Chapter XLI: No Game

The sky was clear; a pale frozen dome upon the pale frozen plate of the world. High and remote and entirely without warmth, the Sun sailed in adamantine splendour. Gollum writhed and whimpered and clawed at his scalp, but he kept moving just ahead of the Ranger's boots, now and then casting a doleful look back at the willow-wand that clung to his captor's flank. Aragorn was grimly relieved at this reluctant obedience, however it galled him to know that the creature walked now in terror of him. He did not think himself fit to struggle against a belligerent captive today. The exhaustion born of his battle with the river and the long tormented night spent clinging to half-frozen life had taken a sorry toll on his body. He moved slowly, every step bringing with it daggers of pain from his thawed and then constricted feet, and he was shivering already in the blasting wind that blew determinedly from the very direction he must travel. He tacked into it as best he could, stumbling now northwesterly awhile, now northeasterly, but though that kept the worst of it from stealing beneath the blanket he clutched to his body and digging hateful fingers into every tear of his threadbare garments it did nothing to ease the sting in his eyes nor the ache in his chest as he walked.

His throbbing head continued to trouble him, and his right nostril persisted in trickling dark blood that froze in the bitter air and tugged at his lip. When this small irritation grew too much to bear he was obliged to dig his right hand out of its shelter beneath his left arm in order to brush away the carmine crust. His fingers blazed indignantly in the chill and the wind found its way through the gap in his improvised cloak, and his efforts were for naught anyhow because no sooner was his arm tucked away and his palm merely cold again than the slow, creeping rivulet would start up afresh.

Worst was the snarling of his empty stomach. His two proper meals in Lothlórien had done little to resolve the deficits of long privation, and each day since he had eaten only sparingly of the stores the Elves had given him, but still it seemed that he had managed to remind his body what it felt like to be fed. On his descent to Gladden he had scarcely taken any food, troubled as he had been in his heart, and in the last fifty hours all that had passed his lips was cold melt-water and the few hazelnuts that had survived the crossing in his pouch. Now his innards were cramping and his jaw burned and beneath his headache fluttered a dangerous giddiness. As he walked he kept both eyes sharply on the lookout for game, but he saw nothing. This was hardly surprising: he was out of the wooded country of the riverbed now, and the day was terribly cold. Had he been a hare or a squirrel or a dormouse with a cosy den to shelter him, he would not have ventured out into this wind, hungry or no.

Gollum was sobbing wretchedly to himself, scrubbing at his eyes and licking his thumbs in turn. His bowed back showed no sign of the punishment he had suffered that morning, but clearly the dread of it was still on his heart. For when Aragorn halted he flung his wasted body into a snowbank and huddled there, trembling. Wearily the Ranger took a heavy step to the right so that his shadow, brief but very dark in the glacial noontide light, fell across the creature. Knowing that he could not admit to halting because of his prisoner's behaviour, when he had so sternly stated that he must walk on without complaint, he loosened his desperate grip on his blanket and fumbled with the folds of his cote. He drew out his bottle and drank, taking small sips of frigid water that he warmed on his tongue before swallowing in the hope that he would not worsen his headache.

The bare, glittering landscape stretched out around him, unyielding and sharp despite the rolling contours of the foothills. He was well away from Anduin's bed now; that much was certain. Away to the west, like ghostly blue parapets huddled low against the horizon, he could see the line of the Hithaeglir. They looked so small, so deceptively delicate at this great distance. It was easy to believe that they were nothing more than an ephemeral border and not the towering ramparts of the earth thrust up between him and all that he loved. The urge to run towards them, to cut the cord that fettered his wrist and to cast aside his hateful burden and to fly westward as his long foremother had done on white wings of the Valar, gripped Aragorn's heart. For a single, awful moment he could imagine the sense of freedom; the lifting of a load laid too long ago on the shoulders of one who had not quite comprehended its meaning; the strange liberty to go where he wished and to do as he pleased with no thought for doom or duty or old promises.

But of course it was impossible. All larger concerns aside, Aragorn knew that he would be unable to live with himself if he walked away. The secret yearnings of his heart might lean as they pleased, so long as his will and his feet remained steadfast. He could not abandon his prisoner, any more than he could cast aside the responsibilities to which he had been born. There was no other path for him. Turning his gaze from the temptation of the mountains, he looked north along the way that he had chosen. He was obliged to squint into the driving wind. He raised his chilled hand to shelter his eyes from the Sun's unwarm glare, and his head nodded once, decisively. On the horizon, in the cleft between two snowy hills, was a mass of pale grey speckled with shadows: beech trees.

