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Chapter LII: Harried and Hunted

He did not slip far. Scarcely it seemed had his breath levelled and his eyes closed, but some strange movement in the night yanked him back to wary wakefulness. Almost before he knew that he had wakened Aragorn was upright, knife at the ready. In the staring darkness of Mirkwood's night he could see nothing, but he heard a stuttering intake of air as Gollum startled at his sudden movement. There was a scrabbling sound of small clawed feet above him and a faint rushing of the still air. He listened, eyes wide and watchful despite the futility, but aside from the uneasy wheezing of his prisoner he could hear nothing save the eerie but expected noises of the forest. Gradually his heart slowed its frenetic pounding and he began to sink out of the rigid battle-ready posture into a weary slump. Something hot and sticky was trickling down the side of his face: a thorn had grazed his cheekbone as he sat up. He tugged one of Una's handkerchiefs from his pouch and dabbed at the scratch, ears still alert for any change in the timbre of the night.

There was no use in trying to sleep again, and perhaps he had been foolish even to try. Still his feet were throbbing and the ache in his knees and hips had not subsided enough to allow him to walk on. So he lay down again, twisting awkwardly until he was flat upon his back and as comfortable as he could manage amid the stalks of the bushes. With the weight of the knife across his ribs he settled into an uneasy silence as Gollum's breathing quieted and the startled squirrel returned to its nest.

For a long while Aragorn could only lie there, listening warily and wondering what it was that had roused him so abruptly. The speculation was fruitless, and served only to heighten his anxiety about the leagues left to travel, but though he tried it was no simple thing to banish it. He could think of nothing soothing or encouraging or even vaguely distracting, and so in the end he merely drove away all semblance of thought and bent his concentration simply to the reckoning of sightless time and the slow rise and fall of his ribs.

When Gollum spoke the sound seemed to rent the very fabric of the woods, hollow and feeble under the great weight of blackness about them. He gurgled deep within his throat and said; 'Asleep again, nassty great manses. Tall wicked lumbering brute, preciousss. Such an easy thing, to scratch out its bright hard eyes, gollum, and leave it blind and bleeding. Ties our hands, it does, but we could manage it.'

Then he whimpered and there was a shuffling sound near Aragorn's boot. Careful to keep his breathing slow and level the Ranger closed his mittened hand more securely about the knife as he listened.

'Use our thumbses, precious, and dig them out, yess. Scoop them out, wetness and jelly and thin strings and all. Maybe we eats them, gollum. Eats them while it watches.' A deep burbling rumble that was a travesty of a chuckle came up from far within him. 'The first one, anyhow, preciouss. Eats it while it watches, then the other while it screams.' There was another whine and the familiar rasp of ragged nails on desiccated skin. 'Oh, but it would wake again, it would, gollum, if we drew too near. Wake quick as an eel and grab us, precious: hurt us with its strong handses. Beat us, precious, slap us and strike us and kill us too!'

Now he made a noise that was something like a sob. 'We know what it wants now, horrid cruel manses. We do, we know it. Know where it's going, gollum. Back to the Elves, more Elves, other Elves. Must be other Elves, precious, living in quiet dark forests. Nice dark places where Yellow Face can't see. Hateful Elveses spoiling it, shining eyes and sharp knives and quick piercing arrows, precious. Elf-friend it said, wicked manses. Takes us to them, it does. Wants our secrets. Wants to know… no! No, we'll never tell! We'll never tell you; hurt our hands! Poor darling handses, burning, bleeding. No! Ack! No!'

This last rose almost to a shriek of panic and Aragorn shifted his left leg, bending his knee and dragging up his ankle a little. The motion was more effective than any reprimand might have been. Doubtless fearing that he had disturbed his sleeping captor, Gollum swallowed the tail of the scream and hiccoughed twice before resuming his soliloquy in a low burbling mutter.

