Chapter LIII: Hobbled

Hastening after his prisoner, Aragorn ran. He was crashing clumsily through the undergrowth, battered feet pounding mercilessly against the forest floor and barking again and again upon roots or fallen brush. Even if Gollum's cries had not filled the air he would have been unable to listen for sounds of pursuit through the roaring of the blood in his ears. His ribs strained with the effort to draw the deep breaths needed to fuel his flight, and the gloom of the forest became flecked with lancing bursts of imagined light before strained eyes. Somehow he kept his grip upon his knife, striving all the while to ready his mind and body for battle, but his strength was failing and he was not at all certain that he would be able to go on much longer.

Then, so suddenly that Aragorn nearly tripped right over him, Gollum halted. Still straining to breathe through the crackling ache in his chest, the Ranger turned at once to watch the way in which they had come. He knew that they had left a trail this time that anyone could follow, and if the unseen danger was in pursuit it would come upon them soon enough. There was no time to ease his hammering heart or to put right his reeling head, but his body found its battle-ready stance almost at once and he focused his faltering gaze and his far steadier will upon the direction in which the threat would come. Gollum was behind him, tense and wary and silent at last. If his judgement was to be trusted he had taken the safest place.

It was the word trusted that struck the first uneasy chord in Aragorn's heart, but almost before he could recognize it something seized upon his cloak, plucking at the heavy wool where it rested on his right shoulder-blade. He had only a brief clarifying moment in which to grasp the folly of his actions before another strand struck at the crown of his head and his hood was tugged away.

He spun, cogent enough to turn left instead of right and so avoid entangling his legs in Gollum's tether, and there was a noise like the twang of a bowstring as the first length of spider-silk snapped. A third struck his scratched face as he whirled, and his knife-hand slipped up to sever it. From above came an indignant clicking noise that sent ice flowing through his veins as he was brought back to an inky tunnel choked with stale and putrid air, and the sudden phosphorescence rushing towards him out of the darkness. While the memory of that terrible time engulfed his conscious thought and set the deep scar in his leg ablaze, the instincts of a hardened warrior were searching for his adversary.

He saw it clinging to its web in the lower branches of a spreading oak tree, many legs shifting as it readied itself to strike again. The jewelled onyx eyes rolled and the pincer-fangs gnashed; then the bulbous body reared as the spinnerets sent out another floating length of webbing. Aragorn took a long step to the right, and it narrowly missed his head.

Then suddenly his mind was clear again, and he felt the irrational urge to laugh. As far as he could see there was only one spider, and a quick appraising glance about the little bower showed him only the one clean and tended web amid the tatters of others long abandoned. And this spider, though hardly of the peaceable garden variety, was but a little thing: scarcely the size of a yearling pony, and with a rickety underfed look that told him it was not much of a hunter. As it fired off another strand of silk and he dodged it again, his suspicion was confirmed. The vast demon-thing that haunted his memories cast this distant cousin in a most unimpressive light.

'Quick!' cried Gollum, his voice hoarse and shrill with anxious urgency. 'Quick, quick! It's swift and wicked, gollum, and it's deadly! Be quick!'

It did not seem especially swift to Aragorn, who danced out of the way of its entrapping filaments again and kept his eyes fixed upon the ugly thing as it skittered to the far side of its web in search of a better vantage-point. He was not fool enough to try to charge it while it roosted in the tree, and it would be mad to try to outrun a spider that could scurry from branch to branch with many-jointed limbs and clinging claws. He made his own judicious withdrawal, and Gollum was obliged to lope after him as the rope grew taut. When the next stream of sticky silk shot after him he dropped to one knee and closed his left fist upon the long fallen bough he had come after. The main shaft was thick and sturdy, and it spread into a fan of smaller branches; on the whole it was a little over four feet long. He could use it to drive back the creature if he had to, but more importantly it would allow him to protect his hard-won prize when the battle was joined.

Thus equipped, he fell to taunting.