'Come,' he said, nudging the sole of Gollum's foot with the side of his boot. 'Perhaps we can take a little shelter until the wind dies down.'

Gollum twisted to look at him, pale eyes questing as ever for signs of weakness. Aragorn merely cast him a blandly disdainful eye and hid the weight of his weariness as he set out again on cold and aching feet.

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Beneath the trees the snow was not so heavy on the ground, and while Gollum skulked in the shadow of a tangled dogwood Aragorn crouched down to dig in the undergrowth. He had hoped perhaps to find some beechnuts, or even a cluster of roots that he might try to dig out of the frozen earth, but an hour's miserable foraging turned up nothing but rotting leaves and the bones of an aged lark that had evidently died around the time of the first frost. The little glade had long since been picked clean, and whatever had done the picking was gone as well. Discouraged but not surprised, he settled himself on one of the patches of ground he had cleared and set about trying to warm his hands.

It was useless, of course. His fingers were stiff and aching with the cold, and blowing upon them accomplished little. Even tucked close against his body they warmed only slightly – his right a little more than his left, because the torn sleeve of his cote allowed closer contact with his ribs. Finger and thumb of his right hand were rasped raw from the striking of his steel in his desperate attempt to make a fire the previous day, and the skin on his knuckles was red and swollen: the beginning of chilblains.

Aragorn expected that his feet were faring little better. They were throbbing in a steady unhappy rhythm against the leather of his boots, and his toes itched and stung quite maddeningly. He wanted to inspect them, if only to reassure himself that frostbite had not set in after all, but the thought of trying to pry them from his boots (much less to cram them back in again) was too much for his overtaxed courage. Instead he drew his knees up near to his chest and tucked his heels against the base of his thighs and tried not to fret about things beyond his control. He was shivering again, and he drew the edges of the blanket around his legs and bowed his head so that his face was sheltered in the resulting tent.

He did not even realize that he had fallen asleep until he awakened with a start at the touch of spindly fingers near his ankle. His head jerked up, exposing his cheeks and his brow abruptly to the stinging cold. At the motion Gollum gave a cry, flinging himself back to the limit of his rope and cowering there, gibbering senselessly. Aragorn watched him for a moment, torn between exasperation at his prisoner's behaviour and irritation at his own lapse in watchfulness. Dusk was falling over the land, and the brilliant orange of sunset hung low to the west. He had slept a little better than four hours, but as he was still upright he could at least assure himself that he had not slept deep or careless.

Apart from the fading light the landscape about him was largely unchanged. The ground amid the roots of a nearby tree had been further disturbed by clever, seeking hands, but whether Gollum had found anything worth eating could not be said. The snow was still unbroken at the edges of the copse, and the air still burned in his lungs. He stretched out his legs gingerly and Gollum tried to slink farther away, hindered by the rope which tugged at the skin of Aragorn's wrist. There was a glossy dark blotch on the cuff of his right sleeve: evidently his nose was still bleeding at whiles. His knees were stiff and his neck ached, and his innards were still knotted in a writhing nest of hunger, but the pain in his head had eased and the bands of exhaustion were gone from his ribs. Imprudent and unheralded his slumber had been, but it had also been sorely needed.

It troubled him that he had not taken steps to secure his captive before slipping away from the waking world, even shallowly, and it was still more unsettling that Gollum had dared to approach him, evidently with some mischief in mind. Aragorn had to stop his hand from creeping up to his throat. He slipped it in amid his garments instead and found his bottle. Here too there was evidence of how much he had needed a little respite; the liquid within was no longer a hair's breadth from freezing, though it was still cold enough to put an ache in his teeth. His body was warming itself properly again.

He did not offer the water to Gollum. For many days now he had been content with the snow. Walking with a young Ranger, Aragorn would have warned his companion how unwise this was. Eating snow was a sure way to squander one's strength and chill one's body, and it did not slake thirst as well as might be expected. Far better to melt it first, tiresome as this was. Yet if Gollum was content to wear upon his reserves rather than put his mouth to Elven leather, so much the better. Aragorn had little enough hardihood left in his tired bones; anything that weakened his uncooperative charge was to his advantage.

Gollum had fallen silent again, and was watching him with those unfathomable eyes. If he ever again had the opportunity for deep, unguarded slumber, Aragorn thought, those eyes would haunt his darkest dreams for many years to come. The glittering malice within them, the sly evasive scheming that always seemed to grind on behind it, and the eerie unyielding stare were unsettling enough, but there was something else there too. Something deeper, unreadable; like a shadow behind the creature himself. Or not a shadow, precisely – a memory? Some strange wight of the mind, buried far beneath the hatred and the avarice and the canny terror; and that, most of all, Aragorn could not read aright and did not understand. He was not at all certain that he wished to.