'Mustn't allow it, preciouss. Mustn't go to the Elveses. For how shall we find it then, eh, gollum? How shall we ever find it then?' he moaned. After that he fell into low mournful sniffles punctuated by the occasional murmur of 'Poor precious!' and fading at last into miserable silence.

lar

After that there was no question of sleep, now or at any time before he reached the safety of Thranduil's subterranean palace. Aragorn lay still for another hour or more before mustering himself, but he passed the time in watchful waking. It was best, he knew, that Gollum remained unaware that his malicious ramblings had been overheard. If he had at least a little knowledge of what was passing through his captive's mind, it was an advantage not to be squandered. When he could remain unmoving no longer he stirred at first as if rousing from a deep sleep, shifting amid the rotting leaves before he sat at last. He took a little of the honey-cake and drank what water he dared. Food he had aplenty, but his store of drink was limited and there were no streams to be trusted between here and the end of his road. Feeling blindly he tucked arranged his gear and drew out his flint, steel and tinder. He managed to get a piece alight without removing his mittens, and with it ignited one of the small candles. The sudden brilliance blinded him for a few dangerous moments, and then at last he could see again after long hours in perfect blackness. Gollum was squatting some distance away, the rope slack between them. He blinked ponderously and glowered at Aragorn.

'Come,' said the Ranger. 'The night is yet longer than the day, and I cannot waste it. Stay close by me and we shall fare well enough.'

Then he crept out of the shelter of the whortle-berry bushes, forced his weight onto feet that seemed to moan in mournful protest, and started off again.

Walking in the night of Mirkwood was a disconcerting thing. The small glow of the candle lit only three paces about him, but it seemed to draw staring eyes from every quarter of the forest. They gathered in the undergrowth and the lower boughs, always just beyond the border of the light, and they fixed all the strength of their gaze upon the flame. Most were the eyes of small animals: the black squirrels that abounded in these woods, no doubt, and badgers and stoats and other harmless things. There were tiny glittering beads too that he knew to be the eyes of birds. Crows and magpies were many here, their sleep disturbed by the walker and his alien light, and there would be owls in abundance and nighthawks also. Any of these creatures might be a watcher, but the stronghold of his enemies was far away to the south, and seldom did the patrols of Dol Guldur pass the girdle of the mountains to dare the dells patrolled by Thranduil's folk. With luck, by the time any tidings of trespassers reached them Aragorn and Gollum would be secure among the wood-elves. And certainly such tidings could be sent by day as well as by night, and the swifter his progress the lesser the risk.

It was the other eyes that filled him with unease. Some were large, round and staring and inscrutable. Of these most had the coppery gleam of ungulates: harts or does or yearling fawns, perhaps. From them he had little to fear. Such animals were not easily bent to evil – or indeed to any will other than their own – and they certainly would do no harm to a man set upon his own business. Yet there were other large eyes, lower to the ground or high up in the trees, that glinted with a strange and haunting light. There were things that dwelt in Mirkwood unswayed by the influence of the Nazgûl and yet still unfriendly to Men. The gloom and menace of this ancient place seemed to breed varieties of life twisted and altered from their original forms. The black squirrels were one, sly and cruel little things with flesh unfit for eating; but there were many others, and some large enough to pose a true threat to travellers.

As the night wore on and the candle burned low, the occasional bead of wax falling to cool upon the spiral-knitted mitten, Aragorn began to think that there was one set of eyes in particular that was following him in earnest. Most of the others fell away as he passed, or moved along with the light for a time before falling away to be replaced by others, but this pair did not. High in the trees, just beyond the border of his globe of light, two pale narrow orbs tracked him. There was a greenish gleam to them that he caught now and again out of the edge of his sight. He could not be certain, of course, for his focus had to be on the way before him and on keeping a true course through the meandering woods, but he thought – he felt – that it was the same pair of eyes all the time.

It was a mercy indeed when dawn broke far away in lands where the sky could be seen, bringing once again the dull gloom of day to this stagnant land where the trees were so intertwined that even the bare branches were enough to blot out most of the light. He was walking now in places that even the snow could scarcely penetrate. What he saw of it were only little grubby heaps, fouled by the forest floor and disturbed by many scuttling feet. It was unfit to melt for drinking, and so he took only sparingly of his water despite his steady thirst and the ache in his head. Aragorn's feet were tired and tender, and every step brought pain, but he strove to bear it. He did not wish to waste the daylight hours, and the need for haste drove him against the protestations of his weary body.