'Ai, Attercop!' he cried. Bilbo's tale of his own remarkable encounter with these creatures had taught him long ago that they were proud, and easily driven to deranged anger. He had never tested this in his own encounters, but those had been with swarms of the things confident in their ability to take down a wanderer or two. This spider would clearly not leave its web without further incentive. 'Come after me if you dare, for I shall not stumble in your web.'

'Promised, you promised,' the spider chittered. Like all of its race it possessed some capacity for speech, though the sounds were warped and thickly trilling and there was little coherency to the words. Likely it did not mean promised at all, nor anything resembling it, and there was no use in trying to make sense of what it thought it was saying. 'Straight to my den, my beautiful web: nice rich breakfast, lean though it be!'

Aragorn took two long strides forward, raised his arm to its full length despite the inconvenience to Gollum, and swatted with the stick. The farthest twigs smacked against the foundation cords, several of them snapping against them. The web vibrated and the tree creaked as the spider reared and shifted indignantly. He tried to curl his lip into a scornful sneer, and although he doubted the unfamiliar expression was rendered very well it seemed to have the desired effect. There was a high clacking shriek of anger and the spider lunged after the branch and its bearer. Aragorn withdrew them both with a leap that cost him much agony in the landing, and shuffled back to a safe distance. When the next bolt of webbing came after him he twisted so that it caught his cloak instead of his body, and a swift swoop of the knife set him free again.

'Elveses!' wailed Gollum in a harsh and almost defiant voice. 'It's a friend of the Elveses, it is, with their bright eyes!'

It might have been nothing more than an attempt to aid him in drawing the spider out of its tree, but Aragorn could not keep himself from turning suspicious eyes upon the withered body crouching some distance from his boot. Before he could speak or give consideration to his unease the spider – emboldened perhaps by his momentary distraction – sprang from the tree and landed arched and ready before him. Its claws dug into the mulch as it moved to its left. Slavering globules of poison shone upon its quivering fangs, and the great eyes glittered with ravening avarice. Rearing up upon the two hindmost pairs of legs, it pawed at the air and let out a rattling howl before lunging. Bending his knees Aragorn swung the knife low and grazed against a bulging joint and narrowly missing the swoop of one chitinous claw. Quickly he withdrew, as Gollum hurried to keep well behind the guarding sweep of the branch. The successful strike had surely done little true harm to the spider, for the hairy legs were thickly armoured and though sharp the knife was short. Yet like all evil things it shunned the touch of Elven steel, and it retreated a pace with a keening noise of torment.

Aragorn did not press the advantage, but straightened and stood fast as he waited for the thing to strike again. Gollum was gibbering senselessly now. He hopped from one foot to the other, bony knuckles grazing the ground as he tried to keep himself as far from the affray as possible without risking strangulation when Aragorn's left hand moved unexpectedly. There was no time to watch him, for the spider had its forelegs in the air again and he was obliged to pull back to keep his knee from being gored by a long serrated claw.

'Hit it, cut it!' Gollum cried. Aragorn lunged, trying again to strike the underbelly where the horny armour of the spider's hide was weakest. The beast sent forth another spray from its spinnerets: not the strong cables this time, but a viscous and clinging mass that struck Aragorn's chest and stuck there. Given the chance the spider would have taken him in its claws and rolled him again and again as it coated his body in a cocoon of the stuff, immobilizing him so that he might hang until fit for eating. Instead he scrambled away, using the heel of his left hand for leverage without letting go of the branch. Small though this spider might be by the reckoning of the one that lent to Torech Ungol its name, it was not an opponent to be taken lightly. It had eight swift seeking legs, every one a weapon, while Aragorn was armed only with a knife and a brittle old stick. For the first time in many weeks he longed for the weight of a sword in his hands.

When he had his feet firmly under him he swept with that arm, smacking the wood against the side of the spider's head as he crouched. It yowled insensibly and lurched to its left, but his right hand was ready and he swung it inward with the knife in his fist. There was a thick squelching sound and when he yanked back the blade it was black with ichor. His heart seemed to strain against his ribs with a grim surge of triumph, even as he sprang away to keep from being eviscerated by a sweeping leg. He turned a hopeful glance at the faceted eye, but it was still whole. His stroke had gone ever so slightly amiss and instead of puncturing the orb he had plunged his knife into the socket behind it.

