Chapter XLIII: Blessings of Kementári

It was with steady legs and a clear head that Aragorn set out again. Though his feet still troubled him and the ache had settled back into his hands almost as soon as they were deprived of the fire, he felt stronger than he had at any time since before his ill-starred crossing of Gladden's ice. Even Gollum's condition seemed noticeably improved by their scanty meal. The glassy fervour in his eyes was eased a little and he did not whimper as the Ranger rose. With the low, gravid grey clouds hiding the Sun he had no cause for complaint when they left the cover of the trees, either. Aragorn was not fool enough to hope that perhaps he had at last made some headway in getting his charge to trust him: that, he now believed, was impossible. They had started in animosity and they would loathe one another forever. Yet Gollum had tried for days to find his own sort of food, and with no measurable success. Need might compel him to obey where nothing else could.

Of course that would only hold true if Aragorn proved able to continue to provide sustenance, and he could not be sure of that. But this afternoon, at least, he had neither the wish nor the courage to worry about their next meal. The mad hound of starvation had been beaten back from the threshold, however briefly, and they would both have to be satisfied with this one small triumph.

The other mercy was that the weather was not so cruel today. The cover of the clouds had brought with it some respite from the cold, and the wind had died almost to nothing. Although both travellers shivered, they were no longer toiling just to keep from freezing. Aragorn found the hours until sundown almost pleasant, or what on this endless bitter road passed for pleasant.

That night the snow began to fall, soft and silent but constant. The moon was drawing on to full and even the clouds could not mask its light entirely, and so despite the absence of starshine Aragorn was able to find his way from one low hill to the next. At first, keeping a steady pace and walking with his head bowed so that the shaggy curtain of his hair shielded his face, he scarcely noticed the snow. Certainly it was nothing like the storm they had struggled through on their approach to the Gladden Fields. It was not even falling heavily enough to accumulate on his shoulders, at least not at first. Then slowly he grew cognizant of a wet, creeping chill about his neck, spreading down beneath the Lórien-blanket to soak the collar of his cote. He tried to shake out the folds of heavy wool, and to bend them inward so that he might guard against the gathering damp, but he did so in vain. The snow found its way around his clumsy substitute for a cloak and hood, and it melted against the heat of his moving body.

Aragorn did what he could to prevent the slow incursion of the snow into the folds and tears of his clothing, but before dawn he was wet to the skin and his occasional shudders had degenerated to constant miserable shivering. Had the night been any colder he would have been in grave danger indeed. As it was he was merely wretchedly uncomfortable and had lost most of the good of his little fire and his inadequate hot meal. Worst of all was the fiery itch in his hands, tormented by the damp after their many travails in the cruel frozen air. He tried chafing them together to generate a little warmth, but his skin was raw and brittle and the blisters now forming over his stiffened knuckles seared in protest. He cupped them over his mouth that his breath might soothe them, but this only served to leave his palms coated in a thin sheen of condensation that made matters worse. In the end there was nothing better to do than to tuck them away between the increasingly sodden cloth of his tunic and his sleeves. He might have given his good right arm for a thick, dry mitten to cover his left, but no one offered him the choice.

With the rising of the Sun, still all but invisible above the clouds, the wind picked up again. Now it blew from the West, dancing down out of the mountains and crying in the hollows of the hills. It was not so cold as the North Wind had been, but it was lively and it was tireless, swirling through the quiet snows and stirring up the land. As they crested the next rise the Ranger and his companion were buffeted by a mighty gust that snatched the blanket from Aragorn's clutching arms and drove a yowl of indignation from Gollum's throat.

'I agree,' Aragorn said, and despite his misery a certain wry lilt crept into his hoarse voice. He would have quite liked to give such voice to his own frustrations, but dignity and the need for dominance would not allow it. 'We may make less haste keeping to the low places, but I think that shall be our fate today.'