All that day he walked, unharried save by Gollum's periodic lagging and the occasional scolding of a scurrying squirrel. He made two halts before dusk, both times stopping only when he could go no farther for the pain. Then he would stop and rest until his nausea subsided enough that he could take a mouthful or two of food. He gave Gollum a ration of water and another of the eggs, which were still half-frozen in the chill of the forest. This earned him no thanks, of course, but after that his prisoner moved on with a little less reluctance. When darkness began to gather he found shelter among the spreading roots of a massive elm, and sat there with his overdriven legs stretched before him and his knife in his hand. He watched the canopy above while the dimness lasted, keeping a lookout for the thing with the green-tinted eyes. He saw nothing of note, and soon could see nothing at all as the night set in.

This time he made no pretence of sleeping, but sat watchful and wary and uneasy in his thoughts while Gollum rooted and snuffled and finally curled up in the mulch and fell silent. The hush of Mirkwood was not a perfect silence, but it was quiet enough that when a cry went up far off in the woods it seemed to fill all the night with its noise.

It was a terrible cry: a warbling ululation that echoed off the trees, a hoarse and mighty yowl like the wails of a woman put to unspeakable torture. In the first shocked moment Aragorn very nearly sprung to his feet that he might follow the sound and offer what succour he could to their unhappy architect. But then his sense returned to him and he listened again as the chilling noise redoubled. It was a cry not human but bestial after all: the nocturnal call of a great cat far away in the forest, chanting victory over its prey or calling a warning to a challenger. He knew that there were such beings in Mirkwood, though he had never seen them: wild feline things such as those that hunted in the unsettled eastern lands. Smaller they were than the huge striped cats of Khand or the lions of far Harad, but they were large enough: big as a mastiff and swift as a hunting tom. It was said that those dwelling in Mirkwood were darker and larger than their kin from less shadowed places, and that they were bolder as well. They might range many miles in a single night, and they were fierce and they were merciless.

Aragorn had no wish to tangle with such creatures, but this one at least sounded a long way off and he did not think it was the season for a lynx to have new young to guard. If he kept on his way and made no move to threaten the sanctuary of the forest he had nothing to fear.

Still the wailing put a chill in his heart and he could not quite keep his imagination from conjuring up an image of a noble lady wracked with torment, writhing beneath the ministrations of some servant of the Enemy bent on an unknown end. In his mind's eye, made clear and all-seeing in the absence of more tangible sight, he envisioned the torturer: tall and gaunt and cruel, features that once might have been accounted handsome twisted into lines of haughty hatred, and mouth set in a sneering smile. And eyes, pale and expressionless as the muttering ice of Forochel, fixed with unyielding demand upon his victim. Then, as the cat howled again the vision shifted and Aragorn realize that he recognized the face of the woman as well. Fair and once flawless skin was marred with blood and bruises. Eyes bright as quicksilver in starlight were dimmed with anguish. Long silken hair was straggled and matted with filth…

He shook himself, driving one heel hard against a root to anchor his mind with the tangible pain of the present. Sternly but not without terror he drove back the dreadful images conjured up in his troubled mind. It was not a woman, but a lynx, he knew, and it was not even suffering but merely speaking in the fashion of its kind. There was no place of torment within a hundred leagues of where he sat, and even if there were both the torturer and the lady were many hundreds distant from here. The thought was nothing more than the product of his fevered brain, worn upon by strain and sleeplessness and the shadow of despair that clung, even here, to lands too much beneath the sway of the Nine. For a moment his heaving lungs stilled, breathless as he took the scent of the air and tried to discern whether perhaps there was something darker and more terrible than a lynx abroad in the night. He felt nothing but the still, cold oppression of the winter air of Mirkwood, and the weight of Gollum's presence in the gloom. Of course he was too far north for the masters of Dol Guldur to be roaming; the dark thoughts were his own and it fell to him to master them.