Still the spider was at least temporarily overcome with pain and rage. It clattered around in a reeling circle, pincers snapping and bloated head shaking. When it struck out at him again it did so erratically, and a swift sidestep sent its claws plunging into the mulch instead of his flank. Aragorn struck again, and again he narrowly missed the spider's left eye. This time the bright blade glanced off of the spider's pinched neck, taking many black bristles with it. The beast let out a piercing ululation of suffering and retreated almost to the foot of its tree before rising to strike again.

Yet now as Aragorn danced out of the way there was a rush of movement behind him. With the nimble precision of a lunging hound, Gollum slipped between the Man's long legs and banked sharply right. Though his wits cried out their warning Aragorn's body did not respond swiftly enough. The rope jerked suddenly rigid, yanking back his left hand and biting into his knees, and as Gollum circled broadly behind him the Ranger began to totter. Tugging on the cord himself, he managed to take a half-step backward, but his foot struck a tree-root and his ankle rolled inward. He thrust his weight forward and tried to brace his failing leg, but there was a terrible snapping sound and a sudden release of pressure spreading from his great toe along either side of his foot. It was followed almost at once by the sickening feel of tendons stretching and ligaments tearing, and he fell.

There was a sundering impact in his lower back, to the right of his spine, and it seemed that all the wind was driven from his lungs. In that moment of blinding anguish he knew nothing but the all-consuming fire that tore through his kidney into his viscera from the place where the wooden bottle of the Beornings dug into him. Then somehow he listed to the left and the vessel shifted beneath his tunic and he could detect the loose, floating burning at the end of his leg. Addled in his suffering, he strove frantically to remember where he was and what had happened and why he must find his knife.

'Cut us loose! Cut us loose, preciouss!' Gollum screamed, and the rope slapped against the side of Aragorn's head as his prisoner yanked at it. 'Cut us loose and kill it! We brought it, we brought it to you: kill it!'

Then with almost academic detachment Aragorn understood. Twice had Gollum given him true warnings, but many more times had he set out with murder on his crafty mind. He might have known – he should have known – that it had been the latter that made him cry out as if in terror on the east bank of the stream. He had expected his captive to make one last attempt to shape his downfall before they reached the stronghold of the wood-elves. He had known that Gollum would not go quietly. But he had not looked for malice disguised as fright. He had wanted to believe, and so had pemitted himself to think, that Gollum had once more meant to spare them both some calamity; and he had allowed himself to be led straight into a trap. How his prisoner had forged the pact with the spider he could not guess, unless it had been the beast's presence that had roused him from his brief uneasy sleep on the first night beneath Mirkwood's shadow. Yes, he thought with a weariness almost too great to bear, that was it. Surely that was it, and now he lay prostrate before his death: betrayed by a creature he should never have allowed himself to trust, even for a moment.

All this passed through the Ranger's mind in a single crystalline instant between the ebbing of the first shock of his fall and the drawing of the sundering gasp that filled his empty lungs and sent him into a fresh throe of agony. Beyond the top of his pulsating skull Gollum was still shrieking, and there was a clicking cacophony of shrill spider laughter. Then a black blur rose amid the muddy film over Aragorn's eyes, and he knew the beast was coming for him. He had scorned it as small and scrawny, but now it seemed quite large enough as it hefted its dark mass over him and reared its head to strike. The pincers dripped their poison and the spider thrust downward to bury them in his neck. It would paralyse him for a time, and when he woke he would be trussed up in its webbing waiting to be dismembered and devoured.

