temple he might have been sleeping peacefully in the hawthorn's scant shelter.

His right hand fumbled and the flint fell onto the bare patch of ground. He tried to lift it, but his fingertips merely rolled across the rough surface, incapable of grasping. Fearful and irrationally cross, he tried again. He did not let his arm tell him when he had an adequate grip, but waited until he could see the blue of his flesh receding to white under pressure. He lifted the rock at last and struck again.

This time one of the sparks found a hollow in the rough surface of the elm-bark, glowing brightly as it bit in. Desperate that it should not fail Aragorn slid forward onto his knees, bending with his shoulders almost to the ground as he tried to blow gently upon it. His breath came out in shivering puffs. The first three were gentle enough, and the spark flared a little. The fourth was sudden and violent and quite beyond his control. The tiny flame flickered and went out.

The desire to cry out in his wrath and fling his treasured tools off into the underbrush seized Aragorn. He might have done it, too, so insensible was he becoming, but Gollum shifted again and snorted, mumbling something incoherent in his half-waking state. The brief moment of distraction dulled the edge of the irrational rage and when Aragorn turned his eyes back on his poor scavenged tinder he felt only a dumb dread of trying again.

Yet try he did, again and again until the paroxysms of his bone-chilled body grew so fierce that he could not even bring his vision into focus. He curled into a ball over his lap, panting shallowly and struggling with a will that seemed half-frozen itself to master his limbs. His eyes were stinging cruelly, even sheltered from the wind as he was, and the sparse new growth of his beard was stiff with little icicles. In that dreadful moment he would have given all that he possessed to have Gandalf beside him to wrap him in a dry grey cloak and take the steel from his fingers and lay the accursed fire before he froze to death.

Then, so abrupt that it was like the snuffing of a lamp in a windowless room, the shivering ceased. Bowed low to the ground with his hands bent like talons around his fire-tools, Aragorn could not even feel the relief in his tortured muscles. He was beyond any terror at the healer's voice deep within him that whispered that this sudden surcease was a very bad thing indeed. The only thought that managed to wade through the freezing slurry that was drowning his mind was that if his hands had stopped shaking then perhaps he could manage to get a spark to take at last.

Still they might be now, but his fingers were every bit as clumsy. He fumbled with his too-tight grip on the flint, and finally gave up trying to strike with it. He rapped his left hand against his right instead, the loop of steel over his knuckles barking against flesh and stone alike. Bright blood splattered against the snow, but sparks flew in every direction. Hastily Aragorn lowered both fists towards the piece of bark and struck with greater fervour. When the first shimmers of tiny flames appeared he tried to blow upon them, to coax them to take, but his lips refused to purse. He huffed sluggishly out of his left nostril instead – the right seemed clogged. One little yellow tongue lapped against another and a flame the size of an ash leaf began dancing against the bark.

Scarcely able to credit his luck Aragorn snatched out for another piece of tinder, feeding it gently against the first and watching as the glow began to spread. His fingertips were useless now, and so he closed his whole hand over a twig as he started building a tent of kindling around the growing flame. When at last he was able to add a small branch he let out a hoarse, croaking noise of victory.

At first the fire was small and gave little heat, but he huddled almost on top of it with his hands cupped over the flames, trying to thaw his fingers. They were lividly blue now, but at least they were not white with frostbite. Weariness such as he had never known before weighed down upon his bowed shoulders and rounded spine. He wished only to lie down upon his side in the gentle pillow of the snow and drift off into kind oblivion. Yet like a small child who has been sternly scolded for some mysterious transgression he could not understand, Aragorn knew that he must not do that. Somehow he managed to get his feet out from under him and close to the little blaze, and he kept feeding the fire until at last it was strong enough to take a stick as thick as his forearm. The first returning shiver tore through his body then, and he thought he had never felt such a welcome sensation.

Before the spasms grew too much for him he forced his tormented body away from the flames and managed to get a hamfisted hold on Gollum's ankle. He dragged him through the snow and the wet winter mulch, mindful of the noose that tethered him to the gnarled old tree. As carefully as he could he curled the creature on his side, belly and limbs turned in towards the fire. His fingertips traced the edge of the swollen mass on the side of his head, probing to be sure that the skull beneath was still intact. Aragorn did not think that he had struck the creature hard enough to do serious harm, but he had to be sure of that now, before he awakened.

It was impossible to tell: his fingers were still numb and discoloured and in the end he gave up and went back to curling over the fire. He managed to add two more good-sized branches before the shivering resumed in earnest, and after that it was a long time before he could do anything at all but crouch with his limbs bowed in and his tailbone anchoring his quaking frame against the fallen log.

The fire was settling into rich glowing embers when the first intimations of returning warmth found their way into his chest. He fed the fire again, this time managing to brace three goodly-sized pieces of wood against one another so that they would burn slow and hot. He could feel the cold at his back now, and he thought again of how he had sheltered beneath the wizard's cloak while his own mud-soaked clothing had dried on the hedges of Harondor.