His worries about what his captive might have been after all but dissolved as he heaved himself onto his sore feet. The willow-wand slipped from his belt and fell to the ground: it had been tugged almost loose of his belt. Very nearly surprised into a laugh, Aragorn bent and picked it up, then flicked his wrist to strike it against the top of his boot. At the sound Gollum cringed, hiding those dreadful eyes behind scrabbling hands. The fear, it seemed, was holding.

'I would only cut another if you took or broke this one,' Aragorn said dispassionately. 'On your feet now: even if we were not so pressed I would be reluctant to stay still tonight.' He lifted his head to scent the raw air. 'It will grow colder yet, long ere the dawn,' he predicted grimly.

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Grow colder it did, until the breath from his trembling lips scarcely clouded about his mouth before settling in a frost over his new beard and the fold of the blanket that sheltered his neck. He had done what he could to rake his hair thickly over his ears and across his brow, but still the flesh of his face stung beneath a thin crust of skin all but numb in the pitiless night. The effort of cutting through the snow must surely be warming him a little, but if that were so Aragorn could not feel it. At least the wind had slackened a little and his forward motion was easier, but the air burned bitterly in his lungs. He could not draw deep enough a breath, and his side ached fiercely for want of it. Beside him Gollum shivered and clutched at his bare arms. His ordinarily pale lips showed dark in the moonlight, purpled with the chill.

Despite their misery they toiled on under the naked Firmament; there was not a cloud in all the vast sky. That was something, surely, for which he might be grateful: though terrible at least the cold was a dry one. Still, he would have gladly exchanged this one small grace for a fur cap and a heavy woolen muffler and a surcote lined in thick spring fleece. And mittens, he thought sourly, digging his throbbing hands deeper into his arm-pits. Half a dozen pairs, in which to bury his fingers until they were entirely useless and imperiled his very life by their immobility but were also, finally, warm again.

Wistful thoughts of winter garments and hot, wholesome food visited him time and again through the long night's march. By dawn his shrivelled stomach had stilled the worst of its disconsolate rumblings, but the other signs of a prolonged fast were stronger. The ache behind his eyes had returned, worse than before and at times almost dizzying. There was a tremor in his hands that was not entirely due to the chill. And the foul taste of famine was in his mouth, dulled only a little by the bite of the air. It was a vile flavour unlike any other, indescribable to one who had never before experienced it and instantly recognizable to one who had. It was sweet and rancid and utterly noxious. No quantity of water would rinse it away, and though the urge to spit was terrible Aragorn resisted. This too, he remembered, would avail him nothing, and it would mean exposing his mouth to the wind, which was once more rising.

Well into midmorning he walked on, watching for a likely stand of trees. The Sun had risen high enough to set Gollum whimpering before he found one. In this empty country the woods sprung up in isolated knots, most often at the southern foot of a hill. One might walk several miles between them, over bald hills covered in scrub grass – or snow. It was a tremendous relief to retreat into the scant shelter of the trees, where at least the wind could not plague him and he might try to think clearly despite his sore and reeling head. Certainly he was glad when his companion fell silent and settled down in an impossibly contorted position, the better to lick at his toes.

Trying to scrounge edible flora out of such frozen lands was an enterprise driven almost entirely by luck, and Aragorn's appeared to be running rather thin of late. There was lichen on the trees here, but he had no vessel in which to stew it and he was neither so foolhardy nor quite so desperate that he would try to eat it raw. Therefore his best hope was hunting, but he had little strength and less time. Alone and unhindered he might have tried climbing an oak or two: these were sturdy trees here, and likely homes for squirrels and other small game. But he could not bring Gollum with him and he feared to leave him below. His one chance, then, was catching some small animal driven at last to leave its shelter in search of food. The merciless cold had been unrelenting for three days now, and eventually even the most well-fed creatures would have to emerge.

He had missed his chance of stalking at dawn, but in any case he had no tool with which to bring down his prey. Once he had found a place where the snow was sparse he cleared a place and sat, taking his knife from its sheath. He studied the glinting blade for a minute, and through the haze of his headache he found himself reflecting that even if the rest of his fortune had forsaken him at least he had not lost this most fundamental tool. With the knife and his firesteel he had at least a real chance of survival, reduced though he was to the barest of necessities.