It seemed he was already under the spell of the venom, for he could not move. He stared up at the shadow eclipsing even the gloom of Mirkwood, and he tried to master himself. It was bearing down now, swift and yet impossibly slow. All that he had to do was roll upon one side, and the fangs would be driven harmlessly into the earth, but he could not muster himself to do it. Still Gollum was shouting his command of death, and though the words made little sense the trilling tone was more than Aragorn's patience could bear. For so long – seven weeks by his closest reckoning – he had borne the mutterings and grumblings and howlings of this hated thing. He did not want that sound to be the last thing he heard.

It was this thought, it seemed, that gave him the strength to command his battered body. At the last moment he twisted, left shoulder rising and left foot pushing as he rolled towards the root that had turned his ankle. The spider struck, but its fangs did not sink into the thin skin stretched across his collarbones and over the great vessels of his neck. Instead one flailed in the open air, while the other struck the meat of his shoulder and slipped into muscles that, though withered somewhat with deprivation and so less than their usual girth, were still hard with the sinews of a warrior. Aragorn felt the fire of the first trickles of poison, but it was the pricking of his right thigh that held his focus. For the pain came not from the ache of the old scar, but from the bite of a blade pressed shallowly against his hose.

By some miraculous might of instinct, he had kept his hold upon his knife.

In the instant of hesitation while the spider strove to decide whether to inject its paralysing cargo or to pull back to strike again, Aragorn wrenched back in the direction he had come. His speared flesh slid off of the pincer as the jet of venom shot out to soak the ground and his tunic and the hem of his cloak, while at the same moment his right arm rose. Sure of his target, laid so readily bare by the spider's straddling stance, he dug the Elven blade deep into the creature's belly. It jolted backward as if stung, but he came with it. The muscles of his abdomen contracted and he rose, forcing the knife deeper still. Then with a long sweep of his arm he drew it down and outward, tearing a massive rent in the spider's flesh and drenching himself in the dark gout of its death. Its final shriek shook the branches of the overhanging trees as Aragorn heaved the bulbous body off of him, and it rolled onto its broad back. Eight legs twitched convulsively in the air, and one by one they fell still.

Breathless and trembling, Aragorn tipped back to land amid the rotting leaves. His shoulder was ablaze with the spider's secretions and he could already feel numbness deep in the wound as the toxins began to spread. From his floating ribs to the base of his pelvis his right flank was a torment of throbbing misery. He could feel almost nothing in his foot now, but from the shallow gasps and the quivering in his fingers he suspected that this was only a sign of shock setting in. It was the bite of the rope against his ear that kept him from subsisting there until he swooned away, for Gollum was with him and he was trying to get free of the halter.

His left hand swung across his body and his right elbow dug into the ground. Aragorn rolled again onto his abused right side and pushed himself up as he did so, managing somehow to sit. Then he shifted the knife to his left hand and hauled upon the rope, dragging his prisoner writhing and shrieking to his side.

'Again,' he hissed, the word catching heavily in his throat. The effort of speaking sent a spasm through his chest, and he had to brace himself against the pain that followed. His right hand let go of the rope and closed on Gollum's ear. The creature stilled, gawping up at him with enormous eyes flooded with terror and rage and the bitterness of failure. 'Again,' said Aragorn, but he could find no words to express his loathing, his anger, his final drained despair. His nails dug into the soft flesh of the lobe and Gollum whimpered. He did not care. 'Again…'

There would have to be a reckoning for this, but he could not think of that now. He had to rise up and find his way back to the path. Though he had no idea how he would accomplish the first he knew the second would be simple enough. He had left a trail like that of a rampaging bull in his haste to follow Gollum in what he had taken to be a flight from danger. The thought that there was one problem in all this ruin with a straightforward solution bolstered his courage a little. He fixed Gollum with eyes he hoped were not too deadened with suffering and exhaustion, and he spoke again.

'You will follow, and you will not thwart me,' he said. His left hand jerked clumsily, but the Elven blade glinted despite the gloom. 'I can do to you what I did to your confederate, and with considerably less trouble.'