Aragorn sat only a short while after that: just long enough for his hands to cease the worst of their trembling so that he might light a candle. Then he set out again; a pilgrim with his strange companion treading with heavy feet among the hosts of the forest.

lar

With dawn came the unhappy revelation that he was on the edge of spider-country. There were cobwebs here, slung from branch to branch or tree to tree, still and lifeless in the unmoving air. Most were old and tattered, and that was good, but now and then he passed one that looked to have been abandoned only days or weeks before. Aragorn walked with still greater wariness now, watching not only the way ahead but the boughs above and listening always for the telltale clicking of pincers in the woods. Gollum had taken to rapping at the base of a tree when they passed near enough to it, sounding perhaps for soft places that might harbour something edible. In an attempt to discourage such loitering Aragorn fed him upon their first halt, sharing out the last of the water in his Lórien-flask. The vessel the Beornings had given him he transferred beneath his tunic, for it was more than halfway frozen. The cold seemed to be the only force of the world beyond that could penetrate Mirkwood's mass with impunity. Had it not been for the warmth of the garments Grimbeorn's family had given him, he would have been in wretched straights indeed. As it was he was merely chilled, though the burning prickles in his fingers and toes grew intense enough that morning that he decided to dare a fire during his second rest.

It drew less attention than he had feared from the forest-dwellers. The occasional curious squirrel drew near for a minute or two before flicking a bushy black tail and hurrying off among the trees, and a small brown bird lingered for a while. Aragorn watched it as he warmed his hurting hands, but there was no way to tell whether it meant him ill or no. He tried to put the speculation from his mind. He had been altogether too imaginative since entering these woods.

He struck out again as twilight began to fall, and he had not gone far when Gollum suddenly balked. This was not the disinterested dawdling in which he ordinarily indulged, but a sudden freezing that yanked the tether and sent Aragorn's torn wrist blazing. Irritated the Ranger turned. He was met not with the obstinacy he had expected, but with a noiselessly gibbering visage of fright. Instantly on the alert, Aragorn looked about. He could hear nothing unusual, and the undergrowth was too thick to allow for a proper survey of the area. Yet something had clearly startled Gollum, and remembering the wargs Aragorn was not inclined to dismiss his prisoner's behaviour out of hand.

'What is it?' he whispered, taking back his last two steps to stand nearer to the creature. 'Have you heard something? Tell me the danger that I may guard us both.'

Gollum looked up at him, frightened but reticent. After a minute's silence Aragorn grew impatient with waiting and turned to walk again. He took three strides and was forced to halt when Gollum did not move. Then with long spindly hands the captive yanked upon the rope, drawing it in towards him. Startled by this temerity Aragorn found himself following the motion. The toe of his right boot caught on a root as he did so, and he wavered a little before he could right himself. He opened his mouth to scold his charge – and then he heard it.

Some distance north of where they stood the underbrush rustled and there was a low snorting sound. Then out from beneath a tangle of low-growing hedges came a small snuffling creature with a narrow snubbed nose and a bristly caramel-coloured hide striped along the back in dark and light hues. It was a wild piglet, not more than two months of age and small to be rooting for food: the product of a winter litter. Aragorn scarcely had time to wonder at the sight when two more came into view, trotting after their sibling and pawing at the forest floor. Hastily he took hold of the halter and drew a long and slow step backward, pulling Gollum with him. The piglets were young: too young to wander far from their den.

His suspicion was confirmed a moment later when there was a snap of a broken branch and a great dark mass came crashing out at a hasty trot. It was the mother boar: huge and solidly built, heavy as a man and armed with tusks that could snap a leg in two. She nudged at her young with her nose and then turned, pawing the mulch with one foreleg while she fixed glittering black eyes upon the Man and his companion.