He had no friend to cover his nakedness today, and so he had to contrive to dry his own things. The scattered garments lay about him, all but one of his underhose beyond easy reach. It was an awful wrench to tear himself away again from the small orb of warmth that surrounded his hard-won fire, but somehow he managed it. His legs shook and he stumbled, but he did not fall as he gathered his cote and his shirt, braies, hose and belt. Finally he picked up his boots, upending each one in turn so that the water that had not yet frozen poured out. While he was mobile he gathered five green boughs, then limped on unfeeling feet back to his rustic hearth.

His garments were frozen stiff, and he had to crack the ice between the threads to wring out what little liquid he could. With the boughs he shaped an ungainly three-legged frame with a doubled crossbar near the bottom woven awkwardly through the three upright posts. He placed this on the far side of the fire, driving each leg as deep into the frozen ground as his flagging strength would allow. Over it he draped his cote like the skin of a tent, its lining to the fire. The ice began almost at once to melt and droplets of water fell amid the flames, but the embers were hot and this brought no more than a steady sizzling. In this way the garment would dry more quickly, and its small shelter kept the heat of the blaze from bleeding off towards the river, reflecting it back instead to the naked Ranger and his treacherous companion.

The rest of his garments he set as close to the fire as he could. His boots he shook out again, cold fingers losing their hold more than once. He dared not set them too near the flames, lest rapid drying should crack the frozen leather. These labours done he was at last free to resume his miserable huddling as his exhausted body trembled and his mind grew fogged with weariness rather than cold. He felt as spent as one who had run for many days without rest, laden with a great weight and wracked with pain. He longed to sleep but he did not dare, and not for fear of freezing alone. Now that he was not so stupid with the chill he knew that he had taken a terrible risk in lighting a fire, even sheltered as he was. If there were watchers about he could not but draw their notice, and he had taken no proper measures against smoke. Yet what else could he have done? It had been, and still was, a choice between fire and death.

He was aware now of a terrible thirst, and he groped behind him until his hand lighted upon the fair Elven bottle. He dug out the stopper with his teeth and took a deep, frantic swallow. There was ice in the water and it burned against his teeth and redoubled the tremors in his chest. He longed for a dish of nourishing beef-broth, or failing that a mug of weak tea or even just hot water, but this was all he had. His cup was gone, scuttled in Gladden's bed with everything else that had been in his baggage. Only luck and a little laziness in packing had saved one of his blankets from the same fate, and he lacked the strength to drag his shivering body away from the fire to fetch it.

The desperateness of his situation began to settle its pall over his heart. He had lost all but a meagre handful of his supplies: his water-skins, his snares, the bandages Celeborn's folk had given him, thread and needles, the rags he used to bind his prisoner, and all that had remained of his dwindling rations. He might not be dead of freezing, but his hands and feet were still numb and blue despite their proximity to the fire. His prisoner had shown no earnest signs of waking, and when he did there would have to be some reckoning for his all-too-efficient escape attempt. By his best guess there were still nearly a hundred and fifty miles of Wilderland to cover, and if he could reach the end of that he would have to contrive to cross Anduin again before his last hopeless push to Mirkwood – and that assuming that the agents of Dol Guldur were not lying in wait for him on the river's eastern bank.

Fighting back the temptation of despair, he reached for another branch to feed the fire. The sun was beginning to sink low to his left, and the shadows of the trees were lengthening. Sensation enough had returned to his body that he could tell the temperature was still falling. Another concussive shiver shook him and he tried to inch a little nearer his small fire. He would have to focus on surviving this one night. That would be labour enough. In the morning he would do whatever he could to face the terrible trials before him.

A rain of melted river-water was falling from his cote now, and he stirred up the fire with a slender stick. He did not have nearly enough fuel to carry him through twilight and moonshine and the dark before dawn. He would have to roust himself to find more while the daylight lasted. Reaching out to feel the edge of his tunic he did not think that he would even be able to wait for his clothes to dry. Setting his teeth with dread he sought for the wellspring of will within himself and somehow straightened his long legs. The spider-scar was itching fearsomely, but his fingers were still too maladroit to scratch at it. Casting one last look at Gollum he tore himself out of the sphere of the fire For a third time.

Once again his toils warmed him, and by the time he had amassed a heap of deadfall and bracken sufficient to keep his hearth burning until morning his shivering had died down to the occasional tremor, though the lower parts of each limb were still insensate. He dared therefore to venture out of the shelter of his overgrown hollow to retrieve the Lórien blanket where it still lay in the orange of the setting sun.

The moment he was out of the lee of the trees the wind struck him like a hundred dancing whips of ice. The breath was driven from his lungs and his weary knees buckled. He fell crashing into the snow and had to struggle to his feet as if fighting against some sucking mire. He took the few staggering steps to where the frozen cloth lay and he fought to pry it free from the ground. His retreat was inelegant but swift, and as he stumbled back to the fallen log he had to pit his reason against his impulses to keep from crawling right in to the glowing embers of the fire. Again he huddled all but atop the flames, shivering pathetically and trying to chafe his unfeeling hands against one another.