So he retreated from that bare height on boots that slipped and skidded in the wet snow, and after that wound his way about the foot of each hill. The contours of the land cut the wind somewhat, though still they stumbled through gaps and gullies where it blew relentlessly. Gollum kept carefully in his captor's lee, though Aragorn wondered how much his lean legs could possibly cut the wind. Still, he thought, that was all to the good: reliant upon him first for food and now for whatever poor shelter could be found from winter's vagaries, perhaps Gollum would not be so eager to attempt another escape.

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A little after midday they came upon a place where two hills met, their roots spreading to form a shallow place in the land which, while not quite a cave, provided some small shelter at least. Here Aragorn halted, huddling in his wet rags and trying to marshal his strength without yielding to the desire for sleep. Gollum, though not foolish enough to sit in the wind for spite, hung back as far from his captor as he reasonably could. Since the cold had broken his fingers and toes were a less unhealthy hue, but he spent an inordinate amount of time studying them and fawning, as always, over his scarred thumbs.

Aragorn knew that he ought to do the same. He had not dared to wrestle with his boots since forcing fresh-thawed feet into them on Gladden's bank. Today his toes felt numb and the balls and arches of his feet tingled petulantly. His heels were given over to a hot, grinding ache that he knew from long experience would not abandon him until he somehow found the all-but-unattainable luxury of a week's good rest. His ankles were stiff but compliant, and beneath the leather of his boots his calves felt very cold. Perhaps there was a small mercy in the need for wakefulness. If once those muscles were allowed to relax in the limpness of sleep, he would be wracked with painful spasms.

In the end the need to move his chilled body came upon him before he could screw up his valour to the task of removing his boots. He stood up, stamping his feet in an attempt to warm them, but a grating pain in his hips was his only reward for that. As he rose Gollum tensed, and when he took his first heavy step the spindly fingers clutched at the noose of the halter and the unwieldy head shook fiercely from side to side. Aragorn's right hand crept to his side, but his stinging fingers found nothing. At some point he had evidently lost the willow-wand. So he closed his left fist on the orc-rope instead, and fixed his most commanding stare upon his prisoner.

'We are moving on,' he said. 'The wind may be unrelenting, but so am I.'

Still when he stepped again Gollum sat firm, digging his heels into the snow. Aragorn stood still for a moment, his back to the creature and his eyes closed. He was so weary of this endless grappling of wills, and as he sought within himself the fortitude to press the issue the wind rose in a haunting howl.

Quick as a flash Gollum was on his feet, scrambling over the distance between them and pawing at Aragorn's knee. His eyes seemed almost to bulge from their hollow sockets and his mouth quivered in a soundless, gibbering circle. For a moment Aragorn was puzzled, and then the noise rang out again and the chilled blood seemed to freeze in his veins. It was not the wind after all: it was the cry of a wolf, somewhere away to the west and not more than four miles distant. Farther off another took up the refrain.

'Bites us and kills us!' Gollum shrieked, one hand scrabbling at his brow while the other clutched the top of the Ranger's boot. 'Gleaming eyes and glinting teeth, precious!'

'Hush!' said Aragorn sternly. He was trying to listen for the other members of the pack, the better to gauge their numbers. 'Wolves in the wild have no interest in us. Men make stringy prey, and you are even worse. If we do not trouble them we have nothing to fear.'

Even as he spoke he did not believe it. He had read all the signs of a hard winter here; his own failure to find more than a single squirrel to feed himself attested to that. A wolf-pack made desperate by thin hunting might indeed think them tempting prey, and at least consider waylaying them. Yet the greater danger was that these were not common wolves at all, but the wild northern wargs that had been a plague upon this land for years uncounted. Wargs would hunt a man for sport, and for the pleasure of hearing him scream as they tore out his bowels. There was no outrunning such hunters, and Aragorn was armed only with his hunting knife and the little sling. With a sword or a bow or even a pike he might have stood a fighting chance, but as it was his only hope was to keep from catching their notice.

'Come,' he said, resisting the urge to shake Gollum off of his leg. 'They are west of us; let us press northeast and stay in the low places. It is only sensible to put some distance between us.'