Gollum had caught sight of the knife, and he was squirming uncomfortably at the end of his tether. Leaden irritation weighed upon the back of Aragorn's neck. 'It is not meant for you,' he growled, laying the blade on a corner of his blanket. With stiffened fingers he fumbled through the tattered skirts of his cote and tugged aside the hem of the Lórien-shirt so that he could see the points that held his hose. He untied one from each leg, taking the innermost pair where the sag of the garments would expose less of his flesh to the violations of the wind. With the strong braided strings in his fist, he picked up the knife again and hesitated.

Again it seemed as if this journey was nothing but an ever-spinning wheel of repetitive labours, poor choices arising over and over again with no better option than they had presented the first time. When first he had cut cloth from the hem of his cloak in the passes of Ephel Dúath, needing patches for his knees, he had thought it a clever solution: a small loss of material from a generously cut garment. Yet again and again he had been driven to pare away at it until by the time he had reached Lord Celeborn's borders the thing had been all but useless for its intended purpose. He had been obliged to replace it with what was available to him, and here he was again, about to make the first small cut. He was not fool enough this time to think that it would be the last.

Smoothing out the edge of the blanket that hung from his shoulders, Aragorn cut off one corner in a neat, precise triangle. Giving himself three finger-widths of cloth, he lopped off the tip as well. Then with the point of his knife he drove a hole through each hem, where the cloth was strongest. Through these he threaded his laces, tying them loosely but securely. The free end of one he knotted; the other he shaped into a loop. He slipped the fourth finger of his right hand into it, and tested the length of his cords. Satisfied, he put away his knife and slipped the little corner-scrap of wool into his pouch. He had made a simple sling.

The quest for stones provided a welcome distraction, both from the insidious cold and from the loathsome taste that filled his mouth and choked his throat. Gollum seemed to think rooting through the mulch a worthwhile endeavour, because he followed behind Aragorn to sift through what the Ranger had overturned. There was a greedy gleam in his eye to begin with, but as morning waxed and afternoon began to wane he grew steadily more frustrated. Whatever he had hoped to find it seemed it was not forthcoming.

Aragorn's own search bore more fruit, though he found not a morsel of food. He gathered a dozen small stones, some smooth and nearly round and others rough and sharp. Heaping them into a fold of his cloak he got to his feet and brushed snow and mulch from the knees of his hose. Gollum was watching him warily now, cautious at the end of his lead.

'You had best get behind me,' Aragorn said, settling the sling in his dominant hand; 'and stay near to the ground. Its edges are not true and in any case I am out of practice.'

His prisoner obeyed with all haste, but still the unsettling pressure of his stare bit into Aragorn's back. He tried to put his unease from his mind as he set about familiarizing himself with his new weapon. As he had expected his first two shots went widely awry, but the next five struck their mark at the joining of two branches some thirty ells away. Satisfied that both his force and his accuracy were adequate, Aragorn gathered his spent missiles and then led Gollum to the far side of the copse, where the ground was undisturbed by their searching. There he sat down to wait for dusk.

It was unpleasant work, sitting still and silent, shivering even away from the wind, and feeling the hours creep by. His right nostril had resumed its sluggish bleeding, and now and again he had to bestir a hand to wipe the dark crust away. He passed the time with this, and with doing what little he could to keep his chilled fingers limber. Yet worse by far was the wait when the Sun began to set and the time came for small animals to be abroad searching for their supper. Aragorn supposed that such creatures might have better luck than he in finding sustenance, but he did not think it would be by much. Still he fervently hoped that at least one would have the temerity to try.

Yet the shadows lengthened and spread out into the blue of twilight that swallowed the snow, and the night-winds cried and the trees stood their silent vigil. Not a sign did the Ranger find of any living thing: neither sound nor movement nor scent. As night grew deep and the darkness too thick for shooting he was obliged to abandon his poor hope of a meal. He tucked the sling and the stones away in his pouch, and he turned to where twin orbs glimmered enormous in the gloom.

'It seems that you and I are the only creatures mad enough to be abroad tonight,' he said grimly. 'And who between the two is the maddest remains to be seen. Yet I cannot waste the hours until dawn, simply to try again. We will have to hope that we stumble across some likely place tomorrow.'

In the meantime, he thought unhappily, a swimming head and an odious mouth would have to continue in his bevy of unpleasant travel-fellows. He thought that even fasting he could keep himself on his feet for another day at least; quite likely two. The greater worry was whether his unfed body would be able to continue to warm itself in this deep, clawing chill. With all the care he could, he gathered the blanket about his ribs and burrowed his stinging hands away. Then drawing one last deep breath before stepping out to defy the wind, he dragged himself onto the open hillside again.