Gollum moaned and tried to shrink away, causing Aragorn's grip to tug at his ear again. He whined piteously and reached as though to claw at the Ranger's hand, but did not dare. Satisfied, Aragorn released his hold and used his right hand to shift himself so that he could bring up his left foot. At last he looked at his right leg. The ankle was canted, and though it straightened when he bade it there was a detached and distant warning of pain to come. He saw too the source of the dreadful noise that he had heard, and of the strange feeling of pressure abating in the moment before the sinews strained. The sole of his boot had torn free of the vamp. It flapped now against his foot, attached only by a few inches of stitching about the heel. He swallowed a cry of frustrated dismay, for he had greater difficulties than a ruined boot. Broken or merely wrenched, he could not put his weight upon his ankle until he had the chance to examine it or he might imperil the continued use of his foot.

He disentangled the rope from his legs so that his left harm had some freedom of motion. Gollum did not resist as he did this: his eyes were fixed all the time upon the knife. Then Aragorn cast about for something to aid him in his efforts to rise. The stick that he had used to fend off the spider was snapped in twain, and in any case it had been too short to be of use as a crutch. He could see no other likely prospect nearby and so, hoisting with his right arm and then shifting his hips, he dragged himself towards the nearest tree with Gollum creeping warily after him. By clinging to the trunk he managed to haul his weight up onto his left leg, the right dangling uselessly beside him. He swayed dangerously, a wave of terrible nausea breaking over him. The numbness in his left arm was spreading now; his elbow felt curiously absent and twice its normal size, though a careful glance confirmed that it was still in place and showed no signs of swelling. While sensation lingered he reached up to break off a long, strong bough, and he put his weight upon the tree as he stripped it for a staff. By the time he had finished his fingers had the feel of useless sausages, and he was obliged to tuck away the knife. Still he shifted it on his belt so that the hilt was clearly visible.

'You have seen me in battle at last,' he said hoarsely, and Gollum cringed at the sound of his voice. 'You know how swiftly I can draw it.'

To his ears the threat sounded feeble, but his prisoner seemed to take it with due alarm. Aragorn crooked his unfeeling left arm about the clumsy crutch, and gripped it with his right hand. He took his first cautious, hobbling step away from the tree and dragged his twisted foot after him. The ache in his side was terrible, but he set his teeth against it. 'Keep pace,' he commanded, glaring down at Gollum. 'If the rope grows taut you will rue it bitterly.'

Then, rocking against the stave and fighting with all his will against a head that swam with illness and hurt, he set off back towards the path. His progress was slow, tortuously slow, but he did not think that it took more than half an hour in the end. At last he was up on the Elven way again, where the cobwebs could not reach. He thought the spider he had slain was an outcast of sorts, but still the others might muster against its killer. Yet rage though they might they would not dare the wood-elves' road. Here too the way was level and the ground firm, and he would be able to limp on once he had seen to his hurts. Now, however, he eased himself carefully to the packed earth with his right leg stretched before him. The morning was still in its youth, and he could not go on until he knew what evils his body had taken.

He did off with cloak and blanket and then laid his pack aside, looking with dread at the stain of spider-blood spread across the wool. If his provisions were fouled he would have no choice but to go hungry, for he could not hunt in this state and he dared not leave the path to forage. Yet this, like his boot, was a minor worry, and he struggled one-handed to unbuckle his belt. He removed Grimbeorn's old tunic by sliding his useable arm out of its sleeve, tugging the garment up over his head, and easing it down off of his unfeeling left limb. The front was smeared with the sticky silver silk and soaked with the spider's dark and stinking blood. In patches the latter had oozed through to stain his tattered cote, but it was not half so foul. Aragorn reached for the lace that held his old garment closed, and then shook his head. The effort would exhaust him, and it was unnecessary. With two sharp tugs he tore the remaining line of stitches that held his dangling left sleeve, and slipped the sheath off. The shirt beneath was light and easily bunched up to the shoulder, laying bare the place where the pincer had punctured him.