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Apparently Gollum agreed with the sense of it, for he scrabbled along at such a pace that Aragorn found himself hurrying to keep up. The creature seemed to possess a sound sense of direction, for at every turn he took the very way that the Ranger would have chosen. Through dusk they walked, and into the night. The snow was still falling and the wind still wailed, but they did not hear any further wolf-voices in the gloom. At last Gollum's panic seemed to abate a little and he resumed his usual sullen loping. Aragorn was only too glad to settle into an easier stride, for his weariness was mounting and as his body expended the last of the strength he had taken from his half of the squirrel he began to feel lightheaded again. The exertion had warmed him a little, but now he fell to shivering again. The wet linen of his shirt clung like a thin film of torment to his chest. He would surely have dared a fire, for comfort and as surety against any roaming wargs, if only there had been any hope of fuel in these barren hills.

With the eastward cant to their path, the land began to level a little. When at last dawn came the swells of the land offered little protection from the wild West Wind, but here and there a straggly fir tree stood lonely over the land. They were not frequent enough to offer much hope of small game, and Aragorn's pinched stomach grumbled disconsolately despite his efforts to silence it. Already he could taste the loathsome vapours of starvation brewing afresh in the back of his throat. He rinsed his mouth with water from the Elven bottle and tried to fight back his swelling despair. He had known that his small success would buy him only a little time, but he had hoped in his folly that the surcease of direst need might last at least another day.

He had done all that he could for himself, and even now he kept moving forward. Yet he walked unknowing in lands he had trod but seldom. On the other side of the mountains he would have been able to find his way to some likely place, somewhere the trees were bounteous and the game plentiful even in the harshest of winters. After long years of wandering he knew the western lands nigh as well as a diligent farmer knew his fields and orchards. Between Bruinen and Baranduin there was not a place of plenty that he could not seek out at need. But here, though he knew enough of the topography to travel with some surety, he lacked the intimate understanding of the land that came from long stewardship. If there were such places here he could not find them, save by chance or some greater grace.

Aragorn stayed his stride abruptly and fell still, scarcely feeling the impact as Gollum stumbled startled against his leg and fell back with an angry oath. The snow, still falling with measured persistence, swirled about him. The wind bit into his flank and his soaked clothes weighed heavily upon his tired limbs. All this was forgotten for a moment as he freed his mind from the fetters of mortal wretchedness and allowed himself to find within him the quiet spring of hope.

'Kementári,' he breathed, unaware of the cloud of heat that issued from his lips and dispersed in the unsettled air. He spoke in the High Elven tongue, his heart drifting back to the Hall of Fire long ago, and to gentle grey eyes and a low loving voice imparting the tales of creation itself to a wide-eyed child. 'Sower of forests, keeper of the fields. Lady of the woods and Mistress of Plenty, have pity upon me. If there is sustenance in this land then guide me to it. Help me, dear lady, for I know not how I may help myself.'

Then the moment of clarity faded, and he was standing once more in a drift just shy of the tops of his battered boots, weary and careworn and far from home; plagued by the cold and haunted by hunger; set upon the hardest road he had yet walked with the most hateful companion he could have imagined. In the snow at his feet Gollum was cringing and muttering blackly to himself, doubtless despising the fair words of the ancient language of the Noldor.

Blinking rapidly and trying to convince himself that he did so only to ward against the wind, Aragorn looked at the way that lay ahead. He stood at the base of a low, lumbering hill, with the feet of two more behind him. He could round this next obstacle to the right, northeastward, or to the left, northwestward. It was not a decision of great significance: either way he would come around to the same spot and find his best way around the next hill. Yet he could not help but hope to feel the hand of otherworldly guidance upon his choice, as a sign his piteous prayer had been heard.

He felt nothing, not even the stirrings of instinct. Left or right, it made no difference save to the way in which the wind would gnaw at him as he walked. Suddenly and unaccountably cross, he hitched the blanket closer to his ribs. He would spite the choice, then, and take neither. Without troubling to inform Gollum that they were setting out again, he started trudging straight – up onto the hill itself. Over it he would walk, and not around; not right and not left.