As he began to warm a little he grew aware of a horrid crawling sensation on the back of his neck. At first he thought it was the ice in his hair, melting away. Then he recognized the churning unease in his innards and turned slowly to his left. Two eerily glowing orbs were fixed on him from the shadow cast over a back turned to the sunset. Gollum was awake.

Aragorn doubted his ability to speak, worn and ravaged as he was, and in any case he could think of nothing to say. His hands and feet were frozen but his heart burned with hatred for this loathsome thing he had tolerated so long. Too exhausted to bestir his better nature he let that odium rise into his eyes, fixing the creature with a gaze that would have made the greatest of Men quail.

And indeed Gollum shuddered, for a moment apparently overcome. Then he turned his head and leaned forward towards the fire and vomited. There was little enough in his stomach: water and bile and a few shreds of what had once been raw rabbit-meat, but the stink of it was terrible. Aragorn felt his own shrunken stomach roiling and he turned his face away. Gollum went on retching for a time and then gave a piteous whimper and was silent.

When Aragorn was certain he was not about to lose control himself, he dared to look back. His prisoner had drawn his rail-thin legs up to his chest and was hugging his knees to his body, his head in the snow as he shivered. He tried to draw nearer to the fire, but the noose around his neck tugged at his throat and he gagged again, clawing petulantly at it for a moment. Then he abandoned the effort and subsisted into shallow tremors.

Aragorn's eyes drifted along the stretched line of the rope to the place where it was knotted about a sturdy branch. He had only the vaguest of memories of setting the knot, but he was glad that he had. Certainly his hasty efforts to secure their survival would never have been managed with the tether about his wrist. He supposed that now the worst of it was past he ought to bring the rope nearer so that Gollum could warm himself properly. Then he looked down at his own hands, still curled into stiff purpled claws, and he knew that he would never manage it. Until his fingers thawed – unless his fingers thawed – he would never be able to undo the rope, much less tie it anew.

With a drowsy dawning surprise he discovered that he understood at last all of Gollum's sudden halts over the last few days. He had been trying to stretch the rope: to loosen the loop of cord about his captor's wrist so that as soon as an opportune moment presented itself he might drag it off and be gone. He remembered the business with the tree; Gollum trying to take the opposite path and dragging on the line between them. Yet again he was startled and secretly amazed at the creature's cunning. He had known that Aragorn would be alert to any tampering with the noose about his throat, but he had reasoned – all too correctly – that the Ranger would pay less mind to his own side of the rope. When the chance to escape by water had presented itself, he had seized Aragorn's moment of panic to make good his escape.

He still did not understand how Gollum had hoped to flee under a mile or more of solid ice, but he supposed it did not matter. Free or drowned the wretch would have foiled his designs, for he was useless either way. Only alive and safe in the halls of the wood-elves where a proper interrogation might be mounted would Gollum be put to any use. Whatever the perils, whatever the miseries, Aragorn had to drive him on through the bare winter lands even if it meant labouring on in want and bitter cold.

And it would mean that, he thought, his eyes falling on the few scattered nuts that had fallen from his pouch. He scooped them up with his rigid right hand. With his left he cast snow over the mess that Gollum had made, hiding it and masking the vile odour a little. He had spent in one day the strength of many, and he had to eat even if it was the very last of his provender. Bowing his head to his cupped palm he took the nuts, chewing as long and as slowly as he could. The poor mouthful was sufficient to send his stomach into ravenous cramps, and he thought of the wholesome meals in Lothlórien and regretted that he had eaten so well. He had foretold that such would only intensify the pangs of privation later, and already it seemed he was right.

The embers were glowing under a thick layer of ash now, so he stirred up the fire and banked it generously again. As the bright new flames licked up he shifted nearer, wishing unhappily that his clothes would dry and trying to quell the guilty thought that this must be much like what Gollum had been suffering since they had come into the snowy lands. He reminded himself of how the spiteful thing had thrown away the hood and cloak, and indeed how he had thrust himself down upon the ice at the most crucial moment in their deadly crossing. He could not lay by pity entirely, but his resentment was certainly stronger and borne of more substantial cause.

A bolt like the pricking of a dull sewing-needle shot up from the sole of his foot into his leg, and he kicked involuntarily against the damp ground. It was followed swiftly by another, and another, and then all at once his toes were afire with the merciless searing torment of thawing flesh. Tears of pain sprung to his eyes and he found himself panting thickly against the sharp waking anguish. Before he could even attempt to school himself his hands began to wake as well, stinging at first and then burning and finally bursting into crashing waves of agony. He bit down upon his lip, raising blood through an old fissure, and rocked a little against the log. Yet through the suffering that consumed conscious thought and clawed at his sanity came a stark, almost triumphant joy. They were not dead and frozen: he would lose neither finger nor toe. When at last they were thawed he would be able to go on.





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