Aragorn did not dare to take his gaze from her face, but out of the corner of his eye he was looking for a fallen branch he might snatch up. His knife was in his hand, but it was a woefully inadequate tool for such an encounter. If she decided he was a threat and moved to charge him, he would lose his arm trying to go after her with the short Elven blade. He waited, watching and not quite daring to hope that she would deign to leave him in peace. She might, he told himself. He had not touched the piglets, and Gollum's forceful intervention had kept him from stepping upon their little leader. But he was obviously near her den, and from the look of her the boar had only just weaned her young. She would still be vicious with the instinct to guard them, and he was a wanderer in a place men were not often seen. This last might measure either in his favour or against it: she might not perceive him as a threat, if she had never before seen a Man, but on the other hand she might attack him for an unknown entity.

The boar took a firm, confrontational step forward and Gollum made a thin whimpering noise in his throat. One long hand clawed at Aragorn's boot, and the Ranger tightened his hold on the knot of the noose, hoping fervently that his prisoner would understand and be still. The pig was bristling now, and she let out a rumbling bellow, whipping her head to one side so that her yellowed tusk showed starkly in the gathering dusk. Wary but motionless Aragorn watched her, filling his thoughts – and hopefully his eyes – with a sense of calm insignificance, of nonthreatening and innocuous existence. He meant no harm to her, he thought fervently. He had no wish to hurt her young. There was nothing, nothing at all to fear from him.

Suddenly she closed the distance between them on stout swift legs. Gollum swallowed what surely would have been an ear-splitting keening of terror, and jerked only a little against the hold of Aragorn's hand. Though it took all of his will neither to shy away nor to break into flight, the Ranger held his ground. Surprised by this, the boar halted just short of his boots. She looked up, eyes seeming to linger for a moment on the bright blade of the knife. Then with a swift lunging motion she bowed her head and butted Aragorn's shin with the bridge of her snout. There was a hollow clock of bone against bone, and a dull shuddering pain rippled out from the place of impact. He stiffened against it but did not allow his feet to shift. The boar swooped again in the same gesture, but this time before she made contact she turned her neck, swept around in a tight arc, and went trotting back to her piglets.

Slowly and cautiously Aragorn edged away from the little clearing in the undergrowth, not taking his eyes from the boar and her young until he was well away. Only then did he loop around to resume his northeasterly progress. When he was satisfied that he had put a solid mile between them he halted, releasing his hold on Gollum's rope and reaching into the satchel. He drew out an egg and offered it to his prisoner.

'You did well,' he said, determined to lay the credit for their serendipitous escape where it was due. 'You have saved us both from a mauling or worse.'

Gollum gave no sign that he had heard these words of sombre praise, but he took the egg readily enough, and when Aragorn lit his candle and started out in the darkness he followed without question.

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Before he was forced to halt again, Aragorn came to a place where the land began to dip downward. He found himself sliding and skittering between the trees with their ghostly garlands of spider-silk, worn boots gripping poorly amid the slippery mulch. Then the terrain leveled again and suddenly he was out of the underbrush and onto a mossy but well-packed path. It wound to the left and it wound to the right, and the cobwebs strung from the trees to either side of it did not cross the byway itself. Aragorn had neither the strength nor the spirit to smile, but his worries eased a little and he breathed more freely than he had in days. He had reached the Elven road in safety, and in little more than half the time it would have taken him to come here from the forest-gate. Despite the pain in his feet he continued on for a while, less haunted by the eyes beyond the glow of his candle. When at last he stopped to rest a while, he did so squarely in the middle of the trodden way, stretching out upon his back with one mittened hand beneath his neck. He had to fight off sleep all the while that he lay, for he had snatched fewer than three hours in total since departing from Grimbeorn's hall, and his mind kept begging to slip away if only for a few minutes. So although he was weary and wracked with perpetual grinding pain he rose up again as soon as he was able and hobbled onward. He did not light a candle this time, but followed the path by feel in the darkness.