It was a stiff-necked gesture, and he had not gone more than a few ells before he was paying an uncomfortable forfeit for his stubbornness. Out of the scant shelter of the land the wind was merciless. His eyes began to water and his left side might as well have been naked to the cold. At his heels Gollum was weeping and mumbling senselessly. Aragorn could only hear him through his right ear: his left was deafened by the wind. The hill itself was steeper than it had looked, and his boot slipped under the poor guidance of a numbed foot. He bent forward, straining with his long legs and all the while cursing himself for a bone-headed fool.

When he reached the top at last he paused, panting and trying to bundle the mass of wet wool more comfortably around his shoulders. His right hand wandered out of his awkward wrappings, seemingly of his own accord, and scooped the ragged and ice-crusted tresses away from his eyes. The land before him was a pale grey swell that met a sky so slightly darker that the two seemed almost one. Hill after barren hill stretched out before him. From this height he thought he could see perhaps six miles to the horizon. He squinted, trying to gauge it although in truth it mattered not. As he did so a dark blotch just at the border of the visible world seemed to shimmer and solidify and to settle into an unmistakeable and most unexpected colour.

It was green; the dark and rusty green of a Ranger's cloak, or a tangle of seaweed washed up on the pale sands of Dol Amroth – or the green of a pine-copse under a harsh winter sky.

The wind seemed to abate a little, and Aragorn's breath came more deeply. He let his hand retreat back within its dank refuge. His back straightened a little and his shoulders squared. The worst of his weariness seemed to fall away as he started his slippery descent with Gollum skittering after him. Perhaps his plea had been heard after all.

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Though he kept the greatest pace that his flagging constitution would allow, Aragorn did not reach the trees before nightfall. Nonetheless he was near enough at sunset that he could see for certain that amid the towering, verdant splendour of the firs that spread on north and west to the mountains and eastward even unto Anduin there were indeed the sparser stalks of aged pines, clustered here and there among their mighty cousins. Something of the frenetic joy he had felt when he had laughed on Gladden's ice visited him then, and his tired unfeeling feet found they could move faster after all.

It was dark when he came at last to the edge of the forest, his side aching with exhaustion and his half-frozen body quaking. Gollum, who had somehow managed to keep his feet, flung himself amid the roots of the first fir with a tremendous groan.

'Not yet,' said Aragorn, overcome with hope fulfilled. 'We cannot rest yet.'

He moved carefully among the trees, for the night was thick about him and even his keen eyes could discern little. He found the one he wanted by its scent, distinct even in the winter air, and groped with outstretched arms until he found his way through the spindly branches to the bole. While his right hand dug for his knife his left settled against the rough bark with its palm outstretched, pressed to the trunk as he might have rested his hand against the breast of a friend in the breathless moment after the passing of some great peril. He bowed his head against the tree as he raised the knife.

'Thank you, old father,' he murmured in the language of his childhood; not the lofty words of Quenya now, but the gentle music of Sindarin. 'You have given me life; I pray I shall not hurt you.'

Then he set to work. With care he cut into the bark, deep enough to riven it but not so deep that he scratched the tender wood beneath. Next he made a second cut parallel to the first and at half a handspan's distance. His third cut joined the two at their tops, like the lintel of a door. With the tip of his knife he raised one corner of the bark so that he could grab it with his cold fingers. Slowly and with great care he peeled away the strip of rough outer bark. It broke away from the soft inner layer in a single long piece, and when he had reached the bottom of his marks he cut it away and let it fall to earth. He had no use for the rough hide of the tree: it was what lay beneath that he wanted.

Digging with his fingernails, he began to peel away the fibrous inner bark. Winter's cold slowed the flow of resin in the tree and made the bark brittle, so it came away quickly in small chips and slivers. The first few went straight into his mouth, tasting faintly of pitch but little else. Then, making a pocket from a corner of his blanket, Aragorn went swiftly about his harvest. When the cut patch was bare to the new wood he ran his palm along the wound. He closed his eyes against the darkness of the night forest and put forth thoughts of healing. He had no wish to harm the tree, which unlike a game animal must go on living with the pain he caused, and for that reason he had taken only a narrow strip of bark, but his need was great and this blessing of nourishment a mighty boon indeed.