It was a deep narrow wound, about an inch and a half in length. It might have been made by a knife, but for the ragged lower corner where the spider's serrated fang had torn at the flesh. It was bleeding copiously: having soaked the sleeve of his shirt it now sent thin red rivulets down towards his elbow. He probed it thoroughly, unhampered by pain because the paralytic – though administered in too low a dose to overcome him completely – had frozen his arm from its socket to the tips of his fingers. Finding no piece of broken pincer, nor anything else to worry him further, he decided to let it bleed awhile. He thought his giddiness to be a result of the poison, and if any lingered at the wound it would be best to let it wash away if it could.

Gingerly he felt his back. The flesh was tender, and exquisitely painful upon deep palpation. It was entirely possible that he had bruised his kidney, but there was no way to be certain unless he started showing blood and in any case such hurts could be healed only by time. The bottle itself had not broken, and that was a mercy. The leather vessel he had carried from Lórien would surely have burst under such an impact, and then he would have been without water. So despite the miserable injury he had in fact been fortunate in that.

Finally he drew his right foot close and felt the ankle. He could move each of the toes in turn and without much pain, but any attempt to flex his foot was rewarded with anguish. Already the foot was swelling and he felt certain he had sprained it. At another time he might have been filled with distress and dread, but his mind was numb to emotion now and he felt only a weariness that seemed to sink to the very core of his being. From his pouch he brought out the strips of wool with which he had bound Gollum's hands on the night when the wretch must have held his conference with the spider. He wrapped them about the arch of his foot, tying the loose sole of his boot in place and putting light pressure upon his inflamed foot. Then he dragged the satchel towards him and opened it.

Some of the spider-blood had indeed leeched through, but it was not as bad as he had feared. Three of the remaining parcels of waybread were ruined, but two were untouched. He tossed away the fouled ones, and with them the eggs – which had broken in his fall. He would have rid himself of them anyhow: he had no intention of feeding his prisoner again until he bided within Thranduil's dungeons. One of the felted shoes was soaked, and it was that which had spared the last of his provisions. He flung it away and tugged the other one over his broken boot. It would not keep his foot dry, he feared, but it was better than nothing. Then he had to contrive to dress himself again. He looked at the heavy woollen tunic, leaching loathsome black ichor onto the path, and he wondered how he could bear to drag it on again. He tugged it onto his lap, but the stink of spider was terrible and he choked back a flood of acid that rose to the back of his throat.

Violently he shoved the garment aside, fighting the urge to retch. He was shivering now, but the day was not much colder than freezing. There was no risk of wind beneath these ancient trees, and he had not much farther to travel. It was decided, then. He would leave the soiled tunic behind. Aragorn wrapped the blanket about his shoulders, fixing it in place with the strap of the satchel over one shoulder and the strap of the water-vessel over the other. Awkwardly he fastened Sigbeorn's cloak, which was wetted only a little with the blood of the beast. Then his right hand fell into his lap beside his useless left, and his chin sank down towards his chest. The urge to sleep was almost more than he could bear. His mouth was dry and seemed stuffed with lambswool, and the flesh across his cheekbones fairly crackled with weariness. Dimly he realized that this was not ordinary exhaustion. He felt as insensible as one drugged. The spider-poison was spreading, and it would lull him into oblivion if given half the chance. If that happened then Gollum would surely slay him at last, however he had to do it.

In a brief but fervent fit of anxious energy Aragorn rocked forward onto his left knee. He hoisted his staff in his right hand, cracked skin catching and tearing against the coarse bark. Levering himself with his two sound limbs he rose, reeling and swaying as he threatened to fall insensible to the path. But fall he did not, and though again he had to bite back the urge to vomit he managed to take first one unsteady rocking step and then another. Then somehow he was moving, sick and hurting though he was, and the path slipped by beneath his dragging right foot. Gollum followed in his footsteps with obedience borne of terror, and on they went as high above and unseen the Sun drove on to noon. As he walked Aragorn could think of nothing but the next unsteady step, save perhaps the need to fight off the toxic weariness that dragged upon his hammering heart. Yet deep within him there was a part of his mind not yet dulled by the venom that wondered why, if the spider lay dead behind him, he still felt that he was being hunted by a green-eyed watcher in the trees.