Still he was dogged by the sense that he was being watched; that something was following him in the darkness, now from the mass of the forest to his right. He thought again of the greenish eyes, and his spine rippled with a shiver of dread. After a lifetime of danger he knew when he was being hunted. In other circumstances he might have doubled back, to search for signs of his pursuer and to try to divine what it was that tracked him, and perhaps even to what end. But he walked in haste and he was not alone on his road, and he had little enough strength to press on without wasting many hours hunting his pursuer. Whatever it was, it moved most often through the trees above - and so at least he could be assured that it was neither Man nor orc. Still his steps were haunted by the knowledge that pursuit was close upon his bruised and flagging heels.

He was forced to halt again that night, and he found the will to eat a little. The honey-cake, so blessedly wholesome and sweet, sat like a stone in his stomach, and though it left his mouth dry he dared not take more than two brief draughts of water. This was the fifth night since he had departed from the care of Eira wife of Grimbeorn. He had hoped to be safe within the halls of the wood-elves by now, and he had not even crossed the Enchanted Stream. He could not expect his water to last if he was too free with it.

Aragorn went limping on again long before dawn, and came at last to the narrow black brook just as the light was beginning to rise a little. Once, long ago, there had been a bridge over this stream: one rotted piling still showed low upon the opposite shore. When last he and Gandalf had come this way, there had been a little row-boat tethered to a root and waiting. He saw no boat now, but he knew this road. At the very bank of the stream there was a mighty oak girdled upon all sides with the Elven path. Its bare boughs were free of cobwebs: the spiders shunned it. On the opposite shore stood its sister, broad reaching arms spanning the water like a carven archway. Above the stream two thick branches met, entwined together. It was the wood-elves' bridge, by which they crossed the stream themselves.

To climb Aragorn was obliged to remove his mittens. At first his fingers, still aching and riddled with open sores, were reluctant to grasp. Then he realized that the residue of Eira's salve, which he reapplied with care upon each halt, was clinging to his hands so that they were slick and qick to slip. He wiped them carefully on the ragged edge of his blanket, and then he managed to make his ascent. Gollum was reluctant to touch the tree, but as Aragorn reached for the next branch and the rope pulled upon his throat he appeared to deem it the lesser evil to climb, and he scurried up after. The bridging boughs were broad and strong, and under ordinary circumstances Aragorn would have stood and walked across. Now, however, his legs were weary and shaking after the exertion of the climb, and there was a giddiness in his head. He straddled the branch instead, ankles tucked up behind him, and drew himself across in that fashion. The descent was easy enough, and the river lay behind him. Exhausted and with throbbing hands, he sat down upon the path and drew up his knees that he might rest his reeling head for a moment or two.

Then, horribly, Gollum let loose one of his shrill, piercing shrieks. Aragorn felt his whole body stiffen, and he would have driven his fingers into his ears if they had not been so stiff and aching after their exertions. Miserably he toyed with the notion of simply picking up his charge and hurling him into the water. The stream was under a powerful and ancient enchantment of slumber, forgetfulness, and deep dreams. It would silence Gollum for a time, and it would do him no harm. But of course he had not the strength to carry his unconscious charge, nor had he spirit enough for the fight to get him into the water. It was an alluring thought but nothing more.

Gollum took a stilted breath and screamed again, clawing at his head with one hand and tugging at the rope with the other. Aragorn's pulse quickened and he lifted his head out of its exhausted sagging. This was not the belligerent shouting that his prisoner had done at the edge of the forest. This was panic: true terror and a note of anxious warning. Twice before Gollum had heralded dangers that Aragorn had been unable to sense. Twice he had saved them from calamity. Now again he was writhing in fright, yanking upon the cord and trying to communicate something to which he could not apparently give voice. Weariness forgotten, Aragorn scrambled to his feet. He stumbled but kept his balance, and Gollum took off at a loping run, down away from the river. Swift as he could Aragorn ran after him, fumbling to draw his knife again and glad that his hands were still bare from the climb. Whatever awaited him he would fend it off with greater dexterity without the mittens. As he dashed after his prisoner he looked to the right and the left, but the cobwebbed forest was a blur on either side, and he could hear nothing over the keening shrieks before him.

When Gollum veered right and dragged him off the path, Aragorn was too rapt in watching for the unseen danger to take much notice.