He did not know if his efforts made any difference. The old pine stood silent and uncomplaining as it had through many years before. Still he whispered his thanks and stepped away, beginning his search for the next tree.

He repeated this ritual at four other pines before the weight in the crook of his arm began to feel adequate. Gollum followed him morosely, grubbing amid the litter of the trees and finding nothing. There was less snow here, for some of it had been caught in the canopy above, and out of the wind the air was not so unbearably cold. Still Aragorn fell to shivering as the heat of exertion left him, and he was glad when at last he had enough pine bark to ease his mind – and hopefully two empty stomachs.

Finding a fir that would serve his purpose was a somewhat more challenging matter, for though the great trees were plentiful he was looking for one with lower branches five feet long or more, that ringed its trunk thickly and drooped near to the ground. After some groping and several stumbles he found at last what he sought, and he did off with the Lórien blanket that he might leave it and his treasured harvest among the roots. From the neighbouring trees he cut several boughs, careful to choose those in which the vigor of life was waning. By spring they would be dead, and would fall off of their own accord, but now there was still enough life left in them that they were thick with supple needles. He dragged them back to the fir he had chosen and crawled about at its base for a time, amid Gollum's grumbled imprecations that the foolish manses had taken leave of his senses entirely.

In the end, however, the labour was done, and Aragorn picked up his wet blanket with care so that he should not spill the chips of pine bark. He crept back beneath the shelter of the low-hanging boughs where the snows could not find him. He had made a pallet of the cut branches and he sat upon it, his lean thighs cushioned for the first time since his brief nights on the fallen mallorn-leaves. He forgot his sore hands and his wet clothes as he tucked in to his supper.

The inner bark of the pine tree was not a flavourful meal, and it was hard work in chewing uncooked as it was. He might have laid a fire to roast it, but tonight he was too weary. He broke off small pieces with his fingers and gnawed at it instead.

'Are you hungry?' he asked Gollum, holding out his palm in the darkness. Grasping fingers found the bark and snatched it up. There were some unpleasant sounds that made the Ranger very glad he could not see his charge, and then a hand stole in among the folds of the blanket to find more.

Aragorn leaned his back against the bole of the fir and sighed. He felt as if a great weight of worry had been lifted from his shoulders. If he was right in his guess, he had reached the woods that came down out of the northern marches of the Misty Mountains. He could walk through them all the way to the road that led to the Old Ford over Gladden; indeed, past the road and on to the Carrock, where he had hope of a safer crossing. Even if he did not come across any game at all, he could survive on the harvest of the pine trees. It was not cheerful fare, and it took a great quantity just to keep a man upon his feet, but he need not fear starvation while he walked amid the pines. It seemed that Gollum too could eat it, though how he managed to chew the tough fibres with his six sparse teeth was a mystery. Closing his eyes as he broke off another shard and set it on his tongue, he offered up his silent thanks to she who had sung of the forests of the world; she who had imagined the trees that offered such blessed succour now; she who had in his moment of helplessness given him hope to bear him hither.

When the heap of pine bark was reduced to splinters, Aragorn shook out the blanket and spread it on the ground to dry a little. Then he stretched out on his narrow bed of evergreen boughs, feeling the welcome release of tension as his spine eased out of its hunched exhaustion. He tucked his right hand behind his neck and curled his left arm over his chest, bracing his foot against the ground to raise his left knee. He was still chilled through, and his damp clothing kept him shivering, but a night off of the frozen ground would do him no end of good. His belly was full if not truly satisfied, and he did not have to fear for tomorrow's barest survival. Beside him Gollum was rooting around to fashion his own nest. He would rest his waking mind tonight, and for the first time in many days he had sure hope of breakfast. The smallest of smiles touched his cold-chapped lips. Perhaps they would reach Mirkwood after all.